INTRODUCTION

Once upon a time the history of the ancient classical world was primarily the story of great men and their battles. We have come a long way since then, with the realization that the inclusive concept of gender is one of the key principles upon which all societies are organized in some way and to some extent. Gender is now central to our understanding of antiquity, as it is to the world around us today. The past and the present are engaged in a complex conversation in this domain. Classical antiquity has long been evoked to justify specific constructions of gender in later times, and our modern and post-modern rediscovery of gender in the past has been stimulated in large part by revolutionary changes in our own society in the latter part of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.

In this chapter I will sketch out how the subject of gender in classical antiquity has been approached in the past, and why perspectives have changed. Most of these changes have occurred as gender has come to be understood in new ways and incorporated into new frameworks of social theory. Gender theory is a huge and complex topic, crossing a wide range of disciplinary domains, and it would be impossible to explore it here in depth. Instead, I will introduce this short history of approaches to gender in classical antiquity with an overview of why gender is so hard to study, to show why it demands a theoretical framework. I will then consider whether the study of gender, and gender in the past in particular, remains important today, and, if so, why.

RELIGION AND SOCIETY

People in the Greek and Roman worlds were surrounded by the supernatural, thus religion was regularly intermingled with other aspects of life. On the other hand, cult activity often had special, designated times and places, and sometimes the structures and institutions of cult practice created alternative social realities and relationships different from the ‘everyday’ routines of social, political and economic life. In most ancient societies, the state played a major role in the organization and performance of religious rituals and festivals, but this is not to say that all religious life was controlled by the state. Many religious acts and celebrations were performed by individuals, households or other kinds of groups and associations with little or no reference to the state. Supernatural experts practised their arts at all levels. And belief in supernatural power was often enacted at a very personal level through the use of curses and magic.

Ancient religion is a vast subject, and it is possible to select only a few of its many gendered aspects here. In some cases participation in and engagement with cult and ritual weres gender-specific – only women or only men could take part (M. Dillon 2002: 237–9) – though other factors such as age and status could also be equally critical. Sometimes religious activities offered a niche for people to do things that were ‘out of the ordinary’ in terms of the usual expectations for gendered behaviours. And at other times religious rites and institutions reinforced established gendered ideals. These two trajectories need not be contradictory: sometimes the flouting of conventions in a religious context may simultaneously underpin their hegemony in ‘normal’, everyday life.

HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY

Households and families were the core institutions that, in most ancient societies, served as the prime social arenas where gender relations were both constituted and acted out. Although the terms ‘household’ and ‘family’ did not signify quite what they do for us, they were highly meaningful concepts in the classical world.

Households in Greece

The most important Greek words for household were oikos and oikia, both meaning ‘house’ in several senses, including: 1) the physical structure, a building; 2) a family or lineage (as in English usage, e.g. ‘House of Windsor’); 3) an estate or property; or 4) almost all of the above at once, a household. The adjectival form, oikeios, means ‘related’, but can also mean ‘private’, highlighting the significance of the household as the realm of private life in contrast to civic and communal activity.

Oikos / oikia are the terms closest to our word ‘family’ in the sense in which it is most commonly used in English (i.e. as ‘nuclear family’), but the oikos often included a wider range of people. Other words were used for broader notions of kinship. The term genos (with its numerous derivatives) was a more general word, referring to a family or lineage of any size, extent or time depth. In classical Athens and to some extent elsewhere it also took on an ‘official’ meaning as ‘kindred’ or ‘clan’, constructed for the most part along the male line. The term angchisteia is also an ‘official’ word in Athens referring to an individual’s bilateral legal kindred, i.e. reckoning relatedness to a limited extent from both the father’s and the mother’s side (see Chapter 3, section 2). Within the angchisteia an individual owed and was owed specific legal and customary obligations and duties. In our sources and perhaps in practice, the angchisteia was most relevant to men, but female links were often crucial (Foxhall 1989 ; MacDowell 1989 ; Todd 1993: 204–10).

SPACE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

Space, like gender, is a culturally constructed aspect of human societies which is entangled with and encompasses the physical world beyond human control. Space is not simply a container for social life. Rather, the physicality of mountains, valleys, seashore and plain is inextricably incorporated into the humanly designed and conceptualized space that is part of everyday life. Much of this space is, literally, built space, where people have modified the physical world to suit their social needs by constructing houses, streets, market squares, temples, fields, threshing floors and many other structures which shape, channel and constrain their own physical environment. A major part of this modification is constructing agreed pathways for moving through space, and coming to a consensus on how they should be used (for example, keeping cars out of pedestrian precincts and draft animals out of dining rooms). But more than this, space can be defined by style of movement, as well as the act of movement itself; travelling through the streets in a sedan chair surrounded by servants creates a spatial separation from ordinary pedestrians. Clothing partitions the body from the space of the rest of the world, and may shield people from their surroundings: the veiled woman creates a space to block out intrusive male gazes (Llewellyn-Jones 2003). Gesture, manner, glances and other behaviours can create, shape or traverse spatial barriers. Space can also be used differently over time by different people. In many societies, including those of the classical world (M. Scott 2012), the gendered use of space is very complicated and has much more to do with how and when different kinds of men and women might use, construct and traverse space in a wide variety of ways than about whether spaces in themselves can be considered ‘gendered’.