Rob Schaap wrote:
>
> G'day Yoshie,
>
> >There is no doubt that Aristotle's virtues were aristocratic (& manly
> >to boot), and that is because Aristotle lived in the world in which
> >freedom _& leisure_ were reserved for ruling-class men.
>
> What evidence is there that aristocratic women had it so tough, btw?
>
Such overwhelming evidence that G.E.M. De Ste. Croix was moved to suggest in his _The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World_ that while peasant women in Athens belonged to the peasantry, etc. that ruling-class women constituted a separate _class_ from ruling-class men. Sparta was a male dominated country, but its contrast to Athens (in the social status of women) was so great that Aristotle referred to it as a country ruled by women.
Carrol
P.S. One might qualify Yoshie's statement about freedom and leisure with the observation that from the standpoint of both Plato and Aristotle peasants and artisans ("the mob") enjoyed way too much freedom & leisure. You might say that Plato's core beef about the "Sophists" was that they dared teach rhetoric (i.e., the art of living) to those who ought to have been too busy slaving for aristocrats to indulge in intellectual pastimes.