The Woman Least Mentioned1: Etiquette And Women's Names

David Schaps

doi:10.1017/S0009838800035606

The Woman Least Mentioned1: Etiquette And Women's Names

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009

David Schaps

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‘And if I must make some mention of the virtue of those wives who will now bein widowhood, I will indicate all with a brief word of advice. To be no worse thanyour proper nature, is a great honour for you; andgreat honour is hers, whose reputation among males is least, whether for praise or for blame.’

Type: Research Article
Information: The Classical Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , December 1977 , pp. 323 - 330

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838800035606 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Classical Association 1977

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^{page 323 note 2} Thuc. 2.45.2.Google Scholar

^{page 323 note 3} e.g. Hypereides (ed. Jensen) fr. 205, . represent an ideal, of course, not necessarily reality: cf. e.g. Arist. Pol. 4.15 1300² 4–7, adduced by G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, CR 20 N.S. (1970), 278.

^{page 323 note 4} Isaeus 10.4.

^{page 323 note 5} Ibid.

^{page 323 note 6} [Dem.] 40.6.

^{page 324 note 1} Isoc. 19.9. Isaeus 8.7 makes considerable use of kinship terms mention the names involved; but as he calls his uncles, too, simply , he may just be trying to avoid burdening his hearers with too many names.

^{page 324 note 2} Isaeus 5.5, cf. ibid. 9.

^{page 324 note 3} Id. 6.6. Further on, the brothers' names are mentioned without the sisters' (‘the children who really were born to him, Philoctemon and Ergamenes and Hegemon and two daughters, and their mother, whom Euctemon married, the daughter of Meixiades of Cephisia,' ibid. 10). The speaker says that ‘all their relatives, and their phrateres, and most of their demesmen’ know them, but he does not for that reason name them.

^{page 324 note 4} Dem. 57.37. In the next chapter he tells us the names of the aunt's husband and her son, but still not her own.

^{page 324 note 5} Dem. 39.9. Cf. [Dem.] 40.27: .

^{page 325 note 1} Dem. 30, passim.

^{page 325 note 2} Id. 31.10, 11.

^{page 325 note 3} [Dem.] 40, passim.

^{page 325 note 4} Dem. 41, passim. That Spudias' wife's name was Cleiocrateia was revealed to us by a dedication discovered some years ago (Hesperia 6 (1937), 341). I omit from this section the numerous oblique mentions of Phile and her mother in Isaeus 3, because these are mostly ironical, designed to drive home the point that the women concerned were not really, as was claimed, a lawful wife and her legitimate daughter: Isaeus insistently calls them such, just as Antony calls Brutus an honourable man, but he does not make any effort to hide the name of Phile, which is mentioned at the very beginning of the speech and three times thereafter (Is. 3.2, 30, 32, 60).

^{page 325 note 5} Dem. 28.3.

^{page 325 note 6} Is. 2.18, cf. Ibid. 36.

^{page 325 note 7} [Dem.] 40.12.

^{page 325 note 8} Dem. 57.8.

^{page 325 note 9} Is. 6.12–13.

^{page 326 note 1} This, at any rate, is the surface meaning. In fact, he singles out Pistoxenus because he cannot make such a statement about Callippe; the boys had provided some details about her, as he goes on to state. In his summation —by which time the details will have been forgotten—he says, (Ibid. 64).

^{page 326 note 2} [Dem.] 40.6. Similar is Aeschines 2.152, where he says he has three children ‘by Philodemus’ daughter, the sister of Philon and Epicrates’.

^{page 326 note 3} For more such, cf. Dem. 27.56 (the same at 29.48), 39.2, [Dem.] 59.12, 58, Is. 6.10, 22, 7.18, 8.19, 20, Lys. 19.14, 16 (but here the speaker has a point to make about the families), Andocides 1.124–5.

^{page 326 note 4} [Dem.] 59, passim.

^{page 326 note 5} Ibid. 50, cf. 121.

^{page 326 note 6} Ibid. 19; cf. 116.

^{page 326 note 7} Ibid. 120, cf. 35, 124.

^{page 326 note 8} Hypereides 5 (ed. Jensen) 2, 4, 5, 34.

^{page 326 note 9} Id. frs. 13–26.

^{page 326 note 10} Id. frs. 171–80; Timandra, Ibid. frs. 164–5, was similar. Of Glycera, Ibid. fr. 121, Mika, Ibid. fr. 125, and the freedwoman Demetria, Ibid. fr. 99, nothing is known.

^{page 326 note 11} Dem. 25.79.

^{page 326 note 12} Ibid. 39.2, [Dem.] 40.9; cf. scholiast ad Dem. 19.281.

^{page 326 note 13} Dem. 22.56; cf. 25.56 for a similar case.

^{page 327 note 1} [Dem.] 42.27. It seems clear that of the three identifications which we are given–Aristonoe, Philostratus' daughter, this man's mother–at least one, and probably two, were not in the document being read; and while it may be that Phaenippus referred to his mother by her father's name only, from the text before us it would be just as possible that he referred to her only by her own, or–perhaps less likely, since the speaker has to make a point of the fact–as his mother.

^{page 327 note 2} Andocides 1.124, 125, 127.

^{page 327 note 3} [Dem.] 59.50.

^{page 327 note 4} Ibid. 58. Similarly, our speaker mentions the name of Lysias' hetaera, Metaneira–he could hardly have omitted it; she was one of the most famous such women in Greece–but omits that of his wife, ‘the daughter of Brachyllus, and his own niece’ (Ibid. 21–3).

^{page 327 note 5} Isaeus 6.13–14, 16; the Alce whom the speaker claims to have been the boys' real mother belongs in the first category, since he asserts that she was a prostitute (Ibid. 19, 20, 55).

^{page 327 note 6} Ibid. 22.

^{page 327 note 7} Id. 8.36

^{page 327 note 8} Dem. 39.2.

^{page 327 note 9} [Dem.]40.48.

^{page 327 note 10} Dem. 30, 31, 41, passim.

^{page 328 note 1} Ibid. 39.9 (quoted above), [Dem.] 40.2, 8, 10, 11, 20, 27, 51, 61.

^{page 328 note 2} A hobgoblin who could assume various forms.

^{page 328 note 3} Dem. 18.130.

^{page 328 note 4} Ibid. 284; cf. id. 19.281.

^{page 328 note 5} Not, however, to the level of naming Demosthenes' mother, though he does impugn her citizen descent (Aeschines 3.171–2). He mentions Demosthenes' (allegedly barbarian) grandmother and her two daughters anonymously, but apologizes only for not naming his maternal uncle:of the grandmother's two daughters, he says, (Ibid. 172).

^{page 328 note 6} [Dem.] 44.9–10.

^{page 328 note 7} Dem. 57.20–1, 37.

^{page 328 note 8} Id. 45.74.

^{page 328 note 9} Ibid. 84, [Dem.] 46.21. Not everybody was willing to mention dead women: the mother whose name Mantitheus so scrupulously avoids died when he was a child (id. 40.27).

^{page 328 note 10} Andocides 1.16.

^{page 329 note 1} Dem. 57.67–8.

^{page 329 note 2} [Dem.] 43.8–10.

^{page 329 note 3} Ibid. 29.

^{page 329 note 4} Is. 11.8, 9, 16, 17, 21, 30.

^{page 330 note 1} The most striking admission of the woman's importance in the home is in Xen. Oec. 3.12: Socrates is trying to persuade Critobulus of the necessity of educating one's wife, and he asks him, Critobulus, who functions in this dialogue as the archetype of the man who gives little thought to women, answers, .

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