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Authors: Stephanie Coontz
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moments of the play Athena, by now the patron goddess of Athens, confirms Apollo’s judgment. In a conciliatory gesture, however, she offers the Furies a new role if they become the “Friendly Goddesses,” blessing people’s homes and gardens rather than enforcing the claims of blood. They can settle in Athens and be worshiped by a grateful citizenry if they will call an end to family feuds and blood vengeance: “Let war be with the stranger, at the stranger’s gate./There let men fall in love with glory; but at home/Let no cocks fight.”
In the “happy ending” to this tale of wrongs and opposing wrongs, the Furies become the defenders of a nonpolitical form of marriage and of the priority of civil law over family feuds and vendettas. They encourage people to honor such traditional aristocratic virtues as kinship ties, ancestral gods, and heroism in battle, but to do so in the service of the state rather than of family or personal interests. Marriage is to be a private affair, marked by dominance of the husband and subordination of the wife and producing orderly inheritance from father to son.
The Oresteia was not, of course, real history. But it spoke to the widespread discontent with the personal and marital intrigues of aristocratic rule. The cycle premiered in Athens just four years after a series of major reforms had expanded the authority of civic institutions and further undercut aristocratic politics based on family and marriage. These included a citizen assembly open to all male citizens over eighteen years of age; a popular court where six thousand jurors, chosen without regard to class, decided legal disputes; and an executive council chosen by lot.
The fear of powerful women expressed in The Oresteia and many other Greek tragedies reflected a distrust of aristocrats’ extended family ties. Athenian leaders were anxious to convert marriage into an association of two individuals rather than two kin groups. While they did not prevent aristocrats or rich commoners from contracting economically and politically advantageous marriages, they did make a concerted effort to relegate women to a private, secondary sphere of life, so that women could not confer status in their own right.
One law enacted by Pericles in 451-50 B.C. declared that a man could not be a citizen of Athens unless his mother as well as his father was Athenian. This seems to contradict the idea that women were not even the true parents of their children, merely vessels that carried men’s seed. But the law aimed to reduce the number of strategic marriages in which Athenian aristocrats took foreign wives and forged connections with powerful in-laws in another city-state or empire. An Athenian who contracted such a marriage would deprive his heirs of citizenship rights.
The world’s first experiment in democratic government did nothing to improve the rights and social status of wives. At every point in her life a woman in Greece was subject to the formal guardianship of a man. While she was unmarried, her father and brother controlled her behavior and were responsible for her support, including providing her with a dowry so that she could be married. Upon her marriage, the husband took control. Not even widowhood freed a woman from subordination to men because after her husband’s death her sons had authority to act on her behalf.
The transfer of authority from father to husband was arranged at the betrothal, when the father declared, “I give you this woman for the procreation of legitimate children.” The young man replied, “I take her,” and the father announced the amount of dowry agreed upon. A husband had a unilateral right to divorce, although if he repudiated his wife without cause, he had to return the dowry with 18 percent interest. 3
Wives in wealthy Greek families generally remained indoors or in the inner courtyards of the home, spending much of their time in upstairs rooms that could be closed off from the rest of
In the “happy ending” to this tale of wrongs and opposing wrongs, the Furies become the defenders of a nonpolitical form of marriage and of the priority of civil law over family feuds and vendettas. They encourage people to honor such traditional aristocratic virtues as kinship ties, ancestral gods, and heroism in battle, but to do so in the service of the state rather than of family or personal interests. Marriage is to be a private affair, marked by dominance of the husband and subordination of the wife and producing orderly inheritance from father to son.
The Oresteia was not, of course, real history. But it spoke to the widespread discontent with the personal and marital intrigues of aristocratic rule. The cycle premiered in Athens just four years after a series of major reforms had expanded the authority of civic institutions and further undercut aristocratic politics based on family and marriage. These included a citizen assembly open to all male citizens over eighteen years of age; a popular court where six thousand jurors, chosen without regard to class, decided legal disputes; and an executive council chosen by lot.
The fear of powerful women expressed in The Oresteia and many other Greek tragedies reflected a distrust of aristocrats’ extended family ties. Athenian leaders were anxious to convert marriage into an association of two individuals rather than two kin groups. While they did not prevent aristocrats or rich commoners from contracting economically and politically advantageous marriages, they did make a concerted effort to relegate women to a private, secondary sphere of life, so that women could not confer status in their own right.
One law enacted by Pericles in 451-50 B.C. declared that a man could not be a citizen of Athens unless his mother as well as his father was Athenian. This seems to contradict the idea that women were not even the true parents of their children, merely vessels that carried men’s seed. But the law aimed to reduce the number of strategic marriages in which Athenian aristocrats took foreign wives and forged connections with powerful in-laws in another city-state or empire. An Athenian who contracted such a marriage would deprive his heirs of citizenship rights.
The world’s first experiment in democratic government did nothing to improve the rights and social status of wives. At every point in her life a woman in Greece was subject to the formal guardianship of a man. While she was unmarried, her father and brother controlled her behavior and were responsible for her support, including providing her with a dowry so that she could be married. Upon her marriage, the husband took control. Not even widowhood freed a woman from subordination to men because after her husband’s death her sons had authority to act on her behalf.
The transfer of authority from father to husband was arranged at the betrothal, when the father declared, “I give you this woman for the procreation of legitimate children.” The young man replied, “I take her,” and the father announced the amount of dowry agreed upon. A husband had a unilateral right to divorce, although if he repudiated his wife without cause, he had to return the dowry with 18 percent interest. 3
Wives in wealthy Greek families generally remained indoors or in the inner courtyards of the home, spending much of their time in upstairs rooms that could be closed off from the rest of
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