(2)      Male visitors were entertained in a room especially for men (and prostitutes).

(3)      Two different spheres of activity for men and women: 

a.        The wife lived indoors and ran the household

b.      The husband lived his life, for the most part, out of doors in the Agora, the Assembly, the gymnasium, on the farm, and in time of war, at sea on warships or on the battlefield. 

(4)      Women secluded:  They were not trusted to go outside the house unaccompanied; the husband or a slave did the shopping.   The only times that a woman could go outside the house without damaging her reputation would be at weddings, funerals, and certain religious festivals that were limited to females, like the Thesmophoria, or that included both sexes, like the Panathenaea and the Eleusinian Mysteries. 

(5)      Women not secluded : Ideally, women were watched constantly, but in everyday life men were engaged in their own activities away from the house, and women left their houses for many reasons. Women worked in fields and vineyards, sold goods in the agora, participated in funerals and festivals, visited relatives, and gossiped with friends in the neighborhood and at fountains.

(6)      The women no doubt had the run of the whole house when the husband did not have male guests.  Also, separation does not mean isolation.  Women had a rich social life together.

(7)      The seclusion of women was truer of wealthier families. Women in poorer families no doubt had to help their husbands outside the home by working and performing other tasks.  If they did not have a slave and their own well, they would have had to go to a public fountain house, e.g. in the Agora, to get water.

(8)      Women cannot choose or refuse marriage, and divorce for women is difficult.

(9)      Attitudes and expectations were different towards men and women.  Women were seen as incapable of a rationally informed moral decision.

(10)  In Sparta, women had fewer limitations placed on them.

Pericles summed up the Athenian view of women in his Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.46):

“If I must talk about the womanly virtue of those of you who will now be widows, my advice will be brief. You will have a great reputation if you are not worse than your own given nature, and so will any woman about whom there is the least talk among men either in praise or blame.”

The invisibility (“least talk among men”) which Pericles recommends to widows contrasts dramatically with the public visibility so cherished by Greek males and the glory which military and civic services brought them.

Women in the A219 Sources

Remember that we cannot discuss women without discussing men.

The Persians

Hard to interpret, since the women are Persian women.  How far is their behaviour typical of Greek women, and how far contrasted with it?

(a)    Persian women do the lamentation, as Athenian women would have. 

(b)   The men are presented as effeminate, and this is shown as a bad thing.  That reflects a Greek attitude that women are inferior.

The Acropolis:

Really only the Parthenon frieze gives us any information.

(a)    Women are modestly dressed, and stand demurely.  They carry religious objects.

(b)   Men show all states of dress and nudity, and a wide range of poses and behaviours.

Does this reflect the ideal, that women should appear in public only for religious events, while men make public spaces their home?

The Funeral Speech

Pericles suggests several things about women:

(a)    Women exist to keep the home.

(b)   Women’s role in the war is to have male children.

(c)    Women should not be talked about.

(d)   Women’s lamentation must be controlled by men, and ended at appropriate time.

Lysistrata

There are three levels of information:

(a)    There is a wild and impossible fantasy of women running the democracy.

(b)   There are stereotypes about women, such as the suggestions that they are all sex-crazed, and they love drink.

(c)    There are glimpses of Athenian women’s real life. 

a.       Their real life is used to explain the fantasy. For example, women can run the democracy because they are used to running the home, or women are used to untangling wool, so they can untangle politics,  or women are used to handling money and budgeting, so they can handle the treasury too.

b.      Their real life is described in passing.  For example, we get glimpses of how they meet at the well, or how they use religion as an excuse to leave the house.

The reality:

We know of women such as Aspasia, Pericles’ wife, who had considerable freedom and political influence.  But the majority of women remain invisible to us, and we must use the small glimpses we get from these and other sources.

Did Aspasia write the Funeral Speech?

In Plato's Menexenus, Socrates identifies her as the author, stating that she had composed "the funeral oration that Pericles pronounced."