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‘Donatus’ and Athenian phratries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mark Golden
Mark Golden
Affiliation:
University of Winnipeg
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Extract

My purpose in this paper is to reassert the traditional view that Athenian women of the classical period regularly had an association with phratries (and incidentally to clarify the nature of that association). As part (though not an essential part) of my argument I adduce an overlooked piece of evidence, a much discussed passage from the Donatus commentary on Terence; for this I provide a new interpretation.

There is some evidence that Athenian women were introduced to their fathers phrateres at birth, or to their husbands' phrateres at marriage, or both. The speaker of Isaeus 3 repeatedly asserts (73, 75, 76, 79) that a certain Pyrrhus would have presented his daughter to his phrateres if she had been legitimate (which he denies). A scholium on Aristophanes, Acharnians 146 (= Suda s.v. Apatouria) may refer to such a practice. Euxitheus calls as witnesses of his mother's citizenship phrateres for whom his father celebrated the wedding feast, the gamelia, on her behalf (Dem. 57.43, 69, Isaeus 3.79); celebration of the gamelia is regarded as proof of the legitimacy of the speaker's mother at Isaeus 8.19. Neither Demosthenes nor Isaeus says that women were formally registered among the phrateres or even present at the feast; but notices in the lexicographers do connect the gamelia with registration among or introduction to the phrateres (Harpocration s.v. gamelia, Suda s.v. gamelia, Etym. Magn. 220.50 s.v. gamelia, Pollux 8.107, Anec. Bekk. 228.5, Schol. Dem. 57.43). Many scholars have accepted these passages as evidence for normal practice at Athens in the classical period.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 1985 , pp. 9 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

1 So, for example, Ledl, A., WS 29 (1907), 214–24Google Scholar (with the earlier scholars cited on 215–16), and Busolt, G.–Swoboda, H., Griechische Staatskunde 3 (Munich, 1920–1926), 241 n. 2, 245, 960, 963Google Scholar, say that daughters and wives were both introduced to phrateres; Kahrstedt, U., Staatsgebiet und Staatsangehörige in Athen (Stuttgart, 1934), 237Google Scholar, Hignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952), 56Google Scholar, and Lacey, W. K., The Family in Classical Greece (London, 1968), 107, 279 n. 51Google Scholar, accept the introduction of daughters; Schmitt, P., Annales ESC 32 (1977), 1059–73Google Scholar discusses the significance of the introduction of wives.

2 JHS 100 (1980), 40–2Google Scholar.

3 Gould's presentation of one piece of ancient scholarship, Harpocration s.v. gamelia, is itself not altogether clear. Though he earlier implies (correctly) that this text is relevant to the introduction of wives to their husbands' phrateres (41 n. 25), he later refers to it as a ‘puzzling passage’ of little value as evidence for the introduction of daughters (42). Nor is his discussion satisfactory. Harpocration cites two statements of the grammarian Didymus. In the first, from his commentary on Isaeus, Didymus said that the gamelia was given to the phrateres on the occasion of marriage and cited Phanodemus (FGrH 325 F 17) as his authority. In the second, from his commentary on Demosthenes, Didymus explicity explained the gamelia as the introduction of women to the phrateres; the Suda apparently refers to this same statement. Harpocration comments on the first statement that Phanodemus wrote no such thing, on the second that Didymus offered no evidence. Gould concludes that Harpocration finds Didymus' explanation ‘unacceptable’ (41 n. 25), but in fact Harpocration does not commit himself either way. Indeed, he seems more interested in Didymus' use of Phanodemus than in the gamelia itself; cf. Thompson, W. E., Hermes 111 (1983), 121Google Scholar.

4 Gould also suggests (42 n. 30) that Dem. 59. 122, where a father's introduction of sons to phrateres and demesmen is linked with his giving legitimate daughters in marriage, supports his view. This is to mistake the rhetorical nature of the passage, a justification for marrying and giving birth to legitimate children. The speaker wishes to cite occasions of equivalent paternal pride and community importance in a society in which male and female roles are very different. Mention of a daughter's introduction to phrateres would be quite out of place, almost bathetic.

5 Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens (Oxford, 1968), i. 64Google Scholar.

6 Rhodes, P. J., CQ 28 (1978), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rhodes says that ‘it is generally accepted’ that after Cleisthenes citizens need not belong to a phratry; cf. Andrewes, A., The Greeks (London, 1967), 84Google Scholar; Lacey (above n. 1) 94; Osborne, M. J., ABSA 67 (1972), 143Google Scholar; MacDowell, D. M., The Law of Athens (London, 1978), 70Google Scholar; Rhodes, , A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), 70, 76Google Scholar. Lotze, D., Klio 63 (1981), 173 n. 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is non–committal.

7 Cf. Lacey (above n. 1) 96, Harrison (above n. 5) 89 n. 2, Lotze (above n. 6) 173 n. 51.

8 This estimate was made from Coale, A. J., Demeny, P., Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (Princeton, N.J., 1966)Google Scholar, South region table level 3 (male life expectancy at birth 24·65 years) with the following assumptions: male age at marriage 30, age at first birth 32, spacing between births 2·5 years, completed family size 6, no population growth. Given these assumptions, 14·5 per cent of fathers would die leaving no surviving natural sons. This figure would be lower if family size were larger or life expectancy greater, higher if family size were smaller or life expectancy lower. It represents a maximum figure for the number of families with epikleroi; in some families, no daughters would survive the father, in others, a son would be adopted as heir, and daughters would not be epikleroi if their father was survived by a son's son. I am grateful to Professor Ellen Gee, Simon Fraser University, for advice and instruction in making this calculation.

9 For much of the following paragraph I am indebted to Cole, S. G., ‘Rituals of maturation’, a paper delivered at the American Philological Association meetings in Philadelphia,December 1982Google Scholar (now published in ZPE 55 (1984) 233–44Google Scholar).

10 WS 29 (1907), 223–4Google Scholar.

11 Two women are named in a list of thiasotai, IG 22 2347.31–2 (dated to the last half of the fourth century), but there is nothing to indicate that this is a listing of the members of a thiasos in a phratry; cf. Andrewes, A., JHS 81 (1961), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The provision for the compulsory registration of girls as well as boys on phratry lists in Plato's Laws (6.785a) implies nothing about Athenian custom.

12 See Schaps, D. M., Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 1979), 4–6, 52–8Google Scholar.

13 This text and its relevance to Athenian phratries was brought to my attention by Professor John N. Grant, University of Toronto.

14 Webster, T. B. L., An Introduction to Menander (Manchester, 1974), 11Google Scholar, suggests 305 as a possible date.

15 Rieth, O., Die Kunst Menanders in den ‘Adelphen’ des Terenz. Mit einem Nachwort heraus-gegeben von K. Gaiser (Hildesheim, 1964), 72–7Google Scholar. Cf. Dziatzko, K.–Kauer, R., Terentius: Adelphoe 2 (Leipzig, 1903), 16–17Google Scholar, Martin, R., Terence: Adelphoe (Cambridge, 1976), 158ad loc.Google Scholar; Callier, F., Latomus 41 (1982), 519–20Google Scholar (who adds that Terence wishes to portray Hegio as motivated by a distinctively Roman virtue, fides, not by family feeling alone).

16 Rieth, recognising this, says that Hegio may be distantly related to Simulus as well (ibid. 62).

17 ibid. 72 n. 109, 145.

18 Goldberg, S., CW 75 (1981), 103Google Scholar.

19 For the nature of the Donatus commentary and its textual tradition see Zetzel, J. E. G., HSCP 79 (1975), 335–54Google Scholar; Reeve, M. D., Hermes 106 (1978), 608–18Google Scholar, CP 74 (1979), 310–26Google Scholar. The quotation is from Zetzel, 340.

20 See Rieth, O., Gnomon 10 (1934), 640–1Google Scholar.

21 So Rieth (above n. 15), 62.

22 Prometheus 2 (1976), 87–90Google Scholar.

23 For ɸρητρία at Naples, see IG 14.759. Greek ɸράτηρ represents Latin frater in Palladas, Anth. Pal. 10. 44 (δόμινε ɸράτερ).

24 Despite Rieth (above n. 15) 61, it is to phyletes and not demotes that the note in the scholia Bembina ad loc. (p. 92 Mountford) points.

25 Examples and discussion: Thompson, W. E., ‘The marriage of first cousins in Athenian society’, Phoenix 21 (1967), 273–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Note here that there is no reason to doubt that women could move from one phratry to another at marriage, just as men must often have done when adopted (as perhaps at Isae. 7.15–17).

27 I am grateful to Susan G. Cole, John N. Grant, and Mac Wallace for commenting on drafts of this article.