The ancient Greeks maintained a very personal connection to their gods and goddesses, understanding them in the same way they understood each other. They had a god or goddess for every different element of life, and some deities watched over more than one element. The religion of the ancient Greeks had a significant impact on their view of how society should operate.
With a Pantheon of Gods on high, each having their specialty, participating in regular meetings to discuss right and wrong with the world, it was not unusual for the Greeks to have a more diplomatic democratic society. They considered their gods to be very much like themselves but with more extraordinary powers to control the elements around them. It was essential women were necessary wanted good weather for productive crops or healthy livestock. A plague in the land could indicate a god unhappy with a particular ruler or policy. The people took their clues about what was necessary to keep the gods happy from the stories and legends about them. It can also be considered that these myths and legends reveal something significant about the society’s ideals for social behavior, such as expected gender roles within its citizenry. However, in exploring the example of the goddess Athena, it is discovered that the Greek conception of gender roles was not as rigidly applied as is commonly thought today.
While most other goddesses were relegated to a somewhat simplified realm with occasional cross-over, Athena reigns over a wide area that crosses over traditional male and traditional female roles. “She was the goddess of wisdom, war, and the useful arts. The useful arts included farming, spinning, weaving and playing music. She was also the protector of heroes, cities, and states” (Loewen, p. 15). The story of her birth emphasizes the two sides of her nature. According to the legend, she sprang fully grown from the head of her father Zeus. This is because Zeus swallowed her mother in order to try to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy that his second child would overthrow him the same way he overthrew his father Kronos (Tuccinardi, 1997). When she emerged, she was already dressed in armor and wielding a spear and shield. According to Eicher and Roach-Higgins (1992), the elements of her dress were important because they immediately communicated specific ideas about her character that was as contradictory as the physical gender of the birthing parent.
“In appropriating the female ability to give birth, he [Zeus] suffers the pain associated with it too. There is a nice gender inversion here: the king of the gods has taken on the role that is quintessentially female, while Athena emerges in full armor” (Deacy, p. 25). This child, so unnaturally born and so obviously ready for battle, upset the order of the universe enough to stop time. “She sprang forth at once from the immortal head and stood before Zeus who holds the aegis, shaking a sharp spear. Great Olympos began to quake dreadfully at the might of Glaukopis, and earth all about screamed horribly, and the sea moved and frothed with dark waves, while foam suddenly burst forth. The brilliant son of Hyperion stopped his swift-footed horses for a long time, until the girl, Pallas Athena, stripped the godlike armor from her immortal shoulders, and Metieta Zeus rejoiced” (Homeric Hymn 28. 5-16). Born ready for battle, Athena is instantly aware of how her appearance has upset the universe and takes steps to restore order by removing her armor, thus proving her dedication to peace.
As the goddess of war, Athena is attributed with having a great number of male qualities “Heroes prayed to Athena for help. She often helped them overcome hardships to complete their quests” (Loewen, p. 12). The way she is typically depicted reveals the reasons why. “Usually, she is shown wearing the aegis as a kind of over-garment: a scaly, serpent-fringed object that enabled her to cause terror or disarm her opponents. This dimension to her power could be enhanced through the frequent inclusion on the aegis of the gorgoneion, which intrigued Freud among others as the epitome of emasculating terror” (Deacy, p. 7). She was seen as impregnable, unbeatable, and fearless. “Athena was a deadly fighter, and her temple, the pure, cold, white-marble edifice known as Athena herself was, as the Parthenon or Virgin, dominated Athens” (Abbott, p. 24).
In her daily life, she remained highly active, which also associated her more closely with a male role. “Men ran the government and spent a great deal of their time away from home. When not involved in politics, the men spent time in the fields, overseeing or working the crops, sailing, hunting, in manufacturing, or in trade. For fun, in addition to drinking parties, the men enjoyed wrestling, horseback riding, and the famous Olympic Games. When the men entertained their male friends, at the popular drinking parties, their wives and daughters were not allowed to attend” (“Greek Culture”, 2009). Although she is considered to have been the goddess of war, Athena preferred her subjects use wisdom rather than physical force to solve disputes. When this wasn’t effective, however, she was not averse to using force to support a good cause. “Athena had a range of skills that make her difficult to classify, other than as a Renaissance woman. She was revered for her wisdom in political and domestic matters” (Abbott, p. 25), further emphasizing her associations with the male gender as these were skills women didn’t have.
However, seeing her various abilities within the body of a female demonstrates that the Greeks were aware of the capacity of women to develop higher forms of thinking. This is confirmed in some of the drama of the age such as seen in the play Lysistrata when the title character announces, “I have useful counsel to give our city, which deserves it well at my hands for the brilliant distinctions it has lavished on my girlhood … So surely I am bound to give my best advice to Athens” (Aristophanes, p. 258). Athena retains her connections to her gender as the goddess of music and the useful arts. “She was even, as we shall see, linked with childbirth, although only in certain exceptional circumstances” (Deacy, p. 5). Her association with the female is made complete by her ‘mothering’ of Erichthonius. According to the legend, Athena went to her brother’s forge to order new weapons and Hephaestus sexually assaulted her (Rosenstock, 1994). Although she repelled him before he could do much, he ejaculated onto her thigh. She brushed it off onto the ground near Athens and a child was born, Erichthonius. “Suddenly the bellicose goddess softened and agreed to raise the child herself. She was an implacable soldier who would defend her virginity with her life, but in response to a mewling infant, she who was motherless became the epitome of motherliness” (Abbott, p. 25). In spite of this incident and her mothering of an infant, like the quintessential maiden she is, Athena fiercely defends her virginity to the point where she blinds Teiresias, who appeared in Sophocles’ plays of Oedipus and his offspring as a seer, simply because he saw her naked while she was bathing outdoors.
According to the Greeks, women were wholly untrustworthy in the containment of their carnal desires based upon their fundamental characteristic of being wet. According to Anne Carson (1990), women were considered to be both physiologically and psychologically wet while “It is the consensus of Greek thought that the soundest condition for a human being is dryness” (Carson, 1990: 137). Like water, it was thought women could not reasonably contain themselves. Because of their lack of self-control, it was necessary for women to forever be under direct male guardians.
This guardianship was necessary because, without the judicious governance of the male, the female “would incline to complete wantonness” (Carson, 1990: 140). Therefore, a distinct division was necessary between the role of the wife and the role of the woman who was not a wife (Thompson, 2005), which typically meant prostitute, slave, or servant as there were few jobs a woman could hold within the Athenian society. Because women, through their wetness, were naturally wild, it was the responsibility of the husband to contain his wife physically within the home as well as mentally within the marriage bed to the business of producing children, the principal reason for marriage. Athena defies these gender roles by remaining celibate and thus claiming her regenerative powers for herself. “Celibacy was a mighty instrument that liberated [Athena] from traditional roles. It was, indeed, [her] only means of escape from the drudgery and subordination to husband, father or brothers that awaited all other Greek females” (Abbott, p. 23). Although she is given so many male attributes, the goddess proves the champion of uniquely female qualities.
The ancient Greek myths and legends can provide us with a great deal of information about the general beliefs and customs of an era, but as this study of Athena demonstrates, these generalizations may not have been quite as strictly adhered to as is assumed. This goddess was given a very complex, cross-gendered identity that enabled her a tremendous level of freedom as well as a great deal of power. Her strengths and abilities as a warrior and statesman suggest a culture that recognized strength and value in their women at the same time that it demonstrates how they feared and feared for them. Her feminine qualities link her undeniably with her gender in positive ways without being too inconsistent with her warrior nature and thus provide Greek women with an ideal that embodies a more complete expression of human existence rather than reinforcing ideas of gender confinement.
Works Cited
- Abbott, Elizabeth. A History of Celibacy: From Athena to Elizabeth I, Leonardo da Vinci, Florence Nightingale, Ghandi and Cher. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
- Aristophanes. “Lysistrata.” The Eleven Comedies. Vol. 1. Charleston, S.C.: BiblioBazaar, 2005.
- Carson, Anne. “Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt and Desire.” Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
- Deacy, Susan. Athena. London: Routledge, 2008.
- Eicher, Joanne B. & Mary-Ellen Roach-Higgins. “Definition and Classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender Roles.” Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning in Cultural Contexts. R. Barnes & J.B. Eicher (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
- “Greek Culture” Crystal Links (2009). Web.
- Loewen, Nancy. Athena. New York: Capstone Press, 1999.
- Rosenstock, Bruce. “Athena’s Cloak: Plato’s Critique of the Democratic City in the Republic.” Political Theory. Vol. 22, N. 3, (1994): 363-390.
- Thompson, James C. “Women in Athens.” Women in the Ancient World (2005).
- Tuccinardi, Ryan. “Athena.” Encyclopedia Mythica (1997).