Women in the Ancient Mediterranean

Catalog description

This course will explore the main sources of information about women in the related Mediterranean cultures of Greece, Rome and Italy, from c. 1000 BC to the 4th c. AD. Although these cultures are quite distinct in many ways, there are all patriarchal societies with an agricultural base for the economy. Women’s roles were tied to reproduction and care of the household, and women were seen as less publicly productive, and therefore inferior to men. The ways in which women were categorized as ‘not men’ cannot be understood without analyzing what it meant to be a man in these societies, in particular a free citizen adult man. The evidence we will consider includes economic and legal texts, literature, religious texts and funerary inscriptions, as well as archaeological evidence. In particular, we will look at the representations of women in epic, love poetry, drama, law cases, art and archaeology. Most texts and art works were created by men, and present the male view, both positive and negative, of women’s roles in society, so the course will also focus upon the culturally defined gender biases in the sources, and on feminist methodologies devised to clarify and interpret these biases.