Womens Role in Hellenistic Times
The common womans role within Hellenistic society was extremely inferior to the role that men played. Compared to other periods of history, the role of common middle class women during the Hellenistic time period is hard to define. It is most clearly defined in the papyri recording their marriages. The marriage document is one of the only sources that can tell historians what life was like for the common women. Of course, depending on location and time period, each lifestyle varies a little bit, but one thing remains constant; common women lived in the shadow of their husbands.
Women were seen as subservient to men. There were boundaries set upon them that dealt with their interactions with men publicly, privately, domestically and politically, (Burton, 41). In the book Women and Society, it was noted that women had little legal independence and were expected to be under the control of their fathers and then their husbands throughout their life, (Rowlandson, 162). This was accomplished by the need to give women legal guardians before they married. The guardian was usually the womans father. If the father had passed on already then the brother or oldest living male relative took the place of guardian. The guardian played an essential role when it came time to writing out the marriage contract. Greek law states that women were not able to sign contracts, not even personal documents such as the marriage document, (Pomeroy, 89). The womans guardian would sign in her place and the groom would sign in his own respective area, (Pomeroy, 89). Marriage contracts were written on sheets of papyrus and usually they were used in the ritual of marriage by the citizens of the Greek cities of Ptolemais, Naucratis and other medium sized Greek settlements scattered throughout Egypt, (Pomeroy, 83). The marriage contract was a legally binding contract that mapped out all of the couples expectations of the marriage.
An example of what type of expectations that were agreed upon within the papyri can be found when reading P. Elephantine 1=Chrest. Milt. I 283= Select Papyri. This is a marriage contract between a man and a woman, although the woman is never mentioned in it as making any decisions. In her place, her guardian who is her father is named. The bride and groom did not decide on where they would live and spend their life together. In the brides place her father decided alongside of the groom, (Pomeroy, 86). Later on, the papyri states that if the woman shall bring any shame or dishonor to her husband during the marriage and the husband can prove this dishonor to a panel of 3 men. Then the woman would loose all of her possessions that she brought into the marriage, (Pomeroy, 86).
The papyri are the only ancient sources that show the extreme difference in treatment of the men and women within marriage. Sex roles were defined in the papyri and women were expected to function in different spheres than the men, (Pomeroy, 83). Sirach wrote about the need to keep the wife at home in order to keep patrilineage from interfering, (King, 271).
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