Introduction to the Ancient World: Greece

Lecture 23

Women in ancient Greece/Athens

  1. Sources and limitations for the study of women in ancient Greece

    1. Athens = Greece?

    2. Concerns with the activities of men, class, gender expectations

    3. Examples

      1. Solon

      2. Pericles’ Funeral Oration (Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War)

      3. Lysias, On the murder of Eratosthenes

      4. Apollodorus’ Against Neaira

      5. Spartan women:

        1. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians

        2. Plutarch’s Life of Lykourgos

  2. The basics about the life of a woman in ancient Athens

    1. To expose or not to expose?

    2. Demography and the life cycle

    3. Childhood

    4. Education

    5. Marriage

      1. Kyrios, epikleros

      2. day of the wedding

      3. citizenship law of 451/0 (reinstated in 403/2)

    6. oikos: andron, gunaikon

  3. Life outside the home?

    1. Depends on class

    2. The other women: hetairai (Aspasia, Neaira)

    3. Family gatherings

    4. Theater?

    5. Religion

      1. Dionysos: The Bacchae

      2. Artemis @ Brauron: arktos, arkteia

      3. Other religious roles: Lysistrata (641-7)

        1. arrephoros

        2. kanephoroi

        3. aletris

  4. Lysistrata

    1. Female characters in the other plays we have read?

    2. Setting

    3. Basic outline

  5. Sculpture

    1. Archaic kore vs. Classical Age statues of women

      1. the statues from temple of Zeus at Olympia

  6. stelai

    1. Hegeso, ca. 400 BC

  7. The Arrival of the Female Nude

    1. Ludovisi throne, c. 460

    2. “Aphrodite” from the east pediment sculptures of Parthenon, 430s

    3. Nike untying her sandal from temple of Athena Nike, c. 410

Aphrodite of Cnidus (Praxiteles), ca. 350 BC

Syllabus
Lect. 23 images (on Blackboard)

modified April 18, 2013
galinsky@austin.utexas.edu