ABSTRACT
We have seen how women were excluded from the social organization of the polis and
how women were endowed with those characteristics considered inimical to the good
conduct of a citizen, a polites. To a large extent social organization and psychological
representations are thus homologous. Women lie outside the polis; the natural
characteristics they possess lie outside the character of the polites. In myth and
ritual-that is to say, in the traditional stories on which Athenian art and literature drew
and the formulaic practices of worship and celebration-a third homology is apparent.
