Women in Ancient Greece and Rome
Assignments from Previous Classes

Assignment for Thursday, Nov. 29: Pompeii continued

Go to the Interactive Pompeii site and explore.  Your goal is to determine what the lives of the women of Pompeii would have conteinted on a daily basis.  Where did they live?  What did they do?  How did they get from point A to point B?  What were their homes like?  What did they do to occupy themselves?  What kinds of jobs outside the home do women have?  What did they do for entertainment?  What evidence pertains to upper class women, to working class women, and to slaves?  Were there ways in which men's lives were substantially different from womens?  In what ways were they the same?

You will find more answers in the astounding Pompeii in Pictures site.  You can get an idea of houses, streets, public buildings, fountains ... virtually (haha) every area is photographed in extreme detail and accessible from this map.  If you want to get a good visual idea of what streets women walked down, where they bought their household (and other) items, where they got their water, etc. -- this site is the place.

As an introduction, you might try the Secrets of Archeology video on Pompeii (Youtube).

You don't have to answer all these questions, but for those you choose, be prepared to show us the area of the site (the material place and the commentary on the web site or elsewhere) that allows you to draw your conclusions. 

Be prepared to present some of this to the class and/or discuss it with others who shared your interest.

Pompeii Power Point

NOTE: The rubric of research papers is up on the Important Information Page

Preparation for Tuesday, Nov. 20: Age of Augustus

Reading: Fantham 280-93; L&F # 68-71, 75, 174-8

Power Point: Age of Augustus

Focus Questions

• List some of the measures of Augustan moral reforms.  How do these compare with the reforms we have seen earlier (most notably Solon's and Lycurgus', but including the establishment and revocation of the Lex Oppia)?  (What are the goals of the legislation, is it symbolic or directed at real problems, does it meet with popular approval, in what ways does it impact women's autonomy and lifestyle?
• What virtues are praised in the funerary inscriptionf os Murdia and Turia?  What relationship of husband and wife is "behind" the praise of the wife -- can you see a relationship between the couple?

Preparation for Thursday, Nov. 15: New Woman

Reading: Fantham 280-93; L&F # 68-71, 75, 174-8

Power Point: New Woman Power Point

Assignment Due:  Traditional Identities vs. New Woman worksheet.  Using the worksheet to organize your observations, consider:   In what ways are some of the behaviors attributed to the "New Woman" of Late Republican Rome in direct opposition to traditional Roman values of the Early Republic?  Consider the identities of the matrona and univira, and the concepts of pudicitia and patria potestas, and contrast the new identities and behaviors with these traditional standards.  Come up with examples (literary or historical) for these behaviors.  (Complete instructions are on the worksheet.)

New Woman Power Point

Terms and Names

Prepare for Class:

New Woman vs. New Man worksheet: List some of the characteristics of the "New Woman" as she emerges in literary sources.  Then list some opposing or parallel features of the "New Man" who is her lover. 

Focus Questions

• What sorts of behavior do authors like Cicero and Sallust hold up as particularly deplorable in the New Women they criticize?  And what sorts of thing have caused them to attack the women they criticize?
• Are all of the behaviors of the women in the love elegies of Catullus, Propertius and Tibullus attested in real life historical sources, or could they be literary inventions to some extent? 

Preparation for Tuesday, Nov. 13: Late Republican Rome

Reading: Fantham 260-279; L&F # 51-3, 167-73

Power Point

• Late Republican Rome

Due: Reading Focus Quiz (on Early Republic & terms)

Discussion Questions

Note: We'll focus on a few key issues for class discussion, and I will provide some glue to hold them together.

• Issue 1: The Lex Oppia (Oppian law)
• The issue is the repeal of an anti-luxury law, the Lex Oppia, after the war with Carthage has been won and times have become more prosperous.  In the (reconstituted) speaches "against" and "for" the repeal of the law by Cato and Valerius (respectively), different ideas about women emerge.  What view of women does each hold that leads to his persepctive on the law?  Does their different assessment of the law hide underlying similarities in their views?
• From the ancient sources -- what roles did women play in promoting the repeal of the law?  And reading behind the lines -- what sort of influences and arguments might they have brought to bear in service of the revocation of the law?
• Compare (to Cato and Valerius's views) the views toward women's luxuries offered by Plautus (in comedy) or Polybius (in history).
• What other evidence is there of the role women played in politics or other aspects of public and/or legal life?

Issue 2: Life as a Slave

• Cato (again) and Varro both discuss the duties of rural slave women working in agriculture: what are the main duties, drawbacks, and (by comparison) advantages of life for a woman in this position?
• What professions are known to be staffed by women (mostly from inscriptional evidence)? Is this a wide range or do you find that women are limited to certain fields?
• Do you find a difference between the professions of slaves, freedwomen, or free women?  How can you tell the status
• In what ways were the lives of slaves and poor free women alike/different?
• To what extent do the lives of fredwomen, and the values they (apparently) held, compare to those of free women?

Issue 3: Women's Admirable Qualities and Actions

• The passages on pp. 276-7 describe what a woman could be proud of in her life and what might give her satisfaction in death (looking over the life she had lived).  What are these things?

Terms and Names for the Late Republic

Terms and Names for the Etruscans

Terms and Names for Republican Rome

 (These terms will also apply to the rest of the Roman world as well, so don't expect this kind of list every time ...)

Preparation for Tuesday, Nov. 6: The Etruscans

Reading: Fantham 243-59

Power Points:

Republican Rome

Etruscan Women

Focus Questions:

• Since we do not understand the written language of the Etruscans, what are the sources from which we get our information about their society? What are the limitations and idiosyncrasies of these sources?

• The passage from Theopompos (p. 248) shows suspicion of great prurience and sexual license in Etruscan society. What are the aspects of Etruscan society that Theopompos finds most appalling? To what extent does his description reflect real Etruscan customs?

• In what ways does Etruscan iconography (portrayal in visual form) of the female figure differ from what is found in Greece or Rome?

Ideas:

• Married couples vs. paterfamilias / matrona
• funerary monuments to women or couples
• different implications of nudity/sexuality

Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 25: Women's Bodies, Women's Voices

Preparation for Thursday, Oct. 30: Medicine

Reading: Fantham 183-203; L&F # 341-57

BRING YOUR FANTHAM BOOK  TO CLASS or you will be totally lost.

Class Discussion:

I will hand out sheets that ask you to determine the attitudes of a doctor to three of the elements below, and in a group with others, you will consolidate your ideas about these issues and try to explain them to the other "doctors" in the class.

Doctor Discussion Topics:

Key Issues:

• Women are regarded as both needing sex in order to stay healthy, and as craving sex. What are the social dynamics that support each of these views?

• In many of the documents that describe women in comparison to men, there are oppositions, that usually emphasize the male's superiority to the female.  What are some of these oppositions, and where do they occur in the medical writings?

• Outline the differences between the views of the Hippocratics, Aristotle, Herophilus, Soranus, and Galen on menstruation in women. Do they regard it as helpful or harmful, or a combination? What is the evidence or reasoning behind their assessments? Is there a cultural component to their differing assessments of the role of menstruation?

• What are the roles the different physicians ascribe to women in the procreative process? Some ideas:
  • female semen, where it originates and where it goes;
  • the role of menstrual blood in conception;
  • the time of month in conception;
  • how male babies and female babies are formed;
  • conception in one's self (female) vs. in another (male);
  • the value of male vs. female roles in conception.

• What relationship do doctors envision themselves having with midwives? What sorts of person are midwives expected to be, and what sorts of skills are they thought of as needing by the doctors who mention them in their texts?

• In the philosophy of physiology, heat seems to be an important concept in explaining differences between men and women. What are the subtleties of heat -- vital heat especially -- in the difference between men and women as ancient physicians explained it?

Ideas

• scientific reinforcement of social ideas (e.g. Aristotle’s explanation of women’s inferiority)
• men as norm, women as "special case" (women as inferior version of men; "deformity" of women according to Aristotle)
• hysteria and the wandering womb

Terms and Names

Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 25: Women's Bodies, Women's Voices

Reading: Fantham 169-180, L&F # 10-27, Theocritus, Idyll II (Expanded version of the Simaetha poem)

Focus Questions

• Simaetha:
  • Review the Simaetha reading in Fantham pp. 171-3, and consult the longer version above (which goes into her witchcraft as well as her single life & love interests). 
  • What is Simaetha's life like, as a single woman?  What are her concerns?
  • Are there any ways in which her lifestyle is parallel to that portrayed in Herodas' scenes of women (dildo, festival)?
  • How does witchcraft fit into this portrayal of this single woman -- is it a danger for women outside of the patriarchal family?  Is it foolishness characteristic of women, or does it represent danger from women?  Could it be a positive sign of a woman taking things into her own hands?  Is it at all like the witchcraft Medea used in Euripides' Medea (about 150 years earlier)?
• Erinna:
  • What sort of relationship with Baucis does Erinna describe ?
  • What time of life does she describe?
  • What is the role of marriage in the imagery of the poem?
  • In what ways is "The Distaff" like the poems of Sappho in the quality of the relationships it shows?
• What relationships do the other women poets quoted in Fantham 164-8 describe?  Are they similar to those described by Sappho?

Terms and Names

Assignment for Tuersday, Oct. 23: Hellentistic Women II

Reading:  Fantham 155-168; L&F # 303-16, 363-82

Preparation:  Focus on two primary sources (not necessarily related) either from L&F or as quoted in Fantham.  For each:

• What do we learn about the women involved?  (status, duties, public vs. private life, male fantasy, lifestyles of real women, etc.)
• Come up with a question or two taht you feel would elucidate the information from the source in the light of the other readings for this class or Hellenistic Women I (to suggest topics for class discussion)

Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 18: Hellentistic Women I

Reading: Fantham 128-155, L&F # 228 ("the dildo," in a more complete version than in Fantham), 241 (women and boy lovers compared, from an ancient romance novel), and 425-37 (women functioning as priestesses).

Due: Reading Focus quiz: Hellenistic Woman I

Focus Questions 

Cleopatra VII and Berenike II were both famous royal women who had real power in the kingdom of Egypt and were commented on extensively by historians and biographers.  So:

• What are the actions that "define" them in the public eye?
• How favorably or unfavorably were they portrayed in historical/biographical accounts?
• What elements of their rule and behavior are used (and how) to create positive and negative impressions?

What are the pastimes of women and women's behavior among themselves, according to writers like Herodas and Theocritus?

NOTE: There is a one-week extension on the essay: it is now due Nov. 1.  Essay goals and topics

Terms and Names

Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 16:

MIDTERM

Midterm Review and Essay Topics

Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 11: Amazons

Reading: Fantham 128-135, L&F # 164 

Preparation:  Look over the Amazons Power Point

Focus Questions 

• How are Amazons portrayed in art? Does their artistic representation match the stories told about them?
• There are several different accounts of Amazons that describe their society and all its strange variations from the "normal" society of the Greeks. But these accounts are not all the same! How are they different? What is the meaning of these differences?  (Herodotus, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Alexander Romance ...)  Choose one of the issues below to focus on:
  • physical appearance
  • role of men in society
  • raising of children
  • leadership and citizenship
  • place/landscpe in which they live, what it looks like, why they live there

Ideas

• Amazons as inversion of masculine order
• Amazons and the East
• Battles with Amazons
• Amazons as a phenomenon of the past
• Amazon sexuality

Terms and Names

Scythians	Persians	Penthesilea/ Achilles
Antiope	Hippolyta	Theseus
Heracles	Amazonomachy	Plutarch (Life of Theseus)
Diodorus Siculus (1c CE ethnology -- role reversal & mutilation)	Herodotus (5c BCE -- Amazons unite with Scythians)	Alexander Romance

Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 4: Medea Cont.; Lysistrata

Reading: review Euripides' Medea; read Aristophanes' Lysistrata.  

Focus Questions: 

Lysistrata:  What are the gender/sex relationships that make Lysistrata's plan work?  To what extent do these ideas align with information about women's roles in Athens based on other sources?

Medea: For the first part of class, I'm assigning each person a "Medea" interpretation and  "Jason" interpretation.  (The two might not agree).  Your job -- to support "your" interpretation, whether you believe it or not, with evidence from the text.  Consider things such as:

• The sincerity or lack of it in the character, in words or actions
• The relationship of Jason and Medea, as expressed in their encounters
• The view others express of them
• The imagery associated with each of them (and for that matter, throughout the play)

Jason 1: Avery, Cindy, Megan, Sarah, Katie, Kristina, Kristen, Fernando, Jeffrianne

Jason 2: Layne, Priscilla, Jessica, Olivia, Maggie, Emma, Bailey, Jennifer, Lili, Madeline

Medea 1: Sarah, Jessica, Madeline, Avery, Megan, Bailey, Katie

Medea 2: Jennifer, Maggie, Cindy, Kristina, Jeffrianne, Jennifer

Medea 3: Olivia, Layne, Emma, Lili, Fernando, Kristen, Priscilla

Terms, Names and Ideas

Jason Interpretation 1:

From the start, he is portrayed as treacherous in abandoning Medea and their children.  When he defends his actions, his arguments are clearly facile and self-serving, and he is more concerned with elevating his own position than anything else, including loyalty to his existing family.  He shows several times that he does not really care about the children, and only thinks of their deaths as a diminishment of himself.  Throughout, he behaves in a thoroughly despicable way, and the audience would have little sympathy for him.

Jason Interpretation 2:

Although Jason has decided to remarry and abandon Medea, he has good reasons for doing so.  Since being exiled from Iolcus, the family has nothing, and he is creating a real future for his family that they didn’t have before.  He also has every reason to be concerned about Medea, since she is a dangerous woman and has proven herself capable of violence.  He does care about his children, and throughout the play is working within the conflicts surrounding Medea to try to do what’s best for them, including insuring their future.  In Jason, the audience would see a man who is trying to make the best of a bad situation, but is in a no-win situation and loses everything because he is not able to overcome the obstacles.

Medea Interpretation 1:

Medea is a heroic character whose journey in the course of the play is from helplessness to revenge.  The tension between her  and Jason is not so much about love and marriage, or even shared parenthood, but results from her rage at Jason’s betrayal.  She is not so much concerned with losing her lover as with avenging herself on a man who broke his promises to her and does her harm.  She loves the children, but everything she does is in service of revenge, and the children are a necessary sacrifice.  The audience would be horrified at the murder of the children, but would be more or less on her side and would understand why she found it necessary to do it.

Medea Interpretation 2:

From the start of the play, Medea is an alarming character.  While the Nurse and chorus express sympathy for her, their expressions of fear about her violence and danger, combined with her deceptive encounter with Creon,  make everything she says and does suspect and give the audience ominous foreshadowing of the final destruction.  Medea’s arguments with Jason show her as a manipulator who knows how to work people’s emotions (Jason’s and those who are sympathetic to her), and her mentions of the children are all manipulation.   At the end of the play, after she kills her children, the audience (at least its male members) would be reaffirmed in their view of women as irrational and potentially dangerous.

Medea Interpretation 3:

Medea’s story is one of loss, of being cut loose from everything human until finally there is nothing left of her but the witch whose dragon chariot reveals a completely different place in the world from her earlier helplessness.  From the beginning, we see her cut off from everything – her home, her family, now her husband and possibly her children.  The exchanges with Jason highlight the extent to which the Greek world has cut her off and rejected her.  When she kills her children in revenge, it is the final stage of her tragic loss of everything human and transformation into the fearsome witch that has little concern for humanity.

Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 2

Source and Citation Exercise due

Description of the Source and Citation Exercise

Reading:

Euripides' Medea; L&F # 28-35, 59-67; Review  L&F 87 on women and crime

Focus Questions: 

(1) Men vs. Women on stage.  In Medea as well as in L&F 28-35 & 59-67, there are speeches by male and female characters about the hardships men cause women and women cause men.   Come to class prepared to articulate the masculine view of the problems with women, and/or the feminine view of how men and their customs are harmful to women.  In groups, we'll arrange argument for both sides of the debate between:

• Men complaining about women/ customs to do with women
• Women complaining about men/ customs to do with men

(2) The rights and wrongs of Jason and Medea's behavior towards each other and those around them.  From your position in the M/F debate above, determine the ways in which Jason and Medea acted in accordance with custom or against it, were constrained by custom or broke free of it, and acted according to a moral code, whether supported by custom or not.

Terms, Names and Ideas

Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 27

Reading: No new reading; you may want to start Euripides' Medea.  Review the selections on legal issues in L&F (see Previous Classes link).

Focus Questions: 

(1) See the Power Point Images of Women.  Some of these are identified, some are not.  For each image, consider such issues as:

• What is the age and/or status of the woman/girl shown?
• What kind of activities is she involved in (or not)
• What does the image show about actual women's lives?
• What is the medium for the image, and does that make a difference in how the women are portrayed?
• Also -- are there any elements that unite all the images, or are they all separate in purpose and effect?

(2) We will continue with our discussions of the passages below, in particular L&F 76

Women and Law

• L&F 76: The laws recorded for Gortyn on Crete are concerned with provisions for property in various conditions.  In what ways do these laws see to a woman's well-being?  In what areas are these laws not attuned to women's concerns, as best we can determine them?
• 79 (Aristotle's Will) and 82 (widow of Diodotus): How do women who are without a husband manage to take care of themselves and thier children?  What clues do these documents gove us about women's agency, or lack of it, in managing their affairs?
• L&F 87: What are the motives of the women involved in this apparent crime?  What sorts of proofs are adduced?  What sorts of views of women and their nature are apparent in this text?
• L&F 88: What are the practical elements of women's lives that you can see in this speech?  What are women able to do or not do in the domestic arena?  What are women's opportunities for defying the convention that they should stay inside?  What masculine ideas about relationsips with women and women's nature are apparent here?
• L&F 90: From the accusations against Neaera, an image of the life of a courtesan/prostitute emerges that must have seemed believable to the men of the jury, whether or not it accurately reflected Neaera's personal history.  What was this life like?  How did her status change over the years?  To what extent was the the mistress of her own life -- to what extent the slave of circumstance?

Athenian Religion Power Point

Terms, Names and Ideas

Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 25

Reading:

Focus Questions

Religion 

• We will

Women and Law

• L&F 76: The laws recorded for Gortyn on Crete are concerned with provisions for property in various conditions.  In what ways do these laws see to a woman's well-being?  In what areas are these laws not attuned to women's concerns, as best we can determine them?
• 79 (Aristotle's Will) and 82 (widow of Diodotus): How do women who are without a husband manage to take care of themselves and thier children?  What clues do these documents gove us about women's agency, or lack of it, in managing their affairs?
• L&F 87: What are the motives of the women involved in this apparent crime?  What sorts of proofs are adduced?  What sorts of views of women and their nature are apparent in this text?
• L&F 88: What are the practical elements of women's lives that you can see in this speech?  What are women able to do or not do in the domestic arena?  What are women's opportunities for defying the convention that they should stay inside?  What masculine ideas about relationsips with women and women's nature are apparent here?
• L&F 90: From the accusations against Neaera, an image of the life of a courtesan/prostitute emerges that must have seemed believable to the men of the jury, whether or not it accurately reflected Neaera's personal history.  What was this life like?  How did her status change over the years?  To what extent was the the mistress of her own life -- to what extent the slave of circumstance?

Athenian Religion Power Point

Description of the Source and Citation Exercise

Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 20: Athenian Women III: : Religion

Reading: Fantham 83-101, 115-118; L&F #383-5, 391, 397-400, 402-3, 406

Class Discussion:

We will focus on the rituals described in Fantham pp. 83-93, and in L&F # 383-5, 391, 397-400, 402-3.  Following the Analysis of Rituals Worksheet, jot down notes on 3-5 rituals to share in class discussion.

And for the third time, we'll approach L&F 267, Xenophon and housewives (see below):

Lefkowitz and Fant: Reading  267, Xenophon's Oeconomicus. 

• According to Xenophon, what is a woman's role in the oikos? 
• Where does she have authority? 
• Where is it considered appropriate for her to have an influence in household decisions
• This is the same Xenophon who wrote about Sparta in such a complimentary way.    Do you see any traces of that perspective in his Oeconomicus?

Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 20: Athenian Women III: : Religion

Reading: Fantham 83-101, 115-118; L&F #383-5, 391, 397-400, 402-3, 406

Class Discussion:

We will focus on the rituals described in Fantham pp. 83-93, and in L&F # 383-5, 391, 397-400, 402-3.  Following the Analysis of Rituals Worksheet, jot down notes on 3-5 rituals to share in class discussion.

And for the third time, we'll approach L&F 267, Xenophon and housewives (see below):

Lefkowitz and Fant: Reading  267, Xenophon's Oeconomicus. 

• According to Xenophon, what is a woman's role in the oikos? 
• Where does she have authority? 
• Where is it considered appropriate for her to have an influence in household decisions
• This is the same Xenophon who wrote about Sparta in such a complimentary way.    Do you see any traces of that perspective in his Oeconomicus?

Ideas

• silent and unseen women
• public and private realms
• complex inheritance laws
• public opinion / common knowledge
• sumptuary legislation
• citizen vs. non-citizen women

Terms & Names for Sept. 13/18:

Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 18: Athenian Women II: Daily Life

(Note the change from the syllabus-- we are switching daily life and religion)

Also Note: Source and Citation Exercise now due Sept. 27.

Reading: Fantham 101-109, 115-118, L&F # 65, 267*, 286-8, 317-18, 322-5

Due: Reading Focus Quiz 4

Discussion

• Results of our Aristotle group discussions
• We'll continue with Xenophon's Oeconomicus (see below)
• Just as we compared Spartan and (ordinary) Athenian women, we will discuss similarities and differences in the lives of citizen women and hetairai.

Lefkowitz and Fant: Reading  267, Xenophon's Oeconomicus. 

• According to Xenophon, what is a woman's role in the oikos? 
• Where does she have authority? 
• Where is it considered appropriate for her to have an influence in household decisions
• This is the same Xenophon who wrote about Sparta in such a complimentary way.    Do you see any traces of that perspective in his Oeconomicus?

Athenian Women 1 Power Point

Sexualities Power Point  (This contains some fairly graphic images (in vase paintings) so if this will offend you, skip it.)

Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 13: Athenian Women I: Overview

Reading: Fantham 68-83; L&F # 73-74, 225-30, L&F 267.

Discussion

• We will carry on our discussion of Spartan women, but with attention to the comparison with Athenian women we get here. 
• Find at least 3 ways in which Spartan women and Athenian women differed.
• Find at least 3 ways in which Spartan women and Athenian women differed.
• In the case of both Spartan and Athenian women, what is the relationship between women and the state (the values & priorities of the polis)?

Two Passages:  (for class discussion, groups then all)

Lefkowitz and Fant: Reading #72 (Aristotle) pp. 38-41: Key ideas  (some of this is excerpted in Fantham, pp. 65-6)

• essential differences between male and female
• despotic vs. constitutional rule
• the differing "deliberative faculty" of men, slaves, women, children
• the difference between women ruling, and rulers ruled by women (Sparta)
• differences between men and women in courage and eloquence
• why things are so bad in a tyranny

Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 11:Spartan Women

Reading: Fantham 56-67; L&F 91-100, 72

Quiz on quotes and authors:  see linked description

Reading Focus Quiz 3 due

Focus questions:

• The primary sources for the study of Spartan women are diverse and often speak to different issues. First of all, what are the main primary sources? What do they tell us and not tell us? What are their possible biases in discussing Spartan women?

• The Spartans apparently had a social structure in which the group was considered more important than the individual. Both ancient and modern historians think that this is an essential reason for the relative freedom of Spartan women. What are the main arguments for this relationship between privileging the group and women's freedom?

• Some modern analysts have thought that women's participation in the Spartan warrior ethos was a chilling denigration of feminine values; others have seen the lives of Spartan women as being particularly happy and desirable in the ancient world. Which view do you support and why?

• Sparta was based on a principle through which only a few, racially pure Spartans governed a large serf population of helots; serfs did most of the work, leaving both Spartan men and women free of the necessities of daily work for survival. What effect might this large population of unfree women have had on Spartan women's interpretation of their own position?

• From the sources you have read, what were love and family relationships like between Spartan men and women? What are typical ways men and women interacted with each other?

Spartan Women Power Point

Terms & Names for Sept. 11

Quiz description:

You will be given four identified quotes, and will choose two of them to write a brief paragraph about.  Your paragraph should include some (but not all) of the following, depending on your point of view and the points you want to bring up. 

• when and where the author was composing
• kind of work it is (epic, lyric poem, poem to be sung by a chorus, etc.)
• commentary it offers on key subjects (for example, from a Homer quote you might discuss the view of women or a woman it shows, or include commentary on Homer's views of women overall, or compare it to other ancient views of women, or observe what you can see about women's material lives/activities, etc.)
• as the above indicates, there is a lot of freedom in what you choose to say about any given quote.  The main thing to do is (1) use the quote in your discussion -- show how it reveals what it does; and (b) give me a coherent view of how the ideas you bring up fit together.

Rubric: [Grade] achieved by a paragraph showing:

• [A]  a detailed appreciation of the situation of the quote; it also expresses a coherent view of themes and/or implications of the passage (litarary, historical, social, etc.) 
• [B]  strong awareness of the quote's situation and an accurate representation of some central ideas
• [C] awareness of the quote's situation and some ideas that could arise from it
• [D] unfamiliarity with the quotes, statements about its author, situation, and/or implications that are erroneous or unspecific

Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 6: Early Women Poets

Reading:
Review Fantham 15-17; L&F #1-9, 160, 162; Sappho poems translated by Julia Dubnoff (full text here)

Focus Questions:

• NOTE:  Bring the poems to class in some form or another.  We will be referrign to them specifically.
• Choose one or two Sappho poems and read them closely, considering some of the following issues:
  • what sorts of relationships are illustrated in the poems?
  • what sorts of imagery appears in the poems?
  • in what ways is the sexual imagery similar to / different from the imagery of Alcman's Partheneion and/or Archilochus's seduction poem?
  • What is the emotional effect of the poems?
  • How does the female-centered eroticism of Sappho fit in with the patriarchal oikos that other sources illustrate? 

• Love was perceived in terms of a pursuer and a pursued: a lover who is more mature and passionate, and a young, inexperienced person who can be won and positively influenced by the mature lover.  The lover and beloved dynamic is not “mutual” in the sense of each partner feeling the same.  Do you find this dynamic in Sappho’s poems?  Where?  Where do you find our version of mutuality – or is there any there?

• Sappho’s poems are often said to contain more true emotional connection than those written by men.  Well, we haven’t read many of those yet – but do you find varieties and levels of emotion that in our culture would be regarded as typically feminine?  With what imagery are they expressed?

• Are the other female poets similar to Sappho in their subjects and effects?
• NOTE: At the beginning of the Dubnoff excerpts linked as "Sappho Poems," there are other focus questions.  That is a lot of focus questions.  Focus on the ones that seem most striking to you.

Terms & Names for Sept. 6:

Tuesday, Sept. 4: Archaic Misogyny

Reading:  

• Fantham 39-53; L&F #55-58;  Hesiod Excerpts (full text here) 
• Review the Penelope and Circe parts of the Homer Excerpts from last class

NOTE on the reading:

• The Hesiod Excerpts linked above are a more complete version of Fantham pp. 40-41 and there is some overlap with L&F 55.  The excerpts have specific discussion questions as well. 
• L&F 57 is a more complete version of the Semonides poem on Fantham pp. 42-3.

To turn in:  Reading Focus Quiz 3 (link up soon)

Focus Questions:

• Though there are a few "bad women" in Homer's works, such as Clytemnestra and maybe Circe, there are also women like Nausicaa and Penelope who seem to be exemplars of good feminine behavior.  But obviously, with Hesiod and Semonides, there is also a tradition very critical of women.  Can you find any ideas about women that are shared in common between the Homeric sources and the tirades of Hesiod and Semonides?  What might explain the difference?  (No right answers, you are free to speculate.)
• This is a simplified version of the question above, more or less.  What are the attributes of women (individually or together) in Homer?  What are the attributes of women in Hesiod and Semonides?  Characterize the similarieties & differences.

Terms and Names for Sept. 4:

Thursday, Aug. 30: Homeric Women II: Marriage, Wives: Circe, Penelope, Andromache

Reading:  Fantham 33-39, 44-49; Homer Excerpts

To turn in:  Reading Focus Quiz 2

Focus Questions:

• What do dedications by women (or the limitations of such dedications) say about the status of women?  About their religious and social lives?

• Hector and Andromache are portrayed as an ideal couple in the Iliad – loving and supportive, both examples of model behavior for their gender.  What exactly are the ideals they represent?  How do they relate to ideals of masculine and feminine behavior held (recently if not currently) by our society?

• What are the different sources of evidence we have about women as mourners?  What could account for women's deep involvement in the rituals and practicalities of mourning?

• (The Homer Excerpts have additional focus questions before each passage.)

Terms and Names for Aug. 28:

Ideas:

• Marriage as an agreement between families (and male heads of household)
• economics of "bride price" (hedna) vs. dowry
• oral poetry
• male/female slavery
• class differences in women's lives (or not)

Tuesday, Aug. 28: Sources; Homeric Women I: Maidens: Persephone, Demeter, Nausicaa

Reading: Fantham 10-33; Homeric Hymn to Demeter;  Optional: Sue Blundell, Olympian Goddesses

Assignment Due: Reading Quiz 1 (The first part is based on Blundell, the last on the Fantham reading)

Power Point: Homeric Women I

Focus Questions:

1. Marriage by kidnapping and divine rape of nymphs or mortals are common themes in Greek mythology (we may see more of this later). Does Persephone’s story give you any insight into why the ancient Greeks would have had such an interest in this story? Does this motif have any resonance in the present day?
2. Where and on what level of experience does the Homeric Hymn to Demeter most connect with you?
3. How does Nausicaa compare with Persephone and the daughters of Keleos?  How do any of them compare with the expectations of modern young women (idealized, fictionalized, or real)
4. (The text of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter also has some discussion/focus questions for each key episode of the poem)

Thursday, Aug. 23: Introduction

Welcome to class!  There is no reading assignment to prepare beforehand, but you should survey the following summaries of Greek gods and goddesses, and review the power point from class.  Scroll down for a list of terms, names and ideas to learn.

• Overview of Greek Gods and Goddesses
• Introduction: Power Point

Terms, Names and Ideas for Aug. 23-28: