Young women

• Kyrios


  The daughter's father, husband, then son
• Exposure


  What in the baby would be welcomed into the household
• Dowry


  A main amount of money the daughter's side of the family had to pay to the husband's family
• Kyria


  Good Athenian women who provide for husband & family
• Wetnurse


  Help other women after her child & train them as well
• Menander


  A playwright
• Plato


  A philosopher famous for his ideas
• Girls were at far greater risk of being exposed than boys were
• Athens had no state education system, each family had to arrange education for their children
• Most of the evidence from vase painting depicts the education of boys
• Menander wrote that a man who teaches a woman to write should recognise he is providing poison to an asp (poisonous snake)
• Plato proposed that girls and boys should have the same education, though separately
• Plato thought that women were generally inferior to men, but that some women would have the qualities to belong to the governing class after an education
• Social class made a difference to a young Athenian girl's education
• Girls had limited opportunities for education and self-expression compared to boys in Athenian society
• Betrothal


  The formal ceremony where the bride's father chose a suitable husband for his daughter
• Athenian girls were often married as young as 14 or 15, as soon as they reached puberty
• Marriage was more of a business arrangement than a romantic joining in Athenian society
• Dowry


  The sum of money or property that was the share of the father's estate set aside for a girl, used to support her while married
• The dowry afforded an Athenian wife a certain amount of security as the husband was legally obliged to maintain the woman
• Athenian wedding ceremony


  1. Day 1: Bride makes sacrifices, shares a feast

  2. Day 2: Bride has ritual bath, dressed in finest clothes, wedding feast

  3. Day 3: Bride given gifts by new family, couple retire to bedroom
• Eye-witnesses were important to the Athenian wedding ceremony to prove the marriage was legitimate
• It would have been impractical for poorer Athenians to devote three whole days to a wedding ceremony
• Similarities between Athenian marriage rituals and burial rites

  Both involve symbolic bath, dressing in fine clothes, procession to new home
• The similarity may reference the myth of Persephone's abduction by Hades, representing both marriage and funeral
• Every day eight you work if they don't come
• Darty had & be payed, of the work
• Woman i andring - manual labored stethos & is to because cleased towards husbandsparily & becoming housewife
• Banquets min mens expensiy
• Death and Marriage
• Scholars have noted similarities between Athenian marriage rituals and Athenian burial rites
• Both involve a symbolic bath for purification, dressing in fine clothes and a procession to a new home
• The similarity may not be a coincidence


  It could relate to the idea that, in her marriage, the young girl disappeared from her household
• Surely her parents would have felt a certain amount of grief at their loss, but obviously less than the grief for a loved one dying
• It could also reference the myth of the goddess Persephone' abduction by Hades


  Hades was the god of the underworld and so his abduction of her could be understood as both her marriage and her funeral
• Activity: Research the myth of Persephone's abduction by Hades


  How similar is it to an Athenian wedding?
• Zeus & Hades made an agreement without consulting Denester & Athenian wedding-arranged marriage whether he liked it or not
• Persephone are for engranak soods which represented her connection with hamsband-Conmen in Athenign malliage
• Married as a Hates abducted persephone" away from blomster - represented in the "gosome thing Puround 14)-perphaned was young
• Demake in gilt, when have phone andmond & the when the Aronian w