This essay focuses on women, goddesses and their freedom and power in the classical world. It will investigate the differences and similarities between them, and attempt to cast a light on why goddesses were very powerful, whilst mortal women spent their lives mostly secluded from society. To achieve this, the position of the woman in society will be examined through the three main Greek periods, and the powers and cults of goddesses will be assessed.
The lives of women in Antiquity
In Ancient Greece, while men were being prepared for war, leadership, and diplomacy, young women were prepared through religious events for adulthood: for marriage and motherhood. Marriage was a symbolic death of youth and the transition to marriage, and therefore, adulthood, was a very important one. For a woman in Archaic Greece, there were two important migrations: one from their family home to their home ,shared with their husband, and one to the grave. An ideal marriage was characterised by a shared mindset between husband and wife, shared social goals, and shared friends and enemies. Marriage, however, was not only characterised by a transition to adulthood, but also by the pain it could cause. The Hymn to Demeter shows how much pain this transition could cause to mother and daughter, who were suddenly ripped apart. This pain is very plain in [quote]. The ideal wife in Archaic Greece would bear and raise their heirs and watch over their household, slaves, and goods, and serve society by performing in religious rites for the gods.
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Women were not held in high regard/esteem in Ancient Greece. Hesiod described women as a punishment for men who caused their fall from a golden age into a world full of atrocities. [quote] Semonides described women as lazy, as having uncontrolled appetite, as being adulterous, amongst other insults. He mentions various types of women, none of them being what you would call a “good person”. His seventh poem, for example, starts with:
“χωρὶς γυναικὸς θεὸς ἐποίησεν νόοντὰ πρῶτα. τὴν μὲν ἐξ ὑὸς τανύτριχος,τῇ πάντ᾿ ἀν᾿ οἶκον βορβόρῳ πεφυρμέναἄκοσμα κεῖται καὶ κυλίνδεται χαμαί·5αὐτὴ δ᾿ ἄλουτος ἀπλύτοις ἐν εἵμασινἐν κοπρίῃσιν ἡμένη πιαίνεται.” “In the beginning God made various kinds of women with various minds. He made one from hairy sow, that one whose house is smeared with mud, and all within lies in dishevelment and rolls along the ground, while the pig-woman in unlaundered clothing sits unwashed herself among the dunghills and grows fat.” (Frazer, R. M.; 1983)
This poem clearly shows the disgust Semonides feels towards women, and he is not trying to conceal any of his aversion.
Nonetheless, not all women stayed inside for all their lives. Women fulfilled important roles: they served as mourners of the dead, and older women were often hired by the aristocracy to participate in the lamentation of the dead. Other professions such as nurse, housekeeper and weighing wool were also available to women. It is also known that women dedicated clay plaques to goddesses, which could be another sign that women did not live lives that were completely secluded from the outside world.
At the same time, Sparta was raising their girls quite differently. Spartan girls were the only ones that were prescribed an education by the state. Furthermore, Spartan girls practiced athletics while naked and regularly engaged in such physical activities. They were also, unlike in Athens, not excluded from public space; a circumstance that may have led to the production of two female Spartan poets.
Spartan women were probably quite similar in status to men in other Greek city-states, although they were forbidden to take part in money-making occupations. Even so, some Spartan women remained extremely wealthy. They were, for example, they were the first to win horse races with horses they bought. Just like wealthy men, they did not race themselves, but hired charioteers to do the job for them. The Spartans gained their sustenance from the work of the lower classes on land that was distributed at birth, and given back to the community when the owner died. Still, the woman’s main task remained to be the producer of offspring, although now not to heirs, but to warriors. Also, in contrast to Athens at the time, Spartan women refused to lament over fallen soldiers, but chose to take pride in their fallen sons.
When Sparta’s power started to decline, commentators were quick to point out, as well as at women as the culprit. Some felt that the distorted distribution of wealth between men and women was at least partially responsible for this downfall. Plutarch, however, rejected this.
Views on women in Sparta varied greatly. Aristotle considered Sparta to be a state run by women, and therefore argued that women were for a large part responsible for the downfall of Sparta. Plutarch, however, had an optimistic outlook on women’s morality and intellectual potential, and refuted Aristotle 's claim/view.
In Classical Athens the wife should ideally spend her life indoors, unless she were to participate in religious events. Even in household from the lower classes, a female slave was often included so that the wife didn’t have to go outside the house to do chores (where men could impose a threat on her chastity and the legitimacy of her family’s heirs). Their lives might not have been as secluded as we might think they were. Citizen wives would visit neighbours and frequently participate in religious events. Still, Xenophon argued in oeconomicus that there was (or ought to be) a division of labour by sex. Men worked outside of the house, and women inside, once they had been trained by their husband to do this properly [quote?]. Aristotle shares a similar view, arguing that the virtue of the woman consists of her obeying her (morally superior) husband. He also argued that women are naturally inferior to men and hence suited for their role in the household. This view was probably widely accepted, since wives in Classical Athens weren’t allowed to make important social or financial decisions without the supervision of a male guardian.
Women’s rights were well protected. For example, a divorce was easy to obtain, and women were protected in such cases, both legally and financially. Male responsibility has often been cited by court cases for the welfare of their female relatives. Guardians were also available for orphans.
Still, lives of women were largely regulated. Solon’s laws (6th century Athens) were largely restrictive, and may have (among other things) been aimed at controlling public appearances of women, which included public expression of private emotions, like grief. In practice, these laws prevented the aristocracy from hiring female mourners, which, at the same time, denied women a source of income.
The only events where women were truly the men’s equal were religious activities, in which they participated just as much as men. Women even had their own religious festival, which was the Thesmophorid, a ritual for Demeter. Women could acquire some power of sorts by becoming a Priestess, but female priesthood was often hereditary or temporarily bought by the family of a young woman, unlike male priests, who were given a theological education. Other ways for women to mark their contribution to the family were weaving, making clothes, participating in marriages, and, though restricted, in funerals. The responsibility to visit the grave and provide it with offerings also fell primarily to women, which shows how important women were in the lamentation of and caring for the dead.
In more rural parts of Greece, women may have had to work alongside men in agricultural activities, and poor women would also have had to work outside.
Even inside, women did not only weave. Evidence from vase paintings [proof?] suggests that women engaged in intellectual activities, especially reading and playing music. They also had part in and knew about economic exchanges among relatives and matters of inheritance.
Only the Hellenistic period is defined by the reign of a woman, Cleopatra. During this period, multiple legal systems were in action. In Alexandria, women were still required to conduct their legal and economic transitions through the intermediary of a male supervisor, but aristocratic women who chose to use the Egyptian or Jewish legal systems did not have to. It was also during this time that women were allowed honours such as magistracies; sometimes as a result of their relationship with men who were given a similar honour, but also granted as a result of the woman’s generosity. This shows a new autonomy that can also be detected in letters and petitions, sent by women who appear to be widowed or to live without a husband. [proof]
There were also increased opportunities for education as well as a stronger focus on the individual, which contributed to the emergence of female poets, who would sometimes travel to festivals to recite their poetry. Other educated women would sometimes pursue professions that required them to work in public and have dealings with men that were not close family. Other women became artists. These were mostly daughters of male artists, and had learned the profession from their father. A couple of women even began the study of medicine.
With the advances in the study of medicine, men’s and women’s bodies were found to be more and more similar, which may also have contributed to the increased autonomy of women.
Still, society was very much patriarchal. Male infants were strongly preferred, and the Greeks in Egypt even practiced infanticide as to reduce the number of female children.
In short, daily lives of women were mostly secluded, except for religious festivals, in which they participated just as much as men did. As time went by, women were able to obtain more and more freedom, but in reality the daily life of the average woman didn’t change much.
Goddesses
After defeating Kronos, Zeus establishes a patriarchal government, and denies power to females, even taking away their only claim to consideration as bearers of offspring by giving birth to Pallas Athena through his head and Dionysus from his thigh. This thought was brought into mainstream philosophy by Hesiod, who, as stated before, presents his unsympathetic view of women in his story of the creation of the first woman, Pandora, who brought onto the world [whatever that was again]. The box she opened may well have been a metaphor for erotic knowledge of women, which was a source of evil to men.
Nonetheless, there are female goddesses, although many have characteristics more closely associated to men. Athena is a typically masculine woman who finds success in what is a man’s world by denying her femininity. She always sided with male heroes. Artemis, on the other hand, generally avoided males, but still fulfilled actions that were not considered feminine, since she was a huntress. Her abstinence of marriage is the key to her independence, something that was very much frowned upon in ancient Greece. Aphrodite resembles more closely the view men in ancient Greece had of women (adulterous, sexual, etc.), but was also said to have a dual nature; one fitting the men, and one fitting women (or actually, prostitutes). The first one, Aphrodite Urania, represented intellectual love, which was only achievable between two men. The other one, Aphrodite Pandemos, represented vulgar love, and was more closely related to prostitutes. Demeter was one of the first Olympic goddesses, and held great power, since she was the goddess of one of the most important aspects of human life: agriculture.
Goddesses were typical images of women in a male perspective. The distribution of desirable female characteristics over multiple goddesses instead of concentrating it in a singular one suited the male experience, since wealthy men were able to afford multiple women, each of them playing a different role in his life. Also, a ‘complete’ female goddess could have rendered anxiety in insecure males. Men from antiquity to present have had a hard time not putting females in “either-or” roles. A woman could not be an Aphrodite and an Athena at the same time.
Daily lives of women were mostly characterised by the indoors, but goddesses didn’t have familial matters they had to address, and also didn’t have that constraint. In myths, therefore, goddesses are represented as hostile to women or pursuing activities that mortal women could only dream of doing, or were completely unfamiliar with. In cult however, the goddesses’ qualities that were useful to the public were strongly emphasised.
The cult of Athena was of great importance to Athens, since she was its patroness. Every year at the Panathenaea, the festival dedicated to Athena, men and women mingled with each other. Every four years the greater Panathenaea were held, and for this occasion a new peplos was woven for the statue of Athena, which shows the importance of Athena’s patronage of weaving.
Demeter was also revered in a large cult, and had two festivals dedicated to her: the Mysteries and the Thesmophoria. The latter one was mostly a female matter. Women’s connection with fertility makes it fairly logical to understand their importance to the rituals of the agriculture.
While women lived most of their lives isolated from society, goddesses were, in myth, free to go where they needed or wanted to go. This, however, was of lesser importance to the daily lives of women, who participated actively in cult. Thus, in cult, useful qualities of goddesses, like Demeter’s association with fertility and Athena’s patronage of weaving, were of greater importance.
Goddesses were very powerful, in myth as well as in cult, and since useful qualities, deemed so by men, were heavily emphasised in cult. This reinforced the way of living prescribed by Greek society.
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