Women in Classical Athens

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In Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries BC, free women's lives centered around the domestic and religious spheres, unlike citizen men, who were able to involve themselves in politics. Free Athenian women, though not considered to be true citizens, became important from 451/0 BC, when Athenian citizenship began to require an Athenian-born mother as well as a citizen father. However, women themselves were still denied the right to participate directly in the democratic process.

Classical Athenian women married young, and were responsible for bearing and raising children, and looking after the household. There is debate among historians as to how far the ideology of seclusion in Classical Athens would have prevented free women from leaving the house entirely, though elite women would have been more subject to this ideology than common women and non-Athenians. While Athenian women were limited in the economic activities they could be involved in, many of them did in fact work, and through dowries their property could be a significant part of the household wealth.

Childhood

In Classical Athens, the infant mortality rate was high, with perhaps 25% of children dying at or soon after birth.^[1] Sarah Pomeroy suggests that in addition to the natural risks of childbirth, the ancient Athenians would have practiced infanticide, with girls more likely to be killed than boys.^[2] Grossman says that girls appear to be commemorated about as often as boys on surviving Attic gravestones, though previous scholars have suggested that boys were commemorated up to twice as often.^[3] If they survived, Athenian children, male and female alike, were named in a ceremony ten days after their birth, known as the dekate.^[4] Other Athenian ceremonies celebrating childbirth – at five, seven, and forty days after the birth respectively – were also observed for both boys and girls.^[5] Later rites of passage seem to have been more common for boys than girls, though, as well as more elaborate.^[6]

Classical Athenian girls probably reached menarche at about the age of fourteen, at which point they would have married.^[7] Girls who died before marriage were mourned for their failure to reach this point. Memorial vases for dead girls in classical Athens often portrayed her dressed as a bride, and were sometimes shaped like loutrophoroi, the kind of vase used to transport water used to bathe before the wedding day.^[8]

Grave stele of a young girl, inscribed with the name Plangon (ΠΛΑΝΓΩΝ). The carving shows the girl holding a doll in one hand. Athens, c. 310 BC. Now in Munich Glyptothek Museum.

Athenian girls were not formally educated, needing only the domestic skills necessary for the running of the household, which would have been taught to them by their mothers.^[9] Classical art shows that girls, as well as boys, played with toys such as spinning tops, hoops, and seesaws, as well as games such as piggyback.^[10] The gravestone of Plangon, an Athenian girl aged about five, now in the Munich Glyptothek, shows her holding a doll and with a set knucklebones on the wall in the background.^[11]

We know more about the role of Athenian children in religion than we do about any other aspect of their lives, and they seem to have played quite a prominent role in religious ceremonies.^[12] We know that girls made offerings to Artemis on the eve of their marriage, as well as during pregnancy and at childbirth.^[1] Girls as well as boys are portrayed on wine jugs which are connected with the spring festival the Anthesteria, though depictions of boys on these jugs are much more common.^[10]

Family life

Marriage

The primary role of free women in Classical Athens was to marry and bear children.^[13] This emphasis on marriage as a way to perpetuate the family through bearing legitimate children was a change from in the Athens of the archaic period, when at least amongst the most powerful, marriages were as much about making beneficial connections as they were about perpetuating the family.^[14] In pursuit of this, Athenian women typically first married around the age of fourteen,^[15] usually to a much older man.^[16] Prior to this point, they were looked after by their closest male relative, who was responsible for choosing their husband.^{[note 1][18]} As a Classical Athenian marriage was concerned with the production of legitimate children who could inherit their parents' property,^[19] women often married relatives.^[18] This was especially the case for women who had no brothers, known as epikleroi, whose nearest male relative was given the first option to marry her.^[20]

Athenian women married with a dowry which was intended to provide for her livelihood.^[21] The daughters of even the poorest families seem to have had dowries worth ten minae, though rich families could provide much larger dowries: Demosthenes' sister, for instance, had a dowry of two talents (120 minae).^[22] Only in exceptional circumstances would there have been no dowry, as its lack could have been taken as proof that no legitimate marriage occurred.^[4] Occasionally, a dowry may have been overlooked if a bride's familial connections are extremely favorable. For example, Callias was supposed to have married Elpinice, a daughter of the noble Philaidae, in order to align himself with that family, being himself sufficiently wealthy that the lack of dowry did not affect him.^[23]

In Classical Athenian marriages, both husband and wife could legally initiate a divorce.^[13] So too could the woman's closest male relative – the man who would, were she not married, be her kurios – apparently even against the wishes of the married couple.^[24] Upon divorce, the husband was required to either return the dowry, or pay 18% interest on it annually, so that the woman's livelihood would continue to be provided for and she would be able to remarry.^[23] If there were children at the time of the divorce, they remained in their father's house, and he continued to be responsible for their upbringing.^[25] In cases where a woman committed adultery, her husband was legally required to divorce her.^[26] If an epikleros was already married, she would be divorced so that she could marry her nearest relative.^[26]

Married women were responsible for the day to day running of the household. At marriage, they assumed responsibility for the prosperity of their husband's household and the health of its members.^[27] Their primary responsibilities were bearing, raising, and caring for children, and weaving cloth and making clothes.^[28] They would also have been responsible for caring for sick members of the household, supervising slaves, and ensuring that the household had enough food.^[29]

Seclusion

In Classical Athens, the ideal woman stayed apart from men.^[15] This ideology of separation was so strong that a speaker in a lawsuit (Isaeus' Against Simon) could assure the jury that his sister and nieces were ashamed even to be in the presence of their relatives, as evidence of their respectability.^[30] In pursuit of this, women tended to live in the more remote rooms of the house, farther away from windows and entrances.^[31] Some historians have taken this ideology to be an accurate description of how Athenian women lived their lives. Tyrell, for example, has claimed that "the outer door of the house is the boundary for the free women".^[32] Even in antiquity, however, it was recognised that this ideology of separation could not be practiced by many Athenians. In the Politics, for instance, Aristotle asked "how is it possible to prevent the wives of the poor from going out of doors?".^[33]

The ideal of respectable women staying out of the public eye was so entrenched in classical Athens that for a citizen woman to simply be named in classical Athens could be a source of shame.^[34] Thucydides wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War that "great honour is hers, whose reputation among males is least, whether for praise or blame".^[35] Instead, women were referred to in relation to their male relatives,^[36] a practice which could create confusion in cases where two sisters were both referred to as the son or brother of the same man.^[37] Even in the case of law-court speeches, where the position of women is often a key point, especially in inheritance cases, orators seem to have deliberately avoided naming them.^[38] For instance, though Demosthenes speaks about his mother and sister in five extant speeches relating to his inheritance, neither of them are ever named, and in his entire corpus of extant works, only 27 women – compared to 509 men – are referred to by name.^[39] The use of a woman's personal name – as in the case of Neaera and Phano in Apollodoros' speech Against Neaera – has been interpreted as implying that she is not respectable.^[37] Gould has pointed out that women named in Classical Athenian oratory can be divided into three groups: low status women, the speaker's opponents,^{[note 2]} and the dead.^[39]

In practice, however, only rich families would have been able to strictly enforce this ideology.^[41] Women's responsibilities would have forced them to leave the house frequently, for instance to fetch water from the well or to wash clothing. Wealthy families could have had slaves do this, while free women stayed in the house, but in most families there would not have been enough slaves to avoid free women leaving the house at all.^[42] John Gould has argued that even Athenian women whose economic position would have forced them to work outside the house would have had a conceptual, if not physical, boundary which would have prevented them from interacting with unrelated men.^[43] By contrast, Kostas Vlassopoulos has posited that some areas of Athens, such as the agora, were what he calls "free spaces", where women and men could interact.^[44]

Even the most respectable of citizen women came out for ritual occasions, primarily festivals, sacrifices, and funerals, where they would have had some interaction with men.^[45] The Thesmophoria, an important festival to Demeter restricted to women, was run entirely by Athenian citizen women, who self-organised, electing officials to plan the festival.^[46] However, not just religious and ritual occasions, but also social reasons, saw Athenian women outdoors. David Cohen argues that "one of the most important activities of women included visiting or helping friends or relatives",^[46] and that even wealthy women who could afford to spend their entire times indoors probably took part in social interactions with other women out of the house in addition to the religious and ritual occasions on which they were seen in public.^[47] In fact, as Schaps argues, citing Cohen, while the ideology of separation in Classical Athens would have expected that women stay indoors when they did not have any reason to be outside, activities outside of the house which needed doing would have in practice overridden this ideology.^[48]

Legal rights

The juridical status of women in Athens is beautifully indicated by the single entry under 'women' in the index to Harrison's Law of Athens i: it reads simply 'women, disabilities'.

— John Gould, "Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens"^[49]

Athenian women, like slaves and metics, were permanently denied political freedoms,^[50] being excluded from the law courts and the Assembly.^[51] Indeed, Nicole Loraux argues that Athenian women were not even considered citizens.^[52] In the law courts, juries were all male,^[53] and women were unable to appear as litigants. Instead, they would be represented by their male guardian (kurios), or, in the rare cases where he were on the other side of the dispute, by any man who wished to.^[54] Indeed, as Simon Goldhill has argued, "The Athenian court seems to have been remarkably unwilling to allow any female presence in the civic space of the lawcourt itself".^[55] At the same time, in the political sphere it was men who made up the Assembly and served in political office.^[56]

While Athenian women were formally prevented from taking part in the democratic process, Kostas Vlassopoulos argues that they would have been exposed to political debate in the Agora.^[57] Also, from the time of the Periclean law of citizenship in 451/0, in which Athenian citizenship was limited to those born of two Athenian parents, not simply those with Athenian fathers,^[58] Athenian women's importance seems to have increased, even though they gained no formal legal rights.^[59]

Religion

Woman kneeling before an altar. Attic red-figure kylix, 5th BC, Stoa of Attalos

Religion was the one area of public life where women could participate freely.^[60] Indeed, Christopher Carey goes so far as to say that it was the "only area of Greek life in which a woman could approach anything like the influence of a man".^[61] Women's ritual activities included being responsible for mourning at funerals,^[62] and involvement in both exclusively female and mixed-sex cult activity, and was an indispensable part of Athenian society.^[63]

The cult of Athena Polias, the city's eponymous goddess, was central to Athenian society, used to reinforce concepts of morality and the structure of society.^[64] Women played a key role in the cult, and the priestesshood of Athena was a position of great importance.^[65] The priestess of Athena was capable of using her influence to support political positions. For instance, Herodotus tells us that before the battle of Salamis, the priestess of Athena supported the evacuation of Athens, telling the Athenians that the snake sacred to Athena which lived on the Acropolis had already left.^[65]

The most important festival to Athena in Athens was the Panathenaea, held annually, which was open to participation from both men and women.^[65] Men and women seem not to have been segregated during the procession leading the animals to be sacrificed in the festival to the altar, which was the most religiously significant part of the festival.^[65] In this procession, young noble girls called kanephoroi were responsible for carrying sacred baskets. These girls had to be virgins, and to prevent a candidate from being selected was, according to Pomeroy, to question their good name.^[66] For instance, the sister of Harmodius was supposed to have first been proposed and then rejected as a kanephoros by the sons of Pisistratus, which insult precipitated Harmodius' assassination of Hipparchus.^[67]

Women contributed every fourth year in the making of a new peplos or robe for the statue of Athena. This task was begun by two girls between the ages of seven and eleven and then finished by other women chosen for the task.^[68]

The most important festival reserved solely for women was the Thesmophoria, a fertility rite for Demeter reserved for married noblewomen. During this festival, women stayed for three days on Demeter's hilltop sanctuary, performing rites and celebrating.^[69] The specific rituals of the Thesmophoria are unknown, but it is known that pigs were sacrificed and buried, and the remains of those sacrificed the previous year were offered to the goddess.^[70] Other festivals reserved for women included the Brauronia, a festival celebrating Artemis of Brauron, to whom virgin girls were consecrated before their marriage,^[70] and the Arrhephoria, another puberty rite in which girls who had spent the previous year serving Athena known as Arrhephoroi left the Acropolis by a passage close to the precinct of Aphrodite, carrying baskets filled with items unknown to them.^[71]

Along with the major community-based religious rituals, women played an important role in domestic cults.^[72] They exercised influence over funeral arrangements, for instance with the speaker of Isaeus 8 explaining that he acceded to his grandmother's wishes regarding how his grandfather would be buried.^[73] This responsibility continued after the funeral itself, when it was women were responsible for regularly visiting the graves of dead family members to present offerings.^[72]

Economic activities

A woman at the laver, with a water bucket, a skyphos and a wineskin; Attic red-figure kylix.

Legally, Athenian women's economic powers were strictly constrained. The traditional view is that ancient Greek women, particularly in Classical Athens, lacked economic influence.^[74] Athenian women were forbidden from engaging in contracts worth more than a medimnos of barley, enough to feed an average family for six days.^[75] We know of at least one instance, however, where an Athenian woman dealt with a significantly larger sum,^[76] and Deborah Lyons notes that the existence of such a law has "recently come under question".^[77] Depite this, there is no evidence of Athenian women owning land or slaves, the two most valuable forms of property at the time.^[78]

While Athenian women were not legally permitted to dispose of large sums of money, they frequently did have large sums associated with them in the form of dowries, which were to be used to support them throughout their lives.^[23] The income derived from a dowry could be significant, and the larger the dowry a woman had relative to her husband's wealth, the more influence she was likely to have in the household, as the wife would retain the dowry if the couple divorced.^[79] Athenian women could also acquire property by inheritance, if she were the closest surviving relative.^{[note 3][81]} However, they could not legally contractually acquire or dispose of property.^[82]

While it was expected that respectable Athenian women stayed separate from unrelated men, and Athenian citizens subscribed to the idea that it was degrading for citizen-women to work,^[83] women both free and unfree are attested working in various capacities. We have evidence of women working both in those occupations which were an extension of the jobs women would have been expected to do in the household, such as textiles work and washing,^[84] and those for which there is no such obvious link. Women are attested as working, for instance, as cobblers, gilders, net-weavers, potters, and grooms.^[85]

We know that citizen women worked as merchants,^[86] and Athenian law forbade criticising anyone, male or female, for selling things in the marketplace.^{[87][note 4]} Women would also have gone out to the market to buy goods.^[89] Wealthy women would have owned slaves who they could send out on errands, but poorer women would have needed to go themselves.^[90]

Prostitution

A man with a Hetaira. Red-figure cup, ca. 510-500 BC. Now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

In classical Athens, female prostitution was legal, though considered disreputable, and the profits made by prostitutes were subject to tax.^[91] Prostitutes were considered to be either "pornai" or "hetaerae" ("companions", a euphemism for higher class prostitutes^[91]) working in Athens. Many of these were slaves or metics, and state-run brothels staffed by slaves were said to have been established as part of the reforms of Solon.^[92][93] However, Athenian-born women did also work in the sex trade in Athens as hetaerae.^[94] Pornai seem to have charged for each individual sex act, between about one and six obols,^[95] while hetairai were more likely to be given gifts and favours by their clients, enabling to them to maintain a fiction that they were not being paid for sex.^[96]

Hetaira at a symposium, playing a drinking game known as kottabos. As respectable Athenian women could not attend symposia, prostitutes were brought in to entertain guests. Attic red-figure kylix, c.500 BC. Now in the Getty Villa Museum

Prostitutes were often hired by the hosts of symposiums as entertainment for guests. Evidence of these activities can be seen on red-figure vase paintings. Prostitutes were also drawn on drinking cups as a form of pinups for male entertainment.^[97] Along with prostitutes, there would have been dancing girls and musicians at symposiums, who might have been sexually assaulted, and at least in the Aristophanes comedy Thesmophoriazusae, a dancing girl is treated as a prostitute, with Euripides charging the guard a drachma to have sex with her.^[98]

Hetairai could be the most independent, well-off, and influential women in Athens,^[99] and could form long-term relationships with rich and powerful men.^[100] The most successful hetairai would have had the freedom to choose which men they would have as their clients.^[101] Hetairai practiced infanticide but would on occasion keep their children and even raise the children that others left to die. They preferred daughters to sons so that they could train them in the trade of prostitution. Hetairai were even known to buy slaves to train as future prostitutes so in their old age they would have a source of income, creating brothels.^[102]

See also

• Aristotle's views on women
• Classical Greece
• Representation of women in Athenian tragedy
• Women in ancient Sparta
• Women in Greece

Notes

References

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