The Verbal and Spatial Rhetoric of Women's Roles in Classical Athens (Ca
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"Least Talked About among Men"? The Verbal and Spatial Rhetoric of Women's Roles in Classical Athens (ca. 450–350 B.C.E.) Lisa Nevett, University of Michigan Abstract In this paper I argue that comparing views derived from texts and material culture highlights the conscious manipulation of both media by their creators in order to communicate specific messages. I suggest that an awareness of this kind of manipulation has a vital role to play in the interpretation not only of textual sources (as is often recognized), but also of archaeological ones (which is more rarely acknowledged). To demonstrate this point I focus on the debate concerning the roles of women in Classical Athens. With the support of a theoretical framework established by Amos Rapoport and elaborated by Richard Blanton, I argue that Athenian domestic architecture was deliberately designed to convey messages about the gender roles and social status of a house's residents. I suggest that such an interpretation is in keeping with previous studies of sacred and civic architecture in Classical Athens, which have demonstrated that the builders and users of such structures were aware of the communicative potential of architectural space. Introduction The title of my paper is taken from a famous passage from the fifth-century-B.C.E. Athenian general Perikles' funeral speech, as related by the historian Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War 2.45). This view that the most virtuous women should remain invisible in the civic sphere, which I refer to as the "rhetoric of seclusion," forms part of a wider perspective on women's roles that can be seen across a variety of Athenian literary genres from the late fifth century B.C.E. to the Archaeology and Text, Vol. 2 (2018) | pp. 7–24 ISSN 2523-2355 (print) | ISSN 2521-8034 (online) | DOI 10.21461/AT012018.7–24 8 Lisa Nevett early fourth century B.C.E. For example, in Euripides' tragic play Trojan Women, Andromache laments that a woman's reputation suffers if she sets foot outside (Trojan Women 647–49), while the speaker in Lysias's legal speech Against Simon claims that the women in his household have led such sheltered lives that they are embarrassed to appear before the men of their own family (Against Simon 6). This rhetoric is, of course, reinforced by philosophical ideas about natural differences between men and women. In the Aristotelian Oikonomika, for example, man's active, outdoor character is contrasted with woman's passive, indoor one (Oikonomika 1343b–44a). Representations of women in other Athenian cultural products also appear to construct norms for female behavior and have frequently been cited as supporting a rhetoric of seclusion. For example, on Archaic and early Classical painted pottery, where a setting is implied at all, women tend to be associated with interior space in contrast to the exterior space in which men are often depicted (Lissarrague 1995: 93; Lewis 2002: 137). In their interior settings, women are shown performing a variety of activities including domestic tasks such as weaving and childcare, as well as attending to their appearance by washing, looking in a mirror, or selecting jewelry from a casket. All these scenes may have been carefully constructed and aspirational, rather than offering straightforward reflections of the lives of those who bought and used the vessels on which the images were painted (Lewis 2002: 138). Although pottery styles changed around 440 B.C.E. to encompass a wider range of imagery, funerary stelai such as those from the Kerameikos began to offer idealized images of women, also representing them in apparently domestic settings, perhaps seated on a chair or with a casket. These images, too, have been interpreted as paradigmatic, alluding to women's role as one of "domestic seclusion" in contrast to the military responsibilities assumed by men (e.g., Leader 1997: esp. 683–93). Some scholars have taken such evidence literally, viewing the wives of Athenian citizens as having been closeted in their homes, coming out only to fulfill religious obligations and not playing an otherwise significant role in the civic life of the polis (citizen-state) (e.g., Goff 2004: 25). Others, however, have noted that underlying this ideal of female seclusion there is actually a much more complex set of ideas and assumptions about male and female roles. Evidence from oratory, for instance, suggests the possibility that juries may have been persuaded by stories about women who played active roles outside the domestic sphere, working to support their families and even engineering their own social advancement (e.g., Pseudo-Demosthenes' Neaira, in Orations 59). Similarly, the philosopher Aristotle "Least Talked About among Men"? 9 asks how a state official could prevent the wives of the poor from going outside (Politics 1300a). Furthermore, women seem to have performed significant roles as priestesses in civic cult (e.g., Connelly 2007). With respect to painted pottery there has been much discussion of whether the depictions of men and women bear any relationship to their actual patterns of daily activity, and if so, what the nature of that relationship might be (e.g., Ferrari 2002b; Lewis 2002: 1–12). Certainly, alongside the types of domestic scenes mentioned above, there are others dating to the late sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. that seem to show women playing active roles outside the domestic context, at the fountain house or graveside, for example (respectively, Kosso and Lawton 2009 and Oakley 2004). The contradictory view presented by these sources is sometimes explained by attributing the seclusion model to a minority of elite households that had the resources to maintain different mores from the rest of the Athenian population (e.g., Brock 1994: 346; Blundell 1995: 138). I myself have proposed that the idea of seclusion was an idealistic rhetoric articulated in opposition to the patterns of daily activity of citizen households, and that the duties of citizens' wives actually required them to be active both within and beyond the boundaries of the city, taking part in a variety of activities (Nevett 2011). What I would like to explore here is how this argument might intersect with the archaeological evidence for residential neighborhoods and households. In particular I consider what this case study can contribute to the broader question of how domestic architecture should be addressed so that it can contribute significantly to our understanding of ancient society. In the larger houses of Classical date, both in Athens and in the Greek world more generally, the architecture and organization of space appear to present somewhat contradictory messages about the rhetoric of seclusion. Physical and visual access to the house was normally limited to a single entrance that was often screened from the street, dividing the occupants of the interior from the world outside (fig. 1). Inside, however, the courtyard played an essential role as a communication route (Nevett 1995; 1994; 1999: esp. 88–91; in prep., chap. 3). A few houses from the fifth century BC.E. onwards incorporated a square room with an off-center doorway, a plaster or mosaic floor with a raised border, colored plaster walls, and occasionally an anteroom. This has been interpreted as an andron, a room mentioned in a variety of Athenian texts and apparently depicted in numerous scenes on Attic painted pottery. This space seems to have been associated with the symposium, the male drinking party. Nevertheless, rather than being separated from the rest of the house as the seclusion model might imply, the andron is usually integrated among the other rooms of the house and entered from the courtyard, 10 Lisa Nevett just as they are. What I would like to explore here is how such a pattern might be explained. I argue that in Classical Athens the built environment operated as a means of communication: just like texts, domestic architecture was subject to manipulation in order to carry messages. I suggest that by exploring some of the mechanisms by which that manipulation took place and by contextualizing the issue of seclusion as an element of a wider communication network, we can gain a better understanding of these contradictions. Fig. 1 – Plan of Houses C and D from the Athenian Agora (after Nevett 1999, fig. 19). Manipulation of the Built Environment in Classical Athens: An Analytical Framework The idea of manipulating the built environment is not a new one: researchers in various disciplines have noted different ways in which buildings can convey a wealth of messages using a range of techniques and with varying subtlety. Here I wish to build, in particular, on a framework developed by Amos Rapoport as part of his non-verbal communication approach, which suggests, in general terms, "Least Talked About among Men"? 11 some of the different kinds of messages that can be conveyed and some of the ways in which this can be done (Rapoport 1988). To paraphrase briefly, Rapoport distinguishes three levels of meaning: first, at the "high level," ideas relating, for example, to religion and philosophy; second, at the "middle level," ideas such as those relating to status, identity, and wealth; finally, at the "low level," instrumental meanings such as cues that enable individuals to adjust their behavior to fit in with the cultural expectations for a particular location. Rapoport suggests that while high- and middle-level meanings may be present to varying extents in different contexts, the lowest level is a constant in any situation in which the number of people using a space is large enough for social rules to be necessary. An important aspect of his work is that there is a degree of redundancy such that meaning is conveyed by multiple different physical features, in order to ensure that the meaning is received and understood by the intended audience.