Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves by Sarah Pomeroy

Author:Sarah Pomeroy [Pomeroy, B. Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79147-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Confronted by the fluctuating mores of the Hellenistic period, the Neopythagoreans were concerned about the proper behavior of women and wrote several texts on the subject. Whether the authors of these writings lived at Rome, Alexandria, or elsewhere, and whether they wrote as early as the fourth century or as late as the first century B.C., are subjects of scholarly controversy. Pythagoras, the founder of a religious order at Croton in the late sixth century B.C., had had many women followers who were admitted on equal terms with men. Adherence to his doctrines required a rigorous discipline. The regulations specifically enjoined upon women are not extant, but they are likely to have included measures concerning abstinence or moderation, possibly in the realms of financial expenditures and sexual activity, if it is true that many husbands actually sent their wives to study with Pythagoras. Some Neopythagorean texts that do discuss the correct behavior of women are extant, and certain of these are attributed to female writers. The authors are at least as likely to have actually been male, but this cannot be conclusively proven. To “Theano” (the name of the wife or daughter of Pythagoras) were attributed Hellenistic texts giving rules for the proper behavior of women whose husbands were adulterous. “Melissa” wrote on the obligations of women, especially that of abstaining from luxury. “Perictione” was the name of Plato’s mother, and it was claimed that she had been a disciple of Pythagoras. In the Hellenistic period several treatises were written purporting to be by Plato’s mother; but the ascription was deliberately fraudulent; they were probably written by some later Perictione or by a Neopythagorean disciple who then attributed his or her work to some “Perictione.” One such little-known treatise gives us a spectacularly early example of “advice to young ladies”:

We must deem the harmonious woman to be one who is well endowed with wisdom and self-restraint. For her soul must be very wise indeed when it comes to virtue so that she will be just and courageous [lit. manly], while being sensible and beautified with self-sufficiency, despising empty opinion. For from these qualities fair deeds accrue to a woman for herself as well as for her husband, children, and home; and perchance even to a city, if in fact such a woman were to govern cities or peoples, as we see in the case of a legitimate monarchy. Surely, by controlling her desire and passion, a woman becomes devout and harmonious, resulting in her not becoming a prey to impious love affairs. Rather, she will be full of love for her husband and children and her entire household. For all those women who have a desire for extramarital relations [lit. alien beds] themselves become enemies of all the freedmen and domestics in the house. Such a woman contrives both falsehood and deceits for her husband and tells lies against everyone to him as well, so that she alone seems to excel in good will and in mastery over the household, though she revels in idleness.

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