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Ras Het posted:Ancient Athenians weren't Startroopers characters, you know? It isn't inconceivable for dude in 400 BC to enjoy talking with women, you know? Sure, but it's remarkable that the one exception to the otherwise repressive social attitudes about women in Athens should take the form of prostitutes. It also isn't inconceivable for dudes in 400 BC to think women are categorically inferior to men, particularly in qualities of rationality. If the entirety of the story was that ancient Athenian dudes just liked to talk to educated women, why wouldn't they have just abandoned the whole patriarchy thing and started educating their women?
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Sep 1, 2013 20:16
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Tao Jones posted:Sure, but it's remarkable that the one exception to the otherwise repressive social attitudes about women in Athens should take the form of prostitutes. It also isn't inconceivable for dudes in 400 BC to think women are categorically inferior to men, particularly in qualities of rationality. If the entirety of the story was that ancient Athenian dudes just liked to talk to educated women, why wouldn't they have just abandoned the whole patriarchy thing and started educating their women? Because the Greeks weren't some monolithic block, but actual people? Aristotle and Plato both leaned hard on the 'wimin are dum' line of thinking, Plato thought they especially needed to be educated because of this, Aristotle thought educating women was a lost cause. So he'd probably be your 'talking parrot' type. Socrates is recorded by Plato (so, 'Socrates') as having talked to women and respected at least some female opinions. Xenophon outright says 'they're as smart as men but not as strong, ergo leave them indoors while we all go stab each other' in a bit of 'separate but equal,' 1950's sort of vibe. The Lysistrata and other works of fiction often (though obviously not always...) show women as just as smart/intelligent/whatever as men. At the end of the day you've got to remember that you're dealing with a city named after a goddess of wisdom and come to terms with the idea that things can be more complex than 'hurhur women dumb' or 'why yes, everyone is perfectly capable and should be treated equally regardless of gender.'
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Sep 1, 2013 21:40
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Tao Jones posted:If the entirety of the story was that ancient Athenian dudes just liked to talk to educated women, why wouldn't they have just abandoned the whole patriarchy thing and started educating their women? Why do people enjoy sex and basically want to have as much of it as possible, yet denigrate sexually open women on really bizarre ethical and religious bases? Social mores are often counterproductive and paradoxical, because their original purpose might lose its relevance and leave people with a pointless code of behaviour, which they stick to thanks to conservatism.
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Sep 1, 2013 22:06
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the JJ posted:At the end of the day you've got to remember that you're dealing with a city named after a goddess of wisdom and come to terms with the idea that things can be more complex than 'hurhur women dumb' or 'why yes, everyone is perfectly capable and should be treated equally regardless of gender.' Goddess worship does not necessarily preclude a society from being misogynistic.
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Sep 1, 2013 22:11
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Ras Het posted:Why do people enjoy sex and basically want to have as much of it as possible, yet denigrate sexually open women on really bizarre ethical and religious bases? Social mores are often counterproductive and paradoxical, because their original purpose might lose its relevance and leave people with a pointless code of behaviour, which they stick to thanks to conservatism. Sure, I'm with you and I think we're thinking the same sort of thing, but expressing it a little differently. Counterproductive and paradoxical social attitudes don't change very easily, and when they do, they don't change in ways that threaten the underlying fabric of society. So I think the desire to speak with educated women had to manifest itself in a way that was non-threatening to the underlying Athenian patriarchy, which was among the most oppressive in the Greek world. So I don't think that the prostitution element of hetaera was an accident - if educated women existed at all in ancient Athens, the only way that could be permitted is if they were another sub-class of denigrated women who were scratching a male itch. Since this discussion came up with regard to whether or not feminism could be said to exist in the ancient world, it seems to me that if hetaera are to be admitted as an example of feminism in ancient Athens, then I think we'd have to better define what we mean by feminism.
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Sep 1, 2013 22:33
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Also keep in mind how good people are at mental gymnastics. Misogynists make tons of exceptions and ifs and buts. A guy who rants about whores who just want to manipulate men probably doesn't think that way about his beloved daughter. It's just most women, like those other ones in the paper or whatever. I don't doubt that some Athenians thought that their hetaira was different (but seriously don't give the rest rights ugh they'll ruin the treehouse). There's Assemblywomen, another Athenian comedy, where women take control of the city and run a utopian communist-ish government. Some people try to read it as an ironic failure, but you have to to jump through quite a few hoops to get there. It's a comic fantasy, not a ten point plan for a new government, but it's a usually pretty conservative part of Athenian culture that goes far deeper than 'those crazy women, amirite?' (Also you get the impression that some academics really didn't take kindly to the superior Greeks  portraying communism in a good light.)
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Sep 1, 2013 22:55
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If all men or women are one way, people typically want their man or woman to be an exception to that generalization. I don't know why, but everyone wants their partner to be special. Which usually implies intellect and smarts and conversationalism.
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Sep 2, 2013 02:10
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And I can't help but wonder if the whole "women are for babies, men are for lovers" thing was just a bit exaggerated.
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Sep 2, 2013 02:29
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Alan Smithee posted:And I can't help but wonder if the whole "women are for babies, men are for lovers" thing was just a bit exaggerated. Any really broad and alien (to us) attitude like that from antiquity could easily be either an exaggeration or something peculiar to a relatively small group of people, or even just to the individual whose writing happened to survive. I mean, imagine there's a modern apocalypse and 2000 years later somebody stumbles across a vault full of Glenn Beck or Alex Jones recordings. Some of the poo poo we think we know about antiquity is totally untrue propaganda or just personal opinion cast as facts, but there's often no way to know for sure. I'm sure plenty of Athenian men loved their wives even if there was a sort of stigma against it at some point, human nature doesn't change that much. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 04:43
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Pericles certainly loved his wife very much, as Samos found out the hard way.
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Sep 2, 2013 04:56
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Unrelated, but I just discovered the story behind Weh Antiok Khusrau and it's loving hilarious. Khousrau I captures Antioch while Justinian's best general is off besieging the West, has the city measured exactly, destroys it, then rebuilds an exact replica, moves all the captured inhabitants into it and literally names it "Better than Antioch, Khousrau built this  "Ancient History dick moves are the best dick moves. 
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Sep 2, 2013 05:33
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Strategic Tea posted:Also keep in mind how good people are at mental gymnastics. Misogynists make tons of exceptions and ifs and buts. A guy who rants about whores who just want to manipulate men probably doesn't think that way about his beloved daughter. It's just most women, like those other ones in the paper or whatever. I don't doubt that some Athenians thought that their hetaira was different (but seriously don't give the rest rights ugh they'll ruin the treehouse). I looked that up on Wiki and found this: The play contains the longest word in Greek, transliterated as: lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimupotrimmatosilphioliparomelitoaktakexhumenokichlepikossuphophattoperis-teralektruonoptopiphallidokinklopeleioplagoosiraiobaphetragalopterugon, or, in the Greek alphabet: λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοκαραβομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοκεφα-λλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερύγων. (1169–74) Liddell and Scott translate this as "name of a dish compounded of all kinds of dainties, fish, flesh, fowl, and sauces." 
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Sep 2, 2013 05:46
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sullat posted:Pericles certainly loved his wife very much, as Samos found out the hard way. Pericles was a NEERRRRDDD
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Sep 2, 2013 05:54
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Pimpmust posted:I looked that up on Wiki and found this: The Ancient Greek turducken.
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Sep 2, 2013 06:22
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As for the stereotypical greek woman being seen as lazy/drunk, as with Everything, "Simpsons already did it".
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Sep 2, 2013 06:31
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Jerusalem posted:Unrelated, but I just discovered the story behind Weh Antiok Khusrau and it's loving hilarious. Khousrau I captures Antioch while Justinian's best general is off besieging the West, has the city measured exactly, destroys it, then rebuilds an exact replica, moves all the captured inhabitants into it and literally names it "Better than Antioch, Khousrau built this I found this little beauty of a line in the wikipedia article. quote:Local inhabitants of the area called the new city Rumagan, meaning “town of the Greeks” Now, I don't speak Greek, but somehow I don't think that's quite what that means.
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Sep 2, 2013 06:44
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I read some book examining the attitudes toward women taken by famous thinkers throughout history and they all have the identical smug self important conviction in their own made up crap. Not necessarily that women were stupid but they were wily, duplicitous, capricious, driven by lust, out to corrupt men and steal their life-force or whatever. It reminds me of something like Reefer Madness. It seems to me that there would have been plenty of people that would not take it seriously in an area of free-ish exchange of ideas and, not challenge the mainstream views but come to modify it in certain respects like with the hetaerae. Or it may not have anything to do with hetaerae but I'm still sure with their commercial wealth and education there must have been some kind of counterculture.
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Sep 2, 2013 09:34
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PittTheElder posted:I found this little beauty of a line in the wikipedia article. What's wrong with it? It's the definition if not the literal translation. Similar to how the various middle eastern languages indiscriminately called all Western Europeans 'Franks'.
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Sep 2, 2013 09:47
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Hedera Helix posted:Goddess worship does not necessarily preclude a society from being misogynistic. I never said that. But I think it complicates the assumption that the Athenian (Greek?) default was 100% totally all women are dumb and/or evil. They had a pretty poo poo lot societally, and Aristotle was a total woman hater, but it's still a complicated, multifaceted issue. For instance, the fact that American women make, on average, something like 75 cents to the dollar for equal work does not mean that all aspects and subsets of our society think of woman as 3/4ths of a man. That Athenian society as a whole, and particularly Athenian aristocratic citizens (these being our most widely reported on sources) were very patriarchal does not preclude variations between attitudes in that society nor variations through time. Tao Jones posted:Sure, I'm with you and I think we're thinking the same sort of thing, but expressing it a little differently. Counterproductive and paradoxical social attitudes don't change very easily, and when they do, they don't change in ways that threaten the underlying fabric of society. So I think the desire to speak with educated women had to manifest itself in a way that was non-threatening to the underlying Athenian patriarchy, which was among the most oppressive in the Greek world. So I don't think that the prostitution element of hetaera was an accident - if educated women existed at all in ancient Athens, the only way that could be permitted is if they were another sub-class of denigrated women who were scratching a male itch. Since this discussion came up with regard to whether or not feminism could be said to exist in the ancient world, it seems to me that if hetaera are to be admitted as an example of feminism in ancient Athens, then I think we'd have to better define what we mean by feminism. I think the main issue here would be that all educated Athenian women would have been hetaera. That was an option certainly, but I don't think anyone said this was the one and only example. One of our problems is that our big sources on Greek life are men like Plato and Aristotle, who give us a very skewed view. People like the stoics were (in)famous for taking slaves and women into their circles. For instance, I reaaaaally doubt Sappho was writing her poetry to titillate men. That's like the point of Sappho. Also, feminism isn't a binary state. Hell, I'm sure in 2500 years our ancestors will look at our most radical of radicals and go 'how quaint and bucolic. But terribly barbaric hmm yes...' and some rear end in a top hat on the Galactic Wide Web will say 'yes, but some of them weren't total assholes.' Also, prostitution is a bit weird, sexual power is a bit weird, though that's an argument that runs much bigger than ancient Greece. Certainly when you get to examples like Aspasia, whose using who for what gets very muddy. Both she and Pericles were terribly smart people. Also sex and sexual power gets weird in Greece because they were a lot less gendered about it than we are. Age is a lot bigger deal than gender in many ways.
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Sep 2, 2013 10:35
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sullat posted:Pericles certainly loved his wife very much, as Samos found out the hard way. Explain? I looked up wiki and saw reference to Samos but not in relation to any wives
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Sep 2, 2013 10:38
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Plutarch, Pericles, 24 posted:ἐπεὶ δ᾽ Ἀσπασία χαριζόμενος δοκεῖ πρᾶξαι τὰ πρὸς Σαμίους
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Sep 2, 2013 10:51
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the JJ posted:I think the main issue here would be that all educated Athenian women would have been hetaera. That was an option certainly, but I don't think anyone said this was the one and only example. One of our problems is that our big sources on Greek life are men like Plato and Aristotle, who give us a very skewed view. People like the stoics were (in)famous for taking slaves and women into their circles. For instance, I reaaaaally doubt Sappho was writing her poetry to titillate men. That's like the point of Sappho. Also, feminism isn't a binary state. Hell, I'm sure in 2500 years our ancestors will look at our most radical of radicals and go 'how quaint and bucolic. But terribly barbaric hmm yes...' and some rear end in a top hat on the Galactic Wide Web will say 'yes, but some of them weren't total assholes.' Can you refresh my memory on what these other options for ancient Athenian women were? I'm drawing a blank on what you could mean, and to my knowledge it was the only Athenian social category (other than "foreigner", I guess) where woman + education = acceptable. Aristophanes presents Aspasia as a hetaera in The Acharnians, so I think her example rather highlights the need to present educated women as prostitutes, or at least the vulnerability of educated women to that particular smear. She was also foreign born -- I suspect she wouldn't have turned out nearly as exceptional as she was if she had been born in Athens. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "feminism isn't a binary state". Assuming that you mean that the definition of feminism is fluid, well, of course -- but I don't think ancient Athens could be said to be feminist under any reasonable definition of the word. I don't think the institution of hetaera could be said to be feminist, either, any more than the Chinese system of imperial concubines or the French system of royal mistresses, even though hetaera, concubines, and mistresses may have enjoyed privileges denied to ordinary women. I agree that gender was constructed differently when it comes to sexuality, certainly. When it comes to Athenian social roles, though, I think there's pretty clear one-way subjugation of women by men which is backed up by many if not most of the extant sources we have that shed light on Athenian life. Sure, maybe there were other Athenians who disagreed with the Athenian patriarchy; we don't have evidence of their opinions or that they mounted a challenge to the system.
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Sep 2, 2013 18:42
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Eustachy posted:an area of free-ish exchange of ideas and, not challenge the mainstream views but come to modify it in certain respects Yeah, ancient Greece and Rome really weren't known for anything like the free exchange of ideas, or for challenging the mainstream views. With a couple of notable exceptions, people's expression was pretty sufficiently suppressed.
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Sep 2, 2013 21:07
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Eustachy posted:What's wrong with it? It's the definition if not the literal translation. Similar to how the various middle eastern languages indiscriminately called all Western Europeans 'Franks'. Just that it rather obviously means 'town of the Romans'. Changing 'Romans' to 'Greeks' seems like something dumb that's all based on modern biases.
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Sep 2, 2013 21:45
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Eustachy posted:What's wrong with it? It's the definition if not the literal translation. Similar to how the various middle eastern languages indiscriminately called all Western Europeans 'Franks'. Not to mention the Eastern Empire was vastly more Hellenised compared to the Latin West due to the local Greek influence. People in the Eastern Empire were probably tough to distinguish from Greeks without asking - in Greek.
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Sep 2, 2013 21:54
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Tao Jones posted:Can you refresh my memory on what these other options for ancient Athenian women were? I'm drawing a blank on what you could mean, and to my knowledge it was the only Athenian social category (other than "foreigner", I guess) where woman + education = acceptable. Depends on how you define education. A fair amount of Sappho's writing is about the girls she was tutoring and how she was alway unhappy when they had to get married. She was a Lesbian (not that kind of- well, okay yes that kind of lesbian, but also from the island of Lesbos) which wasn't exactly like Athens but much closer to it culturally than, say Sparta. Xenophon writes about how you really ought to educate your wife about everything but horses and fighting (admittedly, so they can do all the work while you ride horses and go out fighting, but hey, it's like the 50's backwards. Sort of. If you squint at it.) Women could play important religious roles, and most of all, the whole 'stay in the house never leave thing' was a matter for Athenian aristocratic women. The best recorded but not the most representative chunk of the population. The lower-middle class women, plus the 'foreigners' (Athens did not have birthright citizenship, but if you're talking about 'in Athens' or 'Athenian culture' it's a bit dumb to ignore them) worked crafts and ran stalls. Moreover, we do have records of them hanging out with people like the Stoics, though, of course not much else. We have other examples of, say Socrates deferring his entire speech on true love in the Symposium to Diotima who was some sort of priestess, seer, or wise woman. So, yeah, that's a shitton of examples. It's almost like the issue is complicated, or something. quote:Aristophanes presents Aspasia as a hetaera in The Acharnians, so I think her example rather highlights the need to present educated women as prostitutes, or at least the vulnerability of educated women to that particular smear. She was also foreign born -- I suspect she wouldn't have turned out nearly as exceptional as she was if she had been born in Athens. I think the equation of hetaera = sort sex for money = prostitutes = badwrong gender relations is a bit suspect in all those = sign transitions and picks up a fair amount of baggage along the way. Anyway, I never said that the hetaera were the only or even the most ideal examples that we have. quote:I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "feminism isn't a binary state". Assuming that you mean that the definition of feminism is fluid, well, of course -- but I don't think ancient Athens could be said to be feminist under any reasonable definition of the word. I don't think the institution of hetaera could be said to be feminist, either, any more than the Chinese system of imperial concubines or the French system of royal mistresses, even though hetaera, concubines, and mistresses may have enjoyed privileges denied to ordinary women. Not really disagreeing here. No one said that Athens was some shining beacon of girl power, anyone who does is an idiot. Neither is most of the world right now. There were aspects of the society more open to women than not, quote:I agree that gender was constructed differently when it comes to sexuality, certainly. When it comes to Athenian social roles, though, I think there's pretty clear one-way subjugation of women by men which is backed up by many if not most of the extant sources we have that shed light on Athenian life. Sure, maybe there were other Athenians who disagreed with the Athenian patriarchy; we don't have evidence of their opinions or that they mounted a challenge to the system. Oh, no doubt, but most of our sources are from the super elite, and the opinions of the super elite, that's a big problem. I think we can see from things like the comic poets and the Lysistrata that the ideal of the male dominated, iron fist household may have been more theory than reality, but yeah, we don't really know. I think I said from the start, of the big three Athenian thinkers I've gone over, Aristotle thinks they're dumb and evil and should be treated like cattle, more or less, Plato thinks women are more dumb and evil on average in so we should teach them and salvage what we can, and Xenophon is the best of the three. Which mean, if we're being very generous, a 1950's patriarch of the 'of course you're equal, just stay indoors and let us manly men do manly things like ride horses and fight and wrestle in the nude and oh take me now!' variety. Like, he's got a bit where he's all 'stop putting on make up, woman, I love you for your mind and your kindness' which is a nice sentiment, only he's expressing it by exerting his absolute power in the relationship. Like, one of the classic warning signs of an abusive relationship is one partner trying to control what the other wears.(I think Xenophon had a total bro crush on Agesilaus, but that's just my opinion.)
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Sep 2, 2013 22:56
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the JJ posted:Depends on how you define education. A fair amount of Sappho's writing is about the girls she was tutoring and how she was alway unhappy when they had to get married. She was a Lesbian (not that kind of- well, okay yes that kind of lesbian, but also from the island of Lesbos) which wasn't exactly like Athens but much closer to it culturally than, say Sparta. Xenophon writes about how you really ought to educate your wife about everything but horses and fighting (admittedly, so they can do all the work while you ride horses and go out fighting, but hey, it's like the 50's backwards. Sort of. If you squint at it.) Women could play important religious roles, and most of all, the whole 'stay in the house never leave thing' was a matter for Athenian aristocratic women. The best recorded but not the most representative chunk of the population. The lower-middle class women, plus the 'foreigners' (Athens did not have birthright citizenship, but if you're talking about 'in Athens' or 'Athenian culture' it's a bit dumb to ignore them) worked crafts and ran stalls. Moreover, we do have records of them hanging out with people like the Stoics, though, of course not much else. We have other examples of, say Socrates deferring his entire speech on true love in the Symposium to Diotima who was some sort of priestess, seer, or wise woman. Ah, okay, I think I see where we're differing. I'm thinking about education more in the sense of liberality, teaching someone to be free, a participant in society, and all that other high-minded stuff. So sure, of course there were women who could run shops, make things, do menial tasks, perform religious rites, and so on. I didn't think I was suggesting there weren't those sorts of women in Athens. I didn't know about the Stoic thing other than a vague recollection of a framing device in one of Martha Nussbaum's books involving a fictional woman -- can you point me at something that talks more about that? quote:I think the equation of hetaera = sort sex for money = prostitutes = badwrong gender relations is a bit suspect in all those = sign transitions and picks up a fair amount of baggage along the way. Anyway, I never said that the hetaera were the only or even the most ideal examples that we have. OK. I guess I saw you or someone else mentioning lower-class women who talked with politicians and philosophers and immediately thought hetaera were what was being discussed (and, by extension, supposing that hetaera were meant to be an example of a feminist aspect of Athenian society). If you meant these other women, ordinary shop girls and the like, well, sure, I guess it's possible that some Athenian aristocrat might have talked about the city's affairs with the fishmonger's wife, but I doubt it was a common thing. quote:Oh, no doubt, but most of our sources are from the super elite, and the opinions of the super elite, that's a big problem. I think we can see from things like the comic poets and the Lysistrata that the ideal of the male dominated, iron fist household may have been more theory than reality, but yeah, we don't really know. I think I said from the start, of the big three Athenian thinkers I've gone over, Aristotle thinks they're dumb and evil and should be treated like cattle, more or less, Plato thinks women are more dumb and evil on average in so we should teach them and salvage what we can, and Xenophon is the best of the three. Which mean, if we're being very generous, a 1950's patriarch of the 'of course you're equal, just stay indoors and let us manly men do manly things like ride horses and fight and wrestle in the nude and oh Sure, I definitely agree that the lack of sources is a problem for getting a complete picture of Athenian life. But the picture of women's lives in Athens is generally bleak, based on the sources that we do have. I think the examples of the comic poets and Lysistrata tend to reinforce, rather than undermine, the patriarchy. (We tend to interpret Lysistrata as a feminist play in our times, but I have a really hard time imagining the ancient Athenians getting that message out of it, as opposed to thinking it's a laugh riot to see women in revolt because of the war.) Since I'd never really read Xenophon before, I did some digging and ended up finding a site that compiled the relevant parts of Xenophon's Oeconomicus where his character Ischomachus details his relationship with his wife, including the makeup scene that you described. The resolution to the makeup incident wasn't quite "I love you for your mind and your kindness"; the character asks his wife if she'd be offended if he lied to her about how much money he had and offered counterfeit coins as proof of his wealth. When she says yes, of course she would be, he argues that her disguising her looks with makeup is the same kind of deceit. Then he basically tells her how to sit, exercise, and do her housework; Xenophon posted:'What, by the gods', I asked, 'was her response to that?' So I think we're in agreement that Xenophon is pretty problematic as far as his character's view of women goes (and if Ischomachus is meant to be a stand-in for Any Proper Athenian Gentleman or Xenophon himself, I'd start ranking him up there with Aristotle.)
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Sep 3, 2013 00:37
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How do historians tell they aren't just being taken for a ride by someone writing something under the guise of reality but actually making poo poo up? What if Xenophon and Pliny are basically L. Ron Hubbard and Harry Turtledove for their respective societies and what we are reading is total idealized bullshit and really most ancient civilizations were staunchly egalitarian among the genders? I can see attempting to reconcile several sources, but look at our goddamn society - from the level of proliferation of books, future historians will think we are all wizards who murder each other in the forest by day and engage in crazy fetish play by night.
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Sep 3, 2013 01:21
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The Entire Universe posted:How do historians tell they aren't just being taken for a ride by someone writing something under the guise of reality but actually making poo poo up? What if Xenophon and Pliny are basically L. Ron Hubbard and Harry Turtledove for their respective societies and what we are reading is total idealized bullshit and really most ancient civilizations were staunchly egalitarian among the genders? At some level it boils down to reconciling several sources, with more importance given to primary sources. That's to say, actual letters by people involved in events, eyewitness accounts, physical evidence, legal documents, written battle orders, and so on. Secondary sources, like history books or newspapers or inferences from literature, are weaker because of the concerns like those you suggest. In the case of some kind of dramatic attempt to deceive future generations about the nature of society, I think we'd have come across some evidence somewhere pointing at the truth. (Something like letters from an educated Athenian woman talking about how she was planning to vote in the upcoming election, or court records showing that Mrs. Soandso leaves her legally owned property to her daughter, or orders from the Battle of Where-ever commanding the 16th Armored Woman's Phalanx to attack the Persian lines, or things of that nature.) The fact that we don't really have a lot of things like that from antiquity is why we often have to rely on accounts in sources like Pliny or Herodotus and try to divine what's reliable in them and what isn't.
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Sep 3, 2013 02:07
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Tao Jones posted:The fact that we don't really have a lot of things like that from antiquity is why we often have to rely on accounts in sources like Pliny or Herodotus and try to divine what's reliable in them and what isn't. Sometimes it is even surprising how little bullshit and deception is in a source like Herodotus once you do get independent evidence. Everyone thought the giant gold-digging ants were the most ridiculous story in Herodotus's histories until we actually found Pakistani marmots that fit the story pretty well.
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Sep 3, 2013 03:16
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We just use the most trustworthy source there is on antiquity - the Historia Augusta!
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Sep 3, 2013 03:31
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Tao Jones posted:Ah, okay, I think I see where we're differing. I'm thinking about education more in the sense of liberality, teaching someone to be free, a participant in society, and all that other high-minded stuff. So sure, of course there were women who could run shops, make things, do menial tasks, perform religious rites, and so on. I didn't think I was suggesting there weren't those sorts of women in Athens. I didn't know about the Stoic thing other than a vague recollection of a framing device in one of Martha Nussbaum's books involving a fictional woman -- can you point me at something that talks more about that? Ha, that link's an excerpt from the main sourcebook I used in the undergrad class where I cobbled this opinion together. All right, I guess I ought to really effort post on Why Xenophon is Better than Aristotle, But Not By Much. Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 7.5 posted:She was not yet fifteen years old when she came to me, and up to that time she had lived in leading-strings, seeing, hearing and saying as little as possible. This is going to be pretty crucial to the argument. Xenophon's narrative stand in (Ischomachus, not that it really matters) is going to come off as super condescending and very 'fatherly' to his wife. I'm going to argue that this isn't and issue of gender but a product of age and Greek use of sex with older men (and, as Sappho shows, occasionally women) as a basic function of growing up and learning to be a real person. So a Greek marriage doesn't really resemble our idealized meeting of equals, at least definately not at the outset. So we have to step back a little bit from the whole 'training a wife' thing and consider this within the context of rampant pederasty... if that makes things better I dunno. The point is, it may be more relevent that Ischomachus' new wife was 15 than the fact that she had a vagina. But the JJ, is there something else in the text that supports this? Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.6, the very next line posted:If when she came she knew no more than how, when given wool, to turn out a cloak, and had seen only how the spinning is given out to the maids, is not that as much as could be expected? For in control of her appetite, Socrates, she had been excellently trained; and this sort of training is, in my opinion, the most important to man and woman alike. What's this? Xenophon explicitly saying 'yeah it's the same for both genders?' Also, the control of appetites is a big deal. One of the common *cough*Aristotole*cough* accusations leveled at women in the Greek world was their supposed inability to control their appetites. That was a Big Deal to most Greeks, particularly Spartan fanboys like Xenophon. For example: Plato, Laws, VI 781 B posted:women—left without chastening restraint—is not, as you may fancy, merely half the problem; nay, she is twofold and more than twofold. C'mon the JJ, wrap this up for me in a bow Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.14 posted:[the wife says in response to Xenophon saying 'I could sleep with whoever, I chose you for a reason; let's make a good family'] "How can I possibly help you? What power have I? Nay, all depends on you. The only accomplishment I learned from my mother is how to behave properly." [alternatively. to be discreet] Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.15 posted:[Isomachus says] ... "that’s what my father taught me also." Boom. That's my drop the mike moment as far as excusing the whole 'I'm training you thing.' I think Xenophon goes out of his way to make this point regarding the equality of genders before that moment of training and basically says 'hey some middle aged guys took me under their wing and made me who I am, and I turned out okay. Shouldn't be any different for women.' I should also note that Xenophon fancied himself a big thinker and liked to respond to people whose works he disagreed with or admired. His Hellenika picks up where Thucydides left off, as in, it starts with 'a few days later...' He wrote an alternate Death of Socrates even though he wasn't even in Athens for that because he disliked how Plato portrayed him, I think his Cyropedia is in a lot of ways a response to the Republic and his Oeconomicus is a response to Aristotle's Oeconomicus. He says outright a few times in his writings things to the effect of 'other authors like to focus on blah but I'm going to go on a tangent about blah because blah blah something to do with virtue and the gods.' Anyway, yeah, I think Xenophon, in this passage, is trying to tee off on Aristotle (e.g. king rear end in a top hat w/r/t Greek misogyny, no mean feat.) So Xenophon thinks teenaged women are on the same level as teenaged men. What about when they're all grown up? Weeeeeell... we get some  (well, :Olympustruths:) about men being stronger physically, better at handling extreme weather, blahblahblah. Women are less able to go outdoors but they like babies more, you've seen these arguments before from a variety of jackasses and MRA types buuuuuut... Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.18 posted:For it seems to me, dear, that the gods with great discernment have coupled together male and female, as they are called, chiefly in order that they may form a perfect partnership in mutual service. Or separate but equal(ish) spheres. Women, for instance, are less brave perhaps, but that means they're more cautious. (Oeconomicus 7.25) This is in contrast to the general Greek attitude of 'they're cowards,' Xenophon is saying 'yes, but they might not go charging off into enemy lines, get killed, and so strand their allies in the middle of loving Iraq.' Where a lot of Athenians lionized that sort of gung ho attitude, Xenophon had a touch of that Spartan reticence and the long experience to know the need for some balance on that front. Again, this is still a very attitude, but it is a step up from the norm. Baby steps and all that.Okay the JJ, you know you're treading on thin ice... sell me on this Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.26-27 posted:[26] But because both must give and take, he granted to both impartially memory and attention; and so you could not distinguish whether the male or the female sex has the larger share of these. That's about as good as we're going to get. After that it's mostly Xenophon detailing what indoor work/outdoor work entails for his wife, which is fairly revealing. Although the wife is limited geographically, she wields considerable power and responsibility within the house hold. She's expected to manage personnel, manage finances and the household economy. Though tilling shearing and sowing were men's work, the house made considerable money off of pottery and weaving and processing a lot of what the men brought in. Though you get a similar divide between men's work/women's work this isn't quite the case of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, where her big thing is the loneliness and the crush lack of meaningful labor in her life. Again, not saying it's not restrictive, just adding some context to what inside/outside entailed for an upper class Athenian. Hell, in the quote below, he talks about how a wife might take a slave in, train them, and sell them, like a handyman might make money flipping houses. Greece was weird. Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.41 posted:But I assure you, dear, there are other duties peculiar to you that are pleasant to perform. It is delightful to teach spinning to a maid who had no knowledge of it when you received her, and to double her worth to you: to take in hand a girl who is ignorant of housekeeping and service, and after teaching her and making her trustworthy and serviceable to find her worth any amount: to have the power of rewarding the discreet and useful members of your household, and of punishing anyone who turns out to be a rogue. Okay, this is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge. Like loving huuuuuuuuuuuge when we're dealing with Xenophon. This was a guy who was betrayed time and time again, and yet forged some huge, nigh romantic bromances and mancrushes on some very powerful people. Why did he like Cyrus the Younger? He rewarded his loyal soldiers. What is the best thing Cyrus did when shaping his army up? He gave rewards to the unit commanders of the best trained units, all the way up and down the chain of command, so that merit and eagerness to serve was always rewarded. Xenophon was basically one of nature's followers. He's big on women staying in their place, he's big on men staying in theirs. He loved the hierarchy of Spartan society, was always reluctant to take supreme command. And he got burned by would be employers and commanders. A lot. And he didn't like it. There was, to his mind, no greater virtue than recognizing and rewarding good service, no greater vice than failing to do so. That he's putting this power in women's hands is very telling. To his mind, helots could go suck a dick and die because they were ungrateful rebellious bastards. Women on the other hand, perfectly capable of virtue. Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.42 posted:But the pleasantest experience of all is to prove yourself better than I am, to make me your servant; and, so far from having cause to fear that as you grow older you may be less honoured in the household, to feel confident that with advancing years, the better partner you prove to me and the better housewife to our children, the greater will be the honour paid to you in our home. See what I said about him being a natural follower? (Maybe he just wants to be the bottom.) Also note that he sees the familial interaction in the same ways he sees rulership and leadership: you do good to me, and I will be obliged to do good to you. Our children will care for us if we care for them. That's all from one chapter of one book the JJ. Branch out a bit. Alright, last go. Go by a copy of the Hellenika because I'm not doing that whole quote nonsense. I recommend the Landmark series they're footnoted out the wazoo. Anyway, 3.1.11, Xenophon begins to recount the tale of Mania of Dardanos. Her husband was a sub-satrap under Pharnabazos one of the two big Persian satraps in Anatolia, and so an on and off friend/enemy with Sparta (and by extension, at this point, Xenophon himself). When her husband died, Mania went to Pharnabazos and said, more or less 'yo, I'm not an idiot, I know how my husband did his job, I was inside his operation, it'd be much easier for you to just make me the satrap in his place instead of appointing someone else. BTW to prove I'm serious, here's your tribute. See, I can extract wealth from the territory and that's all you need out of me.' And Pharnabazos was like 'alright.' So boom, we've got a woman, taking a serious leadership position not because she was born to it, but because she could do the job and Pharnabazos knew it. Meanwhile, Xenophon takes pains to note, Mania was even able to participate on campaigns, not by leading from the front, perhaps, but by maintaining a solid corps of Greek mercenaries who she paid goddamn it and she watched the fights so she could better reward the bravest as is right and proper. To Xenophon, this makes her a Good Leader, even if she didn't get blood all over herself personally. So how does Xenophon know this? Well the Greek mercs defected to join Xenophon's merry band of Greek mercs (at this point working for Sparta under a Spartan commander.) Why did Mania's soldiers defect? Well, her son-in-law, Meidias strangled her. Because it was terribly degrading to serve under a woman, amiright guys? Guys? Yeah, you see, all but two of Mania's cities shut their gates to Meidias. So Medias sent tribute off to Pharnabazos, hoping that Pharnabazos would appoint him ruler over the territory and so oblige the cities to obey him. Basically, the arguement that Mania had made. Pharnabazos replied "that Meidias should watch those things until he himself [Pharnabazos] came to take the gifts, together with Meidias himself." In other words "keep your loving money, I'll take it off your corpse when I'm done with you."  When Derkylidas and Xenophon and crew show up, most of the cities swap sides because "the garrisons in these towns had been very badly treated after the death of Mania" because this is Xenophon and he has a Thing about that. When they arrive at Meidias' door he tries to defect (because he knows his people will never defend him), on the condition that he get to rule just Gergis. Derkylidas declares that Meidias will "receive whatever was just." After they arrive at Gergis Derkylidas treats Meidias as his guest (as in, denying him the right to play host as in, well, he's not handing the city over) but lets Meidias try to explain himself. "He is lying, Derkylidas" cry the "Meidias'" mercenaries as Meidias lists off Mania's property as if it had been passed to him by his father. "don't worry about the little details" says Derkylidas, "Now tell me who did Mania serve?" To which they reply, Pharnabazos. "then is it not the case that all of her property also belonged to Pharnabazos?" and they all agree. "Well, then those possessions belong to would now belong to us, since... Pharnabazos is our enemy." All this right in front of Meidias, who then follows after the Greeks as they head to the treasury. "And what about me?" he protests. "Where am I to live, Derkylidias?" "In that very place where it is most just for you to live, Meidias-- in your hometown of Skepsis and in your father's house." e.g. what you actually deserved to inherit. That's another right there. Anyway, the point is, Xenophon sorta makes a point of, at times, using little examples like this to inject some morality commentary into an otherwise straightforward accounting of events. This is one of those episodes, and Xenophon is pretty pointedly making the case that Mania was a good ruler (if an enemy of the Greeks) and her gender in no way justified her death. As is proper, her murderer got his comeuppance and her property (for it was well and truly hers) was the Spartan's by way of the rights of war. All that you need to be a good leader, Xenophon is saying, is that you a. be capable of doing your job, b. properly defer to those above you (and the gods above them) and c. you treat those that defer to you well, and so become worthy of their deference. That's it, gender's totally irrelevant. *This from the same guy who said: Plato, The Republic, regarding state run education of children posted:And, mind you, my law will apply in all respects to girls as much as to boys… I intend no reservation on any point of horsemanship or physical training. Which is, arguably, a far more modern view on the treatment of women than Xenophon. If I were a woman in ancient Greece, I'd rather live in the Republic than be trapped in Xenophon's smothering separate-but-equal, even if Plato thinks women trend inferior, he would (at least he claims) act purely on merit, and acknowledges the possibility of women achieving that merit. The Entire Universe posted:How do historians tell they aren't just being taken for a ride by someone writing something under the guise of reality but actually making poo poo up? What if Xenophon and Pliny are basically L. Ron Hubbard and Harry Turtledove for their respective societies and what we are reading is total idealized bullshit and really most ancient civilizations were staunchly egalitarian among the genders? Yeah, multiple sources are a big thing, also you can judge by how people at the time more or less reacted to their contemporaries. Thucy throws a few sick burns at Herodotus for basically being a bit gullible, meanwhile Xenophon (who fought in a good chunk of the war) liked The History of the Peloponnesian War he decides to try and finish it. If they started making poo poo up, well, the other people who were there might start calling BS. the JJ fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 04:44
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the JJ posted:(This is differant than the translation your site has. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Xen.+Ec.+7.6&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0212 This is what I quoted, but I don't know Greek. Any experts want to weigh in? Eggplant? C'mon, you know you want to...) Looks like the original sentence you bolded is ἐπεὶ τά γε* ἀμφὶ** γαστέρα***, ἔφη, πάνυ καλῶς****, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἦλθε πεπαιδευμένη: ὅπερ μέγιστον ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ παίδευμα εἶναι καὶ ἀνδρὶ καὶ γυναικί. The translation you posted is much better than the one in the document that I linked, but there is a way it can be read kind of like the sentiment in the one I linked. I'd translate it something like "After that, concerning her stomach, as they say, Socrates, she was taught to be completely appropriate: and this lesson, it seems to me, is the greatest for men and women." But the difficulty is in the words I starred. The first one is a particle that emphasizes or calls particular attention to the next word in the sentence. The second, amphi, means things like "on both sides of" or "around", as well as being a way to say "about" in the sense of "regarding". There's also constructions of it that mean wide, circular, rounded, and the like. The final one, gastera, literally means belly, stomach, but can be read metaphorically as "appetites", though I think that's a little wonky. The last word, kalos, can mean beautiful, morally appropriate, fine, lovely, and things of that nature. So I think a translation could be on the table that's more like: "After that, her fat belly, as they say, Socrates, was taught to be completely lovely: and this lesson, it seems to me, is the greatest for men and women." Given that the work is a moralizing text, I think the first one is more in keeping with what's probably meant, but for some reason I find interpreting it as that she came to him fat (and Ischomachus to be a proto-YLLS poster) to be hilarious. Either way, I don't think "She came to me, Socrates, quite knowledgeable about food" is a very good translation of the first clause. fantastic in plastic fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 06:06
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Tao Jones posted:The fact that we don't really have a lot of things like that from antiquity is why we often have to rely on accounts in sources like Pliny or Herodotus and try to divine what's reliable in them and what isn't. That goes double for tales of the Spartans - we only have what the Athenians wrote about them, and the Athenians didn't like them very much. For all we know, the tales of Spartan women as warriors in their own right could've just been an insult along the lines of "your momma wears army boots."
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Sep 3, 2013 09:28
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echopapa posted:That goes double for tales of the Spartans - we only have what the Athenians wrote about them, and the Athenians didn't like them very much. For all we know, the tales of Spartan women as warriors in their own right could've just been an insult along the lines of "your momma wears army boots." I know the Spartans were uh...Spartan, but did they literally keep no records?
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Sep 3, 2013 09:31
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There were no walls to write them on.
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Sep 3, 2013 13:59
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The Spartans were real big on oral tradition. I remember reading once about an Athenian soldier who a couple of Spartan soldiers let go after he managed to recite a good portion of the Iliad. There must have been so many debates for and against writing things down back in Ancient Greece, but conveniently, most of the arguments against books have been lost to the sands of time. 
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Sep 3, 2013 16:10
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echopapa posted:That goes double for tales of the Spartans - we only have what the Athenians wrote about them, and the Athenians didn't like them very much. For all we know, the tales of Spartan women as warriors in their own right could've just been an insult along the lines of "your momma wears army boots." Xenophon was actually a huge Spartan o' phile, so his COnstitution of the Lacedaemonians is a problematic source the other way. But yeah, at one point Plato points out that, had the Spartans actually gone and armed their womenfolk, maybe they wouldn't have been so hosed after Leuctra. Spartan women were fit, but they weren't out there fighting.
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Sep 3, 2013 16:52
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Is there much detail known about things like spying worked in Greece and Rome? I'm curious if there was an Imperial equivalent to MI6 or if there were stories about Gaius Julius Bondus or the like.
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Sep 4, 2013 05:27
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Yep. The wiki article on the frumentarii is a good place to start. As you might imagine there aren't a lot of records, but the empire definitely had various intelligence services throughout its history. There were also the speculatores, which were kind of a scouting outfit that went out and checked out areas before the legions came in. Likely did infiltration and would gather as much information as possible so the legions wouldn't be caught unawares.
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Sep 4, 2013 05:35
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