The demarcation of gender, alongside age and status, was extremely important as an organizing principle in archaic Greek societies. Clearly delineated categories of gender signified social order. An ideology of gender dichotomy comes through strongly in our written sources: the realm of feminine activities, behaviors and concerns was different and often separate from those of the male world. These discrete realms at times engaged with each other and at other times came into conflict. Although men generally seem to maintain overall control, women are not simply passive. Public roles for women appear to have centered in religion and ritual - where a feminine public voice was acceptable. Women were never rulers or openly part of political life as far as we know - Sappho’s possible “political” comments are veiled and focused on her brother, a close relative (fr. 5), just as women who appear in male company do so at home within the family. However the extent to which these ideologies were actually played out in “real life” is impossible to ascertain. The strong dichotomies which come through in written sources are perhaps not so strong in the material cultural record.
Although, not surprisingly, there are strong similarities with the ideologies of gender we know from classical times, we should not think that gender operated in exactly the same ways in the archaic period. On the other hand, I do not believe that gender roles were “more flexible” in archaic times. For example, acceptance of the idea that women could be considered legitimate objects of physical violence seems to be more obvious in archaic sources than in classical times, whatever the reality.
In archaic Greece, gendered behavior was set within different social and political contexts, where the network of social relations in which a person was embedded gave a different significance to the individual or the household than we know from classical times. In communities like Zagora, related families may have lived in close proximity to each other. It is likely that family networks placed limits on the autonomy of both men and women, though it is likely that these limits imposed more on women if we are to believe Sappho’s voice. Moreover, we have seen a different relationship of family/kin group to community than we see in classical times, though we cannot presume that these relationships were the same in all archaic communities. Many poleis seem to have been little more than a consensus between rival groups of elite families, competing with each other, as depicted in the poetry of Alcaeus, Solon and others. Women were caught up in these rivalries and sometimes must have been important players.
Were there dramatic changes in ideologies of gender in the eighth century? I think not. Certain themes appear to span the period: Homer’s Hera locates herself and operates within the Olympian family as much as Sappho does; the girls of Alcman’s choruses are not depicted as individuals, they are a group, albeit a significant one within the community, crucial for its continuity and reproduction (Calame 2001). But the operation of gender was not static either: what changed gradually over time was the shape of political settings themselves. This in turn had a profound impact on how deeply embedded gender ideologies were fitted to the changing notions of community which eventually became the classical polis.
NOTES
1 I am grateful to Lorna Hardwick, Andre Lardinois, and Kurt Raaflaub for their helpful and supportive comments on this chapter.
2 On women and gender in Homer, see Graziosi and Haubold 2005: 95-119; Graziosi and Haubold 2003; Schein 1996; Cohen 1995; Doherty 1995; Austin 1994; Felson-Rubin 1994; Katz 1991; Easterling 1991; Winkler 1990: 129-61; Naerebout 1987; Murnaghan 1986; Foley 1978; Beye 1974.
3 Naerebout 1987: 126-7; Graziosi and Haubold 2005: 115-18.
4 Quotations from the Iliad are in the translation of Lattimore 1951.
5 On Pandora and the origin and nature of women in Hesiod see Clay 2003: 101-3, 116-25; Ogden 1998; Brown 1997; Zeitlin 1995; Vernant 1980: 168-85; Loraux 1981: 75-117; Arthur 1973.
6 Remarkably little has been written specifically about Semonides’ misogynistic iambic; see Hubbard 1994 (mostly focused on the date of the poem); Easterling 1989; Lloyd-Jones 1975.
7 Quotations from Semonides are in the translation of Gerber 1999b.
8 Fr. 7.116-18, quoted above, and in the poetry of Alcaeus and Sappho, see below.
9 Bartol 1992: 66; West 1974: 22-39.
10 Stehle 1997: 237-40; Bartol 1992: 66-7, 70.
Quotations from Alcaeus and Sappho are in the translation of Campbell 1982.
Winkler 1990: 176-8; duBois 1995: 101, 104-5; Greene 2002: 98-9.
Cambitoglou et al. 1971: 13-20, 29-31, 33-6; 1988: 71, 151-4.
Morris 1999a: 268-9 and figs. 14.3a and 14.3b; 2000: 282 and figs. 7.7a and 7.7b. Developed by Morris from the discussion of the excavators, but not following their interpretation (Cambitoglou et al. 1988: 107-16).
H34-H35 are in fact the earliest rooms of this complex in its present configuration (Cambitoglou et al. 1988: 151, 153), but H19 and H22 had Middle Geometric floors, and the present Late Geometric walls may have replaced Middle Geometric walls (Cambitoglou et al. 1988: 154).
On notions of “public” and “private” space in ancient Greece see Vernant 1983; Jameson 1990a and 1990b; Nevett 1994; Morris 1998c; Goldberg 1999; Ault 2000; Antonaccio 2000; Foxhall 2000; Cahill 2002.
On the Athenian agora see Camp 1986; 1990; 2001; Thompson and Wycherley 1972; Wycherley 1957. There is no reliable evidence for the existence of an “old agora” pre-dating the site of the classical agora. The idea is based on a fragment of the second century bce writer Apollodoros (FGrH 244 F 113; see also Wycherley 1957: 224-5, no. 731), who located the shrine of Aphrodite Pandemos in an “old agora,” probably in a misguided attempt to explain the cult title. See Thompson and Wycherley 1972: 19; Wycherley 1957: 1.
Brann 1961; Young 1939.
Young 1951; Thompson and Wycherley 1972: 15-20.
Camp 2001: 34-5; Thompson and Wycherley 1972: 24-9.
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