Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Cantarella dismisses the idea that the pre-classical era ever had actual matriarchies. In Greece she recognizes that women in areas other than Athens had less restricted lives, but emphasizes the role of Athens in passing on literary and cultural ideas of women as a curse to men and as nonentities in civil life. Greek women, for the most part, had lives that were centered on reproduction of citizens, if free, or on servile work and reproduction of servile workers, if slave. In Rome the situation is slightly better in that women earned respect for motherhood and for training children to be citizens. In order to do so they had to have more exposure to the world than women in Greece. But women served the family, not their own interests. show more They did not even have their own names--being know by a feminine version of the father's name and a number. So If Julius had two daughters, the second would be Julia Secundus. However, any change in women's status was usually attacked as a decline in morals. Christianity offered women personhood, but added a revulsion against sex to the general reasons for rejection. As the Empire fell, women lost rights again and were even blamed for the decline. Not an optimistic work. show less