as vulnerable to an aggressive entry, as is a woman (Padel 1983:8). Tales of men
entering the house without permission use a terminology that implies the occurrence
of a sexual act or a rape (Henderson 1975:137–8). Women are symbolically as well as
ideologically tied to the house. The link between house, female sexuality, and female
respectability is played upon by Theophrastus, whose character ‘‘the Slanderous
Man’’ outlines the shame of a house that allows access to all from the street without
discretion: its legs are raised, ready for sex (Characters28.3).
The symbolic connection between female body and house and the importance of
the citizen wife in defining ‘‘home’’ can help us to understand the connection
between women and the hearth, the religious focus of family life. The hearth is also
female; it is the sacred site of its eponymous goddess Hestia, a mysterious and
shadowy goddess. She is one of the twelve Olympian gods represented by Pheidias
on the Parthenon frieze, but has very little mythology. We know only from her
appearance in theHomeric Hymnsthat she is a virgin goddess who rejected marriage
to remain at the center of house and temple and receive the greatest honor from
men (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite21–32). As the sacred hearth she plays a vitally
important role in defining the community and its constituent groups. Access to the
temple hearth defines the sacrificial group, access to the hearth in the Prytaneion at
Athens defines the members of the city and its political officers, and access to the
domestic hearth defines the family (Miller 1978; Vernant 1983). Hestia is inseparable
from the hearth: when Euripides’ Alcestis prays to the hearth to take care of her
family after her death, she prays to both goddess and artifact, as deity and also as the
divine symbol of family (Alcestis158–69).
Without hearth and wife there is no family (Xenophon,Constitution of the Spartans
9.5.7–8). The female hearth and the citizen wife are synonymous with the fertility of
the ancestral line. As family members die and are born or married, the changes in
membership of the family group are recognized and articulated by rituals connected
with the hearth. At theamphidromiathe family feasts in celebration of a birth while at
theperideipnonthey reaffirm their relationships with each other, taking into account
the changes in family dynamics with the loss of a member (Garland 1985;
R. Hamilton 1984). New members of the family, whether bride or slave, are initiated
by a ritual called thekatachysmata(Aristophanes,Wealth768; Oakley and Sinos
1993). They are pelted with fruits, nuts, and fertility symbols while seated at the
household hearth. As the hearth articulates family changes, it stands as a symbol of
the family itself and the continuation of the family line, as does the citizen wife.
Orestes and Electra are described as saviors of their father’s hearth (Aeschylus,
Choephoroe264). Dinarchus refers to the shame of a traitor on facing his ancestral
hearth, using the hearth as a means to convey the depth of betrayal; it hits at the very
core of the family (Demosthenes66).
The hearth plays a vital role in defining home and family, yet hearths are noticeable
in classical and hellenistic Athenian houses only for their absence. While many formal
built hearths are present in the classical houses at Olynthus, only one formal hearth
has been found in an Athenian house (Shear 1973:147–50). Jameson suggests that
the appearance of the hearth in Athenian tragic plays is an archaism, designed to
reflect a time when the royal hearth was a symbol of power and legitimate rule rather
than any contemporary hearth in the classical house (1990:106). Yet a clearer
explanation for its textual importance can be found in the role of hearth and wife as
302 Janett Morgan