Greek-speaking peoples who absorbed Minoan culture. Th is
civilization is the background of the Homeric poems the Iliad
and the Odyssey and of many Greek myths. It was dominated
by a warrior aristocracy that gained status through success
in battle and the collection of plunder from the conquered.
Women’s lives were entirely under the control of their fathers,
husbands, or even sons, and as the literary tradition shows,
the men were fully aware that many women felt this condi-
tion to be unjust. Nevertheless, women could oft en assert
themselves through their personal infl uence over powerful
male relatives.
Th e Mycenaean culture ended in the face of new in-
vasions. Greece entered a dark age in which society broke
down into small villages and individual farmsteads. From
this primitive social organization there emerged the Greek
cities of the Classical Age (ca. 480–323 b.c.e.). Th e amaz-
ing rebirth of Greek civilization established an ideal against
which many later cultures measured themselves, but gender
roles developed unequally. Greek culture had been trans-
formed by an infl ux of tribal peoples who organized gender
roles around bands of male warrior-hunters that lived and
worked together apart from female society. In Sparta, for in-
stance, this early pattern was refl ected in a militarized state.
Th e entire population of male youths and adult men spent all
their time training for war or fi ghting. Th ey lived in barracks
under military discipline and visited their own families and
farms only infrequently, on formal leave. Th is regimentation
led to the unparalleled military strength of Sparta and to a
male ideal famous for its fortitude, duty, and indiff erence to
circumstance.
Spartan women lived apart from men and acted as
stewards over their husbands’ property, wielding a unique
degree of power and independence. Greeks were very hos-
tile to anyone who violated accepted social roles. Because
Sparta’s women seemed to be out from under male control,
they attracted the criticism of other Greeks as being lesbians,
whether or not there was any basis for the claim.
In Athens, on the other hand, aristocratic women lived
secluded lives inside the women’s quarters of the family
house, and even in this home setting men and women ate
their meals separately. Th e legal rights and social status of
Athenian women were very restricted, but ancient dramas
suggest that women could exert tremendous infl uence within
the family through sheer force of personality. Women from
the lower classes had more exposure to the outside world be-
cause they had to work in the family business or farm.
Paradoxically, some women who abandoned idealized
gender roles could rise to social prominence, acting in the
same cultural environment as men. Th ese were the hetaerae
(literally “companions,” but in classical Greece a word signi-
fying a social role somewhere between that of a mistress and
a prostitute). Aspasia (469–406 b.c.e.), mistress of Pericles,
leader of Athens, gained wide popularity for her wit and intel-
ligence. Muesarete (fl. ca. 330 b.c.e.)—ironically nicknamed
“Phryne” (“Toad”) because of her beauty—was the mistress
of the orator Hyperides and of the great sculptor Praxiteles
and amassed one of the largest fortunes in Athens. However,
both women had to defend themselves in court (successfully)
against charges of impiety (the crime of violating religious
law) occasioned by resentment over their prominence ob-
tained apart from social expectations.
Despite the restrictions imposed on most Greek women,
some reached great heights of personal achievement. Arte-
misia I, for instance, queen of the Greek city of Halicarnassus
in modern Turkey, acted as a governor in the Persian Empire
and as an admiral in the Persian force that invaded Greece in
480 b.c.e. Another exceptional woman, Sappho (ca. 630–570
b.c.e.), wrote lyric verse that sets her among the very greatest
poets and can also be considered the fi rst poet in the mod-
ern sense. Some of her poems seem to describe desire for a
woman, but it is not clear whether this refl ects her own feel-
ings or those of a perhaps male character.
Th e male band of earlier times lived on in Athens in the
typical male gathering, the symposium. Today this term usu-
ally signifi es a relatively staid intellectual gathering. In an-
cient Greek it meant simply “drinking party.” Held among
male friends and relatives, the symposium was the height of
fashionable life in Athens and embodied collective cultural
fantasies of ideal manhood. Pederasty, one of the most strik-
ing features of the symposium, was the sexual courting of ad-
olescent youths by adult men. (Erotic contact between adult
men, however, was stigmatized in Greek society.) Th e men
sought the sexual favors of the youths in return for educa-
tion, contacts, and other forms of assistance in entering into
society. Th is practice may have evolved from earlier initiation
rites typical of tribal cultures.
Th e symposium properly began aft er dinner and in-
volved a long night of drinking, during which the guests took
turns entertaining the group by reciting poetry, composing
speeches, and engaging in other elevated and not-so-elevated
activities. Th e presence of prostitutes (of either sex) was not
unusual, nor was drunkenness. In this setting the indul-
gence of pleasure was a more common social value than its
restraint.ROME
BY BRADLEY SKEEN
Roman social ideals were shaped during the city’s early his-
tory as Romans came in contact with more sophisticated
cultures. Th e early infl uence of Etruscan civilization ensured
that within the household the two sexes would live in close
contact, that couples would always dine together, and that
women could move about more or less freely in public. Th us,
there was more equality between the sexes in Roman society
than in many other Mediterranean cultures. Nevertheless,
gender roles in the Roman world were largely the creation of
aristocratic men and are known to us through their writings.gender structures and roles: Rome 501