Women’s Roles in the Ancient Greece

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All throughout Greek history you hear all about the men of the Olympics. However, you don’t hear much about the women of the time. The sources that survived over the years were even written by men for men. Women on the other hand really weren’t apart of the story. The surviving structures such as temples, buildings and battlegrounds all speak of a man’s world. Surviving works of art feature women in various guises, but rarely give an insight into any other kind of world. The place of women in ancient Greece is summed up most acutely in the book Images of Women in Antiquity by saying “the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about by men, whether in praise or blame” (Cameron and Kuhrt pg. 217) With hearing all about the men’s advancements and involvement in the Olympics it made me think: What was the women’s role in Ancient Greek society? Over the past fifty years the raid change in the roles of women in modern society made people want to go back and retake a look at women in the ancient societies. In order to understand women’s role in Greek society we will look at literature, religion, education and mirage.
Greek women in society had to endure many hardships. At least that’s what we can noticed through literature when they rarely discussed women in this time period. For example in the Odyssey, Penelope’s one and only role in the epic poem was to support Odysseus and remain loyal to him. She is at home and struggles to keep her family intact while Odysseus is away trying to return to his native land. The cultural role of women is being depicted as being supportive of man and nothing more. However, what women roles were in ancient Greece did long ago was by far more impressive than what men did. Unfortunately though,...

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.... Now that most people hear all about the men and what they do in their life and involving the Olympics in Ancient Greece, this about their backbone the women who had to stay home with the children and the homes that the men would leave for the Olympics and the wars. Women play a key role in society in Ancient Greece whether that be in the religious duties some of the women had to the education benefits they got because of their husbands.

Works Cited

Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Harvard University Press.1995.print.
Cameron, Avery & Kuhrt, Amelie. Images of Women in Antiquity. Oxon: British Library Cataloguing.1993.print.
Cohen, Beth. The Distaff Side: Representing the female in Homers Odyssey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.1995.Print
Murphy, Neville Richard. The Interpretation of Plato's Republic. Oxford, Clarendon Press.1951. Print.

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