Women in Antiquity: CLAS 330/HUM 330/WS 330 (3 units)
Presession, Summer 1995: Monday, May 15 - Saturday, June 3
9:00 -11:50 AM MTWTHF ML 312
Instructor: Marilyn B. Skinner (mskinner@ccit.arizona.edu)

Readings:
Pomeroy, chapter 5
Lefkowitz and Fant: 88, 90, 267, 339, 341, 343

Housing and Private Life (L&F 88)

1. Interior plan of Athenian house, built of mud brick on stone foundations. If only one entrance it would lead through men's area.
2. Men's quarters (andron) and women's quarters (gynaikeion)
3. Were insides "dark, squalid, and unsanitary"?
4. Physical activities of women:
   • weaving
   • water carrying
   • production of textiles (supervision of maids, see L&F 267)
5. Sumptuary laws: prohibited elaborate funerals, displays of conspicuous consumption
6. Could Greek women read and write? (See L&F 82, 267). Woman's role as storyteller in oral society.

Medicine

• Large corpus of Hippocratic medical texts: male concern with women's reproductive capacities
• May incorporate oral tradition among women, provided to doctors by women themselves
• "Poseidon's Law": intercourse should result in pregnancy
• Women's health and reproductive activity seen as synonymous

1. Model of female gynecology (L&F 341, 343):
   • women are wet, spongy, porous
   • need to discharge blood regularly through menstruation or pregnancy ("born to bleed")
   • blood comes from nutrition; lack of food, excessive work, exercise, etc., dry up women's bodies
   • uterus needs moisture and is irrigated through intercourse
   • excess moisture drawn off by pregnancy (otherwise, dropsy)
2. Intercourse and pregnancy essential to women's health: women have absolute right to both (marriage and children not necessarily every man's right)
3. Rationale for early marriage: girls must have intercourse soon after menstruation begins, protracted virginity harmful (e.g., Electra)
4. Uterus an inverted jug; analogy of neck and vagina
5. Does the mother contribute to the child's heredity?
   • Aristotle (L&F 339): "flowerpot theory"
   • Hippocratic theory of seed

Athenian Concept of the Maternal Role

1. Self-sacrificing: mother risks her life in giving birth
2. Desire to nurture a natural instinct
3. Mother's love for child stronger than that of father
   • representations: mutual affection
   • nurse is secondary caretaker
4. Emphasis on mother-son bond, son repays mother by care
5. Figure of the oppressive mother

Non-Respectable Women: The Case of Neaera

1. Women's sexuality as private (belonging to one man) or public (available to all)
2. In Athens, prostitution was legal (state-run brothels established by Solon) and prostitutes could be investment
3. Stereotype of the hetaira and reality:
   • could move into semi-respectable employment (L&F 87)
   • trained for profession by freedwomen (L&F 90)
   • attempt to prevent contact between classes of women
   • blurring of distinctions between respectable and non- respectable women

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