Women’s ritual actions at birth, death, and marriage create and break down boundaries. As we have seen, they create separated spaces within the house by surrounding and enclosing the corpse, bride, and woman in labor. This allows the vulnerable individual to be placed apart in a protected ritual space. Women can also move through boundaries, to attend to those in a state of transition or to collapse the divisions between public and private, bringing household interests into the public sphere. Ritual space is created, defined, and dissolved by the bodies of the women. Women therefore become visible in our sources on occasions where ritual boundaries play an important role in religious behavior, whether in public or private contexts.
At the public festival of the Plynteria the women of the city come out of the house to participate in the preparations for the Panathenaea by disrobing and washing the statue of Athena (Burkert 1985:79). The women escort the statue of Athena to the sea for purification before returning it to her temple to await the presentation of the peplos at the Panathenaea. The women’s actions here are not focused on breaking down social or ritual boundaries but on creating them. The belief that the gods themselves inhabited statues makes the washing of a statue a potentially dangerous act (Schnapp 1994). In surrounding the statue the women’s bodies form a boundary that contains the danger. It also preserves the modesty of the disrobed virgin goddess. The presence and position of the women mirror their actions in surrounding bride, corpse, and woman in labor. They enclose and protect those within and without the circle. Women’s participation here does not reflect a mixing of home and community but a separation of space: they create a ritual boundary to protect goddess and community.
Women also construct ritual boundaries in the domestic context. A passage from Menander’s Ghost offers us interesting insights into how such boundaries are created and the actions of women in creating them. Here, the character Pheidias has fallen in love with what he believes to be a female apparition, seen at a household shrine. His servant Syros suggests somewhat sarcastically that the best way to rid Pheidias of his sickness is for him to undergo a purification:
What do I advise? I say this. If this had been a real problem, Pheidias, you would have had to seek a real remedy for this. But yet you have not, so find a fake medicine for your fake illness and believe that it helps you. Let the women in a circle wipe all around you and burn incense around you. Sprinkle around water from three springs, throwing on salt, lentils... (Menander, Ghost 24-31)
The women place themselves around the body of Pheidias, just as a chorus circles the altar (Lonsdale 1993:120). They then mark the space around him with water. This has the effect of purifying both Pheidias and the area in which the ritual will take place. The women also burn a scented substance; this serves two functions - it changes the atmosphere within the room and it also binds together those who are participating in the event. It marks them as a group set apart. The bodies and actions of the women map out an area within the room. They form a boundary that describes a temporary ritual space. Within this space Pheidias is isolated from the household and the ritual of purification can occur.
It is difficult to be certain from this passage exactly who the women are. The location of the ritual in the home may point to the involvement of the household ladies. In a second fragment of Menander, servant girls are used to circle an individual: ‘‘And we were burning incense five times a day, and seven serving girls were playing the cymbals in a circle whilst they cried the ritual chant’’ (Menander fr. 237 K-A). Here, again, the burning of a scented substance creates an atmosphere and, as in the first fragment, women mark the space. Again, they form a circle, defining and enclosing the sacred area and also, possibly, the location of the other participants. Women play an essential role in purification rites as they create temporary ritual space; they can then cross the ritual boundary to cleanse and heal. This explains why women become visible in descriptions of purification rites. The Superstitious Man calls out a priestess to purify him with squill and a puppy after seeing someone at the crossroads wreathed in garlic (Theophrastus, Characters 16.13). The mother of Aeschines is a priestess who purifies individuals before they join in the private ecstatic rites of her group (Demosthenes 18.258-61).
World History
