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Women & Slavesin
Classical Athens
From J.P.V.D. Balsdon’s
Roman Women: Their History and
Habits
• “This book was conceived when I asked myself what women were doing while men were active in all the areas traditionally emphasized by classical scholars.”
• The answer? “…having a pretty rotten time.”
Women We’ve Encountered so Far?
• Pandora
• Andromache
• Helen
• Kore
Sources for Women?
• Philosophers
• Plays (women did not act in them)
• Lawsuits
• Vase paintings
• Sappho
Sappho: Archaic Poet
Lesbos
Sappho: The Tenth Muse
“Solon of Athens, the son of Execestides, once when his nephew was signing a song of Sappho’s over the wine, was much beguiled by the song, and asked the lad to teach it to him. When someone asked him why, he replied: I just want to learn it and die!”
Sappho vs. Homer vs. TyrtaeusSome say an army of horsemen,
some of footsoldiers, some of ships,
is the fairest thing on the black earth, but I say it is what one loves.
It’s very easy to make this clear
to everyone, for Helen,
by far surpassing mortals in beauty,
left the best of all husbands
and sailed to Troy,
mindful of neither her child
nor her dear parents, but
with one glimpse she was seduced by
Aphrodite. For easily bent...
and nimbly...[missing text]...
has reminded me now
of Anactoria who is not here;
I would much prefer to see the lovely way she walks and the radiant glance of her face
than the war-chariots of the Lydians or their footsoldiers in arms.
“Six Fragments for Atthis”I loved you, Atthis, years ago,when my youth was still all flowersand sighs, and you -- you seemed to mesuch a small ungainly girl. Can you forget what happened before?If so, then I'll remind you how, while lyingbeside me, you wove a garland of crocuseswhich I then braided into strands of your hair.And once, when you'd plaited a double necklacefrom a hundred blooms, I tied it aroundthe swanning, sun-licked ring of your neck….
No holy place existed without us then,no woodland, no dance, no sound.Beyond all hope, I prayed those timelessdays we spent might be made twice as long.I prayed one word: I want.Someone, I tell you, will remember us,even in another time.
Archaic Women and Art
The Symposium
Primary Source Analysis
Primary Source Analysis
• Xenophon– Memorabilia, #5, pp. 70-71
– Oeconomicus, #4, pp. 77-80
• Pseudo-Aristotle's Oeconomica, #1, p. 82
• Antiphon’s legal speech, #2, pp. 83-84
• Pseudo-Demosthenes legal speech, #3, pp. 84-85
Historiography
• Why study the history of women?
Mary Beard, Classicist
“Where did it take you? Is there any societythat we know in history that has not oppressedits women in some way or another? Whatshould we do with the knowledge that theGreeks and Romans were guilty too? We mightinvestigate the distinctive and idiosyncraticways in which they practiced their ownparticular version of misogny. But thenwhat?...if all we find ourselves saying is thatClassical Antiquity was yet another bad timefor the females of the species, then maybe thereis not too much further mileage there.”
Mary Beard, Classicist
“Some of the best recent work has struckmuch more firmly to the implicationsof…male authorship: ancient literature isnot evidence for women’s lives in antiquity;it is a series of representations of women, bymen; and we cannot hope to understandwhat it is saying, unless we reflect on who isspeaking, to whom, in what context andwhy.”
Mary Beard, Classicist
“In thinking about the ancient world, an emphasison gender means an emphasis not on what women didor did not do, but on how ancient culture, ancientliterature or ancient art defined and debated thedifferences between males and females…Genderdistinctions had a symbolic resonance that extendedfar beyond the real or imagined differences betweenmen and women – into almost every other sphere oflife from warfare to morals…To study gender is tostudy a lot more than ‘women’: it is to study a set ofoppositions and differences that underscore almostevery aspect of ancient (and modern) life.”
Historiography
• Should we study women and slavery as a group?
