The study of
civilizations, with their rise and fall in world history, can be done through
the lens of many different schools of thought. The transition of Greece from
its influential Classical period through the dominance of Macedonia and
Alexander the Great and then spread of Greek culture throughout the
Mediterranean yields a ripe field of study for the disciplines of military
history, political history, and even art and cultural history. One field of
study that has lagged behind is the history of women and their lives as the
Greek civilization changed. While it is true the influence of the classical
Greek culture has shaped the political and cultural development of the Western
world it is in the age of Hellenism that the role women played in society became
not just subject of literary drama but real life drama as well. During
the Hellenistic period the identity of “woman” could, for the first time,
become more than what they had been relegated to previously, housewife or "hetaira"
(Pomeroy 89).
To understand how the status
of Greek women may have shifted from the Classical period it is necessary to
first address the lives of women in the center of Greek culture, Athens. Gomme
describes the view of women during this period, thus: "...legally, socially,
and in general estimation women occupied a low place in Athens in the fifth and
fourth centuries.."(Gomme, 2). During this period Athenian culture had
been influenced by its Ionian neighbors. As Katz explains,"...under the
influence of neighboring peoples of Asia Minor, [Ionians] inaugurated the
exclusion of women from the public sphere and their confinement to the home and
to the company of female friends. The Athenians adopted the practice from their
fellow Ionians...Prostitution...sprang up as the inevitable corollary to the
seclusion of well-born women..."(Katz, 73). This seclusion of women to
their homes became a way of dividing and subordinating the female population to
either a possession of men as a wife to bear children and maintain their households
or the possession of men as a “female companion”, or hetaira. The division of
men and women into quite different spheres created a society where men had the
freedom of engaging in the public space while women’s space became more limited
and less significant. As Pomeroy points out “While men spent most of their day
in public arenas such as the marketplace and the gymnasium, respectable women
remained at home...residential quarters were dark, squalid, and
unsanitary" (Pomeroy, 79).
The
few women who managed to claim the attention and respect of Athenian men were
usually hetaira, “escorts” of not only remarkable beauty but talent and
intelligence as well. Plutarch writes of one such woman, Aspasia. Consort to
the great Athenian ruler Pericles, Plutarch characterizes her influence in this
way:
…
some say that Pericles resorted unto her, because she was a wise woman, and had
great understanding in matters of state and government. For Socrates himself
went to see her sometimes with his friends: and those that used her company
also brought their wives with them many times to hear her talk ... And to
Plato’s book entitled Menexenus … this story is written truly: that this
Aspasia was repaired unto by divers of Athenians, to learn the art of rhetoric
from her. (Plutarch, 161)
While women like
Aspasia had great freedom to interact with a variety of Athenian men, and
sometimes even their wives, and held great influence in her social circle this
freedom was not one afforded to the Athenian housewife.
The “free women” of Athens
were restricted to an inner life, lived for the most part within the inner
walls of their home to prevent them from coming into contact with men with whom
they were not related (Pomeroy, 81). There was no liberal education and
engagement in political and intellectual debate, like might have been seen in
Aspasia’s world. For the wives of Athens seclusion became codified as a
signifier of status. As Pomeroy explains
Women
stayed home not only because their work did not allow them much chance to get
out but because of the influence of public opinion. Many families were likely
to own at least one female slave, but even a woman with slaves was tied down by
the demands of her household....Wealthier women were most likely to stay home
and send their slaves on errands. But poor women, lacking slaves, could not be
kept in seclusion ... (Pomeroy, 79-80)
The poorer a female was
the more range of freedom she had by sheer necessity to run her home and
survive economically, though the only women with any economic independence in
Athenian society were those who made their money through prostitution (Pomeroy,
91).
The
irony of seclusion lies in its inverse relationship to the political structure
of Athens during the fifth century BCE. Katz notes that it actually became a
growing social norm “at just the time when democratic ideals of liberty were
institutionalized....Athenian men now turned to the company of hetairas
("female companions") for the female intellectual stimulation [they
could not find at home]" (Katz, 73). As men were establishing democratic
principles and engaging in political and philosophical debates that would
greatly influence the future of not just Athens but eventually the Western
world their wives were often being pushed inside and out of public engagement.
But political change in the mid fourth century will impact the lives of women
in an unexpected way, with the development of what will be known as
“Hellenistic queens”. These royal women would become major players in political
battles and intrigues often becoming both perpetrator and victim.
While Athenians were crafting more democratic government
their Macedonian neighbors to the north were, “ hardly more than a geographical
expression, ...The kings of Macedon sat on uneasy thrones, their hold on power
and the unity of the kingdom itself repeatedly threatened by … invasions and
the intervention of various Greek states on behalf of rival Macedonian dynasts”
(www.historians.org).
It was under the leadership of Philip II from 359 to 336 BCE that
Macedonian power consolidated and began to expand across Greece
(www.historians.org). This shift in power brings with it a new type of power
player to the political scene: the mother who would be Queen.
One
such queen was Philip II’s wife and the mother of Alexander the Great,
Olympias. When Philip II was assassinated at his daughter’s wedding in 336 BCE
it was rumored that Olympias had been behind it. Because the assassin was
captured and killed there is no way to know for certain. However, “... She does
seem to have been responsible for killing Philip's last wife, Cleopatra and
their newborn baby... “as means of insuring her son, Alexander’s succession to
the throne as well as her own continued political security (Salisbury, 256). When
Alexander sets out to defeat the Persians and expand Macedonian power in the
Mediterranean in 338 BCE it is Olympias who “presided over the court in
Macedonia” in direct competition with Alexander’s “viceroy”, Antipater
(Pomeroy, 122).
In
a similar vein, Philip II’s daughter and Alexander’s half-sister, Cynane had
thoughts of who would succeed her half-brother, Alexander, upon his demise. Having
been raised to understand the "art" of battle she taught her
daughter, Eurydice, to seek power and they set their sights on a union for
Eurydice with one of Alexander’s “weak-minded” half-brothers who would most
likely be designated his successor. While their marriage goal was
attained Cynane was seen as a potential problem for her son-in-law and was
killed by one of his general’s. Meanwhile, Olympias viewed Eurydice’s power
play as a threat to her own security and eventually had both Eurydice and her
husband executed. In an ironic, if not self-perpetuated twist, Olympias was
also seen as a political threat by her opponent, Antipater’s son, and she too
would be put to death. (Sergeant, 16-17).
These
two examples are just a few in a long line of Macedonian royal women who battle
for personal and political control, a unique development in a world where men
had been the political players up to this point. As Sanford illustrates
in regards to the Hellenistic queens following the death of Alexander the
Great, “Though they seldom ruled in their own right, they were often interested
in dynastic affairs and in Egypt sometimes ruled jointly with their
husbands...Greek women of the upper and middle classes naturally gained in
freedom through the example of courts, and their opportunity for education
increased. (Sanford, 308).
Some
of this freedom was a result of the shift away from the city-state and local
political power to the hegemony of Macedonian rule. As the identity of
citizenship and polis were reshaped by the cosmopolitan underpinnings of the
Hellenistic world the privilege gap between men and women also evolved. Dillon
and James explain this age, spanning from the rise of Macedonian power to the
conquest of the Mediterranean by Rome, as period which gave rise to a new
opportunity for Greek women with a burgeoning ability to obtain and use
economic power:
A
new phenomenon appeared in this period, namely the political and public
prominence of specific elite women who exercised power in a number of ways
...These women need not have been royal and they perceived themselves as having
a right to take an active role in the lives, politics, and even wars of their
cities...Female public patronage began in this period, on many levels, from
helping individual citizens to paying public debts to providing important
public buildings. This pattern of female prominence and participation in public
life appeared throughout this cosmopolitan period. (Dillon, 229).
The era of political
transition of Greek city-state to Macedonian empire became a transition period
for Greek women as well. While full gender equality would not be a result of this
age of cosmopolitan attitudes the opportunity for women to hold power,
political or economic. and to use it was a great step forward from the life of
seclusion they were generally expected to live during the Classical period of
Greece.
