32Chapter 2
The Social and Economic Structures
of Athenian Society
In material terms, the Athenian way of life was remark-
ably simple. Athenians, like other Greeks, lived on
bread, wine, and oil, often garnished with onions or
garlic. Beans and various fruits supplemented this other-
wise meager diet. Meat was expensive and normally
consumed in small quantities. Even the largest houses
were small by Egyptian or Mesopotamian standards,
though their arrangement was similar. Square or rectan-
gular rooms were grouped around a central courtyard,
which might contain a private well. Some houses had
second stories. Merchants and artisans often conducted
their business from rooms on the street side of their
dwellings. Housing for the poor, being more cheaply
built, has not been well preserved.
The poor were numerous. Population estimates
vary, but classical Athens probably had between forty
thousand and fifty thousand male citizens in both town
and country and at least an equal number of slaves.
Most of the latter were either domestic servants and la-
borers of both sexes or artisans. A large number worked
in the mines. As in the rest of the ancient world, slavery
among the Greeks had begun with the taking of cap-
tives in war, but by the classical age most slaves were
barbarians (that is, non-Greeks) purchased from itiner-
ant traders. No great slave-worked estates existed, and
even the richest citizens seem to have owned only a
few. Slave artisans who toiled outside their master’s
home were normally paid wages, a fixed portion of
which was returned to their owner. This practice
tended to depress the pay rates of free workers and en-
sured that many citizens lived no better than the slaves.
As in Mesopotamia, killing a slave was a crime, and
slaves were guaranteed their freedom (manumission) if
they could raise their price of purchase.
In addition to slaves and free citizens, Athens
boasted a large population of foreigners. The city was a
commercial center that, though located a few miles
from the coast, had a bustling port at Piraeus. Unlike
some Greeks, the Athenians welcomed foreign ideas—
and capital. Though they could not participate in pub-
lic life or own real estate, foreign residents were well
treated and many became wealthy. They controlled
many aspects of the city’s commerce.
The situation of Athenian women, however, is a
matter of some controversy. Even women who were cit-
izens had no political rights, and their judicial rights
had to be exercised for them by others, because their
status was that of permanent legal minors. They did
have dowries, which protected them to some extent if
they were divorced or widowed. But divorce seems to
have been rare. As in other Mediterranean societies,
wives usually controlled the management of their hus-
band’s household and avoided public life. The Atheni-
ans, like most ancient Greeks, made extraordinary
efforts to segregate the sexes. Respectable women of
the citizen class stayed at home except for occasional
attendance at festivals, sacrifices, or the theater. Even
then they were accompanied by male relatives, and it is
thought that men also did the shopping to keep their
wives and daughters from coming into contact with
strangers. Furthermore, women were expected to avoid
certain areas within the home. The andron,a room
where men received their male guests, was strictly off-
limits to women, and in many Greek houses it had a
separate entrance to the street (see illustration 2.4).
Underlying these practices was the conviction,
voiced frequently by Greek writers, that women were
incapable of controlling their sexuality. A woman sus-
pected of having a child by someone other than her
lawful husband endangered the status of her other chil-
dren, who might lose their citizenship if challenged in
court by an enemy. For this reason, the head of a family
had the right to kill any man who seduced his wife,
daughter, or any other female relative under his protec-
tion. Being nonconsensual, rape was considered less seri-
ous. As one offended husband said in a famous case:
“The lawgiver prescribed death for adultery because he
who achieves his ends by persuasion thereby corrupts
the mind as well as the body of the woman... gains ac-
cess to all a man’s possessions, and casts doubt on his
children’s parentage.” The adulterous woman could not
be killed because she was legally and morally irresponsi-
ble. If married, she could be divorced; if single, she ru-
ined her prospects for finding a husband and spent the
rest of her life as a virtual prisoner in the house of her fa-
ther or guardian. In spite of these sanctions, adultery may
not have been as uncommon as scholars once believed.
By modern standards, the women of middle-and
upper-class families were virtual prisoners in any case
(see document 2.4). They married early, often at four-
teen or fifteen, to men chosen by their families who
were usually far older than themselves, and they almost
never received a formal education. Much of their time
was spent in spinning and sewing because Greek cloth-
ing was simple and could easily be manufactured at
home. There were, however, exceptions. As in other so-
cieties, a propertied widow might enjoy considerable
influence and a few upper-class women, such as the sis-