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Sappho 31
Race 1983:

Identification of "that man" one of the most difficult problems in the interpretation of the poem (p.92)

Wilamowitz introduced the hypothesis in 1913 to explain why the woman was able to talk freely to a man (pp.92-3)

Wilamowitz's interpretation solves a historical puzzle, but creates a literary one: why is there no mention of anything to suggest that the poem has anything to do with marriage (p.93)

Poem has nothing to do with a wedding (p.93)

Idea that Sappho in the poem is jealous of the man dates back to the eighteenth century; there is no literary evidence for this either (p.93)

Sappho's symptoms are of passionate love, not of jealousy (pp.93-4)

Recent interpretation of the man as a "contrast figure" (p.94)

Poem begins "he seems to me": focus is on the poet's interpretation of the scene, not objective fact (p.94)

Ring composition of the poem ll. 1 and 16 (pp.94-5)

In each instance, the verb "to seem" qualifies hyperbole (p.95)

Medism
Medism does not appear to have provoked any specific legislation: in Athens, men accused of Medising were charged with treason.

Implication of accepting the corrupting luxurious lifestyle of the orient: see, e.g. Pausanias, who is said to have dressed and entertained in the Persian fashion, sought the hand of the Persian king's daughter, and travelled with a Persian and Egyptian bodyguard.

Greeks guilty of medism betrayed not just their polis, but Hellas as a whole.

Fragments from Teos, dated to around 470, prescribe punishment by death to anyone guilty of betraying the city: does not distinguish between betrayal to other Greeks and betrayal to Persians.

Term used is "Medism" despite the fact that Medes were separate from (and subject to!) the Persians.

"Persian" rather than "Mede" becomes current in 470s: Aeschylus' The Persians of 472 is first clear evidence of this transition.

"Mede" still in use as late as 451 by Aeschines.

Phrase "Medean war" referring to the war with Xerxes still in use as late as Aristotle.

Medism probably gained it's meaning of "treachery" after Darius' demands of earth and water from Greek city-states.

Medising parties existed in Aegina and Eretria.

Medism in Athens not likely to be due to desire to emulate Persian way of life: appeasement and wish for support against other enemies more likely.

No evidence for a substantial group of Athenian appeasers.

Guilt of the Alcmaenoids of Medism is not very well established.

Oikos#Layout
Changing use of domestic space over time: much more flexible pre-800 BC, but becoming more rigid and gendered by around 700.

Early association of femininity and inner rooms goes back as far as Hesiod, though not much farther than c.750 BC.

Multi-roomed courtyard houses first appear late eighth century at Zagora on Andros.

Early Iron Age: single roomed houses. All domestic activities took place in a single room. This type of house remained most common throughout the archaic period.

Late fifth century houses had high walls, single entrances and small, high, windows. Probably intended to keep women out of sight of unrelated men.

Sparta
Spartan customs allowed two or more men to have children with the same woman

Plural marriage formalised in the archaic period.

Earliest source on plural marriage in Sparta is Xenophon

Death
While Athenian etiquette prevented the naming of citizen women during their lifetimes, it was possible to display dead citizen women on private monuments such as grave reliefs to the public. Indeed, from the mid-fifth century, Athenian commemoration of the dead was dominated by representations of women. In C.W. Clairmont's catalogue of Athenian tombstones, in all representational categories except in reliefs showing single children, there are more female than male figures shown.

The women represented on these funerary monuments are always shown in domestic contexts.

Marriage
Marriage had to be preceded by a ceremony marking betrothal (Cantarella, p.246)

Betrothals could be made when the future bride was very young -- Demosthenes' sister was only five! (Cantarella, p.246)

However, betrothals were not binding and there was no penalty for breaking them (Cantarella, p.246)

The difference between marriage and concubinage was the two ceremonies of eggye (betrothal) and ekdosis (which marked the beginning of a married couple's cohabitation) (Cantarella, p.246)

Father of the bride could only dissolve marriage if bride had not yet born her husband a child (Cantarella, p.247)

Dowry values ranged from 5% to 25% of a family's property (Cantarella, p.247)

(Cantarella, p.247)

Husbands legally had full management of their wife's dowry (Cantarella, p.247)

Seclusion
"Unless they had a reason for going out" women were expected to be indoors.

Just because women's sphere was inside the house, and men's was outside, it does not follow that women lived totally isolated from those outside of their family and slaves.

Tragic evidence for "seclusion": Euripides' Phonecian Women and Electra, Sophocles' Electra, Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes

Myth of Gyges in Herodotus as a gross violation of taboos of seclusion

Strong evidence for separate spheres of activity inside the house and separate areas of customary life

Athenian women eating and drinking with unrelated males is, in the orators, evidence of being hetaira or pallake, not wife

Poor Athenian women, who must have worked, would have not been seen as taking part in normal female roles, and would still have been marked by a sense of boundary

Parallel networks of relationships between men and women

Of the 27 women named in Demosthenes' speeches, 14 are in Against Neaira: 10 alleged to be hetairai and 4 slaves. Contrast 509 male names.

Demosthenes never names his own mother or sister, though they appear in five speeches related to his inheritance

Categories of named women: low status, those connected with opponents, the dead

Strong gender distinction in Greek house design, even if the idea of total segregation is no longer en vogue (Cantarella, p.249)

Women probably attended theatrical performances (Cantarella, p.249-50)

Religion
"women of status were not displayed to unrelated men except in the controlled circumstances of religious festivals"

Women's status defined by kinship with males and/or ritual function

Sacred marriage at the Anthesteria between Dionysius and the basilina

Status
In private law, Athenian women were not considered capable of governing their own affairs, but were subject to the authority of a kyrios (Cantarella, p.245)

Athenian women considered as citizens! (Cantarella, p.245)

Barred from taking part in political life, and so had the status but not the function of citizens (Cantarella, p.245)

Historiography
Evidence available to us all produced by, and aimed at, men

Different authors draw on different categories of evidence (cf. Pomeroy 1973, 1975)

Economic Position
Relatively limited number of trades available.

Many depictions of cooking, baking, and weaving: may depict domestic work, but we find enough depictions that some might be commercial.

Women as merchants reasonably well-attested; women as artisans less common.

Evidence for women working as wall-painters from Pliny, though probably not many as early as the fifth century.

No names of women as signatures on Attic pots; however the Caputi hydria is seen by Richter and Beazey as proof that women did work on vases.

Women could not inherit from their father if they had an equally close male relative (Cantarella, p.247)

Athenian law differed from Gortynian law, where women had more economic rights (Cantarella, p.248)

Women could inherit, be willed goods, and receive gifts (Cantarella, p.248)

Women did have control over "paraphernalia", usually referred to as "clothes and gold jewellery" but which could include other movables. (Cantarella, p.248)

Probable that transactions by women violating the 1 medimnos limit could be challenged in court and declared void (Cantarella, p.248)

In Women at the Assembly, the women impose the one medimnos rule on men (Cantarella, p.248, cf. Assemblywomen 1024-5)

Seduction, rape, adultery
As late as the fourth century, criminal sexual acts seen as an offence against a woman's guardian (Cantarella p.242)

Still no differentiation between adulteress and raped woman: both are subject of illicit sexual acts (Cantarella p.242)

By the age of Lysias, there is however a differentiation between adultery and rape (Cantarella p.242)

According to Plutarch, the first laws on rape date back to the reforms of Solon (Cantarella, plutarch's Life of Solon 23)

Cantarella doubts Lysias' assertion that rape was considered a less severe crime than seduction, considering it "ingenious but totally inconsistent" (Cantarella, p.243)

Lysias' statement that the punishment for rape was a fine but for adultery was death does not correspond to reality (Cantarella p.243)

No Greek word specifically denoted "rape" or "sexual assault"; "shame", "force", "outrage", and "seize" all used. (Cantarella p.243)

The types of lawsuit that could be brought against a rapist included dike biaion, punishable with a fine, and graphe hybreos, punishable with anything up to death (Cantarella p.243)

The penalty for the graphe moicheias doesn't survive, but the penalty was left up to the jury in many public actions (Cantarella p.243-4)

Epizephryian Locri: penalty for moicheia was blinding the moichos; Lepreum and Cumae: atimia (Cantarella, p.244)

Both rape and adultery could be punished by penalties ranging in severity from fines to death (Cantarella, p.244)

Women's consent was not taken into account per se by Athenian lawmakers (Cantarella, p.244)

Women's consent also irrelevant in Gortynian law (Cantarella, p.244-5)

Sexual violence laws in Athens apparently only protected the same women protected by Draco's homicide law; other women could be raped without fear of penalty (Cantarella, p.245)

Misc
Osborne does not believe that it is plausible that female infanticide was sufficiently widespread that not all Athenian men can have Athenian wives.

Pericles' citizenship law encouraged public acknowledgement of Athenian wives and mothers.

Difficult to tell slave, metic, and citizen men (and women) apart.

Agora was open to women.

During the Peloponnesian war, taking multiple wives seems to have been legal.

Literature of Classical Athens: highly articulate and prominent presentation of women

Legally, a woman is perpetually under control of a male kyrios (as male minors were)

Married woman was part of a divided kyrieia (Cantarella, p.43)

On Attic tombstones of women, demotic invariably agrees with the name of the dead woman's kyrios, not her own, in contrast to that of non-Athenians (Cantarella, p.45)

Periclean citizenship law was in 450 (Cantarella, p.245)

Women were not educated, and were not responsible for educating their sons (Cantarella, p.250)

Hetairai sometimes came from abroad (Cantarella, p.251)

Hetairai could be hired by an individual or by a group (Cantarella, p.251)

Hetairai could become concubine of a former client (though rarely a wife) (Cantarella, p.251)

Some pornai were slaves, some were abandoned children brought up to be put to work, some were free Athenians who became prostitutes out of choice or economic necessity (Cantarella, p.251)

Aeschines mentions a tax on male prostitutes in Against Timarchos; scholars have supposed that a similar tax applied to women (Cantarella, p.251-2)