Gender roles have had a major influence throughout ancient history. Two of the most prominent ancient civilizations were ancient Athens and ancient Egypt. The gender roles in these societies effected inheritance, land ownership, government, and religion. One of the biggest times of change for ancient Egypt was the Ptolemaic Dynasty, which lasted from 332-30 BCE, in which the ancient Athenian influence was incorporated into the Egyptian values. Likewise, ancient Egyptians influenced ancient Athens during this era. Ancient Egyptian women were given larger roles in society than ancient Athenian women however; Egyptian women lost some of their power in society during the Ptolemaic Dynasty when Athenian influence entered Egypt. In ancient Athens, …show more content…
In marriage, the husband would be paid a dowry by the bride’s father. The dowry that was given to the man upon marriage could not be returned to the bride’s family upon divorce. All items belonging to the bride were now considered the groom’s. After being wed, many women would seek guidance from the deities, especially Hera (Laurin 2013,) In ancient Athens, one significant thing a woman was invited to do was be the Kanephoros, a maiden who lead the procession whenever there was a ritual sacrifice (Schaps 1979,. Women were not allowed to participate in other religious ceremonies unless they were granted liberal freedoms socially, which would allow them the chance to organize and pray publically. (Laurin …show more content…
Egyptian men were allowed to take on multiple wives, while the woman was seen as solely belonging to one man. However, Egyptian women were allowed to remarry and divorce while Athenian women were not allowed to do either. (Brown 2010,) Another aspect of marriage, especially for royal families, was inter-marriages between siblings, and father-daughter couples. This would prevent power struggles and warring between family members and ensure the continuation of the royal line. Marriage was viewed as more of a transaction between families or family members in both Athenian and Egyptian cultures. (Robins
The marriages in Ancient Greece are significantly different from contemporary American marriages primarily in the roles of the sexes, but also concerning the level of communication between spouses.
Initially, when a girl was married, her husband had complete control over her life. A man’s bride was usually a very young girl who was considered an empty vessel because she had no knowledge about how to behave or manage a household. During a conversation in Oeconomicus between Socrates and Kritoboulos, Socrates asked, "Did you marry her when she was a very young girl and had seen and heard as little as possible" (16)? Since girls did not come to a man’s household with any knowledge it was the husband’s job to only fill her vessel with the knowledge that he wanted her to know. In this way, men believed that they had control over their wives’ lives.
In the Greek society women were treated very differently than they are today. Women in ancient Greece were not allowed to own property, participate in politics, and they were under control of the man in their lives. The goddess Aphrodite did not adhere to these social norms and thus the reason the earthly women must comply with the societal structure that was set before them. Aphrodite did not have a father figure according to Hesiod, and therefore did not have a man in her life to tell her what to do. She was a serial adulteress and has many children with many men other than her husband. She was not the only goddess from the ancient Greek myths to cause doubt in the minds of men. Gaia and the Titan Rhea rise up against their husbands in order to protect their children. Pandora, another woman in the Greek myths, shows that all evil comes from woman. Aphrodite, Gaia, Rhea, and Pandora cause the ancient Greek men to be suspicious of women because of her mischievous and wild behavior.
Women in Ancient Rome lived in a patriarchal society and as a child, the girl would be under a manus and betrothal to her first husband. A dowry was given to both parties of the family and was controlled by the paterfamilias. Marriage was essential to Roman civilization because it kept the population growing, and it provided heirs to thrones or plots of land etc. In order to be married there was four requirements that was listed in the article, “[both] must be free citizens…; must have consent of a relative or
According to Xenophon's "Household Management" in Athenian society the women were looked at as possessions. The Athenian woman would be given to the man by their parents. It was like a business deal and the bride to be had no say in it at all. She was typically much younger than the man. Often times, half their age if the man had a previous wife but was now divorced. To a man, a skilled woman was a valuable tool. The major skills of the woman included cooking, sewing and weaving. The wife simply stayed at home and took care of the house duties. She watched over anything that came in and out of the house. If a woman could tend to the household chores and master sewing or weaving she would be considered valuable. It was her responsibility to manage the house while the men were at work or at war. Once the woman became the property of the man he had the opportunity to control her in any way he liked. She would be kept under
Thompson, James C. “Marriage in Ancient Athens.” Womenintheancientworld.com. N.p., July 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Wives, in ancient Greece, were strategically selected for the purpose of producing legitimate heirs and maintaining control of property (Gulick 57). They were typically not the objects of their husband’s sexual desire. "Marriage was a matter of good family, good dowry, and good health. Given the differences in ages, education and experience, there were no real grounds for companionship.
The Ptolemaic Dynasty was an ancient dynasty of Macedonian Pharaohs who ruled Egypt. In 51 B.C.E after the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, 18 year old Cleopatra and her 12 year old brother Ptolemy XIII were in succession for the throne. Cleopatra and her brother married to keep the power within the family. They were to rule Egypt in unison, sharing power of the throne. That changed in 48 B.C.E when Cleopatra was forced to escape to Syria after being dethroned by her brother who was told to do so by his advisers, Achillas and Theodotus.
Women had very few rights, they lived as prisoners, serving men 24 hours a day. Women were sheltered from society, restricted to their husbands and their husbands houses, crying out for help and justice but there is no one to there to hear their screams. In the play Antigone when the title character had to sneak out of the house to meet up with Ismene. Ancient Greek men ruled a lot like over protective fathers with teenage daughters. Men were also scared of women gaining confidence and begin thinking on their own or worse taking action or speaking out against men, like in the play Antigone where Antigone confronts Creon by burying Polyneices after Creon strictly stated that no one bury him. If someone were to bury him, the whole Polis would stone them to death. When Creon found out that someone buried Polyneices, he did not even consider that it could have been a women that did it.
Most women in ancient Rome were viewed as possessions of the men who they lived with. Basically they were handed from their father to their new husband at the time of their marriage and submitted any property they owned, or dowry they were given, to their husband. There were however two types of marriage in ancient Rome, Manus and sine Manus. Under the first type, Manus, the woman and all of her property and possessions were placed under the control of her husband and he could do with them how he pleased. Under the second type, sine Manus, the woman remained under the control of her oldest male relative, usually her father or brother. This type of marriage gave women a lot more freedom because they could carry out their own cash businesses, own their own property, and accept inheritance money (Gill, 5).
Pomeroy, Sarah B. -. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women’s History & Ancient History.
Women in antiquity did not have an easy lot in life. They had few, if any, rights. Surviving early records of the civilizations of antiquity from ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and Rome suggest the diversity of women’s roles differed little from region to region. There were a few exceptions, mostly concerning women of nobility and the city-state of Sparta. Excluding the rare instances mentioned most antique women were generally limited on education, mobility, and almost all possibilities interfering with domestic or childbearing responsibilities. The limited social roles of women in antiquity suggest the perceived c...
Gender Roles in Ancient Greek Society Throughout history, the roles of women and men have always differed to some degree. In ancient Greece, the traditional roles were clear-cut and defined. Women stayed home to care for children and do housework while men left to work. This system of society was not too far off the hunter gatherer concept where women cared for the house and the men hunted.
... Egyptian women were looked at differently than men; their role was that of the nurturer and the caregiver, the bearer of a family’s future. They were just as important to the society as the men. Ancient Egypt was a very complex world, and just as complex was the role that women played in its society. They were not free, but they also were not enslaved. They were vital, but only in terms of their husbands and their children. Egypt offered women a far more free life than the rest of the ancient world. In the end, women played a secondary role to men putting their desires for achievement aside so their husband could be king.
Women were often subjects of intense focus in ancient literary works. In Sarah Pomeroy’s introduction of her text Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, she writes, “Women pervade nearly every genre of classical literature, yet often the bias of the author distorts the information” (x). It is evident in literature that the social roles of women were more restricted than the roles of men. And since the majority of early literature was written by men, misogyny tends to taint much of it. The female characters are usually given negative traits of deception, temptation, selfishness, and seduction. Women were controlled, contained, and exploited. In early literature, women are seen as objects of possession, forces deadly to men, cunning, passive, shameful, and often less honorable than men. Literature reflects the societal beliefs and attitudes of an era and the consistency of these beliefs and attitudes toward women and the roles women play has endured through the centuries in literature. Women begin at a disadvantage according to these societal definitions. In a world run by competing men, women were viewed as property—prizes of contests, booty of battle and the more power men had over these possessions the more prestigious the man. When reading ancient literature one finds that women are often not only prizes, but they were responsible for luring or seducing men into damnation by using their feminine traits.