The citizen wife is not only in the home but also, in a symbolic sense, she is the home: her presence defines the domestic context. Athenian texts have no clear term to express the idea of house or home. Characters refer to the place where they and their family reside as a domos, a tegos, or an oikos or they refer to their hestia, the family hearth. The word domos simply means a built environment, a man-made edifice. It can be used to refer to a non-domestic building such as a temple or to refer to a single room within a building (Aristophanes, Clouds 303, and Ecclesiazusae 11). The word tegos refers to the space under a roof (Sophocles, Trachiniae 492-5). The last term, oikos, famously encompasses the family and all its possessions, including the places that they own or live in (Menander, Samian Woman 133; Demosthenes 44.2, 47.19.5). Yet again, an oikos can also refer to a temple, a single room, or buildings on a farm (Osborne 1985:121). This indicates that the meaning of a building comes not from the term used to describe it but from the individuals who use it and the manner in which they use it. No permanence attaches to the notion of home; it can change or move as the occupants of a building change or as death changes the dynamics of the family (Foxhall 2000). The citizen wife therefore plays a vital role in the ideology of ‘‘home.’’ The wife’s presence defines the home and locates the family. A good wife guards the stores and protects the wealth and future of the family group (Euripides, Melanippe Desmotis fr. 494.9-11 TrGF; Page 1941:112-15).
As the home is defined by the presence of the citizen wife, it too is female. Authors constantly use the analogy of the female body to describe the home and to indicate its vulnerability. In the speech On the Murder of Eratosthenes (Lysias 1.4), Euphiletos equates the sexual penetration of his wife by Eratosthenes with the physical entry of this adulterer through his door and into his house. A similar theme of intrusion and dishonor appears in his Against Simon, where men burst into the presence of the innocent young female relatives of the speaker (Lysias 3.6-8). Again, in Demosthenes’ Against Evergus and Mnesibulus the intruders burst open the door and come into the presence of a wife and children (Demosthenes 49.53-7). The act of bursting through the front door constituted more than a mere trespass; it was an act of penetration and hubris. The door and the dark interior of the house are described as vulnerable to an aggressive entry, as is a woman (Padel 1983:8). Tales of men entering the house without permission use a terminology that implies the occurrence of a sexual act or a rape (Henderson 1975:137-8). Women are symbolically as well as ideologically tied to the house. The link between house, female sexuality, and female respectability is played upon by Theophrastus, whose character ‘‘the Slanderous Man’’ outlines the shame of a house that allows access to all from the street without discretion: its legs are raised, ready for sex (Characters 28.3).
The symbolic connection between female body and house and the importance of the citizen wife in defining ‘‘home’’ can help us to understand the connection between women and the hearth, the religious focus of family life. The hearth is also female; it is the sacred site of its eponymous goddess Hestia, a mysterious and shadowy goddess. She is one of the twelve Olympian gods represented by Pheidias on the Parthenon frieze, but has very little mythology. We know only from her appearance in the Homeric Hymns that she is a virgin goddess who rejected marriage to remain at the center of house and temple and receive the greatest honor from men (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 21-32). As the sacred hearth she plays a vitally important role in defining the community and its constituent groups. Access to the temple hearth defines the sacrificial group, access to the hearth in the Prytaneion at Athens defines the members of the city and its political officers, and access to the domestic hearth defines the family (Miller 1978; Vernant 1983). Hestia is inseparable from the hearth: when Euripides’ Alcestis prays to the hearth to take care of her family after her death, she prays to both goddess and artifact, as deity and also as the divine symbol of family (Alcestis 158-69).
Without hearth and wife there is no family (Xenophon, Constitution of the Spartans 9.5.7-8). The female hearth and the citizen wife are synonymous with the fertility of the ancestral line. As family members die and are born or married, the changes in membership of the family group are recognized and articulated by rituals connected with the hearth. At the amphidromia the family feasts in celebration of a birth while at the perideipnon they reaffirm their relationships with each other, taking into account the changes in family dynamics with the loss of a member (Garland 1985; R. Hamilton 1984). New members of the family, whether bride or slave, are initiated by a ritual called the katachysmata (Aristophanes, Wealth 768; Oakley and Sinos 1993). They are pelted with fruits, nuts, and fertility symbols while seated at the household hearth. As the hearth articulates family changes, it stands as a symbol of the family itself and the continuation of the family line, as does the citizen wife. Orestes and Electra are described as saviors of their father’s hearth (Aeschylus, Choephoroe 264). Dinarchus refers to the shame of a traitor on facing his ancestral hearth, using the hearth as a means to convey the depth of betrayal; it hits at the very core of the family (Demosthenes 66).
The hearth plays a vital role in defining home and family, yet hearths are noticeable in classical and hellenistic Athenian houses only for their absence. While many formal built hearths are present in the classical houses at Olynthus, only one formal hearth has been found in an Athenian house (Shear 1973:147-50). Jameson suggests that the appearance of the hearth in Athenian tragic plays is an archaism, designed to reflect a time when the royal hearth was a symbol of power and legitimate rule rather than any contemporary hearth in the classical house (1990:106). Yet a clearer explanation for its textual importance can be found in the role of hearth and wife as symbol of the family. Both hearth and wife locate the family; they reflect and ensure its continuity. The link between them is utilized by playwrights to create fearful images of female behavior and the perversion of normal familial ties. Medea kills her brother at the hearth (Euripides, Medea 133) while Clytemnestra makes nightly offerings to the Furies, female spirits of vengeance, at her hearth (Aeschylus, Eume-nides 106-9). These women use the hearth for personal gain; their actions divide rather than unite the family. The connection between women, hearth, and fertility further allows playwrights to create parodies and images of a more sexual nature: as with the concept of home, the hearth is intimately linked to the female body. Clytemnestra’s statement ‘‘as long as Aegisthus lights the fire on my hearth’’ offers a highly sexualized image of her appropriation of the symbol of rule and perversion of the normal process of royal heredity (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1435). Similarly, Sophocles has Agamemnon thrust his staff into the center of the hearth of the Atreidae in order to bring his revenge: the result is Orestes and Electra, child saviors of his hearth (Electra 419-21). Aristophanes uses a range of links between hearths and fire to express ideas of male sexual penetration or refer to female genitalia to comic effect. In Peace Trygaeus refers to keeping a hetaira and poking the coals (439-40), while in Knights a sex act is referred to as ‘‘stirring up the hearths’’ (1286). The intimate textual connection between citizen wife and cult hearth has less to do with actual religious practices, but can be explained as the result of their shared role as symbols of fertility, the means by which the family line is both defined and perpetuated.
World History
