Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 83
to a common-law wife. Such unions were made primarily with
resident aliens, prostitutes, and women who had no dowries. The
prostitute Aspasia, virtually the only woman in fifth-century b.c.e.
Athens who is known to us other than by name, was the pallakê of
Perikles. Most pallakai, however, were probably girls whose families
were unable to provide them with a dowry. A pallakê was placed
under the authority of the man with whom she lived in much the
same way as a legitimate wife. There were, however, two important
differences: first there was no transfer of dowry, and, second, the
offspring of such unions were not regarded as citizens and had no
claim on the man’s oikos. In the last decade of the Peloponnesian
War, however, this regulation was suspended due to the shortage
of Athenian manpower. Citizens were therefore permitted to have a
legitimate wife as well as a pallakê. (In 430 b.c.e. the Athenian dêmos
had passed an extraordinary decree legitimizing Perikles’ offspring
from Aspasia, but this had been an exceptional privilege accorded
to a leading public servant in recognition of the fact that his two
legitimate sons had just died of the plague.)
The Working Woman
So far we have considered only the lives of well-to-do women.
The wives and daughters of the poor, as well as many spinsters
and widows, lacking slaves to fetch and carry, would have been
frequently seen in the streets. The orator Demosthenes tells us that
one of the effects of the poverty that afflicted Athens after its defeat
in the Peloponnesian War was that many women had to go out to
work, typically as wet nurses, weavers, and grape pickers (57.45).
In Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousai, or “Women at the Thesmophoria,”
a widow with five children describes how she earns a precarious
living by weaving chaplets of the kind that might have been
worn by symposiasts (lines 446 – 49).
Virtually the only career option available to freeborn women was
that of prostitute. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the
English word conjures up a very limited picture of the range of services
that women performed under this general title. As the Greek
word hetaira, which means “female companion,” suggests, they
charged for their companionship rather than their sexual favors.
The ideal hetaira was gifted, charming, and intellectually accomplished.
Hetairai were the only women permitted to attend symposia.
The hetaira Aspasia, who, as noted, was the common-law wife of
Perikles, was so respected that she was consulted on both political