ABSTRACT
This is not intended to be a ‘potted history’ of Greek women: the burgeoning interest in women’s studies in the last few decades has generated many useful overviews of this subject which have the scope to be more rigorous and detailed.1 Instead this chapter derives from a real need to deconstruct modern scholarly fascination with the patterns of femininity displayed in the texts. If the strength of the heroines in the genre appears surprising, it seems important to establish the implied point of reference from which their behaviour deviates.
