T h e A r t i o s H o m e C o m p a n i o n S e r i e s
Unit 20: Greece: Sparta and Athens
T e a c h e r O v e r v i e w
Every nation and civilization has its own culture. That culture is a reflection of the worldview of that nation. Each individual has the opportunity to make a difference in their culture by displaying their worldview to those around them. The Greeks displayed their worldview and their beliefs in many ways. One of those ways in seen in the way they lived their day to day lives. How can you display your worldview to the world around you? Be sure to read this unit’s leading ideas to see how the apostle Paul does this.
Map of Greece during the height of Theban power in 362 BC, showing Theban, Spartan and Athenian power blocks
R e a d i n g a n d As s i g nme nt s
In this unit, students will:
Complete two lessons in which they will learn about Sparta and Athens, journaling and answering discussion questions as they read.
Define vocabulary words.
Read selected books from Aeneid, journaling as they read.
Learn about Epic Poetry - Relationships.
Complete literature assignments including studying relationships in epic poetry.
Visit www.ArtiosHCS.com for additional resources.
L e a di ng I de a s
In Acts 17, Paul gives a sermon that makes it evident that he understood Greek philosophy.
However, he did not stay there in his conversation. He presented the gospel to them. This is a great demonstration of not being “of the world” but being “sent into” the world.
— Acts 17 (Read this chapter in ESV at:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+17&version=ESV)
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
— Romans 12:2
Ke y Pe o pl e , P l ac e s , a n d E ve nt s
Sparta Athens Solon
V oc a bu l a r y
Lesson 1: Lesson 2:
phalanx dowry
entrails surveillance
propitious pedagogue
L i t e r a t u r e a n d C o m p o s i t i o n
Unit 20 - Epic Poetry - Relationships
Topic for Units 20 - 22
Aeneid
by Virgil
Literature for Units 19 - 22
Publius Vergilius Maro (Classical Latin); October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period.
While both spellings are acceptable, we will use the spelling Virgil throughout this curriculum.
A ut h or S pot l i gh t
Virgil was probably born into a family of modest means, yet his family was still able to send him away to Cremona and Mediolanum for his education. He did eventually move to Roman and focus more on Philosophy and Poetry.
When Julius Caesar was assassinated, Virgil’s family estate was taken over by the
government. (Virgil was later able to reclaim it.) His work, The Bucolics, was published when
Octavian took power. This was the work that launched Virgil into fame. With the support of Octavian’s advisor, Gaius Maecanas, Virgil was able to connect with many literary figures of the day, including Horace.
When Octavian took the title of Augustus, he commissioned Virgil to write “an epic poem that would glorify Rome and the Roman people.” This was an opportunity of a lifetime – a chance to create a legend that traced Caesar’s lineage all the way back to the Trojan War through Aneas. His goal was to create “Caesarist mythology” that would rival Homer. And while it is true that he took many ideas from Homer’s work, there is evidence that he only wrote three lines a day because he wanted the lines to be written in Latin perfection.
Virgil worked on the Aeneid over the last ten years of his life. He caught a fever on a trip to Greece and died. He was 51 years old and his greatest work was left unfinished. And though he requested the work be burned rather than be left unfinished, Augustus insisted Virgil’s literary executors publish it with as few corrections as possible.
Even though the work was left unfinished, it was immediately considered a masterpiece and, as Virgil had hoped, a “testament to the grandeur of the Roman Empire.” Later,
Medieval Christians would praise his work as a prophecy that, through metaphors and symbols, foretold the coming of Christ.
(Taken from Ancient Rome – Vergil at:
http://www.ancient-literature.com/rome_vergil.html)
U ni t 2 0 – As s i gn me nt s
Read Unit 20 – Assignment Background: Relationships.
Read Books III - V of Aeneid.
Activity While Reading: In your reading journal, write down lines and quotes that talk about Aeneas’s relationship with his father.
U ni t 2 0 – As s i gn me nt Ba c kgr ou n d : R e l a t i on s h i ps
As we work through the next few units, it might help you to go back to Unit 1 and review the characteristics of an epic poem. Virgil was trying to so carefully follow the guidelines that his poem is almost a perfect model. One thing he adds to the Aeneid is the father-son
relationship. Is this something unique to Aeneas?
As you make notes about Aeneas and his father, compare it to Scriptures that talk about fathers. Here are a few to get you started:
▪ Proverbs 23:23-25
▪ Proverbs 30:10-17
▪ Ephesians 6:1-4
Even though Virgil was writing this in 27 B.C., well before the time of Christ, Some in the medieval period believed he was prophesying about the coming Messiah. While that will be interesting to explore in this reading, we will “collect” observations about Aeneas’s
characteristics. As you look back at Unit 1, recall what makes someone an epic hero. Does Aeneas fit the description? Write down your observations.
L e s s o n O n e
H i s t o r y O v e r v i e w a n d A s s i g n m e n t s
Sparta
Structure of the Spartan Constitution
This file is licensed by Putinovac under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
R e a d i n g a n d As s i g nme nt s
Review the vocabulary, then read the Sparta section of this unit’s article: Sparta and Athens.
Make a list of specific characteristics, traits, and activities that were specific to Spartan society. Be specific and detailed.
Narrate about today’s reading using the appropriate notebook page. Include key people, events, and dates within the narration.
Define the vocabulary words in the context of the reading and put the word and its definition in the vocabulary section of your history notebook.
Be sure to visit www.ArtiosHCS.com for additional resources.
V oc a b u l a r y
phalanx entrails propitious
Ke y Pe o pl e , P l ac e s , a n d E ve nt s
Sparta
Adapted from the book:
History of Ancient Civilization
by Charles Seignobos
Sparta and Athens
Sparta When the Dorian mountaineers
invaded the Peloponnesus, the main body of them settled at Sparta in Laconia.
Laconia is a narrow valley traversed by a considerable stream (the Eurotas) flowing between two massive mountain ranges with snowy summits. A poet describes the country as follows: “A land rich in tillable soil, but hard to cultivate, deep set among perpendicular mountains, rough in aspect, inaccessible to invasion.” In this enclosed country lived the Dorians of Sparta in the midst of the ancient inhabitants, of whom some had become their subjects and others their serfs. There were, then, in Laconia three classes: Helots, Periœci, and Spartiates.
The Helots dwelt in the cottages scattered in the plain and cultivated the soil. But the land did not belong to them—
indeed, they were not even free to leave it.
They were, like the serfs of the Middle Ages, peasants attached to the soil, from father to son. They labored for Spartiate proprietors who took from them the greater part of the harvest. The Spartiates instructed them, feared them, and treated them poorly. They compelled them to wear rude garments, beat them unmercifully to remind them of their servile condition, and sometimes made them intoxicated to disgust their children with the sight of drunkenness. A Spartiate poet compares the Helots to “loaded asses stumbling
under their burdens and the blows inflicted.”
The Periœci (“those who live around”) inhabited a hundred villages in the
mountains or on the coast. They were sailors, they engaged in commerce, and manufactured the objects necessary to life.
They were free and administered the business of their village, but they paid tribute to the magistrates of Sparta and obeyed them.
Helots and Periœci despised the Spartiates, their masters. “Whenever one speaks to them of the Spartiates,” says Xenophon, “there isn’t one of them who can conceal the pleasure he would feel in eating them alive.” Once an earthquake nearly destroyed Sparta. The Helots at once rushed from all sides of the plain to massacre those of the Spartiates who had escaped the catastrophe. At the same time the Periœci rose and refused obedience.
The Spartiates’ bearing toward the Periœci was certain to exasperate them. At the end of a war in which many of the Helots had fought in their army, they bade them choose those who had especially
distinguished themselves for bravery, with the promise of freeing them. It was a ruse to discover the most energetic and capable of revolting. Two thousand were chosen—
they were conducted about the temples with heads crowned as an evidence of their emancipation. Then the Spartiates
removed them, but how it was done no one ever knew.
And yet the oppressed classes were ten times more numerous than their masters.
While there were more than 200,000 Helots and 120,000 Periœci, there were never more than 9,000 Spartiate heads of families. In a matter of life and death, then, it was necessary that a Spartiate be as strong as ten Helots. As the form of battle was hand-to-hand, they needed agile and robust men. Sparta was like a camp
without walls—its people made up an army that was always in readiness.
They made soldiers of them beginning at birth. The newborn infant was brought before a council. If it was found deformed, it was left on the mountain to die, for an army has use only for strong men. The children who were permitted to grow up were taken from their parents at the age of seven years and were trained together as members of a group. Both summer and winter they went barefoot and had but a single mantle to wear. They slept on a heap of reeds and bathed in the cold waters of the Eurotas River. They ate little and quickly, and their diet was rude. This was to teach them not to satiate the stomach.
They were grouped by hundreds, each under a chief. Often they had to contend with blows of feet and fists. At the feast of Artemis they were beaten before the statue of the goddess till the blood flowed. Some died under this ordeal, but their honor required them not to weep. They were taught to fight and suffer.
Often they were given nothing to eat—
provision must be found by foraging. If they were captured on these predatory expeditions, they were roughly beaten. A very old story tells of a Spartiate boy who
had stolen a little fox and had hidden it under his mantle. Rather than betray himself, he let the animal gnaw out his vitals. They were to learn how to escape from perplexing situations when they were in the field.
They walked silently with lowered glance, hands under their mantle, without turning the head and “making no more noise than statues.” They were not to speak at table and were to obey all men they encountered. This was to accustom them to discipline.
The other Greeks kept their daughters secluded in the house, spinning flax, but the Spartiates wanted robust women capable of bearing vigorous children. The girls, therefore, were trained in much the same manner as the boys. In their
gymnasia they practiced running, leaping, throwing the disc and javelin. A poet describes a play in which Spartiate girls
“like colts with flowing manes make the dust fly about them.” They were reputed to be the healthiest and bravest women in Greece.
The men, too, had their regular life—a soldier’s life. The presence of many
enemies required that no one was
permitted to weaken. At seventeen years the Spartiate became a soldier and remained so until he was sixty. The
costume, hour of rising and retiring, meals, exercise—everything was fixed by
regulations, as in barracks.
Since the Spartiate engaged only in war, he was to prepare himself for that. He exercised himself in running, leaping, and wielding his arms. He disciplined all the members of the body—neck, arms, shoulders, legs— every day. He had no right to engage in trade, to pursue an
industry, nor to cultivate the earth. He was a soldier and as such was not to allow himself to be diverted to any other occupation. He could not live at his pleasure with his own family. Rather, the men ate together in squads. They could not leave the country without permission. It was the discipline of a regiment in the enemy’s territory.
These warriors had a rude life, with clean-cut ambitions and proud
dispositions. They spoke in short phrases—
or as we say, “laconically”—the word has persisted. The Greeks cited many examples of these expressions. To a garrison in danger of being surprised the government sent this message, “Attention!” A Spartan army was summoned by the king of Persia to lay down his arms. The general replied,
“Come and take them.” When Lysander captured Athens, he wrote simply, “Athens is fallen.”
The arts of Sparta were those that pertained to an army. The Dorian
conquerors brought with them a peculiar sort of music—the Dorian style, serious, strong, even harsh. It was military music—
the Spartiates went into battle to the sound of the flute so that the step might be
regular.
Their dance was a military movement.
In the Pyrrhic dance, the participants were armed and imitated all the movements of a battle. They made the gestures of striking, of parrying, of retreating, and of throwing the javelin.
The women motivated the men toward combat. Their exhibitions of courage were celebrated in Greece, so much so that collections of stories of them were made. A Spartan mother, seeing her son fleeing from battle, killed him with her own hand,
saying; “The Eurotas does not flow for deer.”
Another, learning that her five sons had perished, said, “This is not what I wish to know. Does victory belong to Sparta?”
“Yes,” was the reply.
“Then let us render thanks to the gods,”
she answered.
Spartan Institutions
At first the Spartiates had, like the other Greeks, an assembly of the people. Such institutions were preserved, but only in form. The kings, said to be descendants of the god Herakles, were loaded with
honors—they were given the first place at the feasts and were served with a double portion. When they died all the inhabitants made lamentation for them. But no true power was held by them, and they were closely watched.
The Senate was composed of twenty- eight old men taken from the rich and ancient families, appointed for life. But it did not govern.
The real masters of Sparta were the Ephors (the name means “overseers”), five magistrates who were renewed every year.
They decided peace and war, and performed judicial functions. When the king commanded the army, they
accompanied him, directed the operations, and sometimes made him return. Usually they consulted the senators and took action in harmony with them. Then they
assembled the Spartiates in one place, announced to them what had been decided, and asked their approbation. The people without discussing the matter approved the action by acclamation. No one knew
whether he had the right to refuse assent.
Accustomed to obey, the Spartiate never
refused. It was, therefore, an aristocracy of governing families. Sparta was not a
country of equality. There were some men who were called Equals, but only because they were equal among themselves. The others were termed Inferiors and had no part in the government.
Thanks to this regime, the Spartiates preserved the rude customs of
mountaineers. They had no sculptors, architects, orators, or philosophers. They had sacrificed everything to war—they became “adepts in the military art,” and instructors of the other Greeks. They introduced two innovations especially: a better method of combat, and a better method of athletic exercise.
Other Greeks marched into battle in disorder—the chiefs, on horseback or in a light chair, rushed ahead, the men
following on foot, armed each in his own fashion and incapable of either acting together or of resisting. A battle reduced itself to a series of duels and then a massacre.
At Sparta all the soldiers had the same arms—for defense: the breastplate covering the chest, the helm which protected the head, the greaves over the legs, the buckler held before the body. For offense the soldier had a short sword and a long lance.
The man thus armed was called a hoplite.
The Spartan hoplites were drawn up in regiments, battalions, companies, and squads, almost like our armies. An officer commanded each of these groups and transmitted to his men the orders of his superior officer, so that the general in chief might have the same movement executed throughout the whole army. This
organization which appears so simple to us was to the Greeks an astonishing novelty.
Coming into the presence of the enemy, the soldiers arranged themselves in line, ordinarily eight ranks deep, each man close to his neighbor, forming a compact mass which we call a phalanx. The king, who directed the army, sacrificed a goat to the gods. If the entrails of the victim were propitious, he raised a chant which all the army took up in unison. Then they
advanced. With rapid and measured step, to the sound of the flute, with lance
couched and buckler before the body, they met the enemy in dense array,
overwhelmed him by their mass and momentum, threw him into rout, and only checked themselves to avoid breaking the phalanx. So long as they remained together each was protected by his neighbor, and all formed an impenetrable mass on which the enemy could secure no hold. These were rude tactics, but sufficient to overcome a disorderly troop. Isolated men could not resist such a body. The other Greeks
understood this, and all, as far as they were able, came to imitate the Spartans;
everywhere men were armed as hoplites and fought in phalanx.
To rush in orderly array upon the enemy and stand the shock of battle there was need of agile and robust men—every man had to be an athlete. The Spartans therefore organized athletic exercises, and in this the other Greeks imitated them.
Gymnastics became for all a national art, the highest esteemed of all the arts, the crowning feature of the great festivals.
Even in the most remote countries, in the midst of the barbarians of Gaul or of the Black Sea, a Greek city was recognized by its gymnasium. There was a great square surrounded by porticoes or walks, usually near a spring, with baths and halls
for exercise. The citizens went there to walk and chat—it was a place of
association. All the young men entered the gymnasium. For two years or so they went there every day. They learned to leap, to run, to throw the disc and the javelin, to wrestle by seizing about the waist. To harden the muscles and strengthen the skin they plunged into cold water while covered with oil and rubbed the flesh with a scraper (called a strigil).
Many continued these exercises all their lives as a point of honor and became
athletes. Some became marvels of skill.
Milo of Croton in Italy, it was said, would carry a bull on his shoulders. He was
renowned for stopping a chariot in its course by seizing it from behind. These athletes served sometimes in combat as soldiers, or as generals. Gymnastics were the school of war.
The Spartans taught the other Greeks to exercise and to fight. They always
remained the most vigorous wrestlers and the best soldiers, and were recognized as such by the rest of Greece. Everywhere they were respected. When the rest of the
Greeks had to fight together against the Persians, they unhesitatingly took the Spartans as chiefs—and with justice, said an Athenian orator.
Athens The Athenians boasted of having always
lived in the same country. Their ancestors, according to their story, originated from the soil itself. The mountaineers who conquered the southern land passed by the area without invading it.
The Attic Peninsula, also called Attica, was hardly a temptation to them, for the land is made up of a mass of rocks which, in the form of a triangle, advances into the Aegean Sea. These rocks, renowned for their fine marble and for the honey of their bees, are bare and sterile. Between them and the sea are left three small plains with meager soil, poorly watered (the streams are dry in summer) and incapable of supporting a numerous population.
In the largest of these plains, a league from the sea, rises a massive, isolated rock.
The old city, called the Acropolis, occupied the summit of the rock. Athens was built at its foot.
The inhabitants of Attica started off, not by forming a single state, but by founding
scattered villages, each of which had its own king and its own government. Later all these villages united under one king, the king of Athens, and established a single city. This does not mean that all the people came to dwell in one town. They continued to have their own villages and to cultivate their lands, but all adored one and the same protecting goddess, Athena, divinity of Athens, and all obeyed the same king.
Later still the kings were suppressed. In their place Athens had nine chiefs (the archons) who changed every year. This whole history is little known to us, for no writing from this time was preserved. They used to say that for centuries the Athenians had lived in discord. The nobles
(Eupatrids), who were proprietors of the soil, oppressed the peasants on their estates. Creditors held their debtors as slaves. To reestablish order the Athenians commissioned Solon, a sage, to draft a code of laws for them.
Solon instituted three reforms:
1. He decreased the value of the money, which allowed the debtors to release
themselves more easily.
2. He made the peasants proprietors of the land they cultivated. From this time there were in Attica more small proprietors than in any other part of Greece.
3. He grouped all the citizens into four classes according to their incomes. Each had to pay taxes and render military service according to his wealth, the poor being exempt from taxation and military service.
After Solon the Athenians were subject to Pisistratus, one of their powerful and clever citizens, but in 510 B.C. the
dissensions revived. Cleisthenes, leader of one of the parties, used the occasion to launch a thoroughgoing revolution.
There were many strangers in Athens, especially seamen and traders who lived in Piræus near the harbor. Cleisthenes gave them the rights of citizenship and made them equal to the earlier inhabitants. From this time there were two populations side by side—the people of Attica and those of Piræus. A difference of physical features was apparent for three centuries
afterward—the people of Attica resembled the rest of the Greeks, while those in Piræus resembled Asiatics. The Athenian people thus augmented became a new people, the most dynamic in Greece.
By the fifth century B.C. the society of Athens was ordered: three classes
inhabited the district of Attica—slaves, foreigners, and citizens.
The slaves constituted the great majority of the population. There was no citizen so poor that he did not have at least one slave. The rich owned a multitude of
them, some as many as five hundred. The larger part of the slaves lived in the house, occupied with grinding grain, kneading bread, spinning and weaving cloth,
performing service in the kitchens, and in attendance on their masters. Others labored in the shops as blacksmiths, as dyers, or in stone quarries or silver mines.
Their master fed them but sold at a profit everything they produced, giving them in return nothing but their living. All the domestic servants, all the miners, and the greater part of the artisans were slaves.
These men lived in society but without any part in it—they had not even the
disposition of their own bodies, being wholly the property of other men. They were thought of only as objects of property, and were often referred to as “a body” (σ ωμα). There was no other law for them than the will of their master, and he had all power over them—to make them work, to imprison them, to deprive them of their sustenance, to beat them. When a citizen went to law, his adversary had the right to require that the former’s slaves be put to torture to tell what they knew. Many Athenian orators commend this usage as an ingenious means for obtaining true testimony. “Torture,” said the orator Isæus,
“is the surest means of proof, and so when you wish to clear up a contested question, you do not address yourselves to freemen, but, placing the slaves to the torture, you seek to discover the truth.”
The name metics was applied to people of foreign origin who became established in Athens. To become a citizen of Athens it was not enough, as with us, to be born in the country; one had to be the son of a citizen. It might be that some aliens had resided in Attica for several generations
and yet their family would not be Athenian.
The metics could take no part in the
government, could not marry a citizen, nor acquire land. But they were personally free—they had the right of commerce by sea, of banking and of trade—on condition that they take a patron to represent them in the courts. There were in Athens more than ten thousand families of metics, the majority of them bankers or merchants.
To be a citizen of Athens it was necessary that both parents be citizens.
The young Athenian, reaching maturity at about eighteen years of age, appeared before the popular assembly, received the arms which he was to bear, and took the following oath: “I swear never to dishonor these sacred arms, not to quit my post, to obey the magistrates and the laws, to honor the religion of my country.” He became simultaneously citizen and soldier.
Thereafter he owed military service until he was sixty years of age. With this he had the right to sit in the assembly and to fulfill the functions of the state.
Once in a while the Athenians
consented to receive into citizenship a man who was not the son of a citizen, but this was rare and a sign of great favor. The assembly had to vote the stranger into its membership, and then nine days later six thousand citizens had to vote for him on a secret ballot. The Athenian people were like a closed circle—no new members were admitted except those pleasing to the old members, and they admitted few beside their sons.
The Government of Athens The Athenians called their government a democracy (a government by the people).
But this people was not, as with us, the
mass of inhabitants, but the body of
citizens, an aristocracy of 15,000 to 20,000 men who governed the whole nation as masters. This body had absolute power and was the true sovereign of Athens. It
assembled at least three times a month to deliberate and to vote.
The assembly was held in the open air on the Pnyx (a hill in central Athens). The citizens sat on stone benches arranged in an amphitheater. The magistrates before them on a tribunal (a raised platform used for address) opened the session with a religious ceremony and a prayer, then a herald proclaimed in a loud voice the business which was to occupy the
assembly, saying, “Who wishes to speak?”
Every citizen had a right to this privilege, and the orators mounted the tribunal according to age. When all had spoken, the president put the question to the citizens.
The assembly voted by a show of hands, and then dissolved.
The people itself, being sovereign, passed judgment in the courts. Every citizen of thirty years of age could participate in the judicial assembly (the Heliæa). The heliasts sat in the great halls in sections of five hundred. The tribunal was, then, composed of one thousand to fifteen hundred judges. The Athenians had no prosecuting officer like we have—a citizen took it upon himself to make the accusation. The accused and the accuser appeared before the court. Each delivered a plea which was not to exceed the time marked off by a water-clock. Then the judges voted by depositing a black or white stone into a large jar called an amphora. If the accuser did not obtain a certain
number of votes, he himself was condemned.
The sovereign people needed a council to prepare the business for discussion and magistrates to execute their decisions. The council was composed of five hundred citizens drawn by lot for one year. The magistrates were very numerous—ten generals to command the army, thirty officials for financial administration, sixty police officials to superintend the streets, the markets, weights and measures, etc.
The power in Athens did not pertain to the rich and the noble, as in Sparta. In the assembly everything was decided by a majority of votes, and all the votes were equal. All the jurors, members of the council, and magistrates (except the generals) were chosen by lot. The citizens were equal not only in theory, but also in practice. Socrates said to a well-informed Athenian who did not dare to speak before the people: “Of what are you afraid? Is it of the fullers, the shoemakers, the masons, the artisans, or the merchants? For the assembly is composed of all these people.”
Many of these people had to ply their trade in order to make a living and could not serve the state gratuitously, and so a salary was instituted: every citizen who sat in the assembly or in the courts received for every day of session three obols, a sum just sufficient to maintain life at that time.
From this day the poor administered the government.
Since all important affairs, whether in the assembly or in the courts, were decided by discussion and discourse, the influential men were those who knew how to speak best. The people accustomed themselves to listen to the orators, to follow their
counsels, to charge them with embassies, and even to appoint them generals. These men were called Demagogues (leaders of
the people). The party of the rich scoffed at them.
In a comedy Aristophanes represents the people (Demos) under the form of an old man who has lost his wits: “You are foolishly credulous, you let flatterers and intriguers pull you around by the nose and you are enraptured when they harangue you.”
The chorus, addressing a charlatan, says to him, “You are rude, vicious. You have a strong voice, an impudent
eloquence, and violent gestures. Believe me, you have all that is necessary to govern Athens.”
The Athenians created so many political functions that a portion of the citizenry was engaged in fulfilling them. The citizen of Athens, like the functionary or soldier of our days, was absorbed in public affairs.
Warring and governing comprised the whole of his life. He spent his days in the assembly, in the courts, in the army, at the gymnasium, or at the market. Almost always he had a wife and children, for his religion commanded this, but he did not live at home.
When a child came into the world, the father had the right to reject it. In this case it was laid outside the house where it died from neglect, unless a passerby took it and brought it up as a slave. In this custom Athens followed all the Greeks. It was especially the girls that were exposed to death. “A son,” says a writer of comedy, “is always raised even if the parents are in the last stage of misery. A daughter is exposed even though the parents are rich.”
If the father accepted the child, the latter entered the family. He was left at first in the women’s apartments with the mother. The girls remained there until the
day of their marriage, while the boys came out when they were seven years old. The boy was then entrusted to a preceptor (a teacher, also called a pedagogue), whose business it was to instruct him to conduct himself well and to obey. The pedagogue was often a slave, but the father gave him the right to beat his son. This was the general custom in antiquity.
Later the boy went to school, where he learned to read, write, cipher, recite poetry, and to sing in the chorus or to the sound of the flute. At last came gymnastics. This was the whole of the instruction. It made men sound in body and calm in spirit—what the Greeks called “good and beautiful.”
To the young girl, secluded with her mother, nothing of the liberal arts was taught. It was thought sufficient if she learned to obey. Xenophon represents a rich and well-educated Athenian speaking thus of his wife with Socrates: “She was hardly twenty years old when I married her, and up to that time she had been subjected to an exacting surveillance. They had no desire that she should live, and she had learned almost nothing. Was it not enough that one should find in her a woman who could spin the flax to make garments, and who had learned how to distribute duties to the slaves?”
When her husband proposed that she become his assistant, she replied with great surprise, “In what can I aid you? Of what am I capable? My mother has always taught me that my business was to be prudent.” Prudence or obedience was the virtue required of the Greek woman.
At the age of fifteen the girl married.
The parents would choose the husband. He might be a man from a neighboring family, or a man who had been a long-time friend
of the father, but always a citizen of Athens. It was rare that the young girl knew him—she was never consulted in the case.
Herodotus, speaking of a Greek, adds:
“This Callias deserves mention for his conduct toward his daughters, for when they were of marriageable age he gave them a rich dowry, permitted them to choose husbands from all the people, and he then married them to the men of their choice.”
In the inner recess of the Athenian house there was a retired apartment reserved for the women—the Gynaceum.
Husband and relatives were the only visitors. The mistress of the household remained here all day with her children and slaves. She directed the slaves, superintended the housekeeping, and distributed to them the flax for them to spin. She herself was engaged with weaving garments. She seldom left the house, save for the religious festivals. She never appeared in the society of men.
“No one certainly would venture,” said the orator Isæus, “to dine with a married woman. Married women do not go out to dine with men or permit themselves to eat with strangers.” An Athenian woman who frequented society could not maintain a good reputation.
The wife, thus secluded and ignorant, was not a companion in any real way to her husband. The husband had taken her not to be his lifelong companion, but to keep his house in order and be the mother of his children. He did so because Greek custom and religion required that he should marry.
Plato said that one did not marry because he wanted to, but “because the law
constrains him.” And the comic poet
Menander had found this saying:
“Marriage, to tell the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.”
And so the women in Athens, as in most of the other states of Greece, always held but little place in society.
L e s s o n T w o
H i s t o r y O v e r v i e w a n d A s s i g n m e n t s
Athens
Bas-relief of Solon from the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives
Sculpture by Brenda Putnam; photo by the Architect of the Capitol
R e a d i n g a n d As s i g nme nt s
Review the discussion question and vocabulary, then read the Athens section of the article: Sparta and Athens.
Make a list of specific characteristics, traits, and activities that were specific to Athenian society. Be specific and details.
Narrate about today’s reading using the appropriate notebook page. Be sure to answer the discussion questions and include key people, events, and dates within the narration.
Define the vocabulary words in the context of the reading and put the word and its definition in the vocabulary section of your history notebook.
Be sure to visit
www.ArtiosHCS.com for additional resources.
V oc a b u l a r y
dowry surveillance pedagogue
Ke y Pe o pl e , P l a c e s , a n d E ve nt s
Solon Athens
D i s c us s i o n Q ue s t i on s
1. List the three reforms made by Solon.
