Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Map 1 The Greek World
- Map 2 Attica
- Introduction
- 1 The Homeric State
- 2 The Archaic State
- 3 Economic and Political Development; Tyranny and After
- 4 Sparta
- 5 Athens
- 6 Women and Children
- 7 Economic Life
- 8 Religion
- 9 Other Cities
- 10 Beyond the Single City
- 11 The Hellenistic and Roman Periods
- Bibliography
- Index of Texts
- Index of Names and Subjects
6 - Women and Children
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Map 1 The Greek World
- Map 2 Attica
- Introduction
- 1 The Homeric State
- 2 The Archaic State
- 3 Economic and Political Development; Tyranny and After
- 4 Sparta
- 5 Athens
- 6 Women and Children
- 7 Economic Life
- 8 Religion
- 9 Other Cities
- 10 Beyond the Single City
- 11 The Hellenistic and Roman Periods
- Bibliography
- Index of Texts
- Index of Names and Subjects
Summary
The topic of slavery in the Greek world attracted a good deal of attention in the heyday of Marxism, and more recently there has been interest in excluded categories of people more generally. Earlier parts of this book have focused on the perioikoi and helots of Sparta (passages 75–87), and on metics and other foreigners, and slaves, in Athens (passages 166–87). Throughout the Greek world within citizen families children (as still in the modern world, though there is disagreement over the age at which childhood ends) and women (as still everywhere until the end of the nineteenth century ad) also lacked the full rights of citizens. In this chapter I give an indication of what we know about their rights and their lives. As on all topics, for the classical period in Greece we have a larger quantity and a wider range of evidence for Athens than for other states, so most of the texts presented here are from Athens or refer to Athens; but I include some texts referring to other states, which sometimes agree but sometimes contrast with the Athenian evidence. Even from Athens, our evidence largely concerns the upper strata of society, and if upper-class women did lead largely secluded lives the same is not so likely to be true of lower-class women (cf., for instance, passage 173, and Aristotle, Politics, IV. 1300 a 6–7).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Greek City StatesA Source Book, pp. 163 - 180Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007