Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle

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F. A. Wright. Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle

Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle

Table of Contents

Introduction

I.—The Early Epic

II.—The Ionians and Hesiod

III.—The Lyric Poets

IV.—The Milesian Tales

V.—Athens in the Fifth Century

VI.—Æschylus and Sophocles

VII.—Euripides

VIII.—Euripides. The Four Feminist Plays

IX.—The Socratic Circle

X.—Aristophanes

XI.—Plato

XII.—The Attic Orators

XIII.—Aristotle

Footnote

Отрывок из книги

F. A. Wright

Published by Good Press, 2022

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The same frame of mind that invented these tales ascribed to Sappho all kinds of unnatural vice, degraded Helen into a wanton, and Penelope into a shrew, and made it seem only logical that women, being the creatures they were, should be kept prisoners in a harem and confined to child-bearing—that indispensable function being, indeed, the main reason for their being allowed to exist at all.

The tales of Pasiphaë, Leda, and Europa, however, though useful enough in their way, are a little crude, and we have a more artistic method employed in the passages which about this time were incorporated into the Iliad by Ionian poets, with the idea of degrading the whole conception of the two divinities who represent womanly love, Hera and Aphrodite. Hera, the goddess of married life, the wife in her divine aspect, is represented by these decadents as an interfering termagant, spying upon her husband and seeking always to thwart him in the enjoyment of his legitimate lusts and caprices; Aphrodite, the goddess of unrestrained physical passion, becomes a calculating courtesan.

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