> >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?
M. I. Finley puts it this way in _The Ancient Greeks_ (NY: Penguin Books, 1963):
***** Aristotle argued in the eighth book of the _Ethics_ that true friendship is possible only between equals, so that the relationship between man and woman is of a lower order, each was translating into his own terms the actual behaviour-patterns on the social level on which he lived. In the upper classes one did not _live_ in the family in the sense of finding companionship there. For that one went to other men or to other women, usually to both, and companionship was physical and spiritual together. The whole situation is perfectly summed up in the vocabulary. _Hetairos_ is an old Greek word for 'comrade-in-arms', a term of the military aristocracy. It emerges in classical Athens as _hetaireia_, the upper-class dining-club, very likely made up of members of the same age-group; but also as _hetaira_, a 'courtesan' (not to be confused with a _porne_, a common prostitute). Pederasty was a feature of military _elites_, as in Sparta and Thebes, and in other communities of the upper classes (and therefore of the intellectual _elite_). Homosexuality, the direction of sexual impulses solely to members of the same sex, was something quite different, the object of contempt and malicious jokes. The normal pattern was a bisexuality, so that two complementary institutions co-existed, the family taking care of what we may call the material side, pederasty (and the courtesan) the affective, and to a degree the intellectual, side of a man's intimate life.
For the lower and middle classes the evidence is both sparse and confused, but perhaps the right interpretation is that, though bisexuality was accepted throughout the society, institutionally the family tended to monopolize the field....[P]overty [of the lower and middle classes], leaving men little leisure and no money to spend,...gave their wives, whose labour on farms and in shops was indispensable, a measure of equality. In one respect, however, the unequal relationship never changed: both in law and in practice there was a double standard of sexual morality. This can be seen in its simplest terms in the narrow, one-sided definition of adultery, which never meant anything other than sexual intercourse between a married woman and a man not her husband. The offense, it need hardly be added, was against the husband, just as rape or seduction was an offence against the father or guardian, not against the woman. (146-7) *****
At 1:05 AM +1100 5/17/01, Rob Schaap wrote:
>But their pantheon is interesting, no? Lots of powerful
>intelligent and dignified deities of distinctly female form up there! Just
>makes me wonder whether 'well born' women mightn't have had significant
>social power and status once (eg before 6th century BC), and then had it
>taken away from them later on - things can change a lot in a century or so.
Ellen Meiksins Wood writes in _Peasant-Citizen and Slave: the Foundations of Athenian Democracy_ (London: Verso, 1988):
***** [I]t remains a remarkable feature of Greek history that the position of women seems to have declined as the democracy evolved, and that in non-democratic states -- notably Sparta and possibly the Cretan cities (if the laws of Gortyn are any indication of a more general disposition in Crete) -- they enjoyed a more privileged status, especially in their rights of property. For example, while Athenian heiresses (_epikleroi_) were obliged to marry the next-of-kin in order to preserve the family property, Spartan women could inherit in their own right. And while aristocratic women in Athens were increasingly confined to their quarters in the home as the aristocratic household economy gave way to the 'city-state' and indeed to a decline in the unchallenged superiority of the aristocracy in general, their Spartan counterparts experienced a degree of freedom which deeply offended non-Spartan Greeks. (115) *****
At 10:55 AM -0500 5/16/01, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Rob Schaap wrote:
> > and Pericles's
>> patronising ravings (funny, that; his wife was a formidable and
>> intellectual presence by all accounts),
>
>No -- his "mistress" was. We know nothing of his wife (or at least I
>don't -- I've read quite a bit of ancient history and never recall any
>reference to her)
Right. Rob is thinking of the celebrated Aspasia, a Miletus-born courtesan with whom Pericles fell in love. Socrates says in Plato's _Menexenus_:
***** [235e] Menexenus And do you think that you yourself would be able to make the speech [a funeral oration], if required and if the Council were to select you?
Socrates That I should be able to make the speech would be nothing wonderful, Menexenus; for she who is my instructor is by no means weak in the art of rhetoric; on the contrary, she has turned out many fine orators, and amongst them one who surpassed all other Greeks, Pericles, the son of Xanthippus.
Menexenus Who is she? But you mean Aspasia, no doubt.
Socrates I do and; also Connus the son of Metrobius... [236b] but I was listening only yesterday to Aspasia going through a funeral speech for these very people. For she had heard the report you mention, that the Athenians are going to select the speaker; and thereupon she rehearsed to me the speech in the form it should take, extemporizing in part, while other parts of it she had previously prepared, as I imagine, at the time when she was composing the funeral oration which Pericles delivered; and from this she patched together sundry fragments.
Menexenus Could you repeat from memory that speech of Aspasia?
Socrates Yes, if I am not mistaken; for I learnt it, to be sure, from her as she went along, [236c] and I nearly got a flogging whenever I forgot. *****
And Socrates proceeds to recite the entire speech to Menexenus. Upon the conclusion of the recited speech:
***** Menexenus And by Zeus, Socrates, Aspasia, by your account, deserves to be congratulated if she is really capable of composing a speech like that, woman though she is.
Socrates Nay, then, if you are incredulous, come along with me and listen to a speech from her own lips.
Menexenus I have met with Aspasia many a time, Socrates, and I know well what she is like.
Socrates Well, then, don't you admire her, and are you not grateful to her now for her oration?
Menexenus Yes, I am exceedingly grateful, Socrates, for the oration [249e] to her or to him -- whoever it was that repeated it to you; and what is more, I owe many other debts of gratitude to him that repeated it.
Socrates That will be fine! Only be careful not to give me away, so that I may report to you later on many other fine political speeches of hers.... *****
[For the entire dialogue, visit <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180&query=head%3D%234>.]
On one hand, Aspasia is praised for her accomplishment; on the other hand, compliment is a backhanded one, in that the point of the dialogue (as well as other works by Plato) is to make fun of orators & slight the importance of rhetoric (and Plato's contempt for rhetoric & rhetoric teachers originates in his dislike of participatory democracy under which he thinks the irrational masses are often misled by demagogues, instead of being guided by philosopher-kings).
Yoshie