ABSTRACT
The lot of women in archaic and classical Athens has been characterised as an unhappy one. Denied access to avenues of social, political and economic power, their status has been identified as low, and their personal freedom of movement conceived of as being severely restricted. The funeral, so central to Athenian social and political life, has been singled out as a reification of the male and female power relationship, and the role of women within funerary practices has been adduced as evidence in the construction of this picture; the intensity of the display of their grief serves as an outlet for their own repressed frustrations. Such analyses tend to focus on gender at the expense of other issues. It is doubtful whether gender functioned as the sole means of group identity in ancient Athens. In many circumstances other aspects of social identity and relationship may have been uppermost, most notably familial relationships. By utilising jointly the tools of gender and kin in assessing women’s duties in funerary rituals, this chapter hopes to present an alternative, more sanguine view of female status and power.
