Positionof Athenian Woman

THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS
Author(s): DAVID M. PRITCHARD

Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 61, No. 2 (OCTOBER 2014), pp. 174-193
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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Greece & Rome, 61.2 174-193 © The Classical Association (2014)
doi: 1 0. 1 0 1 7/S00 1738351 4000072
THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC

ATHENS*
1. Evidence
The study of the women of classical Athens involves an eviden

paradox. Women and their pastimes were prominent subjects i
state's literature and in the pictures on its painted pottery, w
comedies and tragedies regularly had articulate and forthright
characters.1 But none of this gives us access to the ways in w
women conceived of their own lives; for they were - as the lat
Gould explained so well - 'the product of men and addressed t
in a male dominated world'.2 What is more, we lack any work
democratic Athens by female writers to counter this persistent
perspective.3 Two further biases complicate the study of A
women. What evidence we have focuses almost without except
the girls and the wives of Athenian citizens and so provides li
insight into the different circumstances of female slaves and fema
dent aliens. Typically this evidence also presents the life of w
females as the norm for every Attic woman, hampering our ab
reconstruct how exactly the daughters and the wives of poor
lived their lives.
To a large extent this second bias can be overcome. This article will
show how archaeology reveals similarities between the lives of rich and
poor women. Moreover, while public speakers, comedians, and trage-
dians belonged to the city's upper class, they had to win over audiences
of lower-class citizens and so had to tailor their works to the latter's
point of view. Consequently we can call their speeches and plays
* Greek translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
1 R. Just, Women in Athenian Life and Law (London and New York, 1989), 1-12; S. Lewis, The
Athenian Women. An Iconographical Handbook (London and New York, 2002), 13-58; A. Powell,
Athens and Sparta. Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 bc , second edition
(London and New York, 2001), 348-50, 384-7.
2 J. Gould, 'Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical
Athens', JHS 100 (1980), 38.
3 Though we do have such texts from other eras of antiquity: see e.g. I. M. Plant, Women Writers
of Ancient Greece and Rome. An Anthology (London, 2004).
THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS 175
popular literature, and the lower-class point of view w

lated popular culture.4 Thus, while this literature may
the pastimes of wealthy Attic women, its assumptions
of Attic women and what they should be doing were
Athenians. In the light of these evidentiary constrai
seeks to analyse the manmade parameters within wh
lived and what social and religious roles they performe
side the home. It shows how the subordination of dau
under the democracy was legitimized by the prevaili
'nature' of women in popular culture.
Before doing so we must clarify the nature of social
cratic Athens.5 Sometimes the Athenians divided them
basis of military roles income-bands, occupations, or p
But the distinction which they used much more often
which demarcated the most important social cleavage
plouskd ('the wealthy') and hoi periētes ('the poor'). The
of skholē or leisure and so did not have to work for a
enabled them to pursue pastimes which were simply t
time-consuming for the poor. Thus groups of wealthy
came together for a sumposion or drinking party.7 The m
class stood out for their wearing of distinctive clothes, t
of public services, such as sponsorships of a chorus o
their paying of the eisphora or emergency tax on pro
Politicians were also drawn from their ranks. They nu
per cent of the whole body of Athenians. The Athenia
rest of the citizen body - ranging from the truly destitut
just below the elite - as the poor. What the members o
had in common was a lack of skholē and hence a need to work for a
living.9
4 For this performance dynamic, see D. M. Pritchard, Sporty Democracy and War in Classical
Athens (Cambridge, 2013), 9-20.
5 Ibid., 2-9.
6 E.g. Ar. Plut. 281; Vesp. 552-7; Men. Dys. 293-5.
7 E.g. Ar. Vesp. 1216-17, 1219-22, 1250.
8 E.g. Ar. Eq. 923-6; Ran. 1062-5; Dem. 4.7, 10.37, 27.66; Lys. 22.13.
9 See e.g. Ar. Pax 632; Vesp. 611; Plut. 281; Lys. 24.16.
176 THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS
2. A man's world
Athenian democracy was, truly, a men's club where the right

attend the assembly, the law-courts, and the council was restric
to adult males whose fathers were Athenian citizens and whose
mothers were legitimate daughters of citizens.10 This exclusion
'Athenian' women from politics operated simultaneously at the
of mythology, language, institutions, popular culture, and s
practice. At the level of mythology every male Athenian - it was
believed - was a direct descendant of the demi-god Erichthonios.11
According to this myth, Erichthonios' parents were two of the
city's major deities, Athena and Hephaestus, while this hero was
born out of the earth herself. That every Athenian male had come
from this divine birth was used by Athenian democracy to justify
the political equality of every citizen.12 Women had no part in this
myth. The Athenians accepted the account of the origins of the
genos gunaikdn ('race of women') as spelt out in the Theogony of
Hesiod.13 In order to punish mankind Zeus created Pandora, from
whom, Hesiod explains (381-92):
. . .comes the fair sex;

yes, wicked women are her descendants.
They live among mortal men as a nagging burden
and are no good sharers of abject want, but only of wealth.
Men are like swarms of bees clinging to cave roofs
to feed drones that contribute only to malicious deeds;
the bees themselves all day long until sundown
are busy carrying and storing the white wax,
but the drones stay inside in their roofed hives
and cram their bellies full of what others harvest.
So, too, Zeus who roars on high made women
to be an evil for mortal men.14
10 E. Fantham, H. P. Foley, N. B. Kampen, S. B. Pomperoy, and H. A. Shapiro, Women in the

Classical World. Image and Text (Oxford, 1994), 74.
11 N. Loraux, The Children of Athena. Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between
the Sexes , tr. C. Levine (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 37-71; R. Parker, 'Myths of Early Athens', in J.
Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London and New York, 1988), 200-2; J. L.
Shear, 'Polis and Panathenaia. The History and Development of Athena's Festival' (unpublished
PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2001), 55-60.
12 E.g. Eur. Ion 670-5; PI. Menex. 239a.
13 For this myth, see Loraux (n. 11), 72-110. For its currency in Athens, see e.g. Ar. Thesm.
789-99; Eur. Hipp. 616-24.
14 Tr. A. N. Athanassakis.
A woman was almost never called a politēs or citizen.15 T

to describe a male who enjoyed full political and lega
('city-state'). Instead she was called an astē ('a woman
city') or an Attīkē gum ('an Attic woman/wife'). Not
Athenaios ('Athenian') was typically reserved for male citizens.
Moreover, the state's administration never registered women as citizens:
their names were not included in the lexiarkhikon grammateion - the regis-
ter of citizens held by each suburb or village in Attica - nor were they ever
presented to a phratry, that is, one of the 'brotherhoods' to which every
Athenian male belonged and whose members served as witnesses of his
legitimacy and citizenship.16 After the introduction of Pericles' citizenship
law of 451/0 bc, which restricted citizenship to the sons of Athenians and
women who were daughters of Athenians, Athenians not infrequently
found that they had to prove in a law-court that their mothers were indeed
'Attic women'.17 In the absence of public records this was done by calling
surviving witnesses to her betrothal (see part 4 below) and by drawing
attention both to the state's repeated acceptance of her male relatives as
citizens and also to her participation in religious rites which were reserved
for the wives of citizens, such as the Thesmophoria.18
In popular culture and social practice it was the norm for the wives
and daughters of citizens to have no part in either politics or the secular
affairs of Athenian democracy. Thus the eponymous heroine of
Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata complains that whenever she asks
her husband about what happened in the assembly, he tells her to be
quiet, as it is none of her business (507-15), or 'at once he'd give me
an angry look and tell me to spin my thread or else he'd see I had a
headache for weeks: "war is for men to take care of'" (519-20).
Such passages help us see that comedies, such as Lysistrata and
Assembly Women by Aristophanes, in which women takeover the run-
ning of public affairs, were not proto-feminist works. Rather they
were male-chauvinist fantasies which represented and legitimized the
views that the male theatregoers had of women.19
15 S. Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (London, 1995), 128; Loraux (n. 11), 116.
16 Gould (n. 2), 45.
17 A. L. Boegehold, 'Perikles' Citizenship Law of 451/0 bc', in A. L. Boegehold and A. C
Scafuro (eds.), Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore, MD, 1994), 57-68.
18 See e.g. Isae. 8.18-20; also A. C. Scafuro, 'The Case against Neaira and the Public Ideology
of the Athenian Family', in Boegehold and Scafuro (n. 17), 162-4.
19 The presence of even a small number of Attic women at the dramatic contests for Dionysus
continues to be hotly debated: see e.g. D. K. Roselli, Theater of the People. Spectators and Society in
Ancient Athens (Austin, TX, 2011), 158-94.
1 78 THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS
Women were expected not only to keep clear of poli

avoid being mentioned in public fora.20 And so in leg
names of the wives and the daughters of citizens wer
pressed and they were referred to by roundabout p
can recall what Pericles says about the arete ('excelle
in his Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.45.2): 'About the virtue
can convey my whole message in a brief exhortation:
great if you do not fail to live up to your own nature,
the least possible talk of you among men either for pra
The proper place for Attic women was thought to b
but even here they were subordinated to men and trea
minors.22 A woman never gained complete indepen
always considered to be part of an oikos ('household'),
trolled by her kurios or male guardian.23 Before marriage
the guardianship of her father, with her husband becomin
due course.
3. Girlhood and schooling
From the age of six, boys were sent to the classes of a grammatistēs or
letter teacher and - if their families were wealthy - also to classes run
by an athletics teacher and a music teacher.24 For their part, girls
remained inside the oikos until marriage, learning how to run a house-
hold.25 Instruction in domestic duties took the form of helping with
cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, and the making of clothing. Wealthy
girls do not seem to have missed out on such lessons, for even the
bride of Isomachus, who was a wealthy man, apparently knew how to
make a cloak and to get the slave girls to spin wool.26
Some wealthy girls may have been taught reading and writing,
although the existence of female literacy in classical Athens continues
to be hotly debated.27 We do have thirty-five images on Attic pots
20 Gould (n. 2), 45.

21 Tr. P. J. Rhodes.
22 Blundell (n. 15), 114; Gould (n. 2), 43.
23 Powell (n. 1), 357.
24 Pritchard (n. 4), 34-83.
25 Blundell (n. 15), 131-4; S. Blundell, 'Women in Classical Athens', in B. A. Sparkes (ed.),
Greek Civilization. An Introduction (Oxford, 1998), 234.
26 Xen. Oec. 7.6.
27 Powell (n. 1), 352-3.
depicting women using book-rolls for the reciting of po

teen of these, the women are clearly identified as the M
goddesses of poetry and music.29 Another is explicitly n
Sappho.30 Nonetheless the status of the women on the th
not entirely clear. As Attic pots usually depicted the live
they might be literate women of this social class.31 Altern
be unnamed Muses, Sappho, or even hetairai ('courtesans'), whose
educated conversation was greatly savoured by their wealthy clients.32
Contemporary written evidence for female literacy is also ambigu-
ous. In Euripides' tragedy Hippolytus the non-Athenian Phaedra
seems to be literate (856-81), while in another of his plays a wealthy
maiden does not know her letters (IT 582-7). More promisingly,
Isomachus is proud that his teenage wife is able to write down what fur-
niture and utensils she gives out to the slaves.33 There is, however, no
uncontested visual evidence and certainly no literary evidence for
Attic girls ever going to school classes to learn how to read and
write.34 Consequently, if some rich girls could do so, they were prob-
ably taught literacy in private classes at home.
4. Marriage
At the onset of menstruation, which seems to have occurred around

fourteen years of age,35 a girl would be married.36 Puberty was thought
to make girls more wild and difficult to control.37 As such, a girl of mar-
riageable age could be described metaphorically as a young female
28 S. G. Cole, 'Could Greek Women Read and Write?', in H. P Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women
in Antiquity (New York, 1981), 223, 229 nn. 22-3. For the images, see e.g. F. A. G. Beck, Album of
Greek Education. The Greeks at School and Play (Sydney, 1975), figs. 349-73.
29 Cole (n. 28), 223-4; Powell (n. 1), 356.
30 Beck (n. 28), cat. no. X.27, fig. 366.
31 For the elite perspective in the pictures on Attic pots, see D. M. Pritchard, 'Fool's Gold and
Silver: Reflections on the Evidentiary Status of Finely Painted Attic Pottery', Antichthon 33 (1999),
1-27.
32 M. Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, MD, and London, 1990),
74; W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1989), 107; Lewis (n. 1), 157-9.
33 Xen. Oec. 7.5, 9.10.
34 Cole (n. 28), 226; Harris (n. 32), 9. Contra F. A. G. Beck, 'The Schooling of Girls in Ancient
Greece', Classicum 9 (1978), 1-9.
35 See e.g. Dem. 27.4, 29.43; Xen. Oec. 7.6.
36 Blundell (n. 15), 119-24; Tust (n. 1), 40-75.
37 Blundell (n. 15), 79, 99.
horse and marriage as her 'taming' or 'yoking'.38 Nor

bridegroom would be around thirty.39 Since marriag
by guardians, she had no say in who her husband wo
That girls did not choose their husbands is borne ou
Bad-tempered Man, despite its dramatization of a betroth
sibly involves eros or sexual desire (786-7). In this pla
causes a rich youth, Sostratus, to fall in love with a g
respectable woman, is not named. Yet Sostratus never
her nor is she asked what she thinks of him. Instead, he
fully to get permission to marry her from her kurios , na
who is unfortunately a violent misanthrope (72-3; see
the end of the play the guardianship of the girl has p
brother, Górgias (735-9). As Górgias, who is poor, now counts
Sostratus as his best friend and wants to find a way to support this
male friendship, he betroths his step-sister to him (759-66). For the
same reason, Sostratus tries to convince his father, Callippides, to
betroth his sister to Górgias. This wealthy man initially refuses to do
so on the grounds that he does not want two 'beggars' in the family
(794-6). But he is finally persuaded. Thus he stands in front of
Górgias and declares (842-4): 'I hereby betroth my daughter to you,
young man, for the ploughing of legitimate offspring, and I settle on
her a dowry of three talents.'
This declaration constituted the enguē or betrothal of a girl, which
was the most important proof of a marriage.40 It was therefore per-
formed in front of several witnesses. This metaphor of a husband
'ploughing' his wife is by no means accidental. Female and agricultural
fertility were strongly associated in popular culture and the chief value
of a woman - not to mention the goal of marriage - was her bearing of
children.41 The dowry was agreed upon at the time of the enguē and
usually represented between 10 and 20 per cent of the estate of a
girl's kurios.*2 While the dowry, as her share of her father's estate,
remained her property, it was managed by her husband alone.
The gamos or wedding served as further proof of a marriage. Just
before it, sacrifices were offered by the families of the bride and
38 For such metaphors, see e.g. Eur. Andr. 621; Hec. 142; for her 'taming', see e.g. Eur. Med.
804.
39 Blundell (n. 25), 234.
40 Blundell (n. 15), 122.
41 Ibid., 100, 106; R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 276.
42 Blundell (n. 15), 115-16; Powell (n. 1), 358.
THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS 1 8 1
bridegroom to Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis, with th

receiving as dedications the girdle of the bride-to-be an
other tokens of childhood.43 These goddesses were s
because of the power which they had over important
riage or a girl's transition to womanhood. Aphrodite e
marriage had enough erõs to be a success. Thus it is no
find the winged Eros or Cupid, who is Aphrodite's reg
in Greek art, helping brides to prepare for the weddin
red-figure pots.44 Hera, as the wife of Zeus, guaranteed th
of the wedded wife. Since Artemis had protected the br
wildness of her childhood, she had to be thanked so tha
cause calamities for the young wife, such as death duri
The wedding day began with a sacrifice in the house
father. In the evening the bride was formally escorted
of her father to that of her husband. Depictions of thi
have the wife conveyed on a donkey cart, with slaves
lebēs gamikos , which was a pot specifically used in a bride
bath, and her other possessions. However, as pottery-p
sented the lives of the wealthy, these pictures cannot
dence that every bride enjoyed such a procession. Fort
archaeological evidence suggests that brides of both so
similar weddings, for the lebēs gamikos , the 'nuptial vase
has been found in the houses of both rich and poor residen
For example, fragments of such a pot were found dur
tions of the so-called Dema House.46 The great size of
house and the absence of any evidence of farming or b
around it show that it was owned by a wealthy family.
lebēs gamikos was found, too, in the House of Mikion
the south-west corner of the agora.48 The broken too
43 L. B. Bruit-Zaidman and P. Schmitt-Pantel, Religion in the Ancient G

P. Cartledge (Cambridge, 1992), 68-72.
44 V. Sabetai, 'Aspects of Nuptial and Genre Imagery in Fifth-century
Interpretation and Methodology', in J. H. Oakley, W. D. E. Coulson, and O. Palagia (eds.),
Athenian Potters and Painters. Issues of Interpretation and Methodology (Oxford, 1997), 319-35.
45 C. Bérard, 'The Order of Women', in C. Bérard et al. (eds.), A City of Images. Iconography
and Society in Ancient Greece , tr. D. Lyons (Princeton, NJ, 1989), 97.
46 J. E. Jones, A. J. Graham, and L. H. Sackett, 'The Dema House in Attica', ABSA (1962), 88.
47 Pritchard (n. 31), 5-6; S. Walker, 'Women and Housing in Classical Greece: The
Archaeological Evidence', in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity
(London, 1983), 84-5.
48 Inv. no. P28056; see T. L. Shear, 'The Athenian Agora: Excavations of 1968', Hesperia 38
(1969), 391-2.
of marbles found on its floors prove that this was th

workshop of a family of marble workers.49 As wealthy
direct contact with business, this family were non-el
the city.
5. The normal place for a wife
A woman's place was in the oikos, where she would be responsible for
its management. Isomachus explains to his new wife that she will be
'the queen bee' of the household, who 'does not allow the bees to be
idle; but those whose duty it is to work outside she sends forth to
their work; and whatever each of them brings in, she knows and
receives it, and keeps it till it is wanted'.50 This account of a woman's
place, which probably reworks Hesiod's misogynist view of women as
'drones' (see part 3 above), dovetails with popular literature, where
the role of the Attic woman is always to be a homemaker.51 She was
to supervise slaves undertaking - or in the absence of slaves undertake
herself - the household's food preparation and storage, cooking, clean-
ing, spinning, weaving, clothes-making, and child-rearing.52 Thus the
aretē of the wife consisted not only of her invisibility in public but
also of her being 'a good housewife, careful with her stores and obedi-
ent to her husband'.53
For the classical Athenians, spinning and weaving were 'the quintes-
sential feminine accomplishments'.54 Their pots regularly depicted
women undertaking these tasks, and the eponymous heroine of
Aristophanes' Lysistrata presents them positively as the activities
which allow the women of Greece to fix up public affairs (567-86).
Tragedy sometimes horrified male theatregoers by making wives use
their products of spinning and weaving to murder their husbands or
his loved.55 Archaeology confirms again that the wives of both social
classes undertook these tasks: loom-weights, whorls, and other equip-
ment for spinning have been found in rich and poor homes, such as
49 Pritchard (n. 31), 15-21; Shear (n. 49), 383-94.

50 Xen. Oec. 7.32-4; tr. E. C. Marchant.
51 E.g. Ar. Lys. 16-19; Eccl. 211-12, 215-17, 221-8, 599-600; Lys. 1.7.
52 Blundell (n. 15), 140-5.
53 Pl. Meno 71e-2a.
54 Blundell (n. 25), 237.
55 E.g. Aesch. Ag. 1125-6; Eur. Med. 785-9, 1156-1230.
the Dema House and the modest Houses C and D in the south-west
corner of the agora.56
As part of her explanation of why women have hard lives Medea
declares (Eur. Med. 248-51): 'They say of us women that we live a
life without danger at home, while they fight with the spear. In this
they think badly. How I would prefer to stand three times by a shield
than to give birth once.' This passage bears out the parallel between
childbirth and battle in the thinking of the ancient Greeks. Whereas
the goal of a man was to be a hoplite, the goal of a woman was to
bear children. In particular she had to bear males, who alone could
guarantee the continuity of her husband's oikos and could serve as sol-
diers in the city's army.57 And so it is unsurprising that the babies
depicted on Attic pots were always male.58 In the same vein,
Athenians believed that soldiering and giving birth involved ponoi or
toils.59 This view of childbirth was justified: the ancient Greeks had
no medical procedures for dealing with problem births, which would
presumably have been common, as many first-time mothers were
young teenagers.60 Consequently, child mortality may have been as
high as 30 to 40 per cent and maternal mortality 10 to 20 per cent.61
6. The ideal and the reality of seclusion
The twentieth century witnessed a hot debate about the place of Attic
women, which focused on the issue of their seclusion.62 The first salvo
was fired by F. A. Wright, whose book of 1923 argued that Attic wives
were treated really badly and kept in 'oriental seclusion' by their hus-
bands.63 Wright's argument was not especially new. The accounts of
56 For these objects in the Dema House, see Jones, Graham, and Sackett (n. 47), 83. For
Houses C and D, see R. S. Young, 'An Industrial District of Ancient Athens', Hesperia 20
(1951), 206, 242.
57 E.g. Ar. Lys. 588-90; Thuc. 2.44.3-4. See also Powell (n. 1), 362.
58 Fantham et al. (n. 10), 104.
59 N. Loraux, The Experiences of Tiresias. The Feminine and the Greek Man , tr. P. Wissing
(Princeton, NJ, 1995), 45-7.
60 Blundell (n. 15), 110-11.
61 Golden (n. 32), 83; Blundell (n. 15), 110.
62 D. Cohen, 'Seclusion, Separation and the Status of Women in Classical Athens', G&R 36
(1989), 3-15; S. B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores , Wives, and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity
(New York, 1975), 58-9.
63 F. A. Wright, Feminism in Greek Literature. From Homer to Aristotle (Port Washington, NY,
1923).
the first Europeans to travel to Greece under the Ottoman

the oriental seclusion in which contemporary Turks and G
female relatives.64 As this period's ancient historians thou
observations could be drawn on productively to write the
ancient Greeks, they used these descriptions of 'oriental se
dence of how the ancient Greeks had treated their wive
By the early twentieth century, ancient historians ha
minds. An increasing number of them refused to believe that an
Athenian would have treated his wife differently from the way in
which, for example, an English gentleman treated his. This change
was due to the fact that in the intervening century Athenian democracy
had become an inspiration for the English upper class and a powerful
historical case study for proponents of political reform. Indeed,
George Grote and other leading liberals of Victorian England employed
this example of a stable democracy to build support for extending the
right to vote.65 The women of Great Britain themselves gained this fran-
chise in the aftermath of the First World War.
At the same time as Athens was being used as part of the campaign
for extending the right to vote, the artists and writers of European
countries were representing 'the orient' as the opposite of their civiliza-
tion and so ripe for European colonization.66 In view of these changes it
is not surprising that, two years after the publication of Wright's book,
A. W. Gomme attacked the idea of oriental seclusion. In 'The Position
of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries bc', Gomme
who would go on to write a famous commentary on Thucydides,
argued that Attic wives could come and go freely from their homes
and were held in the highest possible regard by their Athenian hus
bands.67 This reaction had as much to do with the changing place of
Greece in European discourse and the new voting rights of Englis
women as it did with the actual place of women in classical Athens.68
64 C. Schnurr-Redford, 'Women in Classical Athens: Their Social Space: Ideal and Reality', in
M. Golden and P. Toohey (ed.), Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome (Edinburgh, 2003)
23-9.
65 D. M. Pritchard, 'The Symbiosis between Democracy and War: The Case of Ancient
Athens', in D. M. Pritchard (ed.), War , Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge
2010), 3-4.
66 E. W. Said, Orientalism (London, 1978).
67 A. W. Gomme, 'The Position of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries bc',
CPh 20 (1925), 10.
68 B. Wagner-Hasel, 'Women's Life in Oriental Seclusion? On the History and Use of a Topos ',
in Golden and Toohey (n. 65), 241-52.
The seclusion debate which Gomme's article started ran its full
course during the twentieth century and ended, unexpectedly, wi
qualified rejection of his position. In fact the Athenians agreed t
their sexually mature females should ideally be segregated from
who did not belong to their household.69 This ideal of seclusion
required women to stay indoors as much as possible and not to seen
by passers-by.70 The Electra of Euripides shows how it was 'shameful
for a women to be standing outside with young men' (343-4). 71
Menander's Bad-tempered Man similarly demonstrates how not just a
woman's kurios but her male relatives also were anxious about unre-
lated males approaching her, on the grounds that that it could lead t
a shameful scandal (218-47). Men had to live up to this ideal too.
They were under pressure not to enter another man's household if he
was not in.72 They were also supposed to be ashamed to speak in public
with females to whom they were not related.73
Keeping males outside the family away from its women lies behind
the design of houses in classical Athens.74 The typical house of both
rich and poor families had one outside doorway leading to a courtyard
into which the rooms of the dwelling opened.75 As the walls of
Athenian houses were made of unfired mud bricks, which disintegrate
when exposed to the elements, no examples of them have survived. But
the excavations of ancient houses made out of stone elsewhere in
Greece indicate that the windows were placed high enough in the
walls to prevent passers-by from peering in.76 A house's internal
rooms were divided into the andronitis ('men's quarters'), which
included the andron ('men's room'), and the gunaikonitis ('women's
quarters').77 A sense of shame stopped guests from entering the gunai-
konitis. , while females would not join them in the men's room; doing so
69 E.g. Ar. Thesm. 789-99; see also Blundell (n. 15), 134-8; Gould (n. 2), 47-9.
70 E.g. Eur. Tro. 648-52; Lycurg. 1.40.
71 Cf. Lys. 3.6-7.
72 E.g. Dem. 47.35-8; Lys. 1.25, 3.6-7.
73 E.g. Eur. IA, 821-34.
74 L. Nevettj House and Society in the Ancient Greek World (Cambridge, 1999).
75 M. H. Jameson, 'Private Space and the Greek City', in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.), The
Greek City. From Homer to Alexander (Oxford, 1990), 181-2; J. E. Jones, 'Town and Country
Houses of Attica in Classical Times', in H. Mussche, P. Spitaels, and F. Goemaere-De Poerck
(eds.), Thorikos and Laurion in Archaic and Classical Times (Ghent, 1975), 127, fig. 21.
76 L. Nevett, 'Separation and Seclusion? Towards an Archaeological Approach to Investigating
Women in the Greek Household in the Fifth to Third Centuries bc', in M. P. Pearson and C.
Richards (eds.), Architecture and Order. Approaches to Social Space (London and New York,
1994), 108, 110 n. 7.
77 See e.g. Lys. 1.6-9. Also Jameson (n. 76), 187-90.
in a wealthy home was the preserve of courtesans and

prostitutes who were hired for a drinking party. Interest
excavations show how rooms other than the andron w
sexes on different occasions.78 Thus the boundary be
dered spaces of a classical Greek house was 'essentia
and behavioural'.79
In spite of this ideal of seclusion, women were not prisoners in their
homes.80 They visited each other to borrow commodities, to help with a
baby's birth, or to celebrate its arrival.81 They left the house for family
funerals and religious festivals, such as the Thesmophoria.82 For many
poor women, too, seclusion was very far from a reality, as their families
lacked enough or any slaves and so had to rely on the labour of children
and wives.83 The result was that some poor women travelled outside to
fetch water from a fountain, to help with a family's farming, or to per-
form other tasks.84 Some of them took paid work beyond the house-
hold.85 While many of the female workers in classical Athens were
resident aliens, Attic women are known to have worked as grape-
pickers, wet nurses, washerwomen, and sellers of bread, garlands,
and vegetables.86
Despite not always being able to keep their women inside, poor
Athenians manifestly endorsed the ideal of seclusion.87 Tellingly, for
example, those voicing concern about violations of this ideal in
Electra and Bad-tempered Man are poor, while the speaker of
78 J. Davidson, 'Bodymaps: Sexing Space and Zoning Gender in Ancient Athens', in L. Foxhall
and G. Neher (eds.), Gender and the City before Modernity (Maiden, MA, and Oxford, 2013),
107-24; Jameson (n. 76), 183-93; L. Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite's Tortoise. The Veiled Woman of
Ancient Greece (Swansea, 2003), 193-4, pace Walker (n. 48).
79 Jameson (n. 76), 192.
80 Blundell (n. 25), 243.
81 E.g. Ar. Eccl. 348-9, 526-34; Lys. 700-2; Thesm. 407-8, 795-6; Lys. 1.14.
82 See e.g. Lys. 1.8, 1.20.
83 See e.g. Arist. Pol. 1323a5-7. For child labour, see Golden (n. 32), 34-6. For women's
labour, see Blundell (n. 15), 145; M. Jameson, 'Women and Democracy in Fourth-century
Athens', in P. Brulé (ed.), Esclavage s guerre et économie en Grèce ancienne. Homages à Yvon
Adrian (Rennes, 1997), 104. For the extent of slave-holding, see e.g. E. M. Wood,
Peasant-citizen and Slave (London, 1988), 173-84.
84 For water-carrying, see Ar. Lys. 327-31; Eur. El. 102-3; for farming, see Men. Dys. 329-34;
for other tasks, see Arist. Pol. 1300a5-6.
85 Blundell (n. 15), 136-7, 145-6; Cohen (n. 63), 7-9.
86 For grape-pickers, see Dem. 57.45; for wet nurses, see Dem. 57.35. For washerwomen, see
e.g. M. R. Lefkowitz and M. B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome. A Source Book in
Translation , second edition (London, 1992), nos. 50-1. For Attic women as sellers, see e.g. Ar.
Ran. 840; Vesp. 497, 1390-1; Thesm. 387, 443-58; Dem. 57.31, 34.
87 Jameson (n. 84), 104; Llewellyn-Jones (n. 79), 192.
Demosthenes 57 explains to predominantly lower-

women were ashamed to take jobs outside the hom
as Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones has put beyond doubt, A
social classes veiled their heads and their faces as is done in conserva-
tive Islamic cultures today.88 The veil was conceived as an extension o
the house.89 Indeed, the veil of the late classical and Hellenistic period
was actually called a tegidion or little roof. As long as she had a prope
sense of shame about consorting with strange men, this veiling helped
woman to respect the ideal of seclusion while moving outside her oiko
7. The perceived wantonness of women
In Women in Athenian Life and Law , Roger Just details how the exclu-
sion of Attic women from politics and their ideal seclusion at home
were justified by the perceptions which classical Athenians had of
their 'nature'.90 He cautions: 'By "nature" I mean simply the set of
characteristics, real or imaginary, which in the writings of fifth- and
fourth-century Athens men commonly attribute to women as natural
to their sex.'91 In Athenian popular literature women lacked sõphrosunê
('moderation') and so could not regulate their bodily appetites and
desires.92 Thus they were thought to be gluttons and big drinkers of
alcohol.93 More worryingly, they were much too fond of sex.94 As far
as Athenian men were concerned, their wives enjoyed sex much
more than they did and so found it hard to reject the advances of a
handsome youth or man. This surprising characterization of women
as nymphomaniacs can be seen very clearly in the comedy Lysistrata ,
when the eponymous heroine explains how a sex strike will force
their husbands to stop making war (124-37):
Lysistrata: What we must do is abstain from penises. Why are you turning
away from me? Where are you slinking off to? Why are you
88 Powell (n. 1), 371.

89 Llewellyn-Jones (n. 79), 194-5.
90 Just (n. 1), 153-93.
91 Ibid., 153, 164.
92 Ibid., 166-7.
93 For gluttony, see e.g. Ar. Thesm. 418-20; for alcohol, see Ar. Eccl. 14-15, 32-6, 153-7,
1118-24; Lys. 114, 195-206, 395, 466; Thesm. 347-8, 733-61.
94 E.g. Ar. Eccl. 228, 877-1111; Nub. 1068-70; Lys. 23-5, 125-39, 404-19, 715-80.
going pale? What are those tears? Will you do it or

Myrrine: I could not do it. Let the war go on.
Calonice: My god, me neither. Let the war go on.
Lysistrata: What about you, little flounder? You said you would split yourself
in two for peace?
Calonice: Anything you want. I could walk through fire if I have to. But not
penises. There is nothing like them, Lysistrata.
Lysistrata: And you?
Myrrine: I would rather walk through fire.
Lysistrata: Oh, what a thoroughly buggered race {genos ) we are. No wonder
they write tragedies about us.
What the Athenians feared was that this wantonness of their wives
could turn casual contact between them and unrelated men into adul-
terous affairs.95 Such an eventuality would be a disaster for a husband.
His enemies could question the legitimacy of his sons, which, because
bastards could not be heirs, also threw the continuity of his oikos into
doubt.96 As citizens had to have an Athenian father and an Attic
mother, who also, by the fourth century, had to be properly marr
a wife's adultery might also imperil the citizen status of sons. He
we see the impetus for sexual segregation and the close supervisi
of Attic women.
Women, finally, were thought to lack a capacity to reason - which
was something every citizen in Athenian democracy was thought to
have - and to be cowardly by nature.97 For their part, philosophers
also judged females to be much less intelligent than males.98
Therefore, like barbarians and slaves, they were unable to deliberate
about public affairs and could not fight in battles as citizens were
required to do. Their nature, clearly, did not allow them to be citizens.
8. Women and religion
Classical Athenians may never have extended the right to vote to female
relatives and may have kept them at home as much as possible. But they
did not deny that their wives had a unique relationship with goddesses
95 E.g. Lys. 1.8.

96 Powell (n. 1), 368.
97 For lack of reason, see e.g. Aesch. Ag. 1401; Xen. Oec. 2.9-12; for cowardice, see e.g. Aesch.
Sept. 259; Lys. 2.5. See also Just (n. 1), 154, 164-5.
98 E.g. Arist. Pol. 1254b; PI. Resp. 455c-e.
THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS 1 89
and performed rituals which were vital for maintainin

farms and families." Thus religion was the one area i
women had prominence and independence. Indeed, fo
festivals and funerals were among the few activities for
bands or fathers would allow them to leave the oikos.
This prominence of women in religion rested on three popular beliefs.
The first was that the age and the gender of the personnel of a cult should
correspond to those of the object of worship.100 Thus it was usually the
case that males served as priests for gods and females as priestesses for
goddesses. The second belief was that an undertaking could only suc-
ceed if it had the support of the god or the goddess who had most influ-
ence over it. The Athenians believed that the individual or the group who
depended most directly on such assistance should have the leading role
in the rituals which maintained the kharis ('gratitude') of the relevant
deity. The corollary was that Athenian males, for example, conducted
festivals and set up thanks offerings for Zeus and other gods who, they
believed, brought them victory on the battlefield,101 while their wives
and daughters took responsibility for worshipping the goddesses who
had power over childbirth, childhood, and marriage. Finally, the
Athenians allowed their wives to have religious roles, because they
believed that they were more capable than men of keeping divine support
for agriculture and progeny. 102 This belief was a consequence of the ana-
logy which the Athenians drew between agricultural and human fertility
and the fact that the deities who controlled them were female. Thus, as
Sue Blundell concludes, the roles which they 'accorded both to the god-
desses and to their female worshippers can be seen to entail an acknowl-
edgement of the social significance of the female principle'.103
Attic women had a variety of roles in the state's festivals.104 For
example, some daughters of traditional priestly families served as
basket-carriers in the processions of the Great Dionysia and the
99 Blundell (n. 15), 134-5, 160-9; Blundell (n. 25), 241-2; J. B. Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess.
Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece (Princeton, NJ, 2007); M. Dillon, 'The Construction of
Women's Gender Identity through Religious Activity in Classical Greece', Australian Religious
Studies Review 19 (2006), 221-43.
100 Blundell (n. 15), 160; Connelly (n. 80), 29-30.
101 E.g. Aesch. Sept. 230-2.
102 See e.g. Eur. Supp. 28-31.
103 Blundell (n. 15), 163.
104 See e.g. Ar. Lys. 638-48; also M. R. Lefkowitz, 'Women in the Panathenaea and Other
Festivals', in J. Neils (ed.), Worshipping Athena. Panathenaea and Parthenon (Madison, WI,
1996), 78-91.
Panathenaea,105 while forty Attic women were the pr

city's cults, including those of Demeter, Persephon
Polias.106 For Athena Polias, girls served year round as
things, cleaners of her temple, and the workers who wo
robe. The wives of rich and poor Athenians also partici
female-only festivals, including the Adonia and the Th
This last festival was held in honour of Demeter Thes
took place just before the sowing of the wheat and barley
supposed to be celebrated by every Attic wife and so pa
could be used as more proof of a marriage.109 The The
place on the hill of the Pnyx where the Athenian assem
many other sanctuaries of the goddess across Attica. I
formed rituals which were connected to their own fert
agriculture and re-enacted the mourning of the goddess for her
abducted daughter, Persephone. The festival's three days were called
anodos ('going up'), rnsteia ('fasting'), and kalligeneia ('beautiful off-
spring'). A commentator's note on a manuscript of Lucian provides
the best account of its rituals.110 The women brought to it piglets and
penis-shaped cakes, which they tossed into pits. On the last day some
women climbed down into pits which contained the offerings of the
previous year's Thesmophoria, scooped up 'the rotten remains' and
distributed this goo to the other worshippers. This commentator
explains: 'They think that anyone who takes some of this and mixes
it in when sowing will have good crops.' As Greek words for pig were
'the commonest slang terms for the female genitalia', the wives at
this festival no doubt associated their offerings with their own fertil-
ity.111 Indeed, the commentator states that the Thesmophoria was
thought to guarantee agricultural and human fertility. Athenian hus-
bands manifestly judged their wives' celebration of this festival import-
ant. In spite of the ideal of seclusion, they allowed them to spend three
days camping away from home. Each suburb or village of Attica
appointed a wealthy resident as a liturgist to pay for their local
105 Thuc. 6.56.1-2.

106 Bruit-Zaidman and Schmitt-Pantel (n. 44), 105-7.
107 See e.g. Ar. Thesm. 834-5.
108 Blundell (n. 15), 163-5; J. D. Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion (Maiden, MA, Melbourne,
and Oxford, 2005), 144-5; Parker (n. 42), 270-83.
109 See e.g. Isae. 6.49-50, 8.19; also K. White, 'Demeter and the Thesmophoria', Classicum 39
(2013), 3-12.
110 Parker (n. 42), 272-5. I am using Parker's translation.
111 Ibid., 275.
THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS 1 9 1
celebration of the Thesmophoria and some of their wiv

to take charge of it.112
The performance of services and rituals for the dea
important aspect of women's religious activities.113 The classical
Athenians believed that the burial of the dead was a common custom
of the Greeks which was sanctioned by the gods.114 It was the respon-
sibility of citizens to uphold this nomos at home and to make sure
that the customary rituals were performed at the graves of their fore-
bears.115 The Athenians took a dim view of anyone who failed to pay
these honours to the dead. Failure to bury an oíÃos-member could be
held against a citizen who was seeking to be a magistrate, while the neg-
lect of the customary visits to the tombs of parents, grandparents, and
even great-grandparents left a man open to prosecution for kakõsis
goneõn, that is, the poor treatment of ancestors.116
Athenians relied on women to carry out these customary honours.
Indeed, the mothers, sisters, and daughters of the dead were thought
to be deeply committed to ensuring their burial and the visiting of
their graves.117 They judged it right for their women to ready the
dead for burial by washing and clothing their bodies, to mourn for
them at the prothesis or pre-burial display, and to take part in their
ekphora or procession to the tomb.118 Thus, in images on Attic red-
figure pots it is women who wash and dress the body, and who, at
the viewing of the dead, raise their hands, strike their heads, and tear
their hair.119 Likewise on white-ground lekythoi , which are common
offerings for the dead, women are depicted more frequently than
men making a visit to a tomb, where they leave pots of this shape,
wreaths, ribbons, and food.120
Athenian democracy had laws in operation which sought to regulate
the behaviour of Attic women who performed these rituals for the
1,2 E.g. Isae. 3.80, 8.19; IG ii2 1184.3.

113 Blundell (n. 15), 161-2; R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (Ithaca, NY, 1985), 21-37,
104-20; S. C. Humphreys, 'Family Tombs and Tomb Cult in Ancient Athens: Tradition or
Traditionalism?', JHS 100 (1980), 96-126.
114 E.g. Eur. Supp. 16-19, 24-8, 61-2.
115 See e.g. Isae. 6.40-1, 65; [Dem.] 43.57-8, 65; Lys. 1.8.
116 For failure of burial, see [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 55.3; for neglect of visits, see Dem. 24.107.
117 See e.g. Eur. IT 700-5; Soph. Ant. 450-70; also M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek
Tradition (Cambridge, 1974).
118 Isae. 6.40-1, 8.21-4.
119 Blundell (n. 15), 161.
120 J. H. Oakley, Picturing Death in Classical Athens. The Evidence of the White Lekythoi
(Cambridge, 2004).
dead.121 Fourth-century Athenians certainly believed

the Roman period - that they had been introduced by
sixth century.122 These nomoi forbade women from bein
thesis or ekphora, unless they were closely related to
from lacerating themselves or wailing as part of their
also required that the prothesis take place inside a house,
set out before sunrise, that the women follow the m
sion, and that none of the mourners lament for any
the relative being buried.
Thus classical Athenians appear to have had a contr
this religious role of their female relatives: while they
for them to perform these acts for the dead and reli
so, they still felt uneasy about female emotionalism.123
was that such displays on the part of their womenfolk
their own self-control.124 Certainly, they wished to
Attic women to speak out about or mourn for son
who had fallen in battle.125
It is therefore unsurprising that at the public funeral for the war
dead bereaved females were pushed to the margins.126 By providing
a funeral and a tomb for the war dead and honouring them annually
through yearly contests and sacrifices, the Athenian democracy
appropriated the traditional obligations of close relatives to bury
their kin and to look after their tombs.127 The orators at the public
funeral may have noted in passing the relatives' lupě ('pain') and
penthos ('mourning') but consistently urged them to restrict these
troubling emotions as best as they could by remembering the aretē
which the war dead had put beyond doubt and the support which
the city would give to those relatives whom they had left behind.128
The involvement of bereaved females was limited to the leaving
of offerings for their dead relatives during the public prothesis or
121 [Dem.] 43.62-5.

122 E.g. Plut. Vit. Sol. 21.
123 Fantham et al (n. 10), 78; Humphreys (n. 114), 100.
124 See e.g. Aesch. Sept. 182-202.
125 E.g. Ar. Lys. 37-8, 588-90; Pax 647-56; Eur. Supp. 942-6.
126 Loraux, N. 1986, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City , tr.
A. Sheridan, (Cambridge [Massachusetts] s 1986), 22-8.
127 Pl. Menex. 249b; Thuc. 2.34.
128 E.g. Dem. 60.32-7; Hyper. Funeral Oration 41-3; Lys. 2.71-6; Pl. Menex. 247c-8d; Thuc.
2.44.
pre-burial display of their remains and the lamentin

relatives beside the grave.129
9. Conclusion
For the classical Athenians, the right place for Attic women w
home. They encouraged their wives to focus on making mea
clothes and on running the oikos more generally. They expected
to produce sons so that their households could live on. They genu
valued their wives as homemakers and mothers, but they also con
ly worried that they lacked self-control. They were obsessed by the
sibility that Attic women might have sex outside marriage. The
was that husbands tried to keep their wives away from unr
men. They expected male guests whom they had invited into
oikos to keep out of the rooms where their wives were. They built h
which lacked windows for passers-by to look in and wives to loo
At the same time, they believed that their wives were better placed
they were to worship the goddesses who controlled the fertility of c
and households. They also relied on them to perform the custom
rites for dead relatives. Often, too, poor wives had to help to keep f
businesses or farms going. Thus every Athenian allowed his wife t
ticipate in female-only festivals and funerals and - if his poverty m
necessary - to work outside the oikos. Yet in doing so he insisted
she keep away from men who were not part of the family. Thu
she walked through the streets she had to avoid talking with
men and to keep her face well hidden behind her veil.
DAVID M. PRITCHARD
[email protected]
129 E.g Thuc. 2.34.2, 46.2; see also P. Hannah, 'The Warrior Loutrophoroi of
Athens', in Pritchard (n. 66), 266-303.

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THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS

Author(s): DAVID M. PRITCHARD

THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC

The study of the women of classical Athens involves an eviden

* Greek translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

popular literature, and the lower-class point of view w

Athenian democracy was, truly, a men's club where the right

. . .comes the fair sex;

10 E. Fantham, H. P. Foley, N. B. Kampen, S. B. Pomperoy, and H. A. Shapiro, Women in the

A woman was almost never called a politēs or citizen.15 T

Women were expected not only to keep clear of poli

3. Girlhood and schooling

20 Gould (n. 2), 45.

depicting women using book-rolls for the reciting of po

At the onset of menstruation, which seems to have occurred around

horse and marriage as her 'taming' or 'yoking'.38 Nor

bridegroom to Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis, with th

43 L. B. Bruit-Zaidman and P. Schmitt-Pantel, Religion in the Ancient G

of marbles found on its floors prove that this was th

5. The normal place for a wife

49 Pritchard (n. 31), 15-21; Shear (n. 49), 383-94.

6. The ideal and the reality of seclusion

the first Europeans to travel to Greece under the Ottoman

in a wealthy home was the preserve of courtesans and

Demosthenes 57 explains to predominantly lower-

7. The perceived wantonness of women

88 Powell (n. 1), 371.

going pale? What are those tears? Will you do it or

8. Women and religion

95 E.g. Lys. 1.8.

and performed rituals which were vital for maintainin

Panathenaea,105 while forty Attic women were the pr

105 Thuc. 6.56.1-2.

celebration of the Thesmophoria and some of their wiv

1,2 E.g. Isae. 3.80, 8.19; IG ii2 1184.3.

dead.121 Fourth-century Athenians certainly believed

121 [Dem.] 43.62-5.

pre-burial display of their remains and the lamentin

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