"Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves"

This paper will review Sarah B. Pomeroy's scholarly work, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. Pomeroy's book is a social history of Greek and Roman women, beginning with the role women played in ancient Greek mythology in the Bronze Age as well as at the time when the ancient city of Troy fell. The book ends after examining the role that women played in both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and ends during the time of the early Empire, in approximately 565 A.D. According to the author, her book is unique because it is the only comprehensive comparison of women in classical antiquity which has been written in the English language (x). This paper will show that Romen women had more opportunities to participate in the cultural, political, and economic life than their Athenian counterparts.

The first chapter of the book focuses on the Athenian woman, as she existed in the Bronze Age. Most of the information is extrapolated from ancient Greek mythology and is culled from the lore about Zeus, Dionysus, Aphrodite, and, more importantly, Athena. The ancient Greek Goddess, Athena, is significant because she presides over crafts, which at that time, for women, were mainly spinning and weaving. According to this mythology, a woman's skill in the areas of fabric-making is attributable to the Goddess Athena (5).

While women were perceived, during the Bronze Age, to have some manual, working skills which were o

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d marrying the bad daughter of a bad father, if he [the bad father] gives much wealth [to the groom]" (35). Thus, the concept that marriages were influenced more by economic factors than emotional ones seems to have been fully developed by the time the Greeks were marrying. Unfortunately, during the Dark Age and Archaic Period, women were not thought of as capable of contributing anything of any intellectual or scientific significance to Greek society. In fact, two Greek philosophers (Semonides in the seventh century B.C. and Phocylides in the sixth century B.C.) directly compared women to "species of livestock" (49). At that time, a wife was not considered virtuous if she displayed any interest in sex because she might then be easily apt to commit adultery and therefore make a laughingstock of her husband in his community. Moreover, a frigid wife was thought to be less likely to bear too many children (which would cost a great deal of money to raise). Similarly, women with large rumps were considered desirable because they, it was presumed, would be more able to have anal intercourse, which was a popular method of birth control at the time (49). By the sixth century, men in Athens were clearly making distinctions between
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1414
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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