Conclusions

The position of citizen women in Athenian society is a paradox. Their reproductive capacity places them at the center of the polis and the center of the household: neither can survive without them. Yet they are also marginalized in a social and political sense: defined by their relationships with men, inferior in status to them, and, ideally, secluded within the house (Zeitlin 1982). The religious occasions where women appear most vividly in our sources are at rites of transition, all-female festivals, and in cults that required the creation or breaching of ritual, social, and communal boundaries. Female action and movement on these occasions shows that the home is a vital component in articulating the religious behavior of citizen women in Athens. In public contexts, at festivals and rites of transition, women’s movement out of the house cuts across the traditional divisions between private and public, between house and city, and between men and women. Their actions allow the nature of these relationships to be examined and the boundaries to be constantly redefined. In the private sphere, while much of our evidence for private female practices is fragmentary, we can see that it shares a common theme in highlighting the importance of home and family in the life of a citizen wife. Menander’s mother uses religion as a cover to meet her lost daughter (Menander, Ghost 49-56). Plato’s women set up shrines and altars in response to bad dreams or evil portents; in doing so they act to protect themselves and their households (Plato, Laws 909e-910a). While texts may offer us incomplete views of private female behavior, the religious actions of citizen wives constantly reinforce and reflect their ideological role in Athenian society.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

There is no specific study of women’s religious practices in the domestic context. For recent and comprehensive studies of women’s ritual, see Dillon 2002 and Goff 2004, which focus on material from the public sphere yet also touch on evidence for women’s ritual actions in the home. Cole 2004 looks at female religious behavior in house and city from a spatial perspective. For women, religion, and social status see Kron 1996. Most useful information comes in the form of articles or collections of articles. Winkler 1990b and Zeitlin 1982 consider the actions of women at festivals of Demeter, Adonis, and Dionysus. Blundell and Williamson 1998, Hawley and Levick 1995, and McAuslan and Walcot 1996 offer a range of articles considering different aspects of female religious behavior. The essays in Reeder-Williams 1995 offer perspectives from iconography. S. Lewis 2002 offers a refreshing and informative analysis of the problems of using images of women as a source. On women and death rites, see Shapiro 1991 and Stears 1998. For comprehensive studies of the textual and iconographic evidence for weddings, see Oakley and Sinos 1993 and Verilhac and Vial 1998. Demand 1994 and Cole 1998 and 2004 offer the best studies of women and childbirth. For women and ritual movement see Delavaud-Roux 1994 and Lonsdale 1993. Information can also be gleaned from wider studies of religion or women. Burkert 1985 remains an invaluable resource, as does Parke’s 1977 study of festivals and Simon’s 1983 investigation of festivals from a more archaeological perspective. In the sphere of women’s studies, Blundell 1995 offers a good overview of the lives of women up to the end of the classical period. Katz 1995 offers a particularly succinct analysis of the effect of ancient and modern ideologies on our ability to understand the lives of women in Athens.