This document discusses the status of women and slaves in classical Athens. It provides context on sources of information about women from this time period, such as philosophers, plays, lawsuits, vase paintings, and the poet Sappho. The document examines Sappho's poetry and how she wrote about love and relationships. It also discusses how historians like Mary Beard have approached studying women's history and the need to consider the social context and perspectives of male authors when analyzing ancient representations of women.

1. Women & Slaves
in
Classical Athens

2. From J.P.V.D.
Balsdon’s
Roman Women:
Their History and
Habits

3. • “This book was conceived when I
asked myself what women were
doing while men were active in all the
areas traditionally emphasized by
classical scholars.”
• The answer? “…having a pretty
rotten time.”

4. Women We’ve Encountered so Far?
• Pandora
• Andromache
• Helen
• Kore

5. Sources for Women?
• Philosophers
• Plays (women did not act in them)
• Lawsuits
• Vase paintings
• Sappho

6. Sappho: Archaic Poet
Lesbos

8. Sappho: The Tenth Muse
“Solon of Athens, the son of Execestides,
once when his nephew was signing a song
of Sappho’s over the wine, was much
beguiled by the song, and asked the lad to
teach it to him. When someone asked him
why, he replied: I just want to learn it and
die!”

9. Sappho vs. Homer vs. Tyrtaeus
Some say an army of horsemen,
some of footsoldiers, some of ships,
is the fairest thing on the black earth,
but I say it is what one loves.
It’s very easy to make this clear
to everyone, for Helen,
by far surpassing mortals in beauty,
left the best of all husbands
and sailed to Troy,
mindful of neither her child
nor her dear parents, but
with one glimpse she was seduced by
Aphrodite. For easily bent...
and nimbly...[missing text]...
has reminded me now
of Anactoria who is not here;
I would much prefer to see the lovely
way she walks and the radiant glance
of her face
than the war-chariots of the Lydians or
their footsoldiers in arms.

10. “Six Fragments for Atthis”
I loved you, Atthis, years ago,
when my youth was still all flowers
and sighs, and you -- you seemed to
me
such a small ungainly girl. Can you
forget what happened before?
If so, then I'll remind you how, while
lying
beside me, you wove a garland of
crocuses
which I then braided into strands of
your hair.
And once, when you'd plaited a
double necklace
from a hundred blooms, I tied it
around
the swanning, sun-licked ring of your
neck….
No holy place existed without us
then,
no woodland, no dance, no sound.
Beyond all hope, I prayed those
timeless
days we spent might be made twice
as long.
I prayed one word: I want.
Someone, I tell you, will remember
us,
even in another time.

11. Archaic Women and Art

13. The Symposium

14. Primary Source Analysis

15. Primary Source Analysis
• Xenophon
– Memorabilia, #5, pp. 70-71
– Oeconomicus, #4, pp. 77-80
• Pseudo-Aristotle's Oeconomica, #1, p. 82
• Antiphon’s legal speech, #2, pp. 83-84
• Pseudo-Demosthenes legal speech, #3, pp.
84-85

16. Historiography
• Why study the history of women?

17. Mary Beard, Classicist
“Where did it take you? Is there any society
that we know in history that has not oppressed
its women in some way or another? What
should we do with the knowledge that the
Greeks and Romans were guilty too? We might
investigate the distinctive and idiosyncratic
ways in which they practiced their own
particular version of misogny. But then
what?...if all we find ourselves saying is that
Classical Antiquity was yet another bad time
for the females of the species, then maybe there
is not too much further mileage there.”

18. Mary Beard, Classicist
“Some of the best recent work has struck
much more firmly to the implications
of…male authorship: ancient literature is
not evidence for women’s lives in antiquity;
it is a series of representations of women, by
men; and we cannot hope to understand
what it is saying, unless we reflect on who is
speaking, to whom, in what context and
why.”

19. Mary Beard, Classicist
“In thinking about the ancient world, an emphasis
on gender means an emphasis not on what women did
or did not do, but on how ancient culture, ancient
literature or ancient art defined and debated the
differences between males and females…Gender
distinctions had a symbolic resonance that extended
far beyond the real or imagined differences between
men and women – into almost every other sphere of
life from warfare to morals…To study gender is to
study a lot more than ‘women’: it is to study a set of
oppositions and differences that underscore almost
every aspect of ancient (and modern) life.”

21. Historiography
• Should we study women and slavery as a
group?