Women's Lives in Archaic Athens: Voices Silenced by History

Introduction: Unheard Voices from Ancient Greece

Although there is much controversy regarding conditions in ancient Greece due to the limited information passed down through the centuries, it is generally accepted that women were largely discriminated against during this period. As society influenced men to adopt discriminatory attitudes toward women, it was very difficult for women to conceive of themselves as equal members of their communities. Matters such as marriage, inheritance, and social life imposed a great deal of stress on women, who had little to no power over their lives. There is limited information about women living in ancient Greece because even the well-educated men who wrote about the period considered women inferior and thus irrelevant as subjects worthy of detailed portrayal.

One of the most important differences between men and women in ancient Greece was that one could rarely find a woman who knew how to read or write. As a consequence, nearly all information that contemporary society possesses about ancient Greece was produced by male writers. These individuals effectively filtered the historical record and provided the modern world with their own perspective on the condition of women. Aristotle's Politics describes this outlook plainly: "Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind" (Aristotle).

One can only speculate about how women in ancient Greece felt about their position in society. Most accounts relating to women from the period are mere interpretations, given that it is virtually impossible to locate a document actually written by a woman in ancient Greece. Everything that has been written about women from this era must be treated as equivalent to secondary sources, since no first-person accounts by women survive. It is deeply unfortunate that present-day scholars are unable to examine matters from the perspective of a typical woman living at the time. The dreams of ancient Greek women remain inaccessible to today's public, just as their opinions on political matters, wars, and philosophy will never fully surface. Conditions were probably critical for them, as they witnessed democracy flourish without being able to benefit from the freedoms it promised.

The Patriarchal Household and Women's Legal Status

Families in ancient Greece had a complex organization in which the father served as master of the household. From this position, he was responsible for caring for the family and controlling its members with the purpose of directing their affairs. Men were considered fit to rule over a family because this was held to be their natural role. The relationship between men and women was understood to be analogous to the relationship between older individuals and young people: society promoted the belief that it was perfectly normal for men to assume an authoritarian position when dealing with women. Women had no rights, and their husbands were practically in charge of their lives. Men could control women by denying them access to particular locations; some husbands reportedly forbade their wives from leaving the household altogether (Demosthenes).

One reason women were not permitted to leave their houses was the belief that they were predisposed to becoming victims of rapists. Yet even within the presumed safety of their homes, their own husbands sometimes raped them — a fact that underscores how completely men controlled women's fates (Women of Ancient Greece). Although it is difficult to determine whether women were simply confined and denied education or whether they were merely forbidden to speak freely, history was left with accounts authored entirely by others.

Mythology and the Origins of Female Subordination

Hesiod's Theogony was an important document in ancient Greece because it provided people with information about their gods and offered complex accounts relating to each deity. The Prometheus myth is one of the most significant sections of the Theogony because it describes the early ages of humanity and explains why men can no longer live alongside the gods. Men apparently did not have to labor and spent most of their time in a state of relaxed harmony when they were at peace with the gods. However, Prometheus' transgression angered the gods and led them to send Pandora to humanity.

Pandora was apparently fashioned using a series of divine concepts and largely explains the mythological origin of women and the suffering they were presumed to have brought to humanity. She was presented to Epimetheus, Prometheus' naive brother, with the purpose of introducing women to the earth. Hesiod himself adopted a discriminatory stance by refraining from describing the steps that take place between marriage and birth, most probably reflecting "a deliberate suppression of women's sexual and reproductive roles on the part of Hesiod, who argues that only men have any work to do, while women, the source of men's hard work, remain inside the house taking in all that men can produce" (King 24).

The fact that Pandora is described as having been given the mind of a bitch by the gods offers further insight into attitudes toward ancient Greek women. This characterization was probably meant to suggest that women are fertile and that they instill feelings of lust in men, causing them to lose sight of their priorities. Pandora's box is often interpreted as a jar — signifying that the ancient Greeks compared a woman's womb to a container filled with troubles and responsible for many of the world's ills. As one scholar puts it, "in opening her jar herself, Pandora is performing an act 'equivalent to breaching her virginity', while closing it can represent the beginning of pregnancy" (King 26). It is very likely that women were held responsible for most problems that ancient Greek society experienced, which in turn led men to believe it was their duty to control society in order to maintain order.

Conclusion: Democracy Without Women

By being denied access to education, by being generally unable to come into possession of material wealth, and by being persecuted by a male-dominated society, women in ancient Greece found it difficult and nearly impossible to improve their condition. As a result, they were left with little to no means of expressing how they truly felt and made it impossible for people today to be fully acquainted with their personalities. Most ancient Greek laws imposed with the stated purpose of improving marriage were in practice designed to provide men with even more power over women. The idea of democracy appeared to address only those fields deemed in need of reform, with the role of women apparently meant to remain unchanged.

It is not surprising that the world knows so little about the inner lives of ancient Greek women, given that they were denied access to education and were generally unable to speak freely. People in ancient Greece seemed reluctant to grant women equal rights, considering them to be psychologically inferior to men. Furthermore, women were held responsible for many of the problems their society experienced and were thus persecuted in a way that actively reinforced their inferior status. The result is a historical record that is profoundly and perhaps irreparably one-sided.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Politics. Echo Library, 2006.

Demosthenes. "Against Neaera." Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0080%3Aspeech%3D59%3Asection%3D3.

Euripides. Hippolytus. Hayes Barton Press.

King, Helen. Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. Routledge, 1998.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Oxford University Press, 1999.

"Ancient History Sourcebook: The Lot of the Hellenic Woman, c. 700–300 BCE." Fordham University,

"What Athenian Men Said About Women." Women in the Ancient World,

"Women of Ancient Greece." Pace University,