The Contribution Of Women In Ancient Greece

Wives of Greek The Athenian historian, political philosopher and general Thucydides said ones, “The greatest glory [for women] is to be least talked about among men, whether in praise or blame”. Most of the sources that survived from the Ancient Greece are written for men for men. According to the historian and novelist Helena P. Schrader, this is because, " There are surviving evidence about work of art featuring women, but just a few of information about their accomplishments and contributes to the Greek society. Women at this time only had a few rights comparing to the male citizens, for example, they were unable to vote, own land or inherit without a man on their lives. Also, their main purpose in life was to rearing of children and taking care of their husbands. This varied from city-state to city-state, but on most of them the father owned his daughter, like a property, until the daughter got marriage. Considering all this oppression that the wives of Greek were submitted, there still existed many of powerful and influential of them in the Ancient Greece history. However, there are just a few of documented evidences about them, because most of the Greek historians wrote more likely about the Persian queens than the wives of Greek. However, there were many notable women in ancient Greece that performed such accomplishments that those male Greek historians couldn’t ignore and feel the need of written about them. The Queen Gorgo was the daughter of king Cleomenes, but she was known better as wife of the bravest general King Leonidas, whom leaded Sparta in the war with Persia. When Leonidas was losing his fight against the King Xerxes send a message to alert Sparta, but the message was encrypted in order to pass the enemy line. When the message arrive to Sparta any of the generals could decipher it, and thanks to the Queen Gorgo, which she was the one that figure out how to decipher the message from her King, they were able to be prepare for the Persians. Also, she is one of the few women that the historian Herodotus wrote about. According to Herodotus, “This was very risky - what if he should be caught? - and the only way he could find to get the message to them was to take a folding writing-tablet, scrape off the wax, and write about the king 's decision on the bare wood of the tablet. Then he covered the message up again with melted wax so that during its journey the tablet would not arouse the suspicions of the guards on the route”. (7.239) Queen Gorgo was recognized for clever and influential in the ancient history, and not only because of Leonidas. The writer and historian Helena P. Schrader described her as intellectual, self-confident, outspoken and involved in the body politic. Gorgo was more than a Queen, she stepped out because her interest for her people. Also, she was even feature in the films “The 300 Spartans “(1962 CE) where her role was played by Anna Synodinou and in the films “300 “(2006 CE) and “300: Rise of an Empire” (2014 CE) played by Lena Headey and portrayed according to the traditional view of her as a strong and noble woman. Perhaps equally impressive were the contributions of female philosophers in Greek history. While some scholars deny the existence of any women philosophers, Mary …show more content…
However there is not too many evidence that mentioned her, there are some writers that documented her life and her work. For instead, In the book “Women in Ancient Greece” by. Sue Blundell has a few pages about her life and work. This book mentioned that apparently Sappho from Lesbos was a lesbian poet that most of her works were love poems, which were directed towards to another women. This fact was on of the reasons why her poems didn’t survive intact. Like her work was linked to homosexuality, later on the Christians writers destroyed most of her work. As result of the Christians actions, Sappho was almost completely removed from historical records. However, Sue Blundell wasn’t the only that felt fascinated to write about Sappho of Lesbos, Viky Leon, on the same book mentioned before