Roles Of Women In Ancient Greece

Most ancient civilizations are very similar in the way that they saw their ruler as a descendant from God, or that they often traded with other civilizations to get something they weren’t able to produce themselves. When looking at the role of women in their culture, the importance of family, marriage, and the religious life between ancient Greece and ancient Egypt, in some aspects they are similar, but in most ways they are worlds apart. When it comes to the role of women in these two ancient civilizations they could not be any more different! In Greece, men were superior to women. Aristotle said that men should rule and that women should be ruled. (Thompson) Hipponax, the Greek poet, said, “There are two days on which a woman is most pleasing, when someone marries her and when he carries out her dead body.” Whereas women in Egypt were considered to be equal to men. If they were wealthy they could even be a pharaoh. Their life was considered to be just as valuable as men. They may not have had quite the same roles around the household, but their lives were valued more than that of the women in ancient Greece. Not much is known about women’s day to day life in Greece because men did not see them as important, so they did not write about them according to …show more content…
Both civilizations were polytheistic. Egypt believed that their Gods is who they should thank for the Nile river, the moon and sun rising and setting, the cycle of the four seasons, birth, death, and so on. (Thompson) In Egypt they were not very strict about religion, whereas in Greece they were “demanded worship and respect from the community as a whole and were quick to strike down any who became self-righteous and overconfident” according to Everyday Life. Greece believed in twelve Gods who represented wisdom, the sun, poetry, love, the seas, and earthquakes. Greece often had large festivals celebrating their Gods.