Women in Antiq.
 

 

Quiz Notes

On this page, I’ll be posting notes on each of the quizzes that we have. These quiz notes are not meant to be the “right answers” so much as information relevant to the arguments you might make in response to these questions.

PDFs:You can also find the Quiz Notes in PDF form on the Print/PDF page.

Quiz #1

1. According to Pomeroy, Athena, the Greek goddess of war and wisdom, is “the most complex of the goddesses” because:

a. She has a complicated love life

b. She works all day and parties all night

d. She has seven uturuses

The text draws attention how she’s presented as a “masculine woman”: female in appearance and in some aspects (olive fertility, handicrafts), but associated with traditionally “male” elements (warrior goddess, protector of the citadel, depicted with armor and weapons, patroness of particular warriors; goddess of industry and manufacture (but also spinning and weaving); also wisdom, later appropriated by Greek men as a male attribute). Disguising herself as a man is also unusual. She’s a virgin, born of man, not woman, and identifies the father as the true parent. Adding to her complexity is the fact that more stories and plays have survived depicting her, placing her in many diverse contexts.

2. A double standard seen in stories about the gods’ and goddesses’ relationships is:

b. Goddesses can sleep with women but gods can never sleep with men

c. Gods can give fruit baskets and other gifts to their lovers, but goddesses can’t

d. Cursing your lover can only be done on Sundays

Pomeroy notes a double standard wherein goddesses are expected to have sex with individuals close to them in rank—male gods or demigods/heroes—but gods fornicate with all sorts. Gods’ relations with mortals (mostly Zeus and Apollo) tend to result in suffering, revealing the vulnerability of the women and the male gods’ tendency to exploitation.

3. The “virginal” Olympian goddesses (that is, those who are unmarried and nonmonogamous) include all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Athena

b. Artemis

c. Hestia

Athena, Artemis, and Hestia were all seen as “virginal”—i.e., they were not married or in a monogamous relationship. Hera, the goddess of marriage, had a husband, Zeus.

4. Mother goddesses in various cultures make a connection between female fertility and

a. architecture

c. archeology

d. astrophysics

Mother goddesses like Gaia or Ge represented a connection between the earth, fertility, and agriculture—that food is born of the fertile mother earth.

5. The pre-Olympian god Cronus is known for all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Castrating his father with a sickle

b. Swallowing his own children

c. Being defeated by Zeus with the help of his wife Rhea

The Titan Cronus was indeed known for castrating his father with a sickle, swallowing his own children to defy a prophecy his son would surpass him, and being defeated by Zeus with the help of his wife Rhea.

Quiz #2

1. In heroic Greek society, marriage patterns between powerful families included

a. matrilocal marriage (a roving warrior marries a princess and settles in her kingdom)

b. patrilocal marriage (a suitor brings a bride back to his lands and family)

c. all mature women being expected to marry in order to ensure the city’s future defense

In the patrilocal pattern, a suitor brings back a bride to his own house, and this bridges the families of the husband and the bride’s father. Variant: Marriage by capture (e.g., Briseis). In the matrilocal pattern, a roving warrior marries a princess and settles down in her kingdom. Variant: Marriage by contest, in which the kingdom is a prize for the right suitor. Either way, marriage was expected of both genders in this warrior society, in order to produce future warriors.

2. The queen who, enraged by her husband sacrificing their daughter, cast him aside and married his cousin instead was

a. Iphigenia

b. Helen

d. Mary Tudor

When Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the gods, Clytaemnestra was incensed. After Agamemnon left for the Trojan War, leaving a herald to watch over his wife, Clytaemnestra repudiated her marriage to Agamemnon and married his cousin, Aegisthus.

3. In Greek art, the exclusively female Amazons were often depicted as

b. ugly, representing their unfeminine nature

c. having a secret king

d. makers and sellers of books

There are a number of depictions of Amazons fighting centaurs, contrasting the centaurs’ masculine qualities (violent and lusty) with those of the Amazon women (strong but chaste).

4. Women were a larger proportion of which group in heroic Greek society?

a. Landholders

c. Actors

d. Stonemasons

Ready access to slave women resulted in part from the practice, when taking a city, of ransoming or killing the landholding men but enslaving the women of that class.

5. When Nausicaa meets Odysseus, she does all of the following EXCEPT:

b. Admires his beauty once he’s had a bath

c. Chastises her handmaidens for running away from him

d. Tells him he should ignore her father and try to win over her mother instead

Nausicaa cannot accompany Odysseus into the city, as she knows that doing so will affect her reputation as a maiden and future wife among the men and women of the town.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. According to Pomeroy, why might the matrilocal pattern of marriage be better for the bride?

Though the bride seldom had the choice of husbands in either pattern, the matrilocal scenario allowed the bride to remain within her support system of friends and family members.

Quiz #3

1. Spartan women

a. went to war alongside the men

c. never married

d. were nude at all times

Because the biological role of the mother was important to producing strong warrior children, Spartan girls were trained to be as physically fit and as well nourished as the boys. Housework and clothes-making were performed by lower classes, freeing Spartan women to train the gymnasium, manage the household, play music, and rear children. Women could bear children of men other than their husbands, though if they were helots’ children they could not be citizens, and adultery was not as strictly proscribed as elsewhere. Pomeroy believes they also engaged in homosexual liaisons in order to prevent unwanted children from heterosexual fornication for pleasure.—Women controlled their dowries and inheritances, so that by the fourth century two-fifths of Spartan land and property was controlled by women, many living luxurious lives. Increasingly later Spartan women displayed their wealth with clothing, purchases like racehorces, and jewelry and cosmetics; Agis’s attempts to restore Lycurgan discipline failed through women’s resistance to archaic austerity.

2. All of the following are true of archaic Athenian Greek burials EXCEPT:

b. Male graves significantly outnumber female graves

c. Male graves contain spears and shields; female graves contain cooking pots, spindle whorls, and jewelry

d. Depictions of funerals show women beating their heads and tearing their hair, while men are rigid and restrained

Grave goods of Athenian women included spindle whorls, cooking pots, and other items indicating they still performed household chores that Spartan women had offloaded to lower classes. Depictions of funerals show kinswomen tending to the dead (washing, anointing, and dressing the corpse) and as chief mourners, engaging in public lamentation as an important part of the death rituals.—Burial grounds from early periods show many more male graves than female; this is partly due to men being more likely to be honored with a public burial, but Pomeroy suggests female infanticide is also to blame (again, unlike Sparta, where we are told all the girl babies were kept and only boy infants were exposed if defective).

3. The archaic statues of maidens (korai) and youths (kouroi) were

a. clothed if male, naked if female

c. always naked

d. always clothed

Both fame and female grave-marker figures (kouroi, korai) are extant from archaic Athens, both derived from Egyptian forms and exhibiting the bland physical ideal of each gender. Male figures were naked and emphasized strength and aesthetic proportions. Female figures were clothed and emphasized strength and restraint; physically the buttocks were a focus of beauty.

4. According to Pomeroy, all of the following are true of Sappho EXCEPT:

a. She belonged to a community, Lesbos, where women were valued and educated

b. Her work is an example of individualism in Greek poetry during this period

d. Some of her poetry suggests she may have been married and had a child

There were a number of other female lyric poets; some of their writing survives in fragments, as quoted by other authors.

5. Advice given by Hesiod in Works and Days includes:

a. “Do not let a flaunting woman coax and cozen and deceive you: she is after your barn.”

b. “First of all, get a house, and a woman, and an ox for the plough—a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen.”

c. “A man should not clean his body with water in which a woman has washed, for there is bitter mischief in that.”

All three of the quotes are indeed from Hesiod’s Works and Days, which displays a strong mistrust and fear of women rooted in the vulnerability of men.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. Pomeroy called Spartan marriage customs “unusual among the Greeks.” How so?

Spartan warriors were held to be equal; consequently, marriage among the landholding elite was not about family status as in Athens and elsewhere. Instead, marriage focused on compatibility and the ability to produce children; as the weddings were often secret, unproductive marriages might be quietly annulled and both parties could seek new mates. In some cases, young men and women were shut up in a dark room to see who went home with whom. Other customs sometimes practiced included the groom carrying the bride away in secret. The wedding involved the bride with male clothing and hair cut short, possibly reflecting a transition from the groom’s previous homosexual relations in the barracks.

Quiz #4

1. In the play Eumenides by Aeschylos, Orestes is tormented by the Furies for killing a parent (his mother, Klytaemnestra). All of the following oppose the Furies tormenting him EXCEPT:

a. Orestes, because he was ordered to kill her, and because his mother was “twice afflicted with pollution” for killing a husband and father

b. Apollo, because “the mother … is not the parent, but the nurse of the newly-sown embryo”

c. Athena, because she had no mother and “in all things, except for marriage, whole-heartedly I am for the male and entirely on the father’s side”

In the play, Orestes, Apollo, and Athena presented the arguments given above in opposition to the Furues, who act as the Chorus. Bacchus is not present in the play.

2. For an Athenian woman from a propertied family, marriage typically

a. was arranged by her guardian and the groom

b. included a dowry for her support

c. could be easily ended without stigma

For families with property, marriage was normally arranged between the two families and involved the passing of a dowry commensurate with the bride’s family’s economic status to the groom, to be kept by him intact for her support only, throughout her entire life. Divorce was easily obtained by mutual content or by either party and involved no stigma.

3. According to Pomeroy, modern historians have disagreed about the status of women in Athens. Recent opinions include all of the following EXCEPT:

a. women were respected and enjoyed freedom

b. women were despised and kept hidden

d. women were secluded but revered in the home

Some historians have argued that women in classical Athens were despised and kept in extreme seclusion, like eastern harems (according to Pomeroy, a position severely colored by the historians’ own views of a woman’s proper place). Others have countered that they were respected and enjoyed freedom comparable to women of most other ancient societies (citing fictional heroines like Antigone and Elektra). A third position has argued that they were secluded, but in that seclusion they were both respected and, within the house, dominant (emphasizing that the seclusion was primarily a means of protection something cherished against male strangers).—Pomeroy presents this debate as part of a broader concern regarding the best interpretation of our limited sources for Athenian women, and is flawed in treating Athenian women as if they were all the same. Within the Athenian culture there are major differences across class, region, and period. What’s more important, from her point of view, was that the state considered the duty of citizen women to be the production of legitimate heirs to the oikoi, and thus to the citizenry.

4. Athenian religious cults in which women played an important role included all of the following EXCEPT:

b. the cult of the Olympian goddess Athena

c. the mysteries of Demeter and Korē at Eleusis

d. the exclusively female celebration of the Thesmophoria

Women were involved in a number of religious cults and festivals, providing opportuynities for community among women in Athens and other cities. [Spangeti Teras is Greek for Spaghetti Monster.]

5. Education for women in Athens normally consisted of

a. tutoring in art and music by the father’s patron

c. physical education with the soldiers

d. training in rhetoric by the city archons

Athenian women did not have access to formal education, whereas education was required and expected for men. This education gap contributed to the treatment of women as less than full members of the community.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. Which story from Herodotos in today’s reading did you find most interesting or surprising?

This is subjective and could include any number of key moments, including the nature of the Amazons, Artemesioa, Gorgo, Candaules, or the famous brooches of Athens.

Quiz #5

1. In The Bacchae, Pentheus is attacked and torn to pieces by

a. the goddess Athena

c. wild animals

d. the vengeful Furies

The Maenads—women of Thebes induced into a frenzy by the liberating rites of Dionysus, and led by Pentheus’s mother, Agave—attack Pentheus while he is spying on their rampage. In their dream state they believe he is a lion. Pentheus himself is feeling the effects of the god’s power and seeing things as well. The Maenads rend him to pieces, and Agave brings the head of the “lion” home as a trophy of the power that the women have together.—All of this is the result of Thebes not accepting Dionysus and ignoring his rites, which Pentheus has outlawed. Dionysus exerts his power as punishment for the city and its rulers, to teach them the wrath of the gods and the possibilities of inhuman understanding released through the frenzy.

2. All of the following were true of the hetairai EXCEPT:

a. They were elite courtesans, registered and taxed like all prostitutes in Athens

b. Many possessed not only physical beauty but intellectual training and artistic talents

d. The most famous woman in fifth-century Athens was a hetaira

“In classical Athens, prostitutes had to be registered and were subject to a special tax. Those at the top of this social scale were called hetairai, or ‘companions to men.’ Many of these, in addition to physical beauty, had had intellectual training and possessed artistic talents, attributes that made them more entertaining companions to Athenian men at parties than their legitimate wives. It is no accident that the most famous woman in fifth-century Athens was the foreign-born Aspasia, who started as a hetaira and ended as a madam, and in the course of her life lived with Pericles, the political leader of Athens.”

3. Seclusion of women in Athens involved

a. No access was permitted to any space outside the home to any woman of any class

b. Sexy clothing for women as a kind of compensation for their inaccessibility

c. Any man seeing a naked woman having to undergo a cleansing ritual in front of his kinsmen

Seclusion of women was designed to minimize the ability of male visitors to come in contact with the women of the household. It involved a separation of spaces within private homes (when there was enough space for this to be possible). Though wealthy women with female slaves tended to remain in the home, sending their slaves out to market and to collect water, less wealthy matrons had only themselves to send, making the markets and wells social places for women of lower rank. Women of all classes also were involved in public festivals and could participate in funerals and other rituals, though the latter was more limited in classical times than previously.

4. In Classical Athens, all of the following were true about seduction EXCEPT:

a. Seduction was considered a more serious crime than rape, because it implied longer contact

c. The aggrieved husband had the right, but not the obligation to kill the seducer

d. As with rape, the male was presumed to be the guilty party, not the female

Since it was assumed men were vulnerable to their urges in relation to women, seduction, adultery, and rape were all assumed to be the fault of the man. Seduction was especially reviled because it required more time to create an emotional connection. Ancient traditions allowed the cuckolded husband the right to seek vengeance on the male adulterer.

5. Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle all believed Spartan customs regarding women were more wholesome than those of Athens because:

a. Athenian women married young, making childbirth more dangerous at an early age

b. Spartan women were kept as well fed as the men; this was less consistently true for Athenian women

c. Physical exercise for women was common in Sparta; not so in Athens

“Motherhood at an early age, combined with a life spent indoors, was disadvantageous to the health of the Athenian woman. More children were born in the first half of the twenty-year reproductive period than in the second half, making the period from approximately sixteen to twenty-six years old the most hazardous. It is interesting to recall here Plutarch’s approbation of the Spartan custom of having girls marry at eighteen, since they are then in a better physical condition to bear children, although he preferred earlier marriages for other reasons.—“Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle all believed that Spartan customs concerning women were more wholesome. Xenophon praised the Spartans for nourishing their girls as well as their boys, for it was unusual among the Greeks to do so. This differentiation in nourishment could exist even for suckling newborns. … Xenophon also approved of the Spartan custom of encouraging women to exercise so that they could maintain a good physical condition for motherhood. The well-developed physiques of Spartan women caused comment among the Athenian housewives in the comedy Lysistrata, although it may be suggested that performing household chores, especially moving back and forth before the loom, offered an Athenian woman ample opportunity for strenuous exercise. In the Republic, Plato prescribed physical exercise for women and stated that females should become parents for the first time at twenty and males at thirty. Later, in the Laws, he reduced the age minimum for females to any time between sixteen and twenty. Aristotle suggested that pregnant women be forced to exercise by passing a law that they must take a daily walk to worship the divinities presiding over childbirth. He also noted that it was undesirable for the very young to produce offspring, since more of the babies were likely to be female, and the mothers endured a more difficult labor and were more likely to die in childbirth. He suggested that the optimum age for marriage was eighteen for women, thirty-seven for men.”

Optional Extra Credit

EC. If you were a woman in Athens, would you rather be a hetaira or a married woman in a noble family? Why?

“The hetaira had access to the intellectual life of Athens, which we nowadays treasure, and a popular courtesan who was not a slave had the freedom to be with whoever pleased her. Admittedly our sources are biased, but the fact that we know of some courtesans who attempted to live as respectable wives, while we know of no citizen wives who wished to be courtesans, should make us reconsider the question of which was the preferable role in Classical Athens—companion or wife.”

Quiz #6

1. According to Pomeroy, Athenian tragedies often showed women as forceful and rebellious because the plays’ female protagonists

b. were there to be destroyed and put in their place at the end of the play

c. accurately reflected Athenian women’s agency and active public participation in real life

d. were actually gods dressed as women

Athenian drama often shows women acting in rebellion against the established norms of society. This was because women’s interests and responsibilities were private and family-oriented, putting them in conflict with the patriarchal state and reflecting concerns more primitive than the later Olympian support for the state.—In drama, this means heroines who act in a “masculine” way—not submissive or modest. This gives us insights into the conflicts within Athenian society, but also means that women in Greek drama are not to be taken at face value as representative of normal behavior or expectations. A good example is Antigone, in which the title heroine stands against the state in defense of older values related to family and private religious duties. Antigone herself is a heroine and so dies not act like a normal woman, which she actually laments at the end of the play. Instead, she stands for the collective concern of women in Athenian society.

2. In the play Antigone, Antigone’s sister Ismene insists that Antigone must not

a. delay in burying their brother

c. offer to fight Creon in single combat

d. visit Egypt during the tourist season

Both sisters represent a woman’s duty to her family. Ismene believes in what Antigone wants but fears to challenge Creon and the laws. Ismene’s actions cast Antigone as the heroine, a larger-than-life character in an exaggerated pursuit of the ideal. Even though she survives in the end, her survival seems not to matter, so in a way both sisters are lost.—One way of seeing Ismene is that she is holding herself to how she thinks a woman is supposed to be seen, rather than acting on the burden or female moral responsibility that Antigone accepts.

3. In the play Medea, the legendary hero Jason

a. kills his own sons to spite Medea

b. has sailed away and is not present in the play

d. dies at the end

Jason wants a more socially impressive wife, and so sets aside Medea, whom he met and married on his travels.

4. According to Pomeroy, all of the following are true about Plato’s utopian exercise, Republic, EXCEPT:

a. No private property meant there was no need for monogamous marriage

b. Plato thought men and women were similar in nature apart from their roles in begetting children

d. Women were included in the ruling elite class, the guardians

Treatment of women in Plato’s Republic is more egalitarian in some ways (though this is partly because male citizens don’t have much public agency under the rule of the guardians and the philosopher-kings). Prostitution is not any more common in this utopia than in real life.

5. The comedy Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, is about women ending a 20-year war by

b. taking over the fighting of the war and winning

c. bribing the men to make peace by giving them fine new clothes and horses

d. appealing to the gods to intervene and make the men more rational and less aggressive

Lysistrata is a comic account of a woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city-states by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired. Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. The play Medea ends with Medea escaping in a flying chariot. In terms of the play’s message, what do you think this might mean?

The end of the play means that Medea escapes, rising up out of the scene in a manner normally associated with the gods. This suggests that a divine or mystical justice has been visited on Jason, and reinforces Medea’s association with mystical power as a non-Greek woman (the exotic Other unbound by Greek rules, combined with the nature-driven life-creating power of the woman). This implicitly makes her a witch and suggestive of Hekate. That Medea escapes in the end casts Jason’s actions as the evil, and her actions as a sacrifice to ensure justice and suffering on him and those around him, as noted above.

Quiz #7

1. All of the following are true of Hatshepsut before becoming queen EXCEPT:

a. The only records we have of her childhood and time as a princess are those she left herself

c. When her brother became king, she gained the titles of King’s Wife and God’s Wife of Amun

d. Though she was married to her brother, Thutmose II, his son Thutmose III was not hers

Hatshepsut, who had three brothers, does not figure in the records of her father’s reign; it’s after Thutmose II accession and premature death that she becomes prominent. Once she asserted her preeminence a mythology of predestination was developed, citing a miraculous birth and a descent from Amun-Re. Emphasis was placed on her royal blood deriving from Thutmose I and Ahmose (deemphasizing Thutmose II and his son, Thutmose III, whose royal blood was not pure).

2. By the seventh regnal year of Thutmose III, Hatshepsut was

b. hosting wild parties in the temple of Karnak

c. dead, killed by a crocodile

d. building pyramids like the old days

In her regency, Hatshepsut commissioned images of herself in the traditional garb of queens and with the insignia of the God’s Wife of Amun. She adopted the additional name Maatkare, signifying the pharaoh’s responsibilities of ma’at (harmony and justice), and some images showed both kingly and queenly attributes, including one with a woman’s dress and a man’s long stride. During the co-reign with Thutmose III, the two were presented on some monuments as twin male rulers, with Hatshepsut shown first as the eldest, while other statues showed her in female form. In general she increased the “male” iconography over time while never hiding her female essence.

3. All of the following are true of Hatshepsut and her young co-ruler Thutmose III EXCEPT:

a. They sponsored an expedition to Punt to obtain exotic materials

b. They ruled jointly together for about 15 years

c. On some monuments they are depicted as twin male rulers

Thutmose III was Hatsheptut’s nephew (and stepson), the son of Thutmose II and a minor wife called Isis.

4. All of the following are true of Thutmose III’s destruction of Hatshepsut’s memory after her death EXCEPT:

a. Her name was removed from monuments and her statues thrown in a pit

b. Scholars now say the erasure occurred 20 years or more after her death, casting doubt on the theory that Thutmose was motivated by revenge

d. Her representations as queen were left untouched; only her kingship was erased

Some time after Hatshepsut died and Thutmose III had been ruling alone, he attempted to remove her reign from history in a process called damnatio memoriae. Her sculptures and monuments were removed, most of them deposited in a pit, and her wall inscriptions were walled up or chiseled off.—An older theory has long held that Thutmose III did this out of personal resentment, desiring to assert his independent rule after years of being in Hatshepsut’s shadow. But the reading argues against this theory, noting that many years elapsed after Hatshepsut’s death before this took place; for most of Thutmose III’s reign he was content to have the people and nobles remember the peace and prosperity of Hatshepsut’s rule. The timing therefore suggests that the concern was over Thutmose III’s imminent succession: inherently conservative, the Egyptians were uncomfortable with the innovation of female succession after thousands of years of male rule, and wanted to remove the precedent of Hatshepsut’s rule in order to prevent a recurrence of succession by a strong, well-blooded princess or queen.

5. According to her epitaph, Kheredankh, daughter of Shepmin

a. was trusted by each person who saw her, both male and female

b. was loved by her brother, who did not let her separate from him in the beer house

c. asked a libation of water from the visitor, because she was one who “loved to drink”

The epitaph describes a young woman who loved to drink, enjoyed parties with her friends, volunteered to wetnurse for friends, and was loved and trusted by family and community alike.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. Why do you think Hatshepsut was accepted as a “female king” and was able to rule for so long?

There are several possible reasons for this. The most important one may be that Hatshepsut was royal on both sides, and Thutmose II and Thutmose III were not. Also, Thutmose II’s death left an infant on the throne; Hatshepsut’s time as a princess and her royal blood made her the obvious candidate for regency, and during her regency she showed herself to be strong and capable as a leader, preparing the way for her to claim full kingship alongside her nephew.—Other factors include the fact that in some ways Egypt was more gender-egalitarian than other ancient societies, and in the New Kingdom women in the imperial family were more active and visible than ever; so visible involvement in royal affairs by a princess. Finally, like any pharaoh Hatshepsut showed her suitability through just rule, manifesting the nurturing of the gods through the ensuring of ma’at, peace, and prosperity.

Quiz #8

1. According to the Book of Esther, Esther saves her people by

a. defying the law that she cannot present herself to the king and demanding that he do as she asks

c. using her authority as the queen to command the guards to prevent the massacre

d. pleading God for a miracle

Not knowing she is a Jew, the Persian king, Ahasuerus, has fallen for Esther and marries her; she keeps her heritage secret from him at the urging of Mordecai, her cousin and adoptive father. Meanwhile, the king’s vizier, Haman, is angered that Mordecai will not bow to him, and in his hubris orders that all Jews in the kingdom be slaughtered and that Mordecai be hanged—despite Mordecai’s role in exposing a conspiracy to kill the king by two of his eunuchs.—Esther hears about the planned genocide, but there is a law that says she cannot present herself before the king unless called. So Esther offers a “banquet of wine” to the king and Haman, followed by another the next night. At the second banquet, the besotted king offers to grant any petition of hers, even if it is half the kingdom. Esther tells him that someone plans to murder her people—the very Haman sitting at his side. Enraged, the king orders Haman hanged on the scaffold that had been reserved for Mordecai. Haman’s lands are given to Esther, and the Jews are protected and given the property of their abusers.—Throughout the story, Esther shows both humility and determination and is intelligent enough to find a way to assert herself within the restrictions of a woman at court. In the end, the story makes clear that the responsibility to ensure the safety and future of the Jewish people falls on all Jews regardless of gender, not just male authority figures like Mordecai.

2. In the story of Ruth, after her husband, brother-in-law, and father-in-law all die, the Moabite woman Ruth decides to do

a. wander the Earth as a holy woman

b. journey to Babylon to become a priestess

c. stay in Moab alone

Ruth, though Moabite, remains loyal to her husband’s family and goes with her heartbroken mother-in-law, Naomi, and her sister-in-law to Naomi’s homeland, Bethlehem, in Judah, forsaking her own heritage and gods. She tells Naomi, “your people is my people, and your god is my god.” This loyalty to her bereaved mother-in-law is eventually rewarded by Yahweh. She gains a new family, and her son becomes the father of King David.—Part of what’s being emphasized here is that in Judah (as generally in the ancient world) on becoming married a woman’s duties to her father’s family are transferred to her husband’s. These duties include religious obligations to the god or gods of the husband’s family. The flip side of this is that the covenant with Yahweh does not fall only on men; Ruth’s own relationship with god is at the heart of the story. Also relevant is the fact that Ruth clearly stays with Naomi because she loves her and because Naomi needs her; to Ruth, compassion is more important than the suffering she’ll experience from leaving her homeland and people.

3. The Judean landholder whom Ruth meets at the threshing of the grain and who later marries her is

a. Balthazar

c. Bozo

d. Weezer

The son of Salmon and his wife Rahab, Boaz was a wealthy landowner of Bethlehem in Judea, and a relative of Elimelech, Naomi’s late husband. He notices Ruth, the widowed Moabite daughter-in-law of Naomi, a relative of his, gleaning grain in his fields. He soon learns of the difficult circumstances her family is in and Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi. In response, Boaz invites her to eat with him and his workers, as well as deliberately leaving grain for her to claim while keeping a protective eye on her. According to the Book of Ruth, Boaz and Ruth were ancestors of David and therefore of Joseph.

4. In the Book of Esther, the threat to the Persian Jewish community is sparked by

b. the Jewish God’s wrath at his people’s infidelity

c. the bloodthirsty character of the Persian king, Ahasuerus

d. a rampage of wild animals

Haman is outraged that the Jew, Mordecai, refuses to bow to him. Taking his action as representing the disloyalty of the Jews as a whole, he then orders the massacre of the Jewish population.

5. Flashback question to last week! By the seventh regnal year of Thutmose III, Hatshepsut was

b. hosting wild parties in the temple of Karnak

c. dead, killed by a crocodile

d. building pyramids like the old days

In her regency, Hatshepsut commissioned images of herself in the traditional garb of queens and with the insignia of the God’s Wife of Amun. She adopted the additional name Maatkare, signifying the pharaoh’s responsibilities of ma’at (harmony and justice), and some images showed both kingly and queenly attributes, including one with a woman’s dress and a man’s long stride. During the co-reign with Thutmose III, the two were presented on some monuments as twin male rulers, with Hatshepsut shown first as the eldest, while other statues showed her in female form. In general she increased the “male” iconography over time while never hiding her female essence.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. In the Book of Esther, how is the behavior of Vashti, the previous queen, contrasted with Esther’s?

On the seventh day of a festival of food and wine, the king orders Vashti to appear and show her beauty to the assembled attendees; Vashti refuses the summons. The king is advised that her actions are an insult to the king and that word of her disobedience will spread to wives throughout the land, inspiring them to show contempt for their husbands, too. So the king announces to all of Persia that Vashti has lost her position as queen on account of her disobedience.—Esther, on the other hand, is shown as dutiful and respectful to the king and the rules of the palace, implicitly making Vashti look willful and self-sabotaging by her assertiveness. Both Vashti and Esther are shown as being strong women, but only Esther was able to achieve her own goals by engaging with the king rather than counterproductively asserting her own agency.

Quiz #9

1. Most Roman upper-class women married at least once, but the birth rate among nobles remained low. Reasons for this include all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Arranged marriage was standard for the nobility, leading to unaffectionate couples and both parties turning to lovers and adultery

c. Mothers died during childbirth often enough that females had a shorter lifespan overall

d. Roman married couples (and adulterers) practiced contraception and, if necessary, abortion to prevent unwanted children

Reasons for a low birth rate among Roman noblewomen were several. Arranged marriage. Within the nobility, marriages tended to be arranged for the political and financial profit of the families involved, rather than for sentimental reasons. Girls as young as 12 could be so married, and the first marriage usually took place between 12 and 15. Men, however, though eligible from 14, often married much later, increasing the differences between husband and wife.—Adultery. Adultery was common, but the law held it against the woman only. It was considered a public offense only in women, leading to divorce, forfeiture of half the dowry, and exile or death. Husbands were not liable for criminal prosecution for adultery. This gave tacit permission for husbands to sleep with women other than their wives. (Stoic philosophy, important in Rome from the Late Republic on, did contemn both male and female adulterers.)—Death in childbirth. This happened frequently enough that females had a shorter lifespan overall, making the likelihood of giving birth to two children much lower than giving birth to one. This also produced a gender imbalance, with more male nobles than female.—Contraception. Roman married couples (and adulterers and other illicit pairings) practiced contraception and, if necessary, abortion to prevent unwanted children. There were a variety of methods in both cases.

2. According to the story related by Livy in “The Capture of the Sabine Women,” after being abducted, the Sabine women

a. angrily rallied their fathers and brothers to war and called on them to destroy the Romans

b. appealed to the gods for Rome to be obliterated

c. watched in horror as the Roman and Sabine men slaughtered each other

The women intervened and stopped the war between their old families and the Romans, saying they owed their duty to Rome and their families now that they were Roman matrons.

3. In “The Rape of Lucretia,” Lucretia is killed by

a. the king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius

b. the enraged senator, Brutus

c. the disgraced husband, Conlatinus

After her father and husband vowed vengeance on her behalf, Lucretia committed suicide so as not to provide future matrons with a model of virtue that had been corrupted. Ultimately the entire clan of the Tarquins was ejected from Rome (leading to a series of wars with the Tarquins’ Etruscan and Latin allies).

4. Marriage with manus

a. transferred guardianship from the wife’s paterfamilias to the husband’s

b. was the traditional, conservative form and was increasingly uncommon in the Roman Republic

c. could be prevented by sleeping three consecutive nights outside the husband’s home

Manus marriage was relatively rare by the time of the Late Republic. It was achieved through either formal ceremony (confarreatio or coemptio) or through continuous cohabitation for one year (usus, also known as common-law marriage). It constituted a transfer of guardianship from the wife’s paterfamilias to the husband from which she had no refuge. A wife married by manus changed from her birth household religion to her husband’s; the husband’s ancestors became hers. Whether the husband’s manus gave him the same absolute power over his wife as a paterfamilias is unclear, but her birth family remained invested in her behavior (supervising her drinking, for example) and provided a bulwark against the husband’s abuses. Manus marriage gave the wife some rights over the husband’s property, but also gave the husband rights over hers.—Non-manus marriage was the more common form. It was achieved by interrupting cohabitation by spending three continuous days elsewhere than the husband’s home. Non-manus marriage gave the wife more freedom; the husband had no formal authority over her, and she could return at will to her birth family. There was no transfer of religion, and the wife was theoretically excluded from household rites, remaining instead in her father’s cult. She did not gain rights relating to the husband’s property; her own property remained with her birth family.

5. The idealized matron Cornelia was famous for all of the following EXCEPT:

b. She was admired for being independent, cultured, self-assured, and devoted to her children’s education

c. She took pride in being the daughter of Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal

d. She bore 12 children, two of whom grew up to be important political figures

Cornelia, daughter of the war hero Scipio Africanus and mother of the populist firebrands Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, was famous among Romans for representing the ideal matron through her strength, independence, and devotion to Rome and her children’s future.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. Why did the king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, decide to rape Lucretia? Why her specifically?

Full of the pride of his family’s power over the rest of Rome, Sextus raped Lucretia explicitly because she was the most virtuous of all the Roman matrons. This betrayal by the king’s family caused the Romans to foreswear monarchy altogether and instead declare a Republic, in which no one man or family would have greater authority than any other.

Quiz #10

1. In relation to gender, the Twelve Tables established all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Women were not allowed to cry at funerals

b. Women remained under guardianship into adulthood

c. Sons could be sold into debt slavery up to three times, but daughters could not

There are a number of provisions in the Twelve Tables that touch on both male and female gender roles. The rules for manus vs. common-law marriage, based on the idea title vs. usufruct in property, are established. The paterfamilias’s guardianship of men ends when they become eligible for military service; the guardianship of women does not. Sons can be sold into slavery across the river up to three times, but daughters cannot. The Tables provide for the exposure of deformed children, and prohibit inheritance by children born 10 months after the father’s death. There are rules about the exhibition of grief at public funerals. A late provision states that patricians and plebeians cannot marry (but this barrier was soon rescinded).

2. Marriage among slaves in Rome

a. was formally acknowledged and legally valid

c. was disliked and discouraged by masters

d. sometimes involved multiple wives or husbands

Slaves could not enter into formal marriage, but they could have an informal cohabitation, which had no legal validity but had the social value of marriage among slaves. Masters encouraged family life among slaves in order to improve morale and to bring about slave children that he might keep or sell. A male slave could use his savings to purchase his wife.—A slave could marry a free person with the master’s permission. If the slave belonged to an important household (e.g., the emperor’s), the marriage might involve a raise in status for both, though a law was passed in the late Republic discouraging such acts by reducing the free person’s status to freedman.—Children born of cohabitation took the status of the mother. If the mother was a slave, the child was a slave. If only the mother was freed, the child was freeborn but illegitimate; if both parents were freed, the child was legitimate and freeborn.

3. Stories related in Ovid’s Metamorphosis include all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Daphne, a nymph pursued by Apollo

b. Hecuba, queen of the destroyed Troy

d. Galatea, the sea-nymph beloved of Acis and coveted by Polyphemus, the Cyclops

Women feature strongly in Ovid’s compilation of mythological stories, Metamorphoses—often bearing the burden of decisions made by men, and thereby becoming the origin of important elements of the later Greek and Roman world. The excerpts assigned relate the stories of Daphne, a nymph pursued by Apollo; Hecuba, queen of the destroyed Troy; unhappy lovers Pyramus and Thisbe; and Galatea, the sea-nymph beloved of Acis and coveted by Polyphemus, the Cyclops. The work is Roman, from the first century BCE.

4. A female Roman slave could achieve manumission (release from slavery) through all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Bearing four children to become her master’s slaves

c. Repaying her purchase price with her personal savings from tips and gifts

d. Marriage to a free man, which involved prior manumission

Release from slavery for women involved a number of paths, including purchasing one’s freedom, marriage to a free Roman, and, in some periods, bearing a certain number of children that might then be enslaved or sold by their master.

5. According to Pomeroy, most freedwomen were

a. dependent on gifts from lovers or the state

c. no longer in contact with their former owners

d. initiates in a secret cult, the libertinae gaudiales

Freedwomen comprised a large part of the Roman working class, serving as shopkeepers or artisans or continuing in domestic service. Most commonly they pursued the same work they had trained for as slaves, very often in their former owner’s household. Most freedwomen and working women were involved in textiles, but others were tavern waitresses.

Optional Extra Credit

EC. What aspect of the life of Roman slaves, freedmen, and freedwomen surprised you or stood out to you?

This is subjective. While male slaves might end up in any kind of labor, including roles that made use of their skills and education (Greek captives included scholars, historians, poets, accountants, and men with other valuable skills), the variety of jobs held by female slaves was more limited. Since female education and training was limited, possible skillsets involves household skills or being a midwife, actress, or prostitute.—Female slaves could work as spinners, weavers, clothesmakers, menders, wetnurses, child nurses, kitchen help, and general domestics. With training, female slaves in Rome might also work as housekeepers, clerks, secretaries, ladies’ maids, clothes folders, hairdressers, hair cutters, mirror holders, masseuses, readers, entertainers, midwives, and infirmary attendants. Female domestics also served as part of a lady’s entourage. In general they were better off than very poor free women, since domestics were cared for and their appearance and upkeep were important.—Female slaves might also have a sexual function. As Pomeroy pointed out, the master had access to all his slave women. Some slaves worked as prostitutes in brothels, inns, or baths; others were actresses, which might involve sexual performances.