http://www.jstor.orgHousehold, Gender and Property in Classical AthensAuthor(s): Lin FoxhallSource: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 39, No. 1, (1989), pp. 22-44Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/639240Accessed: 31/05/2008 07:08Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Classical Quarterly 39 (i) 22-44 (1989) Printed in Great Britain HOUSEHOLD, GENDERANDPROPERTYIN CLASSICALATHENS INTRODUCTION Theideathatthehouseholdwasthefundamental building blockofancient Greek society,explicit intheancient sources,' hasnowbecome widelyaccepted.2 Itisno exaggeration to say that ancient Athenians would have found it almost inconceivable that individuals of any status existed who did not belong to some household; and the fewwhowereinthis position werealmost certainlyregarded asanomalous.3In ancient Athens, as elsewhere, households'area primary arena for the expression of age andsex roles,kinship, socializationandeconomic cooperation'.4 Ithasbeen suggested formodernGreecethatourowncultural biases,along withtheGreek ideology ofmale dominance, haveledtothe assumption thatthefoundationsof power in Greek society lie solely in the public sphere, and that domestic power is 'less important'.5 In a less simple reality the preeminent role ofthe householdcannotbe underestimated. Here I hope to question similar assumptions aboutancient Greece, focusing in particular onthe relationships that existed between Athenian households andthe property ofthe individuals, particularly women, withinthese households. Themostextensivetreatmentofthe subject isDavid Schaps' book,Economic Rightsof WomeninAncientGreece (1979). He portrays thehouseholdasmale- dominated, withwomen playing little part indecisionsaboutitsresources because they were unable to own property. Since Schaps wrote, this viewpoint has entered the mainstream ofclassical scholarship.6 HereIshall argue thatitis inappropriate to consider property solely as a function of individual ownership, important though that isinsomecircumstances.More often, in everydaylife,property wasused by households, notindividuals.Inorder toassesstheeconomic consequences ofthis, especially for women, an examination of the ancient Greek householdas a social and symbolicentity is necessary for the arguments which follow. Anyoneobserving another culture, either past or present, doessoasanoutsider, his perception encumbered by different cultural paraphernalia ofhisown.Forthe ethnographer whostudies contemporary,living cultures itisvitaltocometo grips with how the inhabitants of a culture construe their own world and how they express this understanding, that is their cognitive systems and categories of meaning. For the historian who approaches his subjects through a documentary filter it is just as vital 1 E.g. Aristotle, Politics 1.1.3-6; Xenophon,Oikonomikos. 2 E.g. Lacey 1968: 15ff.; Fisher 1976: 2,5ff.; Humphreys1978: 200ff.; Schaps 1979: 7; Hunter 1981: 153; Hallett 1985:72-6. 3 Cf. Lacey 1968:129 andn.21:menseemtohavebeen registered inAtheniandemesas membersofahousehold (oKos). Even Plato,forhisidealstate,ultimatelysettledonthe household as the basic principle of social organisation, and the establishment of households was the 'first law': Plato, Laws 4.720e-721e. (Even inthe Republic, where he suggests alternatives to the household, it is still his starting point, and the touchstoneof normality.) This is alsotrue inmodern Greece, seedu Boulay 1974:ch.1. Onhouseholdsasbasicsocialandeconomic organisational units in other societiessee,Netting, Wilk and Arnould1984. 4 Netting etal.1984:xxii. Cf.,formodernGreece,du Boulay 1974:ch. 1, wherethe household (arrtt) 'istreated by [the] community asa single social reality'(19). 5 Dubisch1986: 13-16;Hirschon1984:19. 6 E.g. Powell1988: ch. 8;Garner1987: 83-7. 22 to cometoterms with cognition and meaning, since the documents themselves are a product ofthewriters' perceptions and interpretations oftheir worldfromwithin their ownculture. InancientGreek culture,broadlyspeaking, itcanbe argued that pairs of complementaryoppositions areafundamental aspect of cognition,intruding into every corner ofsocial interaction from Eiv and bC to men and women.7 As cadres of the system of meaning,complementaryoppositionsgeneratespecific cultural concerns:thresholds (theboundary betweenthetwosidesofan opposition), liminality (sitting on this boundary) and transition (crossing from one side to another andback again). Alloftheseconcerns heighten the perception ofthe original opposition as meaningful. For Mediterranean cultures in general8 and ancient Greek culture in particular many such oppositions havebeen pointed outas significant: public/private;wet/dry;male/female;hot/cold, etc.9 But some ofthese oppositions are more significant for imputing cultural meaning than others. And they cannotbe permanently or inextricably linked intoa continuouschain of meaning: they simply donotcoalesce tidily intoastructuralist framework.10 Gender is probably the most vigorousexpression of meaning available toancient Greek culture:its very pervasiveness attestsits vitality.Consequentlygender often serves as a metaphor for expressing other relationships. And it becomes a kind of lens through whichGreeks perceived andthusdefined theworldaroundthem.Onthe other hand,contextalso plays acrucial part in defining the particular relationship betweenthetwosidesofabalanced opposition(and thusits metaphorical significance). The most usual contexts for gender are provided by the poles of another complementary opposition: the private world ofthe householdand the public world ofthe community. Thehouseholdembodiestheunificationofthe male/femaleopposition. Thisis analogous tothe idea, prevalent in Greek medicine and philosophy, that the bodily health ofan individual resulted from the presence in equal balance ofa collectionof complementary opposites: wet and dry, hotand coldelements had tobe present in equal amounts."1 Thebalanceofthe opposites inahousehold,manifestinthe genders,ages andstatusesofitsindividualmembers, is similarly expressive ofits healthand well-being asa properly constitutedsocial body. Thehouseholdisthe contextin which male and female individuals operate as a single social entity. In the context of the community, however, male and female are separate, opposing and unequal, and thusserve todefine other parts ofthe culture inthesame terms. Inevitably,genderrelationships becomeafocusofcultural ambiguity whenthe context changes. That is, when genderrelationships ofthehousehold impinge on genderrelationships asan acceptedcategory of meaning inthecontextofthe community, social ambiguity and stress may result. So, for example, male and female householdmembers had particular rolesanddutiesin family funerals.12 Butthese roles spilled overintothecontextofthe community inwhich gender roleswere 7 On the importance of meaning see Sahlins 1981,1986; Hertzfeld1985, especially18, 45ff. On polar oppositions see Lloyd1966; Garner1987: 75-83. 8 Bordieu1977: 87-95;Hertzfeld1986,1985: ch. 2, especially 53ff., cf.90-1. 9 Lloyd1966;Garner1987:75-83 (who,remarkably, passes overthe significance ofthe opposition of gender); with regard to gender see Clark1982: especially183. 10 Contra Bordieu1977:142. " Lloyd 1966:20-2.Thebalanceisevendescribedas laovoL t'ainonesource!Onthe householdasthe integrated balance ofmale andfemale see pp.26-31. 12 Garland 1985: 21--37. A funeral is itself an event expressing liminality and transition, thus enhancing theuse of oppositionmetaphor. 23OWNERSHIPATATHENS differently construed (with the emphasis on separation and hierarchy), since a funeral hadbotha private/household anda public/communityaspect. Oneofthe manifestations of the resulting cultural ambiguity and social stress was the persistence of sumptuary legislation fromSolononward. Significantly, much ofthis legislation was concerned precisely with therole ofwomeninthe public part ofthe funeral.13 Asasocial entity thehouseholdisan agglomeration ofindividual intentions, desires and behaviours which contend and compromise with those of other individuals to produce householddecisionsand actions.In somesenses the householdalsohas a life of its own, and can be said to pursue strategies which transcend the interests of its personnel.But, individualinterestsarenever completelysubmerged.Further, householdinterests and solidarity may gain and recede in importance in relation to individual interests depending upon the particular circumstances. What we see in the documents is almost certainly the result of decisions made by a number of individuals within the household.14 Noris'household'a tidy, fixed orclosed category. The specification ofwhoor what is containedin ahouseholdand the boundaries between householdsare often hardto pin down.Thisis partly becausehouseholdstructure isnotstatic.Inthe courseofevenonelifetime roles,statuses, economicresources andeven personnel change. Sexdoesnot change,thoughgender roles may. Whoorwhatisincluded within the sphere ofahouseholdoften dependsuponperspective and context: e.g., thestate may accounthousehold membership differently fromthe participants; or someindividualssuchasslavesorfreedmen may behouseholdmembersinan economicbut notina religious or political sense.'5 13 On sumptuarylegislation, Garland1985: 21-2, 24-5, 29-30, 33-4, 37. On changes in the meaning of gender with contextsee n. 24. 14 For example, in [Demosthenes] 41.17-19 the circumstances surrounding the disposition of the propertybelonging to the householdof which Polyeuktos was the head are given.Clearly, all the family was expected to be present:Polyeuktos' two daughters, and one of his sons-in-law were there (the other son-in-law,Spoudias, had been invitedto attend).Each memberof the family apparently had some say in how the property was distributed:hence the reason the speaker claimedthat Spoudias shouldhave protested(and been present) on thatoccasion,rather than complaining of unfairnesslater. Spoudiaswas, in fact, representedby his wife, who was acting as a memberof two households:that of Polyeuktos and that of Spoudias. The final result - the will of Polyeuktos - might have appeared tohave been simply anindividual's decisionif we did not possess the informationcontainedin this speech. As it is, it is clearthat the will was more or less a consensusdecisionreachedwith the agreement of individual family members. (That it was not a secureconsensusis indicated by the very fact ofthe lawsuit.) However, italso emerges from this speech that gender, age and status ofthe individuals concernedmusthavebeencrucialto the quantity and quality of input eachone had towardsthe final decision. 15 See, for example, in [Demosthenes]47, the case of the nursewho had been freed by the head-of-household'sfather,but who as an old widowhad come back to live with the family in whichshe had been a slave (47.55-6). Whenshe was beaten by men trying to seize property for payment of a debt and died of the woundsshe received,the ambiguity of her statuswith regard to the householdbecamea problem. The family treatedheras a memberof the household: they called in theirown doctor to treather (47.67)and made arrangements for her funeral(47.69). But when the Exegetai(acknowledgedexperts in the interpretation of religiousprocedure and customarylaw) were consulted,it becameclearthat, as faras the statewas concerned,the nurse was not a householdmember.The householdhead, thereforehad no access to legal or ritual retribution (47.72): 'but this person did not belong to my family, she had only beena nurse;nor again was she a slave, for she had been freed by my fatherand was dwellingseparately and had a husband'. Similarly,slaves, who were certainly accountedhouseholdmembers,were probably notallowed tobe present atcertain religiousfestivals, towhich itwas expected that all householdssend representatives,e.g. the Thesmophoria, see Burkert1985:242 and nn. 7, 8. 24LINFOXHALL OWNERSHIPATATHENS25 Finally, it is important tostress that legal expectations (the norms most readily, if not alwayseasily, culledfromthe documents) cannotbestudiedinisolationfrom social behaviour, or absurdity results.16Thatisto say, coursesofactionthat may appear equally possible under the law, may not be equally feasible in terms of cultural acceptability. And legal andsocialstructuresofteninterlocktoform something different in character from its componentparts. In fact, the extenttowhich a legal system canbe separated fromothersocialstructures in anypre-modernsociety, including ancient Athens, is dubious.l7 Public and community values and meanings are the oneshistorians see via the documents, since the documentsthemselves have emanatedfromthiscontext.Processes generating fromwithinthe household, particularly those involvingwomen,may notfit comfortably intotheworldofthe lawcourts, and some aspects may never operate in the public sphere at all. Hence they can easily vanishfrom sight since the texts we study mayrarely reveal them.'8 INDIVIDUAL, HOUSEHOLDANDPROPERTY: RELATIONSHIPSOFPEOPLEANDPROPERTY 'Ownership' inancient Greece has always been difficult tounderstand. Harrison is typical of many scholarsin saying that'therewasan extremely fluid concept of ownership in Greek thought'. Some, such as Wolff, have even tried to claim that the Greeks had no proper notion of ownership.20 Of particular importance for the present argument, it has normally been asserted that women in ancient Athens could not and did notown property, putting them at the mercy oftheir male guardians. Recently, Schaps has promulgated this argument most extensively.2' There is no doubt that Greek ideas of property ownership were quite different from ourown.But merely toassert that ownership in modern, western terms wasnon- existent (orbarely existed) is unhelpful. Whatwemean by'ownership' is really a collectionof rights,privileges, dutiesandother relationships between people and property. Theseareof course, culture-specific. Overthewhole range ofhuman societiesthere are, potentially, an enormousnumber of relationships which may be an integral part of or attached in some way to the idea of ownership, e.g. possession, management,kinshipattachments,patronageattachments,rights of disposal and usufruct.Butthe particular ingredientsincluded, theirrelative importance, their mutual integration and, consequently, the conditions of ownership vary greatly from culture toculture.22 Though it is not within the scope of this paper to consider Greek ideas of ownership in detail, somediscussion is imperative, if only tomake an attempt at clarifying the 16 As Harrison1968: 47; Schaps 1979: 14-15, 24, 75; Garner1987 (who still concentrateson legal, but not social institutions) and othershave generally done. Cf. Laslett 1984:364. 17See, e.g., Osborne 1985: 52-3; Gould 1980: 42ff.; and onthe importance of context, Humphreys 1986: 90. 18 The Attic orators,writingspeeches for the lawcourts,are, in fact, the mainsourceof data on people andtheir property, supplementedby other literary and epigraphical evidence.See Humphreys 1986: 58 on the orators as a source for kinship strategies. The information provided in these often polemicalspeeches must be used with extreme caution, butthere is occasionally some insight into the decision-making processes that led up to the denouement of a public final transaction. Cf.Laslett1984: 354. 19 Harrison1968: 52, cf.200ff. 20 Wolff1944: 63. 21 Schaps 1979: 5-14,75, 91-2.Kranzlein1963: 45,51-2, 99-100isanotable exception, though he doesnotdiscuss female property-holding in detail. 22 Cf.Hirschon1984: 2. relationships thatAthenians perceived between people and property.Schaps considered that 'family/household' and 'private person' (='man')represented 'two concepts of ownership [which] competed with each other'.23 But the reality is more complicated. I hope toshowthatinancientAthensthe concepts of management, disposal andusecould jointogether inseveral different ways,depending onsocial context, toform what we call 'ownership'.Ironically, this is chiefly because gender provided the predominant framework for interpreting person/propertyrelationships. Within the household, where male and female persons and perspectives combined in counterpoint (if not always unisonor harmony) property was usually treated as if it 'belonged' tothe household,e.g. in the generalised reciprocity of normal, every-day consumption. Thisrelationmust normally have prevailed becauseofthesheer frequency withwhichitwasactivatedin everyday life. Despite thefactthat individuals may have had special or even exclusive attachments to particular items of property, 'property is part ofthe household'.24 However, when person/propertyrelationships transcendthecontextofthe householdand spill overintothecontextofthe community, the interpretative framework, basedon gender, changes asthe meaning of gender itself changes ina public context.25 Thus the property used by the whole household at other times, may betreatedas 'belonging'exclusively tooneindividualwithinthe household, for example, inthetransmissionof property fromone generation toanother.The resulting ambiguity in person/propertyrelationships, sketched with insightby van Bremen26fortheHellenisticandRoman periods, isundeniable:in many circum- stancesitis impossible to say who 'really owns' something. Thustheheart ofthe difficulty forus in considering ancient Athenianideasofthenature of 'ownership' isthat rights of managementand/ordisposal were not synonymous withwhatwe might call 'ownership', but merely an aspect of it, the significance ofwhichcould change contextually inrelation toother aspects. Thereisalmostnodirectdiscussionof ownership inGreek literature, withthe result that one of the few relevant passages, Aristotle, Rhetoric 1361a (1.5.7), has been regularly citedas a'definition'of ownership :27 23 Schaps 1979:4. 24 Aristotle,Politics 1.9.3. Cf. Schaps 1979: 55ff. For similarvaluesin modernGreecesee du Boulay 1974: 15-17: 'The houseis still thought of as a unit enclosing a group whichincludes animalsand inanimate property as well as the family in the centre...' (16-17). On generalised reciprocity see Sahlins 1972. 25 Cf. Hirschon1984:5. A strikingexample of such a change in the frameworkof gender is providedby Aristotle's(Rhetoric1360b-1361a [1.5.6]) explanation of evTrEXva and 7ToAvrTEXVia: the blessing and abundance of children. In the context of the community (rTo KOtV&)this means the birth and successful rearing of perfect young men. However,'privately'(ti8a, i.e. in a household context), it meansthe birthand rearing of bothmaleand femalechildren,with many of the samevirtues: ,uEyeOog,KacAAos, awopoavv-rq, magnitude,beauty, discretion. Significantly, thevirtues attributed only to young menarethose exemplifyingstrength and power: laXVIS, v'valtS dyovyrUtK77,dvopeLa - strength, ability at games,manly courage. Theseare replaced for young women by the virtue of industry, LAEcpyL'a, activity without control. Interestingly, this is specified as cfLAEpyLa avev dvEAEvOepias, industry withoutslavishness. Is the notion implicit herethatwomenareessentialtothehousehold's reputation andstatus?Theframework proposed here incidentallyprovides analternative explanation forHertzfeld's (1985:ch. 2, especially 53ff., 90-1) 'twomodesof kinship'. The tensionbetween the agnatic idiomand the bilateral idiomcouldbeunderstoodastheresult ofthe changingmeaning of gender (which profoundly affects kinship strategies) with context. 26 Van Bremen 1983: 230, onthe problem of exactly what benefactions ek ton idion entailed and whether individuals orfamilies 'owned'the resources used for such euergetism. 27 Aristotle,Rhetoric1361a (1.5.7):7rAovrovoE ie'pr1voUt'oiaTrosrrAr10os, yrs,xwpiwov KTraotL, Ent8er7T7rrAwv KTriias Kat fioaK:qtiaTrTjv Kai d&v8pa7ro'8ov 7rA'OEtKaL izEyEOEL KaL 26 LINFOXHALL OWNERSHIPATATHENS Wealthconsistsof an abundanceof coin and land; the possession of agricultural land and the possession of moveables, cattleand slaves,distinguished in number, magnitude and beauty. And these are all