Women In Ancient Greece

Greece, before the time of Christ, was a thriving era filled with new philosophy, political standards, and technological advances. It was a time of moving forward in a lot of ways, but in different areas, Greece stayed very primitive as well. One example of how Greece stayed primitive was their attitudes and ideas about their women. By examining the attitudes of the men in ancient Greece, we can deduce that they believed that women were to stay silent, there were certain activities women should never be allowed to participate in, and women should be confined to stay in the private life of a man. Women were quiet back in the times of ancient Greece. The general public at this time believed that “Silence is a woman’s glory,” and that if a woman stayed meek and silent, she was fulfilling her duty. Men even spoke for women in front of judges and juries. Pericles addressed the silence of women in his famous funeral oration. His advice to women, in particular, has been severed from its intended audience and reduced to an ideological prescription calling for silence and only silence from Athenian women. Why this demand for quiet was because men believed women had nothing to say or simply weren’t …show more content…
As sad as it, women were just something for men to come home to. While there were times that they were included in public events and the public atmosphere, a women’s time was spent at home. Some exceptions to this rigid social convention were weddings, funerals and state religious festivals in which women were expected to play prominent public roles. But other than those few exceptions, custom dictates that Greek woman had to limit their time outside the house to visiting with her nearest female neighbors. Women weren’t to be displayed by men and certainly were not treated as prized