ABSTRACT
The study of women in classical Athens presents us with a dilemma. As A.W.Gomme
remarked many years ago, There is, in fact, no literature, no art of any country, in which
women are more prominent, more carefully studied and with more interest, than in the
tragedy, sculpture, and painting of fifth-century Athens’ (1925:4). Moreover, there exists
a considerable body of evidence, mainly in the form of law-court speeches, which allows
us to reconstruct (though not without the inevitable gaps and uncertainties) the position of
women within the political, legal, social and economic structures of the Athenian polis. It
would seem, then, that social historians had a wealth of material at their disposal. Yet the
fact remains that for all practical purposes there is nothing which represents the authentic
voice of women themselves. Euripides’ Medea may speak passionately for women, but it
is still Euripides who does the talking. Contrary to the recorded comments of Athenian
men, the women of Athens have kept a prudent silence. Further, compared with our
knowledge of public institutions and political and military history, the private and
day-to-day lives of the Athenians remain relatively opaque, and it is in this context that
we might have hoped best to register the role of women, for they make scant appearance
in the chronicles of Athens’ greatness. Either, then, we know what men said about women
and how they represented them, or we know very little about them at all; and when we
look to determine the position of women in Athens we can claim to be determining only
what Athenian men thought about women, and how rules and regulations constructed by
men sought to define and locate women within a male conception of society (Gould
1980:38-9). This is a distressing situation, particularly at a time when a general attempt is
being made to reassess the contribution of women to society and history; yet it is a
situation whose several consequences must be accepted.
