Essay Series 2.3: Ancient Greek and Roman men disparaged and dominated women.

Europe and North America derive much of their cultural heritage from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Both societies disparaged women and their abilities. Men dominated these two societies and largely confined women to domestic roles.

I grew up thinking that Ancient Greece was the cradle of democracy and that the Romans had democratic institutions that gave way to dictatorship. However, as a young person, I didn’t learn about how poorly these societies treated women.

Ancient Greek Philosophers

Many of the leading Greek thinkers, who remain influential to this day, thought poorly of women. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, said that women were passive and incomplete creatures.⁸⁸ The poet Hesiod, around 700 BCE, wrote that women were a deadly race with an evil nature.⁸⁹

Pythagoras was an ancient Greek philosopher who regarded women more positively.⁹⁰ He led a popular school of philosophy and related communities. Women were able to join both and contribute to philosophical development and debates. Some experts assert that Pythagoras’ wife and daughters continued his school after his death.⁹¹

As philosophers’ opinions varied, so did the roles of women by locality. The ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta had different approaches toward women. Sparta was the more liberal of the two. This city focused its society on warfare, so women had to manage property and businesses while their men were at war. Women had somewhat more education and freedom than Athenian women. Spartans also believed that women needed to be strong and healthy so they could bear healthy children.⁹²

Athenian men ruled women’s lives and primarily valued women’s fertility. Women remained oppressed under Athenian democracy because they couldn’t participate in it. Neither could slaves and non-citizens. Women in Athens couldn’t own property and had legal protection through the men in their lives. The ideal Athenian woman was submissive, quiet, and hidden in her home. This seclusion was only possible in wealthy families. Women who were poor or slaves needed to work. Women’s status became somewhat freer after Athenians began mixing more with other cultures, like Egypt’s, which allowed women more liberty.⁹³

The Roman Empire

The situation for women early in the Roman Empire involved domesticity. Roman women’s primary roles were being wives and mothers and doing domestic tasks. They were subject to their fathers and then their husbands. Women generally had a very basic education and couldn’t be politically active.⁹⁴

As in Greece, most leading Roman thinkers thought poorly of women. However, one Roman philosopher named Musonius⁹⁵ said that women need the same philosophical education as men. He added that women have the same reasoning power and senses as men as well as much the same body. He also said that women value virtue like men do. He concluded that women were capable of studying philosophy and it was important for them to do this so they could live honorably.⁹⁶

The situation for women in Rome began to change somewhat in the 1st century CE.⁹⁷ Women gained some freedom to manage their own business and financial resources. Eventually, Roman women with three children (and freed women with four) became legally independent. Widows who inherited or had wealth also could be independent. Enslaved women had no freedoms.⁹⁸

Reflections

The roots of misogyny go deep in Western societies; much deeper than I knew before starting this series of essays. The Greeks and Romans generally believed women to be inferior to men, with their main values being breeders and keepers of the home. Early democracies in Greece and Rome were limited to certain free men. Women had no guaranteed voice in their societies’ politics. However, some leading thinkers in ancient Greece and Rome advocated for women’s education because they valued women’s intellect.

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers were supposedly brilliant thinkers, but most couldn’t see beyond the myth of the supposed superiority of men. And most didn’t recognize that women are humans of equal value to men and deserve the same human rights. These philosophers’ sexist thinking set the standard for the denigration of women and their submission to their fathers and husbands. These attitudes bled into Western societies in Europe and North America.

What did you learn while growing up about the ancient Greek and Roman attitudes toward women?