Ancient Athens

Ancient Athens

Family concept in the ancient Athens  

taken from ancienthistory.about.com

The concept of family was defined many years ago. The first lawgiver of Athens, Drakon (650 BC- 600 BC),  provided this city with its first set of written laws. One of these laws defined the family as a wide unit encompassing all free females and went as far as to include even slaves-concubines. This entity consisting of all the people that lived in a household and all its goods was called oikos. Aristotle saw the city-state (polis) as a constellation of oikoi, and his remark certainly underlines the importance of the family-unit in Greek public as well as private life.

“The association of persons, established according to nature for the satisfaction of daily needs, is the household [oikos]... The next stage is the village, the first association of a number of households for the satisfaction more than daily needs… The finally association is the polis. For all practical purposes the process is now complete; self-sufficiency has been reached and while the polis came about as a means of securing life itself, it continues in being to secure the good life”.

Aristotle, Politics 1252 b

Women in ancient Athens

The family role of women in ancient Athens

The role played by women in the family has emerged from ancient cultural and social models, which over time have been passed down from generation to generation, giving women a certain level of family involvement different from that of men, creating a dissociation in terms of place of work for man and woman because the man was in charge of productive activities whereas woman was responsible for the upbringing and chores, reinforcing the idea of ​​seeing the woman as an individual who is identified only in the house.

In the ancient Athens the woman life revolved around housework. For example the housewives were responsible for cooking, making clothes, sowing, getting the water and taking care of children. But there are other roles that should be known and we explain below:

taken from fineartamerica.com

The family role as a daughter :  In Athens, families had two children, a man who inherited the family goods and a daughter who was handed over to a potential husband as a wife, but if a family had two girls they were rejected and abandoned, so they were not accepted by their fathers. They could not study, so their role  in the family was doing chores while they were waiting the arrangement’s father for an appropriate marriage.

The family role as a mother: The function of woman as a mother  was to conceive sons and daughters as well as the children’s care and their education, especially the daughters’ education because they could not go to the school. The mother taught them how to do chores, so the girls grew up doing housework.

The family role as a wife: In Athens, the women got married when they were teenagers and they had to be at home all the time. They did not have social life and they could not go with their husbands to other places, even in their own houses they could not stay when their male husband’s friends were present. At that time,marriage was an economic transaction where love did not exist and the inequality and the subjugation prevailed.

The social role of women

taken from pinterest.com

When we talk about the social role, we should consider citizenship as a very important part  of this, because citizenship supply people with the rights and duties to play a role in public life. According to the professor of law Rothchild(2007) “In Athens the right to participate in the political life of the polis was limited to what we would consider a narrow segment of the population. Participation was restricted to free adult (18 or older) male citizens, thus excluding women, resident aliens, and slaves”. On the other hand Blackwell( 2003) says that the most important institution of the Athenian democracy “ The Assembly” was only in charge of male athenian citizens because women did not have political rights. As a consequence, women can’t vote concerning the government of the city.

Notorious Women of Ancient Athens

Taken from [wikipedia]

Until now we have seen the general role of women in Ancient Athens, but as in most cases, there are always exceptions to the rule. Not every woman decided to fit in the familiar or social role men had established for them. Not all women were  housewives, in contrast, there were  courtesans, philosophers and doctors.

Take the case of Agnodice, the first female doctor in the world, she lived in Athens in the 4th century BC.  Smith (1870) says: “ Agnodice dressed as a man to study with the doctor Herophilus, and while still disguised, she began to practice gynecology. Her fame became great, and fellow doctors accused her of corrupting women. She was forced to reveal herself as a woman in order to escape execution and then was charged with practicing medicine illegally since women were not permitted to practice medicine”.

Hipparchia of Maroneia Taken from[wikipedia]

Following this, other woman who challenged the norm of her society was Hipparchia of Maroneia (circa.300B.c.), a famous female philosopher,  the daughter of Athenian aristocrats, who had momentarily established in the coastal town of Maroneia. Maria Jamil Fasolo in Hipparchia - The World's First Liberated Woman, says: “Hipparchia even at a tender age rejected the domestic chores normally imposed upon Greek girls: she herself admitted proudly, later in life, that she had neglected spinning and weaving in favor of study. Indeed, Hipparchia's main characteristics as a young girl seem to have been restlessness and unquenchable curiosity, the desire to learn even those subjects forbidden to females of her epoch. She longed to enter male intellectual circles, to converse with learned men on deep philosophical themes. This, of course, was firmly and systematically denied to her by her rigidly traditionalistic parents.” Furthermore,  in The Cynic Epistles, Diogenes of Sinope wrote to Hipparchia: “ I admire you for your eagerness in that, although you are a woman, you  yearned for philosophy and have become one of our school, which has struck even men with awe for its austerity”.

taken from melaniekelliher.wordpress.com

There are other women who disagree with the general role in those days. There are very few but enough for proving all the women weren’t housewives or slaves.