Athena problematic?

I came across an interesting online article which discusses Athena’s problematic character. Athena is charismatic, yet problematic. She exemplifies strength, wisdom, intelligence, strategy, handicrafts and skill. She is an inspiring role model for women, a multifaceted alternative to the mother/sexpot Venus role that pop culture often means when it hails someone as a “goddess.” However, she is strongly male-identified in classical mythology, assisting male heroes and (often) treating women rather badly.

Athena Polias, the goddess of (male) Athens, who like modern women executives challenges the corporate world by assuming male dress, denying femininity, and by denying that traits like intelligence, wit, crafts, technical skill, non-sexual camaraderie are naturally part of a woman’s repertoire. We are left with Pallas Athena, who kills her girlfriend, who denies her mother, who rises from the head of Zeus. We are left with the more complex Athena who gifts Penelope and (in late classical times) seems to have another Pallas-like girlfriend,khlariklo.reducing Athena to a male-dominated goddess brainwashed into championing the patriarchy does a great disservice to her. But she is a complex figure and any follower of Athena who identifies her as a patron of academics, wisdom, and womanpower may need to grapple with this question.(link)


athena and the amazons
Athena and the amazons share many qualities such as being strong women, also both are always depicted wearing armour which was only worn by men at the time.

(Athena in armour)

                                   

(amazons in battle)

problematic females in greek tragedy

The role of women in ancient Greek life, was considered to be insignificant compared to that of Greek men. And yet, in tragedies, women were often written as major characters, revealing insights on how women were treated and thought of in society. Many well-known Greek plays contain several well-written, complex, female characters. Each female character takes upon herself, the role of villain, the role of victim, and the role of heroine.

Clytemnestra

One of the most recognizable female characters in history, Clytmenestra may also one of its most noted villainesses, due to her partaking in the murder of her husband Agamemnon and his female consort. It is in the play Agamemnon that Clytemnestra is first seen and her crime committed. She is depicted as a brutal, treacherous woman, "a woman with a man's heart" (Ferguson 76). Through out the play, Clytemnestra is spoken of with a bitter tongue and a fearful heart. The citizens and the audience are made well-aware of how she welcomed her husband home, led him across a crimson carpet, "like a sea of blood," and ripped away his life in a gory bath (Hadas 82).

Clytmnestra was certainly a villainess, but several underlying themes of the play also suggest that she both victim and heroine, as well. She suffers a variety of grievances and hardships throughout her life, there by justifying her actions. For instance:

• Agamemnon sacrifies their daughter Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Diana, in order to win a war. She murdered her husband, partly, to avenge her daughter's wrongful death at his hands.
• After the conclusion of the war, Agamemnon brings a female prize to her home. Cassandra is another piece of her husbands betrayal and innocent or not must be destroyed.
• In the second play of the Orestia trilogy, Clytemnestra, herself, is murdered by her children.

Medea

Perhaps the most fascinating and complex character in Greek drama, is the of Medea. She is the ultimate combination of heroine, villain and victim, all displayed in a single play. Medea was married to a Greek named Jason, whom she followed from her foreign land, to Greece. Her love for Jason was deep, and when he elected to leave her to marry the daughter of Creon, Medea was furious (Euripides lines 1-24). In retaliation for his strayed affections, Medea sent Jason's bride a poison dress. She then murdered her children as a second form of revenge. While she loved her children, her hatred for Jason was greater than a mother's love could ever have been. These acts of murder were the ultimate revenge toward her ex-husband, leaving him brideless and childless. Despite these crimes, Medea is a character who can be sympathized with. She gave up all she loved for Jason:

• Murdering her brother and betraying her family
• Leaving her home for a foreign land [Greece] that would not accept her
• Becoming a mother, when she had no desire to bear children. "I would rather fight three battles than bear one child" (line 248)

Knowing of all the sacrifices Medea had made for him, Jason still felt no obligation to remain with her and left her for the promise of a "real" Greek princess. Medea's love for Jason was so great and his betrayal damaged her mind so drastically, that revenge was the only comfort she held in her power. She killed his bride, using the cleverest chess piece available, Jason's own children. When she realized the consequences of her actions, she was forced to make a harrowing decision. Ferguson elaborates,"[After sending the poison dress] Medea kills her children, partly to make Jason childless, partly because since they must surely die, it is better they should perish by her hand." (263). Mitchell-Boyask justifies Medea's actions in this way, "Medea may seem at time a frightening character, but compare her real, ethical concerns with the rather shallow and scheming hollows of Jason." Medea accompanies Antigone as one of the defining heroines of ancient Greek drama. She defied her role as the "happy", helpless housewife and refused to accept her betrayal without striking back.

works cited
http://www.richeast.org/htwm/Greeks/gwomen/gwomen.html

neaera and aspasia

                                                                                                                                                                          

Neaera and Aspasia are to good examples of hetaerae that had interesting lives. Both women are not from the idealised background that would have allowed them to be citizen wives however both women managed to marry important Athenian citizens and both had their children legitimised.      

 For a woman involved in this most sacred of rituals, to be exposed as non-Athenian, to be in fact the child of an ex-slave, and a whore, was a scandal that involved not just Neaera, but her daughter, her grandson, and all the other Athenian families that had been affected by these marriage relations. Now unfortunately this is going to be something of an anti-climax. We can't say how the case ends, because in many instances from the Athenian law courts, we know of the prosecution or of the defense, but don't have the other side, nor the result. We also have no way of independently assessing how much of the speech against Neaera is true. It may be, if we applied the skepticism we applied to Aspasia's story, that in fact Neaera was a perfectly nice housewife who got married to a somewhat low-class character as and simply dragged into a dreadful legal dispute that involved her husband and children. Yet the point we can make is the following. For the speech against Neaera, to be written with such invective and detail, it demonstrates something of the anxiety of being Athenian in the Classical age. The great anxiety was that the privilege of citizenship was being diluted. From Pericles on, the Athenians were addicted to the idea that citizenship was available to them, because they were a club. It is ironic to imagine that in the world's first and greatest democracy, the mindset of the Athenians was that you were a member of the demos, the people, not because you were a human being, but because you were a member of the club, the club of citizens whose fathers were citizens, and now more importantly, whose mothers were citizens. As women and as foreigners, Aspasia and Neaera labored under a double disadvantage. It's those double disadvantages of being women and foreign, that are reflected in the incredibly hostile and misogynistic traditions that survive concerning them. What the truth is about either women, we don't know. Yet we do know that the hatred directed against them, does not speak well of Athenian men.

work cited

(link)

http://teachingcompany.12.forumer.com/a/5-aspasia_post1832.html

Sue Blundell-aspasia

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Sue Blundell- neaera

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HETAIRAI

NEAERA

ASPASIA

The most famous woman of Ancient Athens was Aspasia, the companion of the great leader of democratic Athens, Pericles. Because she was a courtesan, Pericles was not permitted to marry her, but in every way she was his partner and an important Athenian in her own right.Aspasia was probably a hetaira. 

hetairai, were indeed sexual partners, but they were also companions, better educated than other Greek women. They were educated in philosophy, history, politics, science, art and literature, so that they could converse intelligently with sophisticated men. Aspasia was considered by many to be the most beautiful and intelligent of the city's hetairai.



Aspasia entertained the most powerful men of Athens at hersymposia (dinner parties). Though men openly attended such parties, wives did not. The women at these parties werehetairai. Aspasia's house became a fashionable place for the elite of Athens to go.Pericles met Aspasia and immediately moved in with her. He may have divorced his wife to make this possible but in any event, they lived together as man and wife until Pericles died of the plague. 

The city's laws prevented marriage. 

He lived with her as her husband and treated her as an equal. This was unseemly for a respectable man, and for a man of Pericles' standing, unheard of. He was often criticized for his relationship with Aspasia, and for his obvious reliance on her help and judgment. Women were not part of Athenian public life, and there was a place for hetairai, but it was in the bedroom and dining room, not in politics.

They had a son together called Pericles, who because of their illegal relationship, could not be a citizen (later, after his legitimate sons had died in the plague, Pericles unsuccessfully made an emotional plea to the Assembly to grant citizenship status to his son - it was not until after his death that his wish was granted).

The gossip in Athens was always vicious, and Pericles and Aspasia were popular topics. They and their illegitimate son were ridiculed. She was called, among other things, a "dog-eyed whore." Many felt that Aspasia had too much influence on Pericles. Some accused her of persuading Pericles to go to war with Samos in order to help her native Miletus. Some even blamed her for the war with Sparta (the Peloponnesian War).(link)

Sue Blundell- AMAZONS

Women in ancient Greece By Sue Blundell has a chapter dedicated     to the Amazon women. in this chapter  Blundell explains who the Amazons where she also discuses the fact that the Amazon women where not considered to behave as normal Greek women also the Amazons never win any war against the Greeks. 
further reading 
Women and war: a historical encyclopaedia from antiquity to 

the present, Volume 1

By Bernard A. Cook(link)
sue blundell,women in ancient greece,Harvard University Press,1995

Amazons

It appears obvious that Amazons were women who did not fit into the patriarchal Athenian establishment's Rules For Women. They rejected typical marriage roles - some sources say they simply were uninterested in male marriage partners, others suggest that the women did marry men who stayed at home to take care of the children and perform other "feminine" tasks while the women participated in public life as warriors and leaders. 
Amazons show up in myth principally as warriors, and were said to have conquered many nations and be fierce fighters. As Sue Blundell says, "Whatever the reason for this, we can be sure that it had nothing to do with heartwarming messages about the empowerment of women." Yes, of course that's depressing, but it is undeniably true. Amazons almost certainly true. Amazons exist through Athenian myth, and in those stories they never, ever win against Greece."the Amazons were everything that an Athenian woman ought not to be, and ultimately they failed. There can be little doubt that ... one of myth's functions was the provision of a negative role model."(LINK)

THE AMAZONS

Greek myths describe an all female culture known as the Amazons. Amazon women were known for their great skill in battle. They had strength equal, or superior to, that of men. They lived in a separate independent society, the exact location of which is uncertain. They would mate with strangers or travellers to preserve their race, but they did not permit men of and standing in their society. Men could only be servants, doing the most menial of tasks.

There are conflicting stories of what the Amazons would do with male children. Some stories suggest that they would give the boys away to travellers. Others suggest they were abandoned. It is certain the female children were raised to be warriors. Some even suggest that they took their warrior status so far as to remove the right breast so it did no interfere with them shooting arrows.

Their patron god was Ares, the god of war. They worshipped him because they were a warrior culture. In addition, Ares had fathered one of their more famous queens. They also worshipped Artemis because she symbolized a strong independent huntress.

The Amazons were involved in several wars. They joined on the side of Troy in the Trojan War. The most famous war for them was known as the Amazonomachy against the Greeks. Ancient Greek art often depicted the Amazonomachy and other battles between the Amazons and the Greeks.(LINK)

Amazonomachia (fight between Greeks and Amazons), relief of a sarcophagus (ca. 180 BC), found in Salonica, 1836. Location: Louvre, Department of Greek Antiquities (Ma 2119)

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WELCOME

This blog will focus on examples of women in ancient Greece who did not fit in to the criteria of normal Greek women-wives.