“household management” is oikonomia, the word from which English “economy” is derived, so that the
role of the citizen wife is, in the most literal sense, an economic one. Even her role as mother is, strictly
speaking, economic in nature, since her production of male heirs serves the purpose of providing a new
family member to whom the father’s property can be transferred. The role of the woman, then, like the
role of her husband, is determined by what is in the best interests of the family. As we have seen,
however, the role of the family within the Athenian polis had changed, or was still in the process of
changing, as a result of the democratic reforms of the sixth and fifth centuries. The aim of several of those
reforms had been to reduce the power of the main aristocratic families to influence public policy;
political influence now was vested more widely and, supposedly, in a more egalitarian fashion in the
collective body of adult male citizens. Another such measure was taken in the middle of the fifth century
when the Athenian assembly voted in 451 BC to approve a proposal by Pericles to restrict citizenship to
men both of whose parents came from citizen families. Previously, the male product of a marriage
between a citizen father and a non-Athenian or even a non-Greek mother could enjoy the benefits of
citizenship. Such marriages had often in the past been used by aristocratic families to solidify alliances
with powerful families in other poleis, and there was always the danger that such connections could be
exploited by someone who wished to establish himself as tyrant. Now, however, by exercising its control
over who could become a citizen, the state made such marriages undesirable, because any offspring
would be barred from participation in political affairs.
“Hear me, you imperious suitors, you who have always been incessantly taking advantage of this
house for your feasting and drinking, a house that belongs to a man who has long been absent, nor
have you been able to make any excuse other than to say that you are eager to marry me and make me
your wife. Suitors, it is time for action, since the prize is now here before you. I present to you the
great bow of godlike Odysseus. I will go off with whatever man can most easily take the bow in his
hands and string it, and then shoot an arrow through all twelve axes. I will leave behind this lovely
house, the house where I was a bride, which is filled with the memories of a lifetime.” (Homer,
Odyssey, 21.68–78, Penelope speaking)In this way democracy had the effect of exaggerating and validating the separa-tion of men and women
into denizens of, respectively, the public space of the out of doors and the private space inside the house.
At the same time, the Athenians were well aware, through their familiarity with the Homeric poems and
with countless other tales and myths, that things had been different in an earlier time, that such women as
the wives of Priam or Menelaus had had the opportunity to act in a much more public manner than was felt
proper for a contemporary Athenian woman. In the Odyssey, for example, Homer represents Odysseus’
wife Penelope as managing the absent Odysseus’ estate on her own, during which time she publicly
interacts with and frustrates the wishes of several dozen suitors. Those women, of course, were married
to kings and were the daughters of kings or even gods, categories of persons no longer represented on the
citizenship rolls of democratic Athens. Kings and tyrants still existed in some Greek poleis and among
most barbarian peoples – we have even encountered a barbarian queen as a naval commander at the battle
of Salamis (p. 122) – but Athenians liked to think of themselves and their democratic ways as more sober
and reasonable. Barbarian kings and queens, like Euripides’ Medea or Xerxes’ mother in Aeschylus’ The
Persians, or legendary figures from the distant past of Greece, could be represented as extreme in their
emotional make-up, and so were appropriate characters with which to populate the tragic stage. In fact,
the very exaggeration of their desires and impulses could make them at the same time both fascinating and
reassuring for their fifth-century audience, since they represent extraordinary, and extraordinarily
destructive, individuals of the sort that the Athenian democracy could imagine that it had succeeded in