Ancient Athenian Women: A Look at Their Lives

by Moya K. Mason

Any historical investigation into the lives of ancient women involves individual interpretation and much speculation. One can read the ancient sources concerned with women and their place in society, but in some sense, they are all secondary sources that were written by men about women. No ancient manuscripts, journals, or diaries written by Greek women were found. An exception would be rare examples like the poems of Sappho. There is nothing to assist modern scholars or students to determine what a typical woman in ancient Greece may have felt about her experiences. It is not known what her hopes and dreams were, or what women thought about politics, the numerous wars, or the philosophical movements that were taking root. Nor can we read about her thoughts on slavery, children, or domestic activites. The scope is truly limited, but many questions can still be asked and considered, such as: how was the subject of women treated in early Greek writings, and did these writings adversely affect the treatment of women who lived later? Were Athenian women of the Classical Period really locked away, not educated, with no control of their own lives? Were they citizens, who had personal freedom? Or did they live very restricted lives during a time when democracy had its opportunity to flourish? The answers may be hard to uncover, but a look at myths is a good place to begin.

Myths are traditional tales that attempt to make some sense of the world. They often include some very basic beliefs about life, society, and what roles men and women play in a culture. The fact that these tales became traditional and were handed down from one generation to another, shows the important role they played in transmitting a culture's attitudes. And as Sarah Pomeroy writes, "the myths of the past molded the attitudes of successive more sophisticated generations and preserved the continuity of the social order."⁽¹⁾ For the Greeks, Hesiod's Theogony was a very important work because it gave them a catalogue of their gods and explained the details of each god's creation and lineage. But central to the Theogony is the Prometheus myth, which explains that once upon a time gods and men lived happily together, and the fields gave food without the necessity of tilling. It was the Golden Age⁽²⁾ and life was blissful: no work, just leisure. Eventually, Prometheus angered the gods, so Zeus sent a punishment to mankind -- "the renowned Ambidexter,"⁽³⁾ a woman named Pandora. Pandora brought the Golden Age to an end by opening the jar and letting out "grim cares upon mankind. Only Hope remained there ... under the lip of the jar, and did not fly out ..."⁽⁴⁾ The message the myth transmits is that before women, everything was fine. But then men had to begin to work for even less than they used to have. Hesiod was likley a misogynist, however, "his views of gods and humankind not only shaped, but probably corresponded to the ideas held by the population as a whole."⁽⁵⁾

One must realize the emphasis that ancient Greeks placed on the mythological poetry of men like Hesiod and Homer. They were held in reverence and their works carried the same importance as the Holy Bible did centuries later. In the Poetics, Aristotle said, "that poetry is both more philosophical and more serious than history because poetry speaks of the universals and history only of the particulars."⁽⁶⁾ The poetry of these men gave the people who read it the insight into how their ancestors lived; what they considered important in life; and it also seemed to answer questions about morality. Therefore, how Hesiod and Homer portrayed women was very significant and had repercussions on subsequent generations.

In Homer's Odyssey, he includes many women, but most of them only find their place in the story by their relationship to the men. The most important woman in the Odyssey is the goddess Athena, but even her importance is predicated on how she can help Odysseus. The poem is a moral exemplum,⁽⁷⁾ which is illustrated in part by the Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Aegisthus triangle that ends with the murder of Agamemnon at the hands of his wife. Women were to be feared and held under suspicion, even seemingly faithful wives like Penelope. Odysseus is reminded to be careful of her, since she could be another Clytemnestra. Greek girls and women were expected to learn from the myth and to strive not to be like Agamemnon's treacherous wife. They should strive to be loyal and patient, and to learn the crafts of spinning and weaving, as Penelope did. Or to be sweet and innocent as Princess Nausicaa was and love to wash the household's clothing. These were the women who were held in high esteeem within Greek culture.

However, poetry and myths are not histories as Aristotle clearly pointed out. How did the early Greek historians handle the subject of women? When Herodotus and Thucydides wrote their histories, they were fundamentally interested in the political and military aspects of the subject matter. Certainly Herodotus mentions legendary women like Medea, Io, and Helen, but only in connection to the role they may have played in the series of hostilites that occurred between the Greeks and the Asiatics. To be fair, he also mentions historical women, such as queens of Egypt and Babylon, for example, and did write some social history on a number of things including, Babylonian marriage customs and the role of the sexes in Egypt. Thucydides was writing the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, not a social history. His interest was war and the military, so it is not surprising that women do not play a central role in his analysis. He does mention women in The Funeral Oration of Pericles (431 BC), in which he has Pericles say on the subject of women: "Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men whether for good, or for bad."⁽⁸⁾ But Pericles loved a woman named Aspasia, who was undoubtedly talked about all the time since she was said to be a foreign woman of ill-repute. If Thucydides thought that women should strive to be "least talked about among men,"⁽⁹⁾ did he mean that women should somehow be kept separate from men? Or just make themselves invisible in some way? In either case, these ancient histories do not shed very much light on women or their importance. It is to be expected when one realizes that much of the history of ancient Greece and especially of Athens, involved much warfare and the building of an imperialistic empire. Of cource, these were the domain of men, while women were expected to give birth to the future soldiers and citizens. Were women's lives really that one-dimensional? What was life like for an Athenian woman during the Classical Period?

Girls of the Classical Period (500-323 BC) in Athens were not given the same opportunities for education as the boys were. In fact, in H.I. Marrou's wonderful book, A History of Education in Antiquity, there is no mention of education for Athenian girls at all during the Classical Period. It is not until the Macedonians conquered the Hellenistic world that the status of women was elevated, and some were given formal education in the same way boys were.⁽¹⁰⁾ Women had always played a more important role in Macedonian culture and this was reflected in the educational system. In Xenophon's On Household Management from the fourth century BC, Athens, one can read about a woman's education. In excerpts 7.4-7.6, Socrates is asking Ischomachus if he has taught his wife everything she needs to know, or had she already been taught by her parents. He tells Socrates that his wife came to him at fifteen years of age, with knowledge of wool, spinning, the making of clothes, and food preparation.⁽¹¹⁾ These were seen to be the most important skills for women to have, along with the ability to raise children. This is the sort of education that women were given and the better student she was in these areas, the better chance she had of getting herself a husband. Girls seem to have married as soon as they reached puberty, while their husbands would be at least thirty years of age.⁽¹²⁾ While boys of their same age would still be receiving educational and military training, the young women were giving birth to the future citizens. ⁽¹³⁾

It was very important to be a citizen of Athens, especially after the democratic reforms of the sixth century BC. Being a citizen entitled a person to own land, and at the age of thirty, to hold political office. Citizens could also speak in the ekklesia and they voted on all affairs of the state. Men were the citizens of democratic Athens, and all women were excluded.⁽¹⁴⁾ This exclusion meant that women had no political rights; it meant that they could not own land, which constituted power in the ancient world; and that they could never hold political office. Roger Just makes a very interesting point in Women in Athenian Law and Life: that life was worse for women in democratic Athens than in other periods of the city's history because:

In narrowly oligarchic, aristocratic, or monarchic states, women who belonged to the elite have often wielded considerable power, even if illegitimately; on the other hand, since the bulk of the population, whether male or female, possessed no political rights, politics was not something which in general distinguished men from women. But in Athenian democracy there were no thrones from behind which women could rule, while the access that every adult Athenian male had to the offices and honours of the state sharply distinguished the citizen's life from that of his wife or daughter.⁽¹⁵⁾

Nevertheless, women did play a role in the Athenian polis, since "the very definition of an Athenian involved not only his being born of an Athenian father, but also of an Athenian mother properly given in marriage by her kin."⁽¹⁶⁾ Women also played a major part in the religious ceremonies of their oikoi, the gene, and of the polis⁽¹⁷⁾; but only wives of Athenian citizens could participate in the Festival of the Thesmophoria.⁽¹⁸⁾ It must be stressed that the Athenian polis was both a citizen's club and a men's club, and by definition women fell outside both. Many women may have felt relieved that they could not play a role in deciding whether their sons, brothers, and husbands would go to war, but there were likely some women who wished that they too could have a say in the running of their city, and to be citizens. In a lot of ways, even in her personal life, an Athenian woman was powerless. Did that include her marriage?

The goal for a young Athenian woman was to get married. Most every woman would have a dowry. The amount was determined by her family's wealth, which varied drastically through the classes. The dowry helped to attract a suitable husband and was supposed to be used for the woman's maintenance, but this did not always happen and was sometimes squandered by the husband. The dowry was given by the father or her kyrios to the husband and could be taken back if the marriage did not work out. Every woman had a kyrios or male guardian: when she was born it would be her father, and if he died, a male relative could take his place. After her marriage, her husband would become her kyrios. Any property or money that would be her's because of the death of a family member or through inheritance, became the property of her household, which was controlled by the kyrios. There is no evidence from Athens that women were ever allowed to become kyrios. What this meant was that an Athenian woman could never have any real financial say in her life. Her dowry was in no legal sense her own, as it was given by her kyrios and she could not dispose of it herself. An Athenian woman could obtain a divorce, but only if her family and kyrios supported the decision, and in that case, a dowry had to be returned.

Many men feared the possibility of divorce because the returm of a dowry could bankrupt a family, and men may have treated their wives somewhat better than if there was no money to be considered. If the woman was young enough, her kyrios would use her dowry to marry her off again, and if not, the money was used for her future care. So as can be seen, a woman may have come from a wealthy family, but as an individual she was at the mercy of her household. Women from the lower classes had to hope relatives would help their kyrios collect a dowry for them. If not, marriage was not very likely for them. A woman could divorce, but only if her family agreed she should and in all cases, the woman lost her children, who were expected to stay with the father.⁽¹⁹⁾ As a result, it is easy to see that it is likely many women stayed in their marriages, even if they really wanted to leave. Either way, the women of Athens did not have much power or input into their personal or financial lives. Were they even free to work and walk about the city?

Women were expected to take care of the houses they lived in and their husbands and children. This was what a woman's life revolved around, and it was very separate from the preoccupations of her Athenian husband. In fact, there was even a separate area of the house for wives, daughters and female slaves; these quarters were called the gynaeconitis.⁽²⁰⁾ This area was usually located in the upper level of the house and was seldom seen by men. Respectable women stayed indoors as much as possible,⁽²¹⁾ and it was considered proper for them to keep out of the sun so their skin stayed white, like the "white-armed Hera,"⁽²²⁾ Of course, it would depend on her status in society because if she were a slave, she would have to fetch water and do the shopping at the agora. It really was not considered proper for a respectable woman to handle those sorts of business transactions, so if she did not have a slave, her husband would purchase their household provisions.⁽²³⁾ Does all this mean that Athenian women had no personal autonomy and were they basically locked away in the gynaeconitis?

Greece has always been known as an outdoor society, with many activites such as theatrical plays and meetings of the ekklesia routinely held in the open air. Is it possible that women were actually hidden away indoors most of their lives in such a society? Thucydides mentions that women were in the audience on the day that Pericles made his famous speech in 431 BC, and it is also known that they played a major role in religious activites and were thought to attend plays.⁽²⁴⁾ Women also seemed to be prominent in functions such as weddings, which is not surprising, and in funerals, since they were the ones who took care of the bodies.⁽²⁵⁾ Women were not allowed to visit the ekklesia, the Pan-Hellenic games, or even the cherished oracular shrines of the Greek world.⁽²⁶⁾ The only woman who could enter the shrine at Delphi, for example, was the Pythia, since she was considered a choosen one. However, women must have visited each other even if it was only for the purposes of communal domestic activities like washing clothes or letting their children play together.

Free women of the poorer classes worked in the marketplace and obviously went outdors much more than wealthier women. All in all, it does not seem possible that most women were shut away and never seen. Surely they were physically protected by their male relatives and were expected to protect their own reputations by avoiding familiarity with members of the opposite sex, or putting themselves in compromising situations. Nonetheless, they did seem to enjoy some outdoor activities and it is realistic to assume that many had to work outside the home because they had no husbands or because their husbands were poor. Women could not hold professional jobs like medical doctor because they had no access to the education the profession required, although it seems possible that they worked in the agora, in the production of wool and clothing⁽²⁷⁾, and some were surely prostitutes. Women were restricted and were not allowed to go wherever they wanted, but they were not kept indoors like prisoners, dependng upon their social status.

We will never really know what the women of ancient Athens thought about the inferior social position they held or even whether they thought their position was inferior, or what they might have felt about the many layers of separation that existed between themselves and Athenian men. The ancient Greek world was a very patriarchal culture, with men holding all the positions of power. Women and children really did not have many rights, but one must remember the context. It could be a very dangerous existence, with invasions occurring and women taken prisoner. Women were not able to travel alone, but maybe the men felt that they were protecting them. Also, the images invoked by the early writings of men like Hesiod surely adversely affected women in ancient Greece for many centuries and had many repercussions. When looking at Athens, it seems realistic to say that life was not very easy for anyone. They were building an empire and developing many important aspects of culture like architecture, the ideas of democracy, and amazing scholars and philosophers. None of these should be forgotten or devalued. Although the Athenians were not pioneers in social equality, the civilization that came out of Athens was brilliant and very influential for both men and women in subsequent generations.

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