Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach

Jean-Luc Lamboley
Universit de Grenoble II

Dun point de vue strictement institutionnel et politique les femmes nont pas grande place dans le fonctionnement de la dmocratie athnienne, souvent dfinie comme un club dhommes, et lon a tendance rduire leur rle de citoyenne la reproduction des citoyens. Toutefois, par le biais de la religion dont on connat limportance dans toutes les activits de la cit, les femmes occupent une place qui est loin dtre ngligeable. Ltude par exemple des fondations coloniales montre que les femmes, quand elles sont prtresses dun culte poliade, sont indispensables la fondation de la colonie. Cest le cas dAristarch dEphse pour Marseille, ou de Kleoboia pour Thasos. De faon encore plus nette, les artistes grecs, dans ce que la tradition a reconnu comme des chefs duvre, expriment une trs haute ide de la femme. Cest le cas pour les Ergastines de la frise ionique du Parthnon, oeuvre de Phidias; ces vierges, issues de la plus haute aristocratie de la cit, conduisent la procession jusqu lAssemble des dieux et apparaissent ainsi comme des figures mdiatrices entre lhumain et le divin. La Victoire de Samothrace, derrire la simple allgorie dune victoire navale, exprime elle la force vitale conduisant lhumanit, image du progrs des peuples; cest le mme type que lon retrouve dans le fameux tableau de Delacroix, La Libert guidant le peuple. Enfin la fameuse Vnus de Milo, avec son buste de femme mergeant de la matire qui prend forme, incarne la sensualit fminine et lamour comme source de toute vie et de toute cration. Ce sont donc trois aspects de la femme qui vont bien au del dun simple rle politique; les Grecs ont su montrer quelle incarne lhumanit dans ses dimensions les plus universelles.

Jean-Luc Lamboley was born in 1953 in Toulouse, France. He was a student of the cole Normale Suprieure and of the cole franaise de Rome. He is now Professor of History and Archaeology of the Ancient Worlds at the Universit de Grenoble II. His special interests are the contacts between the Greeks and the native populations in the colonial world and problems of acculturation. His works include Lexique dhistoire et de civilisation romaine, Paris 1994; Les Grecs dOccident (la priode archaque), Paris 1996; and Recherches sur les Messapiens, Rome 1996.

If we consider the Greek civilisation from a strictly political angle, that is to say, looking at civil rights, or public activities inside well-established institutions, it is clear that the definition of womens roles is very poor, even non-existent. Citizenship is conceded to women insofar as they give birth to children, and this way, allow to perpetuate a City always controlled by men only. At this point, I could end my speech or take the risk of being outlawed as regards the topic. But if we admit that our modern societies are still based on solid elements coming from classical antiquity the very notion of citizen-

Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach

Politics and Power

ship, democracy, civil and human rights and so on , if we admit that Greek philosophy has conceived universal values, it is not possible to imagine that this civilisation has cancelled womanhood. So my challenge is to show you that the Greeks were able to give us a very high idea of womanhood, but, as is suggested by the title of my text, it will be necessary to move from the political to the religious and artistic field. First, we can note that the law established by Pericles around 451 B.C. is important because it proves that the legal notion of citizenship is pertinent for women who are not completely excluded from the civic community. Let me recall that according to this law a young Athenian could be a citizen only if his father and his mother were citizens in their own right. We may also recall Aristotles statement that the education of women is bound to be important, since they make up a half of the free population (Politics, I, 1260b). [See Source 1] Secondly, the overriding importance of religion in Greek communities in general leads to consider another path to integration in the civic community: I mean priesthood. Indeed, the role of women appears very clearly when we consider the religious life of Greek cities, especially in the archaic period when private and public activities were not as separate as in the classical period and in a particular situation: when a colony, that is to say, a new Greek community, was founded. It seems that a foundation could not be done without the presence of women who brought with them the cults from the mother country, because it was standard practice for the colonists to establish in their new cities the cults that were maintained in their mother cities. So it is impossible to imagine the performance of the rituals of Greek womens cults by a population of largely native women and the idea of Greek men setting out alone to establish a new Greek community without any Greek women is absurd 1. For instance Herodotus (I, 146) [See Source 2] states that when they founded Miletus in Ionia, the Athenian colonists took no women with them and took their wives amidst the local population. The indication of such an attitude from the colonists is the mark of uncommon behaviour, and implies that in Herodotus opinion it was normal for colonists to take women with them. In a more positive way, the presence of women in the colonial expedition is attested by several examples. There is one case where we are expressly told that women and children took part as well as men. This is the Phocean expedition which shared briefly the settlement at Alalia in Corsica (565 B.C.), and later established itself permanently at Elea. However, since this was intended as a complete evacuation of the mother city after the Persian conquest, it is obviously an exception in the history of Greek colonisation. In the case of the foundation of Thurioi by Athenians in 444-443 B.C. in order to reinforce the Sybarites who had failed in their attempt to re-establish their destroyed city, we are told that disputes arose between the original Sybarites and the newcomers. One of the causes of friction was that the Sybarites thought their wives should have preference over the wives of the new colonists when making sacrifices to the gods. So the Athenian colonists of Thurioi brought wives with them. Lastly we have positive evidence for the presence of two Greek women whose name is preserved by the literary sources: Kleoboia at Thasos, and Aristarch of Ephesus at Massalia. It is interesting to observe what they did and what they were. Kleoboia was the first to bring the rites of Demeter from Paros to Thasos. A painting by
2 Jean-Luc Lamboley

Polygnotos at Delphi depicted her as having on her knees a chest of the kind that was usually made for Demeter. She is very likely to be considered as the first priestess of Demeter in Thasos. Aristarch of Massalia was an aristocrat from Ephesus who was instructed in a dream by the goddess Artemis to accompany the Phocean expedition and establish in Massalia a new branch of the cult of Ephesian Artemis. So she took with her the means for such a transfer of a cult, and when the colony was established, the new sanctuary was duly built. Aristarch was given the outstanding honour of being appointed priestess. These last two examples draw our attention to the role of women in the religion of the polis (Greek city). Indeed, intermarriage between Greek and native populations in colonial areas was very common, but such intermarriage is to be distinguished from the practices regarding Greek women during the foundation of a colony. In the case of intermarriage, the question is to favour demography; in the case of the Greek women, the question is to settle the religious basis of the new community. Which is the more political role? In so far as it was common in Greece for female deities to be served by female ministrants and there were many female deities the role of female priestesses was unavoidable. This is already clear from the famous passage in the Iliad (VI, 297 ) where Theano, the wife of Antenor, who has been chosen priestess of Athena by the people, is requested to open the doors of the temple to worship the goddess. We also know of the very important role performed by the wife of the Archon Basileus at Athens; she had to lead the celebration of the secret rites of Dionysos at the Anthesteria, and make sacrifices that could not be named. There were many cults and festivals in Greece which belonged to women or offered women a special role; it is not possible here to give a list of them, but the fulfilment of this task is often used as proof of a womans citizenship and legal marriage. [See Source 3] So the Greek communities, as early as the most archaic period, gave women a very important role through the religious activities which were essential components of private and public life. And now let us study the second approach, the artistic one. What image of womanhood have Greek artists left us? I shall focus on sculpture, choosing only three masterpieces that everyone knows, and I shall try to show that these are masterpieces just because they give us the noblest idea of womanhood. The first one is the slab of the Ergastines, carved in high relief, from the Parthenon east frieze, the work of Phidias the sculptor, the artistic adviser to Pericles for the project (Fig. 1). The frieze, 160 m long, ran around the outside of the central block of the temple, at the top of the wall just inside the outer colonnade. According to the common interpretation, it shows the Panathenaic procession, during the great festival in Athens; all the civic community is represented on the frieze, and the Ergastines are heading the procession (at the end of the frieze just before the Olympian Assembly). These maidens, who belonged to the highest aristocratic families of the City, had to weave for a year a sacred veil for Athena, and during the Panathenaic procession they brought this veil to the Temple of the goddess on the Acropolis. But on the frieze, they do not carry the veil and their duty is different. They march in step very slowly and demurely, under the control of some masters of ceremony, towards the Assembly of the Olympian Gods waiting for their arrival. So we can say that they introduce and enthrone the human city in the divine House. These young priestesses appear as the mediators between men and gods and give manhood its highest dignity.
Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach Politics and Power 3

Fig. 1 East frieze of the Parthenon showing the Ergastines in procession.

In Sophocle's tragedy Antigone Sophocles lived at the same time as Pericles and Phidias we can read (verse 332): the marvels of nature are many, but among all these marvels the most beautiful is man. This is the message Phidias wanted to carve for eternity in the marble of the frieze, and he used the cortege of the wise maidens leading the people to the majesty of the Olympian Assembly. [See Source 4] You can observe that the artistic language is very classical: the intensity of this sacred moment is expressed with very few effects; no agitation, no pompous staging, no dramatic composition as is the case at the beginning of the frieze where the young Athenian cavaliers are parading. The figures are less expressive and emotional than others of the same period, but more deliberately seeking to express an ideal and generalised view of the human subject. You can see the repetition with some variations of the same figures: maidens who are marching two abreast (the first two on the left are very close; in the second group they are further apart, and in the last group on the right, the two girls are completely separated). They seem motionless, static, because they are suffused with the majesty of the gods, but the idea of the slow procession is given by the position of the men who stand still, looking in the opposite direction: the solemn movement is given by the variation between these two attitudes. There is also another movement, very tenuous and subtle: the dropping folds of the peplos. It looks like a shimmer or a trickling, but the best metaphor is a musical one: the folds are at the same time theme and variations, and play as a trill or a tremolo. The trill is a sort of dynamic pause: it varies the note but gives the fullness to the sound; it reconciles the tempo necessary for the succession of the sounds and the pause necessary for enjoying the plenitude of the emotion. But in this case, what is the meaning of this sculptural trill? It is the expression of the sacred shiver caused by the proximity of the gods; it is
4 Jean-Luc Lamboley

the way for the artist to immobilise the tempo of the procession before crossing the threshold of transcendence, and the key of this transcendence is woman, and more exactly the maiden. We can now understand why this frieze was relatively inconspicuous and only to be glanced at between the peristasis and intermittently from a very steep point of view. The message was too hard to be accepted in the middle of the 5th century when the official dogma was that human and divine condition were radically different and without any possibility of intercession. Remember that some friends of Phidias and Pericles had already been condemned for impiety. Now let us have a look to the second masterpiece, the Nik (the goddess Victory) from Samothrace (Fig. 2). The statue no doubt commemorated a great naval victory of an Hellenistic king. The island of Samothrace was a favoured sanctuary for royal dedications.

Fig. 2 The Nik (Victory) of Samotrace.

Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach

Politics and Power

One of the great Antigonid sea victories of the mid-3rd century (for example the battle of Cos in the 250 B.C.) is the most likely context, although a later date, for a Rhodian victory in 190 B.C., has also been favoured. The goddess, with mighty wings outstretched, lands in a rush of fine drapery on the prow of a warship. The statue was framed in its own exedra on a hill above the sanctuary. The ships prow was set obliquely in the exedra so that the statue presented a left three-quarter view, the view for which it was clearly designed. The twisting axes of hips and shoulders and the contours of wings and flying drapery are most telling from this viewpoint. According to the common interpretation, the goddess in landing on the ship wants to be victorious, but I think that the main effect is another one; it gives a leading or pulling effect. The massive and ruffled wind-blown folds, flattened against the body, have a very powerful effect; the goddess is fighting against the natural elements, the wind and the spray or spindrift, and she is irresistibly leading to the Victory. The most striking effect in this statue is its vigour and immediacy. Under the wet clothes, we can observe a very feminine anatomy, for instance the abdomen, the navel, the very graceful left leg ; but in the same time this femininity shows great strength because of a well-built frame with the different anatomic volumes perfectly distributed; they seem animated by a powerful energy expressed by the contrast between the baroque swirl of the folds and the classical solidity and stability of the body; nothing and no one could tear the goddess away from the ship, and nothing and no one could stop the ship from sailing to victory. We can observe the two main lines that structure this work: the first one is the long oblique line constructed with the forward thrust of the breast, and the inclination of the trunk and the left leg like a long spindle; the second one, upright, is the movement of the wings spread backwards. The left wing forms a perfect right angle with the left leg which is very visible because the head is missing; then this right angle itself emphasises the obliquity of the big diagonal designed by the rest of the body. So these two main lines which express at the same time heroic stability and irresistible momentum are the key to understanding the meaning of this statue. The Allegory of Victory does not symbolise simply military power but something more essential: the life forces that generate the progress of peoples and History. Woman is here a capo popolo, the embodiment of such a force. The goddess is not a superwoman in the sense of a super soldier. She is the basic energy able to pull humanity forward in spite of all the obstacles. Along the same line, you may recall the famous painting by Delacroix Liberty leading the people: the artist has put the French flag in place of the wings of the statue, but the figure is the same, the inspiration is the same, the message is the same. Last, but not least, let us observe the famous Aphrodite from Melos found in 1820, and bought for the Louvre as the work of a classical master; in fact, it is an Hellenistic statue dated from the 2nd century B.C. (Fig. 3). The very impersonal expression of the face indicates clearly that it is not a portrait but an ideal and abstract view of woman. The visual approach must be frontal; the slightly raised left foot generates a general waving movement expressed by the long sinusoidal line which frames the general structure of the body, and suggests the apotheosis of woman. We can also notice a strong contrast between the upper and the lower part of the statue emphasised by two parallel lines, the line of the shoulders and the line of the edge of the
6 Jean-Luc Lamboley

Fig. 3 The Aphrodite from Melos.

cloth: while the naked upper body is worked with great sensitivity expressing the great sensuality of feminine flesh, the heavy folds of the drapery, carved in a rather rough manner give a massive form which is masking the nudity only suggested by the outline of the left leg and the toes of the right foot. It has been said that this Aphrodite, originally the goddess of Love, represents profane or secular carnal life. But there are two approaches to this work: we can favour the drop of the drapery revealing the complete female nudity, and so we turn our attention to the erotic power of a voluptuous form. But we can also favour the opposite movement, that is to say the blooming of a female body which is coming to light, emerging from the shapeless matter under the invisible chisel of the sculptor, like a cocoon from the chrysalis. In this case, we witness the birth of Eve and the mystery of creation. What is the message here? Woman is the source of life and love, she comes out from the chaos of the shapeless matter to which she gives form and sense. It is time now to conclude by summing up the main roles that the Greek artists not Greek politicians have defined for women:

Woman as a link between humanity and divinity Woman as embodiment of the irresistible life force of History Woman as source of any life or archetype of any creation.

Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach

Politics and Power

You can see the artistic language is very far from the political speeches, but I think it is stronger and able to suggest fundamental mysteries such as Humanity thy name is woman. The Greek artists told it, and I just wanted to be their spokesman because at the beginning of this new millennium it is important to rekindle the fire of classical antiquity. Do not forget: this light will be new only if it is yours.

NOTES
1

Cf. Graham A.J., Religion, women and Greek colonization, in Religione e citt nel mondo antico, Atti, Centro di ricerche e documentazione sull'antichit classica, 11, Roma 1981-2 (1984), p. 293-314.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Histoire des femmes en Occident. 1. Lantiquit, sous la direction de P. Schmitt-Pantel, Plon 1991. Graham A.J., Religion, women end Greek colonization, in Religione e citt nel mondo antico, Atti, Centro di ricerche e documentazione sullantichit classica, 11, Roma 1981-2 (1984), p. 293-314.

SOURCES
1. Aristotle, Politics, I, 1260b, from Aristotle in 23 volumes, vol. 21, translated by H. Rackham, Cambridge Mass.

Jean-Luc Lamboley

But on these subjects let us conclude our decisions in this manner: while the question of virtue severally belonging to man and woman and children and father, and of the right and wrong mode of conducting their mutual intercourse and the proper way of pursuing the good mode and avoiding the bad one, are matters that it will be necessary to follow up in the part of our treatise dealing with the various forms of constitution. For since every household is part of a state, and these relationships are part of the household, and the excellence of the part must have regard to that of the whole, it is necessary that the education both of the children and of the women should be carried on with a regard to the form of constitution, if it makes any difference as regards the goodness of the state for the children and the women to be good. And it must necessarily make a difference; for the women are a half of the free population, and the children grow up to be the partners in the government of the state. So that as these questions have been decided, and those that remain must be discussed elsewhere, let us relinquish the present subjects as completed, and make a fresh start in our discourse, and first let us consider those thinkers who have advanced views about the ideal State. 2. Herodotus, Histories, I, 146, from Herodotus with an English translation by A. D. Godley, Cambridge Mass. 1920.

For this reason and for no other, the Ionians too made twelve cities; for it would be foolishness to say that these are more truly Ionian or better born than the other Ionians; since not the least part of them are Abantes from Euboea, who are not Ionians even in name, and there are mingled with them Minyans of Orchomenus, Cadmeans, Dryopians, Phocian renegades from their nation, Molossians, Pelasgian Arcadians, Dorians of Epidaurus and many other tribes; and as for those who came from the very town-hall of Athens and think they are the best born of the Ionians, these did not bring wives with them to their settlements, but married Carian women whose parents they had put to death. For this slaughter, these women made a custom and bound themselves by oath (and enjoined it on their daughters) that no one would sit at table

Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach

Politics and Power

with her husband or call him by his name, because the men had married them after slaying their fathers and husbands and sons. This happened at Miletus. 3. Homer, Iliad, Book VI, line 297, from Homer, Homeri Opera in five volumes, Monro D.B., Allen T. W. (eds), Oxford 1920

When they reached the temple of Athena, lovely Theano, daughter of Kisseus and wife of Antenor, opened the doors, for the Trojans had made her priestess of Athena. The women lifted up their hands to the goddess with a loud cry, and Theano took the robe to lay it on the knees of Athena, praying the while to the daughter of the great Zeus. 4. Sophocles, Antigone, 332-341, from Sophocles, The Antigone of Sophocles, Jebb R. (ed.), Cambridge, 1891

Chorus Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. This power spans the sea, even when it surges white before the gales of the south-wind, and makes a path under swells that threaten to engulf him. Earth, too, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, he wears away to his own ends, turning the soil with the offspring of horses as the plows weave to and fro year after year.

10

Jean-Luc Lamboley

Women in Ancient Greece: a Political and Artistic Approach

Politics and Power

11

12

Jean-Luc Lamboley