ABSTRACT
The laws of the Athenian polis, framed and instituted by men and officially defining the
role of women, are important indices both of women’s actual position within Athenian
society and of the manner in which the female was perceived. Laws are par excellence
the means by which society attempts to give itself explicit form and to regulate the
conduct of its members in accordance with accepted morality (cf. Gould 1980:43). But
laws are also rigid and incomplete reductions of that morality and embrace only a limited
field of activity. The axioms of right and wrong are usually left unstated. Many of the
constraints imposed by society find no mention in official ordinance, while what might
formally appear to restrict the actions and influence of a particular group can often in
practice be bypassed, modified, or forgotten, if only because the exercise of the law, more
concerned with specific proscription than general permission, comes into play only at
those crisis points when individuals are forced to appeal to the officially stated
prohibitions of society rather than to the tacitly accepted allowances of daily life (cf. Post
1940:421-2).
