Women in Ancient Greece and Rome
Terms, Names and Ideas from Previous Classes

Tuesday, April 10: The Age of Augustus

Reading: Fantham 294-329; L&F # 243-7, 252-66

Focus Questions:

• What happens to women who live like "New Women" in the Augustan age? 
• What ideals about women emerge and how do they compare to the earlier Roman ideals?  Consider:
  • cosmetics
  • contraception and abortion
  • adultery laws
  • the public image and private reality of Royal women
  • Sulpicia's poetry

Augustan Age Power Point

Preparation for Tuesday, April 6: New Woman

QUIZ on terms, names and ideas from March 23

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

Focus Questions

• In what ways are some of the behaviors attributed to the "New Woman" of Late Republican Rome in direct opposition to traditional roman values?  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.  Traditional vs. New Woman work sheet
• 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.  New Woman/New Man Work sheet
• 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?  Be ready to discuss some of these elements.

New Woman Power Point

Terms and Names for April 6-8:

Preparation for Tuesday, March 30: Late Republican Rome

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

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: Cato vs. Varro
• 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) speached "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?
• Compare (to Cato and Valerius's views) the views toward women's luxuries offered by Plautus (in comedy) or Polybius (in history).

Issue 2: Life as a Slave

• Cato (again) and Varro both discuss the duties of rural slvae women working in agriculture: what are the main duties, drawbacks, and (by comparison) advantages of life for a woman in this position?
• What sorts of professions did slave women have (mostly from inscriptional evidence)?
• 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: Life as an aristocrat

• 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?
• Cato and Varro both comment on the duties rural women working in agriculture. Comment on the expectations of women working in agriculture, especially slave women.

• What professions are known to be staffed by women? Is this a wide range or do you find that women are limited to certain fields?

• What roles did aristocratic women play in the public/political world? Come up with concrete examples for discussion.

Preparation for Tuesday, March 23: Early Republican Rome

Reading: Fantham 211-242; L&F # 165-6

Focus Questions

• The mythologized history of early Rome is full of rapes -- consummated, averted or avenged. What sorts of cultural attitudes toward women, the family, and masculine conflict do these stories show?
• By what sorts of values are Roman women expected to judge themselves, their families, their husbands, their lives?
• What are the "rules of conduct" for a Roman woman and how do the "histories" of early Rome reveal them?
• In what ways are these rules similar to and different from what one would find in classical Athens?
• Although the Romans shared a pantheon with the Greeks (e.g. Juno was equivalent to Hera, Juppiter to Zeus, Minerva to Athena), Roman ritual does not really parallel Greek ritual. What are the rituals that were important to Roman women?
• In what sorts of ways were women's religious practices considered important to Rome?

Class Plan: We will get an overview of some fundamentally different elements of Greek and Roman women's lives; we will discuss the key Latin terms that describe Roman women's virtues and legal realities, and we will look at the stories of Lucretia, Verginia, Cloelia, and the Sabine Women for occurrences of these ideas and for perspective on what the Romans considered admirable feminine behavior.

Republican Rome I Power Point

Terms and Names for March 23: (Note: there are a lot of these, but the 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 Thursday, March 25: The Etruscans

Reading: Fantham 243-59

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

Terms and Names for March 25:

Preparation for Thursday, March 18: Medicine

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

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

PAPER 2 IS DUE!!!

Terms and Names for March 18:

Preparation for Tuesday, March 16: 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

• 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)?
• What relationships do the women poets quoted in Fantham 164-8 describe?  Are they similar to those described by Sappho?

Terms and Names for March 16:

Assignment for Thursday, March 4: Hellenistic Women cont.

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

Focus Questions

• Review the texts on Cleopatra VII, esp. Plutarch's description.  (Different sources might have different answers to this question, but start with Plutarch.)  Be ready to discuss:
  • In what ways is Cleopatra excellent?
  • In what ways is she negative or harmful  (and to what exactly)?
  • Are there attibutes she has that would be OK in a man but not in a woman?
  • What specifically feminine strategies does she use (if any) to get her way?
• Review the Simaetha reading in Fantham pp. 171-3. 
  • What is Saimaetha'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)?
• What relationships do the women poets quoted in Fantham 164-8 describe?  Are they similar to those described by Sappho?

Terms and Names for March 2:

MIDTERM

Assignment for Tuesday, March 2: 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).

Focus Questions 

• By Monday 8 pm, send me an email (deagona@uncw.edu) with (a) comment(s) or question(s) that arise(s) from the lives of the historical figures discussed in Fantham 135-155, or from the primary sources that are either quoted in Fantham or given in L&F.  Put "Hellenistic Women" in the subject line.  We will use these comments to focus the class discussion. 

Midterm Review and Essays

Assignment for Tuesday, Feb. 23: 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

Amazons Power Point

Terms and Names for Feb. 26:

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 Tuesday, Feb. 16: Medea

Quiz on terms, names and ideas postponed to Thursday (as I did not give you a list of terms etc.)

Reading:  Euripides, Medea, L&F # 28-35, 59-67; review L&F 72, 82 and 87 (for background and comparison on the realities of Medea's situation).

Our Themes:

(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.  I have randomly assigned to all of you one or the other side of the discourse.  Come to class prepared to articulate the masculine view of the problems with women, or the feminine view of how men and their customs are harmful to women.  You might want to list some argumants as I will randomly ask people for their comments.

Men complaining about women/ customs to do with women: Paula, Sarah, Kacy, Kenneth, Tiffany, Meredith, Lauren, David, Mayan, Rachel, Vinay

Women complaining about men/ customs to do with men: Rebecca, Caroline, Bryan, Lisa, Amelia, Sean, Anna, Mary, Michael, Marie, Shelley

(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 for Feb. 12:

Assignment for Thursday, Feb. 18: Medea continued & Lysistrata

Quiz on terms, names and ideas from the quiz list below.

Reading: Aristophanes, Lysistrata

Focus Questions

• Continuing with your assigned m/f perspective assigned for Medea, consider the events of Lysistrata in the light of this discussion.  What ideas about men and women emerge in the comic situations of Lysistrata?  What are men's and women's values?  How do men and women relate to one another (as old men and women, as married couples, as players in a political dispute)?
• Sex is a big part of the humor of Lysistrata.  What ideas about men's and women's sexual desires and roles emerge from the comic situaitons of the play?  (These are exaggerated of course, but must have some basis on popular culture for them to be funny to their original audience.)

Terms and Names for Feb. 18

Quiz List

Assignment Tuesday, Feb. 9: Athenian Women IV:  Law

Reading: Fantham 109-125; L&F # 77-90, 338-40

Focus Questions

Religion 

• Go over the Religion Power Point and consider the issues arounf Maenadism.  What effect do you think Maenadic ritual had on the women who practiced it and society as a whole?

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 thier 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

Assignment Thursday, Feb. 4: Athenian Women III:  Relgion:

FIRST PAPER DUE

Reading: Fantham 83-101, 115-118; L&F #383-5, 391, 397-9, 402-3, 406; Optional: Sue Blundell, Olympian Goddesses

Focus Questions

Part I: Variety

• We are looking at several religious festivals in Athens today, mostly described in Fantham.  Note a few aspects of each of them.  Are there similarities between them all?  Significant differences in their activities of social functions?
  • Thesmophoria
  • Adoneia
  • Haloa
  • Anthesteria
  • Lenaia
  • (also Maenadism)

Part II: Significance

• What did religious worship of Dionysus entail?  Many sources identify its main purpose as escapist, or look at social dynsmaics (we will see some of these in class).  In what ways could it be a positive element of women's lives within the polis?
• What is your sense of how important religious activity was to the average woman in Greece? 
• In what ways was it important?
• How does the importance of Greek religion for women compare with the importance of religion for women today or in the recent past?

Terms and Names for Feb. 4

Assignment Tuesday, Feb. 2: Athenian Women II Daily Life (note the change from the syllabus)

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

Discussion

• What is the relationship between women and the state (the values & priorities of the polis)?
• What are the virtues of women as the (male) authors paint them in the primary sources in Fantham?
• L&F 267, Xenophon's Oeconomicus, will be our main focus of class discussion.  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, by the way, 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

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, Jan. 28:

Reading: Fantham 68-83; L&F # 72-74, 226-28; 234-38.  (The L&F readings are a little different from the ones in the syllabus.)

Optional: Katz, "Daughters of Demeter" .  This text contextualizes the list of opposites below.

Discussion

• What reasons does Aristotle give to explain and justify the subserviant social role expected of women?  What metaphors does he use?  Do any of these arguments strike you as particularly strange in our own cultural context? (return to 72)
• In what ways is Plato's perspective on the relative merits of men and women in alignment with modern feminist ideals, and in what wyas is it different? (L&F 73-4)
• What benefits did marraige bring to women?  What did they have to fear in marriage?
• What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of life as a hetaira?
• Do Medea's complaints about the role of women translate into modern terms, or have they largely been addressed?

Terms & Names for Jan. 28

Katz's list of oppositions:

Assignment for Tuesday, Jan. 26:

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

Quiz on terms, names and ideas listed below.

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 Jan. 26

Quiz Terms and Names:

Assignment for Thursday, Jan. 21: 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:

• 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? 
• Are the other female poets similar to Sappho in their subjects and effects?

Terms & Names for Jan. 21:

Ideas:

• construction of feminine community (for broader readership?)
• parameters of women-centered eroticism

Preparation for Tuesday, Jan. 19:  Archaic Misogyny

Reading:
Fantham 39-53; L&F #55-58; Hesiod Excerpts (full text here) 

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.

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.
• 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?  And what does the mourning of Andromache, Helen and Hecuba reveal about the life of Hector and the ways in which women could relate to men?
• What are Solon's reasons for limiting women's public mourning?  What does this show about women's acceptable behavior in Athens in the archaid period?

Terms and Names for Jan. 19:

Preparation for Thursday, Jan. 14: Homeric Women II: Marriage, wives: Circe, Penelope, Andromache

Reading:
Fantham 33-39, 44-49; Homer Excerpts (from Iliad 6 , Odyssey 10, and Odyssey 19) 

Quiz on terms, names and ideas from 1/7 and 1/12. Quiz Terms linked below.  For the quiz, I will give you ten definitions, and a list of 15-17 names for you to choose the answers from.  No, you will not have to spell anything!

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 Jan. 14:

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)

Homeric Women II (Wives) Power Point

Quiz, Jan 14, 2010: Terms

Tuesday, Jan. 12: Sources; Homeric Women I: Maidens: Persephone, Demeter, Nausicaa

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

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)

Images Power Point

Terms, Names and Ideas for Jan. 10:

Thursday, Jan. 7: 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 Jan. 7: