Pandora's Daughters

by Cantarella, Eva

• ISBN13: 9780801833854
• ISBN10: 080183385X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-01-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Expanded and updated for this English-language translation, Pandora's Daughters is the first history of women in ancient Greece and Rome to be written from a legal perspective. Moving outward from an examination of the legal evidence--the laws governing marriage and divorce, sexual behavior, and inheritance--Cantarella demonstrates how literary, anecdotal, and juridical sources can and cannot be used to discover what Greek and Roman men thought about women. She offers a provocative feminist interpretation of the sociological information that can be derived from law codes, lawyers' speeches, records and discussions of custom, and legislation to determine the status of women in society. At the same time she draws upon the evidence of myth, ritual, and literature to question whether women were actually subjugated to the extent that the laws imply.

Author Biography

Eva Cantarella has taught at the universities of Camerino and Milan and currently holds the chair in the history of Roman law at the University of Parma.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Translator's Note	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Weaving of Discrimination	p. 1
Problems of Method	p. 5
Greece
Matriarchy in Prehistory, Myth, and History	p. 11
The Neolithic Period	p. 11
Minoan Society: The Mediterranean Great Mother	p. 14
The Mycenaean Kingdoms	p. 15
Myths of Matriarchy: Amazons and the Lemnian Women	p. 16
Interpreting Myth: Forgotten History or Unthinkable World?	p. 18
Women and the Origin of Cities	p. 19
Female Initiation Ceremonies	p. 20
Conclusions	p. 23
Origins of Western Misogyny	p. 24
The Homeric Poems	p. 24
Hesiod and Semonides	p. 34
Exclusion from the Polis	p. 38
The First Legislators	p. 39
The Classical Period	p. 43
Philosophers and Women	p. 52
The Reproduction Debate: Does Woman Contribute?	p. 52
Socrates and Aspasia	p. 53
The Virtues of Women	p. 55
Plato: Feminist?	p. 58
Aristotle: Woman-Matter	p. 59
Conclusions	p. 61
Women and Literature	p. 63
Women in Classical Literature	p. 63
Lettered Women	p. 71
Homosexuality and Love	p. 77
Homosexual Love in Myth	p. 77
Crete and Sparta: The Role of Homosexuality in Initiation	p. 79
Homosexuality and Bisexual Divinities	p. 80
Plato	p. 83
Female Homosexuality	p. 86
The Hellenistic Age: New Images, Old Stereotypes	p. 90
Legal Status: Toward Equality	p. 90
Women and Political Power	p. 92
Women in Literature	p. 93
Conclusions	p. 97
Rome
The Hypothesis of Matriarchy	p. 101
The Protoagricultural Phase	p. 101
Tanaquil and Etruscan Women	p. 102
Traces of Ancient Collective Marriage?	p. 105
The Ancient Ethnographers	p. 107
The Debate on the Matriarchy	p. 110
The Period of the Kings and the Republic	p. 113
Legal Status of Women	p. 113
Social Status of Women	p. 124
The Principate and the Empire:
The Emancipation of Women?	p. 135
The Centuries of Expansion	p. 135
The Fall of the Empire	p. 159
The Byzantine Empire	p. 171
Conclusion	p. 177
Abbreviations Used in the Notes	p. 181
Notes	p. 185
Index	p. 221
Books in the Series	p. 231
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