Women of Legend

• Pandora

  • first woman created by zeus to punish mankind for recieving gift of fire from prometheus (god of forethought)
  • she made humans experience suffering and death
• Creation of Pandora

  • hephaestus shapes her out of earth and water
  • athena gave her clothes and jewelry “adorned her body”
  • hermes gave her a shameless mind and her name (means all gifts)
• Hesiod Works and Days= “put lies and crafts words and a thievish nature into her heart“

  • creation of first woman reflects negative greek attitudes towards women
• Pandoras desirabilitu

  • giften to epimethius depsite warning; her desirability made a titan forget
  • pandoras birth is focused on beauty and fine clothing; greek woman have to be physicalily attractive
• Pandoras Box

  • pandora opened her pithos releasing all evils that plague mankind once she had reached the earth
  • pandora opened box due to her curiosity; demonstrating women’s lack of obedience and self- control
• Pandoras Character

  • either a double agent working for the gods against humanity
  • or an uncontrolled slave to her curiosity

  both interpretations blame pandora and women all together
• Theogony describes the inherent evil of women increased by men’s need to have children with women

  • ”deadly race“ “who live among mortal men“
  • mankind “reaches deadly old age without anyone to tend to”; refers to men who wish not to marry
• Helen

  • dayghter of zeus and leda, wife of king tyndareus of sparta
  • most beautiful women in the world
  • suitors swore an oath to go to war if anyone threatened her marriage
  • married menelaus
• Helens Capture in Illiad

  • paris visited menelaus + captured helen as aphrodite promised him the most beautiful women in the world
  • helen brought shame upon herself by being unfaithful
• Homer Illiad= “i wish i had chosen death rather than following your son”

  • helen speaks to paris’ father and expresses her regretful decision
• Helen as a victim

  • helen could’ve been overcome by irresistible power of aphrodite
  • helen could’ve been taken by force
• Euripides Helen

  • hera creates an eidolon (phantom) of helen in troy whilst the real helen is whisked away to egypt
  • helen isn’t a villain or victim; rather a pawn in the game of the gods
• Euripides Helen= “Aphrodite promises my beauty of misfortune is beautiful“

  • shows her guilt despite not committing adultery; innocent
• Sabine Women

  • After creation of Rome, Romulus asks sabines to arrange marriages as they have a shortage of women
  • after refusing, they invite sabine women and capture them
• Livvy History of Rome= “they justified their needs with love and longing, which is the most effective way of appealing to a woman’s heart“

  • once offering benefits of roman citizenship, women are supposedly swayed by flattery; demonstrates roman attitudes towards women
• Livy History of Rome= “being suspected of wishing to betray them, fell a victim of her own bargain”

  • interpretation regards her as a heroine rather than a traitor
• Livy History of Rome= “we are the cause of war, of wounds and the deaths of our husbands and fathers”

  • intervention of sabine women demonstrates the great impact women had by influencing males in political sphere
• Lucretia

  • patrician woman married to collatinus
  • ideal matrona and prefect example of feminine virtue
• Lucretia’s Story

  • collatinus and men go to visit their wives; lucretia proves to be the most virtuous
  • sextus tarquinius is so impressed that he forces her to sleep with him via threatening to accuse her of adultery
  • she commits suicide out of pudicitia
  • leads to uprising against tarquinius superbus
• Livy History of Rome=“ the prize in the contest of feminine virtue was awarded to lucretia” who was “completely occupied by her spinning”
• Livy History of Rome= “her steadfast chasisty was overcome at this terrible prospect”

  • lucretia wasnt “even touched at the fear of death” but rather being accused of infidelity
  • demonstrated her strong pudicitia
• Livy History of Rome= “my heart is innocent as death shall be my witness”

  • commits suicide as “no shameless woman will ever live by the example of lucretia”
  • couldn’t bear prospect of unchaste women living by her example
• Lucretia’s masculinity

  • despite her womanly virtue, she displays masculine qualitiees
  • Ovid describes her as “matrona with a manly spirit”; her suicide was unlike women in myth as she died by stabbing herself
  • Valerius Maximus calls her a leader