Male Athenian writers and modern classical scholars locate the citizen wife firmly in the home. She is presented as a creature of the dark, enclosed, interior space, whose life and interests are intrinsically tied to house and household (Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.22; Keuls 1985:82-112; Pomeroy 1975:78-84). Her life contrasts with that of her husband: men are creatures of the public sphere, active and visible in the public places of the city. The family home is the focus and limit of a citizen wife’s existence and she leaves it only with her husband’s permission (Schaps 1998:169). In comedies, the speeches of women affirm the link between citizen wife and home. In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Calonice states that it is not easy for women to get out of the house (16), while in his Thesmophoriazusae the female Chorus observes the anger of men at finding their wives have left the house (794-5). An unnamed male character in a fragmentary passage by Menander notes explicitly that for a freeborn wife the street door should be the customary limit of her world (Menander fr. 815 K-A).
The connection between wife and home reflects the fear of men, their need to control women in order to ensure legitimate offspring and to protect the wealth of the family (Cohen 1991:140-1; Ogden 1996:100-6). Yet the home also offers protection to the citizen wife: men may move freely into and out of the house but women do so only at a cost to their reputation. In a forensic speech by Lysias, the defendant Euphiletos is careful to place the blame for his wife’s seduction firmly on the shoulders of the dead Eratosthenes in order to eliminate queries about the paternity of his son (Lysias 1). Gravestones in the Kerameikos show women with their families or performing activities that indicate a domestic setting. The home offers a symbolic stage on which to idealize female behavior: the citizen wives on gravestones engage in activities commensurate with the ideology of a citizen wife. Hegeso examines her jewelry (National Museum Athens 3624), Polyxena bids farewell to her child (NMA 723) and Archippe stands in the background as father and son bid farewell (NMA 737). The women are modestly clothed and wear veils.
The two key features of the relationship between women and home, its role as female stage and place of protection, may help to explain the occasions where women’s ritual action becomes visible in the domestic context. Texts indicate that women could use the roof of the house as a ritual space. At the festival of the Adonia, women and girls mourned the death of the youth Adonis. They grew gardens in honor of Adonis, which withered and died in the heat (Plato, Phaedrus 276B). The Adonia could be celebrated by all women, whether maiden or mother, citizen wife or hetaira. Indeed in Menander’s Samian Woman (35-50), we find the women of two households, citizen and hetaira, celebrating together. It is a private celebration and its principal activities are intimately linked to the roof. A vase painting by the Meidias Painter depicts women celebrating the Adonia; one of the assembled women climbs a ladder to place a pot holding plants onto the roof (Dillon 2002: fig. 5.7). Women also feast, dance, and shout on the roofs of their houses. Although the behavior of the magistrate in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata suggests that the noise and activities of the festival may have irritated men, there is no indication that Demostratus’ wife is acting irresponsibly as she shouts and dances on her roof (387-96). For the duration of the celebration women are audible and visible within the city, yet their behavior, while contradicting the ideology of the demure and silent wife, is socially acceptable.
The choice of the roof as a location is curious as there is little in the story of the life and death of Adonis to explain this. Adonis is associated with youth, love, and untimely death (Burkert 1985:176-7). His setting is the natural world, not the homes of men. The use of the roof may be related to ritual action, practical requirements, or socio-cultural needs rather than to mythology. In terms of ritual action, the placement of the gardens on the roof may be designed to facilitate their demise: the heat of the sun on the roof by day might cause the plants to wither and die more quickly. In practical terms, the roof may have presented the largest space within the house, making it particularly suitable for the needs of a party. The passage in Menander’s Samian Woman indicates that feasting and dancing took place at night; the roof may have offered a cooler and more suitable place for feasting and dancing in the evening than a small, overheated court (45-6).
For the purposes of this investigation, however, it is the connection between the loud female behavior and the roof that is most interesting. The house roof is a space that is open and visible and yet has restricted access. This means that women on the roof can be visible in the city and yet separated from it (Winkler 1990b:191). For Menander, the celebration of the Adonia presents an ideal occasion for seduction; a vulnerable young girl is seduced by a neighbor’s son and made pregnant (Samian Woman 35-50). At the Adonia festival the women are possessed by their grief: their vulnerability derives from their state of religious ecstasy. The use of the roof offers protection to the women. They can drink, make noise, and lose their self-control whilst retaining the protection of the home. They can become visible and audible without coming out into the city.
The connection between female visibility, female protection, and the roof of the house is not limited solely to the festival of the Adonia. In Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Antigone climbs to the roof of the palace to view the Argive army; yet she is careful not to be seen and returns to her private rooms within the house after the event (88-201). Spying on an army of men is not a suitable reason for a young girl to become visible; she must stay out of sight whilst on the roof. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians, when Dicaeopolis wishes to begin his festival, he sends his wife up to the roof to watch (262). She may not participate directly but may become visible and participate indirectly from the safety of the roof. The value of the roof as a vantage point and visible stage is illustrated in its use by the female servants of a household, who climb to the roof to alert passers-by to an attack taking place within a neighboring house (Demosthenes 48.60). The evidence from these occasions and from the Adonia reflects the male ideology linking women to the house. It shows women participating in a religious celebration in a way that reinforces the textual connection between women, appropriate behavior, and the home.
World History
