Although most women lacked political and equal rights in
Ancient Greece, they enjoyed a certain freedom of movement until the
Archaic age. Records exist of women in ancient
Delphi,
Gortyn,
Thessaly,
Megara and
Sparta owning
land, the only durable form of
wealth at the time. However, after the Archaic age, women's status worsened, and laws on gender segregation were implemented. Historian
Don Nardo stated "throughout antiquity most Greek women had few or no civil rights and many enjoyed little freedom of choice or mobility." Until marriage, women were under the guardianship of their fathers or other male relatives; once married, the husband became a woman's kyrios. Women typically married around age 14 to a husband about twice their age. This system was implemented as a way to help ensure that girls were
virgins when they wed. The girl's
kyrios typically selected her husband; she would have little input. Such seclusion was likely impractical for all but the wealthy, as domestic tasks such as fetching water required entering public spaces. Nevertheless, Athenian women were excluded from essentially all public life. Their gender acted as a permanent disability inhibiting full
citizenship, similar to
enslavement but without a removal process analogous to manumission. Women were barred from conducting legal proceedings, and their kyrios would represent them instead. Athenian women had limited
right to property, and independently could only enter into a contract worth less than the value of a "
medimnos of barley" (a measure of grain), allowing women to engage in petty trading. Most upper-class Athenian boys would receive private tutelage on
rhetoric and physical education, essential for political and military participation. As women participated in neither, Athenian girls received little-to-no formal education. Instead, they would apprentice with their mothers to learn the domestic arts. The only areas in which Athenian women could participate freely were
religious ritual and entertainment/prostitution. Despite the seclusion ideal, many religious festivals involved both genders. The few that did not (especially the
Thesmophoria) were restricted to women alone. The priestesshood of Athena held great moral suasion and women appear to have managed private rites of passage.
In Sparta The vast majority (~94%) of Spartan women were enslaved
helots, a proportion extraordinary in the
classical world. These women bore the economic brunt of Sparta's extractive class structure, and had few-to-no legal protections against abuse. Unusually for slaves in ancient Greece,
helots were free to select other
helot partners for sexual reproduction, although the paramilitary
krypteia would promptly kill any beautiful or unusually-capable children from such unions. but began running estates while men were engaged in military activity. Following protracted warfare in the 4th century BC Spartan women owned between 60% and 70% of all Spartan land and property. By the
Hellenistic Period, some of the wealthiest Spartans were women. Sparta reared young spartiate boys for military and paramilitary work away from their family in the
agoge, a practice that included extensive, violent physical and emotional abuse but likely little intellectual work. Spartiate girls instead remained with their families, learning household management and possibly literacy. Unlike in other city-states, however, Spartiate women rarely performed domestic labor, which they considered demeaning and better extorted from
helots.
Helot-made Spartiate clothing was notoriously simple and short relative to in other polities, and scandalously bared girls' thighs. The extent to which the state supervised spartiate girls' education is unclear. Girls appear to have imbibed Spartan values primarily through music, dance, song, and exercise. Spartiate girls trained athletically as though for combat, and may have participated in the
Gymnopaedia ("Festival of Nude Youths"). They likely ceased participation in athletic competitions after marriage, typically around age 20. Plutarch wrote in his Sayings of Spartans: "When someone inquired why they took their girls into public places unveiled, but their married women veiled, he said, 'Because the girls have to find husbands, and the married women have to keep to those who have them!". Spartan marriage may have been a looser relationship than in other Greek polities. Polybius writes of
polygyny and
wife-sharing. Spartiate men were rarely at home, and a newlywed spartiate bride would have cross-dressed as a man to better resemble her husband's past sexual partners. Nevertheless, Sparta appears to have placed great value on bearing unflinching sons, and Spartiate women whose children died in battle appear to have been celebrated. Conversely, Plutarch writes of Spartan women killing their cowardly sons themselves.
In law codes and philosophical texts The
Gortyn code granted women a much better position than in mainland Greece. All women, including slaves, were protected. Gortyn women, like Spartan women, were able to enter into legal agreements and appear before the court. They were able to own property without male co-ownership or permission. Husband and wife had equal right to divorce. A free, divorced woman could throw her child into the river. Sisters and brothers shared inheritances equally.
Epicleros (in Sparta and Gortyn, they were called
patrouchoi) had a certain freedom of choice regarding marriage. Namely, if a woman was already married with children and became an epicler, she could choose whether to divorce her husband or not. But a married woman without children who became an epicler had no choice but to divorce and remarry, according to the regulations. In general, a daughter who inherited property could not dispose of it. An exception was that she could sell it or pledge it as payment in the amount of a debt owed to her late father's creditor. Athens was the cradle of philosophy in Ancient Greece, and most surviving philosophic texts work to justify Athenian practice. Almost no female philosophers are known.
Plato acknowledged that extending civil and political rights to women would substantively alter the nature of the household and the state.
Aristotle, who had been taught by Plato, denied that women were slaves or subject to property, arguing that "nature has distinguished between the female and the slave," but he considered wives to be "bought." He argued that women's main economic activity is that of safeguarding the household property created by men. According to Aristotle, the labour of women added no value because "the art of household management is not identical with the art of getting wealth, for the one uses the material which the other provides."
Aristotle also thought Spartan women's influence and legal freedom was the cause of its ruin. In doing so, they followed the
Cynics, who argued that men and women should wear the same clothing and receive the same kind of education. Women are frequently depicted as "sexual objects" in ancient Greek pottery, thus providing context for the sexual culture of Ancient Greece. Funeral scenes on ancient Athenian pottery depict women gesturing wildly and emotionally in response to loss, contrasted by the depiction of men, who stand orderly in restraint with lack of emotion. According to Tim McNiven, these scenes enforce the image of women lacking
Sophrosyne (Greek virtue of self-control) in comparison to men. A majority of vase scenes portray women inside their houses. A common presence of columns suggests that women spent much of their time in the
courtyard of the house. The courtyard was the one place where they could regularly enjoy the outdoors and get fresh air. A majority of Greek cooking equipment was small and light and could easily be set up there. It can be inferred that during sunny weather, women probably sat in the roofed and shaded areas of the courtyard, for the ideal in female beauty was a pale
complexion.
Lysistrata (/laɪˈsɪstrətə/ or /ˌlɪsəˈstrɑːtə/; Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη,
Lysistrátē, "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy written by
Aristophanes, originally performed in classical
Athens in 411 BCE. The play depicts women's extraordinary mission to end the
Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying men sexual pleasures, which was the only thing the men desired. Women were going to end the war by capitalizing on their sexuality. Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace. This strategy, however, only inflames the battle between the sexes. One of the few Athenians to have developed a critique and specific perspectives on the condition of women in Athens is
Euripides, who presented
original approaches regarding the status of women in Greece. == Women in the Greek War of Independence ==