Planning Investigation:
This investigation will answer the question “What were the differences and similarities of the roles of women in Athens and Sparta?” This question is relevant due to the fact that the role of women and how they were treated back then are very different than today and we’ve come a long way since then in terms of women’s rights. It’s also important to see the drastic differences between the roles of women from one Greek city to another. The issues that will be addressed are their treatment and roles within societies and how they differ from the Greek towns Athens and Sparta. The places investigated will include Athens and Sparta. This will be accomplished through an examination of books, websites, and academic journals.
Word count: 123
Source Evaluation:
The origin of this source is an essay, titled “Athenian vs. Spartan Women in Antigone’s Era” that was written by Professor Eric Hibbison at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College in 2002. It’s a secondary source. Its purpose is to inform people and better educate his students and others through his writing so people would be more informed. A value of this is that it gives the perspective of being a fairly newer text which means it has more new information. It also has a balanced view on who, between Athenian and Spartan women, were treated better or worse. However, there were some limitations too. A lot of the sources were websites with only a handful of book cites, making it rely on other authors and
Throughout ancient human history, men and women held vastly different roles. Women were often given the duty of bearing and raising children, whereas men were expected to fight, provide an income, and protect the household. Women were seen as totally inferior to men and described by Euripedes as “a curse to mankind” and “a plague worse than fire or any viper.” However, this misogynistic view of women and designated role of inferiority was not apparent in every ancient civilization. The role of the female in ancient Greek history can best be explored and contrasted between two important civilizations: The Spartans and the Athenians. The Spartan women were incredibly advanced for their time, and the Athenian women were drastically far behind. Both the Spartan and Athenian women held roles at home and lived lives far removed from the men of their societies. However, their lives were much different. While the Spartan women were strong and educated, the Athenian women held a status almost equal to slavery. The Spartan women were far more advanced than Athenians in aspects of life including education, athleticism, and independence.
Women have played important roles throughout history. They have been responsible for the rise and fall of nations, sustaining families, and have been the focal point of worship in ancient religions. Moving forward in history, women's roles have continually changed. Their status as matriarchs changed as the more advanced ancient civilizations rose. The patriarchal societies of ancient Greece and Rome viewed women differently from some societies of past eras. The study of the economic and political status of women, their rights, and their contributions to both these ancient societies reveals how views change throughout history.
A woman’s place was supposed to be at home, in both Sparta and Athens, but the capacity in which they were supposed to be at home differed substantially. In Athens, it was compulsory for women to be acquiescent and compliant. They were supposed to stay home most of the time, bearing, nourishing and taking care of the children, spinning and weaving clothes, keeping the home clean and tidy, preparing food or overseeing the preparation of food by the servants; women from Sparta were the complete opposite of the women in Athens, they were allowed to keep property with the over seeing of the male counterpart, which according to Aristotle, said that in 4th BCE, 405 Sparta was owned by women, and may have contributed to
Greek and Roman women lived in a world where strict gender roles were given; where each person was judged in terms of compliance with gender-specific standards of conduct. Generally, men were placed above women in terms of independence, control and overall freedom. Whereas men lived in the world at large, active in public life and free to come and go as they willed, women's lives were sheltered. Most women were assigned the role of a homemaker, where they were anticipated to be good wives and mothers, but not much of anything else. The roles of women are thoroughly discussed in readings such as The Aeneid, Iliad, Sappho poetry, and Semonides' essay.
For this informative report I will attempt to point out the roles women and how they are viewed in ancient Greece. I will then show how these views are present in Homer’s "The Odyssey." How are women, goddess or mortal, conveyed in "The Odyssey?"
But in the Spartan society, the woman had a dignified position just because they were the mother of the famous Sparta worriers. The Athenian women were also not allowed for education or to educate themselves. Men were the only ones allowed in the schools. They also wore clothing that completely covered their bodies and was not able to walk where they
Studies concerning the lives of women in classical Athens have sparked much controversy because, despite the apparent fascination with femininity manifested in art and drama, we have no evidence voicing the opinions of the actual women themselves. This presents a
Even being from the same time frame in history, the Roman women from Sparta and the Greek women from Athens were completely different. Their ideas, habits, and daily activities were majorly impacted by the community they lived in. Some of the main differences between the lifestyles of these women include the rights they were given under the government, the daily and professional attire of the women, and the marital and divorce rituals of each of the women. Though they had many different things about them, they also had some similarities that connected them together. Both the Athens and Sparta have two completely different statuses for their women in the society, in many different aspects as well.
Women’s role in Greece can be seen when one first begins to do research on the subject. The subject of women in Greece is coupled with the subject of slaves. This is the earliest classification of women in Greek society. Although women were treated differently from city to city the basic premise of that treatment never changed. Women were only useful for establishing a bloodline that could carry on the family name and give the proper last rites to the husband. However, women did form life long bonds with their husbands and found love in arranged marriages. Women in Athenian Society Women are “defined as near slaves, or as perpetual minors” in Athenian society (The Greek World, pg. 200). For women life didn’t
Respectable Athenian women seldom left their homes. Only men could purchase goods or engage in soldiering, lawmaking, and public speaking. The societies of ancient Egypt and of the Greek city-state of Sparta provided a rare contrast. Both Egyptian and Spartan women could own property and engage in business. According to Dr. Peter Picone, the author of “The Status of Women in Ancient Egyptian” states “the Egyptian women seem to have enjoyed the same legal and economic rights as the Egyptian man”. Also he states that legal rights were on a class boundary more than a gender boundary. The Women of Sparta on the other hand were quite different from the women of their neighbor, Athens. As you well know, the women of Sparta were bold, freer, and well educated. Also with the Sparta women, everything depended up money, which would determine your rank in society. While some of the Spartan citizens have quite small properties, others have very large ones; hence the land has passed into the hands of a few. And this is due also to faulty laws; for, although the legislator rightly holds up to shame the sale or purchase of an inheritance, he allows anybody who likes to give or bequeath it. Yet both practices lead to the same result. And nearly women held two-fifths of the whole countries; this is owing to the number of heiresses and to the large dowries that are customary. The Women of Sparta on the other hand were quite
Despite Athenian and Spartans being associates of the same influential nation, these two states or ‘Peloi’ and denominations of people in Ancient Greece in (400BC) were substantially different. The women in their own distinct societies endured several problematic issues and experienced inequity, demoralisation and condemnation. The notion of women and their purpose was typically conjectured by men in society, specifically Aristotle who claimed that women brought ‘disorder, were evil, were utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy’ . However despite misogynistic, biased and loathsome perspectives of women, both Athenian and Spartan women have all played exceedingly significant roles and contributed substantially to the prosperity of Ancient Greek society in their own inimitable ways.
The first source that will be evaluated is Michael Scott’s magazine article “The Rise of Women in Ancient Greece,” by Michael Scott. This article’s origin is in the History Today magazine and was written for the November 2009 issue. This article was written to promote Scott’s book that came out the same month under the title From Democrats to Kings: the Brutal Dawn of a New World from the Fall of Athens to the Rise of Alexander the Great Scott is a professor who teaches at Darwin College, Cambridge and is the Moses and Mary Finley Fellow in ancient history. The purpose of this article is to reach the people who are interested in history through the magazine article to promote Scott’s new book. The book by Scott was written to inform people about where
Readers of the three Greek plays, Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Medea, can easily gather an abundance of information about the different cultural details within the Greek society at that time. One of the major cultural values that can be picked up from these three plays, is the roles of women in this society. The roles of women can be observed through a comparison between them and their male counterparts.
For the most part, women in today's society hold a position equal to that of a man;
Women in ancient Greece still have an impact on us today. They were very similar to us women nowadays and at the same time very different. There wasn’t just one type of women in ancient Greece though. There were women who lived in Sparta, Athens, and many other city states, those are just the main city states. Each city state had different lifestyles and traditions, so women in one city state were different from another. Women in ancient Greece didn’t impact us in one way, they impacted us in many ways.