CCIV 243:
WOMEN AND THE POLIS

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Suggestions for Study
For each Tuesday class, I suggest that you first read through the assigned material, to get an overview of the period covered, the major issues and events in it, and the aspects relating to women. Second, reread the material from Fine, The Ancient Greeks with the notes and questions below in mind: these are designed to help you organize the material for yourself and to alert you to what the major issues are. Also, consult the indicated pages in the Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece (PHA), and follow the links to the supplementary material from Thomas Martin's on-line Overview of Archaic and Classical Greek History (TRM). This will give you a slightly different perspective on the material and will help you to see how historical information can be understood and presented differently. Third, reread the material in Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece and think about the historical period covered in relation to women: what questions occur to you that are not answered by the readings in either Fine or Blundell? Make a list of these and bring them to class. For Tuesday's class, ignore the questions posted for Blundell: in most cases we will discuss these in connection with Thursday's readings. Your reading in Blundell for Tuesday can be more or less casual, and should be used to help you get started in thinking about women in relation to the historical period under discussion. For Thursday's class, read the Blundell chapter more carefully and think about it in more detail (see next paragraph).

For each Thursday class, I suggest that you first read through the assigned primary material, to get an overall sense of what it is about. Second, reread the material with the notes and questions below in mind. These are designed to help you focus your attention on historical and sociological, rather than literary, issues. Third, reread the material in Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece which was assigned for Tuesday. Evaluate your own interpretation of the implications for women of the material against hers. Make notes on your observations and bring them to class.

Assembly: Ekklesia
all citizen men aged 20+
40,000-50,000 male citizens; quorum 6000
meeting-place hill of the Pnyx
40 meetings yearly (four each prytany)
preliminary sacrifice of purification
"Who wishes to speak?"; right of initiative?
example of debate over Mytilene (427)
subjects of decrees (page 411)
graphê paranomôn - trial in popular courts with 1000 dikasts and thesmothetai presiding; conviction resulted in fine or death
assembly as Heliaea through early fifth century
eisangelia (impeachment) before assembly

For an illustration of Amazons on Greek vases, link to this page by Susan Matheson.
And for an interesting commercial site on Amazons, link here.

Here's a little diversion: consider this newspaper advertisement for a film on the Amazons. What does the arrangement, dress, postures, etc. of the figures tell you?

Prologue - This section offers good opportunities for thinking about the relationship between the theater and the assembly: what are the similarities and differences between them as performance spaces? Reflect also on the differences between this and the Lysistrata's opening scene: how do Praxagora and Lysistrata compare as comic heroines?
Parodos - notice that the chorus only now organizes itself into a chorus; what have its members been doing up to now?
Episode - how does the representation of women and men in this scene differ from that in the prologue?
Choral Interlude - how does this choral ode differ from the first? how does it complement it?
Episode - this is the first point in the play where men and women appear onstage together; what characterizes their relationship?
Debate - what do you think of Praxagora's plan? does she propose a utopia or a dystopia (cf. Slater)? what does her notion of the polis as a household reveal about the ideology of the actual oikos? what aspects of the traditional order are maintained and which are discarded? what critical aspects of the polis are left unmentioned?
Episode - this is the first and only scene in which only men appear; how does this restriction affect the characterization and the content of the scene?
Episode - sexual communism at work; compare this scene to the immediately preceding one, and also to the scene of Myrrhine and Kinesias in the Lysistrata
Episode - the only slave in the play (a serving girl); what is the effect of her appearance here?

There are two web sites with interesting discussions of this play. An article by Slater discusses feminism and performance and goes through the scenes of the play in sequence; an article by McCosky deals with women's role in the Thesmophoriazusae and this play from the perspective of feminist theory.

Last updated 2 April 1998