Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 71
Go inside the house, and attend to your work, the loom and the distaff,
and bid your handmaidens attend to their work also. Talking is men’s
business, all men’s business, but my business most of all. (lines 356–59)
Telemachos’s reprimand epitomizes the traditional view of Greek
society, namely one that was both patrilineal and patriarchal.
Women, the view goes, though necessary for propagation, served
few other useful functions. They were to be subdued and secluded,
controlled and confined. Greek society was sexist and chauvinistic,
as a wealth of literary evidence suggests.
Recently, some scholars have begun to question this overly schematized
view of Greek society, regarding it as based on a highly
selective set of sources that present an “idealized” view of how
Greek society should operate from a male perspective. In particular,
they cite scenes of daily life on vases, which show women enjoying
far more freedom in the company of other women than literary
sources suggest. Even so, it cannot be denied that Greek society
did practice a degree of sex segregation, even if women were not
entirely secluded, and it was certainly the case that they had no
political or legal persona.
Odysseus’s Women
Already in The Odyssey there is some support for a somewhat
complicated view of the dynamic between the sexes. Despite
Penelope sitting at a loom. Courtesy akg-images, London:
Peter Connolly.