wife. Hegeso examines her jewelry (National Museum Athens 3624), Polyxena bids
farewell to her child (NMA 723) and Archippe stands in the background as father and
son bid farewell (NMA 737). The women are modestly clothed and wear veils.
The two key features of the relationship between women and home, its role as
female stage and place of protection, may help to explain the occasions where
women’s ritual action becomes visible in the domestic context. Texts indicate
that women could use the roof of the house as a ritual space. At the festival of the
Adonia, women and girls mourned the death of the youth Adonis. They grew gardens
in honor of Adonis, which withered and died in the heat (Plato,Phaedrus276B). The
Adonia could be celebrated by all women, whether maiden or mother, citizen wife or
hetaira. Indeed in Menander’sSamian Woman(35–50), we find the women of two
households, citizen andhetaira, celebrating together. It is a private celebration and its
principal activities are intimately linked to the roof. A vase painting by the Meidias
Painter depicts women celebrating the Adonia; one of the assembled women climbs a
ladder to place a pot holding plants onto the roof (Dillon 2002: fig. 5.7). Women also
feast, dance, and shout on the roofs of their houses. Although the behavior of the
magistrate in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata suggests that the noise and activities of
the festival may have irritated men, there is no indication that Demostratus’ wife is
acting irresponsibly as she shouts and dances on her roof (387–96). For the duration
of the celebration women are audible and visible within the city, yet their behavior,
while contradicting the ideology of the demure and silent wife, is socially acceptable.
The choice of the roof as a location is curious as there is little in the story of the
life and death of Adonis to explain this. Adonis is associated with youth, love,
and untimely death (Burkert 1985:176–7). His setting is the natural world, not
the homes of men. The use of the roof may be related to ritual action, practical
requirements, or socio-cultural needs rather than to mythology. In terms of ritual
action, the placement of the gardens on the roof may be designed to facilitate their
demise: the heat of the sun on the roof by day might cause the plants to wither and
die more quickly. In practical terms, the roof may have presented the largest space
within the house, making it particularly suitable for the needs of a party. The passage
in Menander’sSamian Womanindicates that feasting and dancing took place at
night; the roof may have offered a cooler and more suitable place for feasting and
dancing in the evening than a small, overheated court (45–6).
For the purposes of this investigation, however, it is the connection between the
loud female behavior and the roof that is most interesting. The house roof is a space
that is open and visible and yet has restricted access. This means that women on the
roof can be visible in the city and yet separated from it (Winkler 1990b:191). For
Menander, the celebration of the Adonia presents an ideal occasion for seduction; a
vulnerable young girl is seduced by a neighbor’s son and made pregnant (Samian
Woman35–50). At the Adonia festival the women are possessed by their grief: their
vulnerability derives from their state of religious ecstasy. The use of the roof offers
protection to the women. They can drink, make noise, and lose their self-control
whilst retaining the protection of the home. They can become visible and audible
without coming out into the city.
The connection between female visibility, female protection, and the roof of the
house is not limited solely to the festival of the Adonia. In Euripides’Phoenician
Women, Antigone climbs to the roof of the palace to view the Argive army; yet she is
300 Janett Morgan