The Roles of Greek and Roman Women Essay

What do we learn about male and female roles in Greek society from the Odyssey? In the ancient time setting women were subservient and submissive to men; their lives were restricted to childbearing and household duties.

Women in Ancient Rome enjoyed a slightly better life than those in Ancient Greece. Roman men "placed a very high value on marriage, home and the family and this made quite a difference to society's treatment of women" (Thompson, 2005). Women still were passed from their father's supervision to their husbands, but enjoyed a more important role. While women could not hold

The Roman woman had a very limited role and they could not attend, speak in, or vote at political meetings. Women were not allowed to hold any position of political responsibility. They were not allowed to voice their opinion in public but in the Greek society, the woman was considered just like an object.

   Ancient Greek society treated women as secondary citizens. Restrictions were placed on the social and domestic actions of many aristocratic women in ancient Athens.  The women depicted in Homer's Odyssey, on the other hand, are the ideal.  Penelope, Clytaemestra, Athena, and Helen are all women with exceptional liberty and power.

Roman women like Greek women need to be kept out of the public eye and remain home where they can be watched so they do not cause any trouble or problems for their families or husbands. Women of Rome do not always remember their place in society, and so it becomes the responsibility of the men to have to keep them in line, and not let women have the freedom to do as she pleases, for any spare time spent by a woman is a chance for them to manipulate and control a man to do her bidding. Women also should not be allowed to handle any form of currency for many women are poor, and do not properly understand how to manage money and determine the actual worth of the items they are purchasing.

Ancient times have a lost list of feminine roles and conduct to fit those roles. Ancient Greece was known as a patriarchal society in which women had little rights personally and legally. Women were subject to acts of seclusion as they needed

The ancient Greeks had very clear ideas about many things in life. In particular, this clarity can be exemplified as a binary system of worldview by looking at things in black-and-white perspectives to avoid ambiguity. A person is either free or a slave, a native Greek or a foreigner, rich or poor, royalty or not, and in the case of gender, either a man or a woman. This kind of dichotomy was a good way to impose social order and maintain harmony in Greek society because their social hierarchy was quite rigid. However, from the early myth of Hesiod's Theogony where misogyny is quite obvious, ancient Greek literature soon takes a more enlightened view of female roles in Greek society as their civilization develops further.

While there are a number of notable, female characters in the Aeneid, most of them die. First, we have Creusa. She is the Aeneas’s wife while he is in Troy. While they are fleeing from the Greeks she tells him that he will find a new wife and then she is killed. Second, we have Queen Amata. The queen’s daughter, Lavinia, desires to marry Aeneas but Amata wishes for her to marry Turnus. Amata is furious at her daughter’s choice. “Burning already at the Trojans’ coming, the plans for Turnus’ marriage broken off, Amata tossed and turned with womanly anxiety and anger” (pg. 208). In a fit of rage, she rides through the city and leads the women of the town into a revolt. When she sees the Trojans coming into the city she believes that her husband is dead and takes her own life. Finally, we have, Dido, the queen of Carthage. The irrational nature of women is definitely shown in this character. Her former husband dead, she had become favored by her people and ruled

It is no secret that the Roman World was male dominated. The myths we know about today come from male writers and scholars, and the stories they tell hail from a male dominated society. Because of this, the role and status of women in Roman society has been misrepresented.

Women had been primarily tied to housework and childbearing duties - Thucydides wrote in the 5th century BCE that “the greatest glory [for women] is to be least talked about among men…” (Scott 36) - but as the Greek economy suffered during the Peloponnesian wars, women were forced to take on more work outside the home. The Hellenistic age saw women acquire more rights under the law, becoming landowners and achieving economic independence. They were included more in education as philosophers opened their schools to both sexes (Scott 40).

Most women in ancient Rome were viewed as property of the men who they lived with. Basically they were handed from their father to their new husband at the time of their marriage and surrendered any property they owned, or dowry they were given, to their husband (Document 1). There were however two types of marriage in ancient Rome, manus and sine manus. Under the first type, manus, the woman and all of her property and possessions were placed under the control of her husband and he could do with them how he pleased. Under the second type, sine manus, the woman remained under the control of her oldest male relative, usually her father or brother. This type of marriage gave women a lot more freedom because they could carry out their own

women may have been considered property, but they were also acknowledged to be so much more. Women living in the Roman Empire were treated quite differently than the men were. However, that doesn't mean they didn't have an interesting and active life. They were valued for their role in society. In fact, the women in Rome were treated fairly well for that

Women in ancient Roman did not have a lot of autonomy. Most of the time women had to take care of their husbands, it was part of their marriage customs. Like the Roman poet Plutarch wrote that most marriages were made by the male head of a household, most of the girls were married as young as twelve years of age (Doc 1). Due to that, women had to be “chaste, domestic, a good housekeeper, and a rearer of children”. That was part of the speech Augustus was recorded on by the historian Dio Cassius when he gave it at the Forum. Augustus went on explaining that that was an important function for the women to follow (Doc 4). According to the Digest, sometimes girls could opt out of marriage if they did not desire it. In one condition which was,

The roles of women in ancient times is undeniably important. They were the center of the home and the center of the family. Family was most important in these times, especially the fact that all men needed heirs, without women this would not happen. They were cunning seductresses, obedient housewives, givers of life and the center of all households. They were not given citizenship or had political power, but held power and influence none the less. Women were not worthy of education and were meant to stay subservient. They were thought of as worth less than a man, but where would men be without women?

We see the position of women in society through their normal social roles as mothers and wives. (Hecuba, Andromache in Book VI). There are women who are the stereotyped mothers, like Achilles’ mother Thetis, and Queen Hecuba, who in the course of the epic poem are seen to be either weeping or troubled with the affairs of their sons. [TIES INTO SECOND PARAGRAPH]