Marriage and Social Roles

Question 1

What are some key generalizations of marriage and social roles in Greek and Roman histories?

Answer 1

Greek and Roman societies have broad similarities in them.

1. Demographic Realities: Low life expectancy, lots of pregnancies, not a lot of adult children
2. People seems to value monogamy, but men could have sex outside of marriage. 3. Marriages were arranged, with the expectation that you would learn to love each other eventually (see reading #42, a married woman begs her father not to remarry her to a richer man, referencing how this first marriage was arranged and she now loves her husband)
3. The focus of marriage was property, inheritance, and children

Question 2

When did women get married? What were their other options? What was their relationship with property?

Answer 2

1. Most everyone got married, you had very limited options otherwise. Other options were slavery, prostitution, concubinage.
2. Women usually marry in teens or early 20s to older men
3. Women have separate property, with a lot of limits on their control of it. They do have to give the dowry back in the case of divorce

Question 3

What was marriage like for women in Classical Athens

Answer 3

1. Oikos: House, family, and family’s property with the father at the head
2. Law makes the assumption that women will have a responsible male (kurios). First their father, then their husband
3. Athenian citizens must have Athenian mother and Athenian father, so marriage stays between Athenian
4. Athenian women do not have political rights, but they are “astai”, people with social rights and roles in religious ceremonies
5. Epikleros: Heiress, inherit wealth without getting married.
6. Husbands could get divorced easily, women had to have permission from their family.

Question 4

What was marriage like in Sparta?

Answer 4

1. Helots: People that Spartans conquered and enslaved
2. Lots of source bias, but we think it works quite differently
3. Men lived a collective military life, women were empowered to do a lot more things. If men snuck out to see their wives, so they were seen as weak
4. Women have property rights, they’re educated, physical training because they believed it gave them stronger babies. Only applied to 30% of the population
5. Marriage through kidnapping was a common practice

Question 5

What was Roman Marriage and family like?

Answer 5

1. Unequal companionships vs. total subordination (Athens)
2. Women still didn’t have political status, but they did have political and social status
3. Patria Potestas: A continued link to your birth family, based off different marriages
4. People marry more off of social status than family links
5. Women have a lot more property and recognition. Married women’s property is separate from the husband’s, but still controlled by the father
6. Adult women were supposed to have guardians (tutores) to supervise them in business deals, but this practice wasn’t usually followed
7. Divorce was pretty easy, but not socially acceptable. children will stay with the father

Question 6

What is the Athenian Oikos

Answer 6

1. Strict ideological division between political outside world (polis) and domestic world (oikos)
2. Houses are supposed to be separated in men’s (andron) and women’s (gynaikon) quarters, but this didn’t usually happen
3. Women in the home was an ethical value, but reality and women’s inclinations often intervene
4. Social exceptions were also made for religious ceremonies and family gathering, as well as lower class women doing retail trade. Those in more precarious family situations (concubines, 106) probably have more autonomy due to material insecurity
   Women didn’t even have autonomy in their own spheres, given that the men still “ran the family”. Jealousy between women is often an issue

Question 7

What are some case studies from the readings about Athenian oikos?

Answer 7

245: Thesleff: Advice about a husband cheating with a heater (prostitute). Says don’t be jealous, just keep being a good wife and wait it out until he realizes what he has

#98: Widow of Diodotus, Athens 400 BC: Complex situations in a woman’s life cycle. Woman’s speech to a court, read by her son saying that her kyrios (male money manager) is spending all her money, making the case that he should go away
#105: The murder of Eratosthenes by Lysias, Athens, 400 BC:
Tries to make his marriage sound normal, ruined by Eratosthenes.
Says his wife runs that house and finances the man brings in.
They are able to have separate chambers, wife sleeps with him at night and then the baby stays in her quarters. Eratosthenes is the villain who saw her in public and is seducing her, “corrupts” his wife which justifies the murder.