Women in ancient Greece / Sue Blundell.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-219) and index.

Acknowlegments -- Introduction -- Part I Women in myth -- Myth: an introduction -- Creation myth -- Olympian godesses: virgins and mothers -- Women in the poems of Homer -- Amazons -- Part II The Archaic Age, 750-500 BC -- Women in an age of transition -- Women and the poets -- Women as poets: Sappho -- Women in stone -- Part III The Classical Age, 500-336 BC -- Women's bodies -- Women in Athenian law and society -- Lives of women in classical Athens -- Sparta and Gortyn -- Women and religion -- Part IV Ideas about women in the Classical Age -- Women in drama -- Women and the philosophers -- Women in classical sculpture -- Postscript The Hellenistic Age -- Notes, Bibliography, Index.

"To read the history of ancient Greece as it has been written for centuries is to enter a thoroughly male world. This book, a comprehensive history of women in the Archaic and Classical Ages, completes our picture of ancient Greek society." "Largely excluded from any public role, the women of ancient Greece nonetheless appear in various guises in the art and writing of the period, and in legal documents. These representations, in Sue Blundell's analysis, reveal a great deal about women's day-to-day experience as well as their legal and economic position - and how they were regarded by men. Here are women as portrayed in Homer, in Greek lyric poetry, and by the playwrights; the female nature as depicted in medical writings and by Aristotle; representations of women in sculpture and vase paintings. This is evidence filtered through a male view: Sappho is the only female writer of antiquity much of whose work survives. Yet these sources and others such as legal regulations and law court speeches reveal a great deal about women's lives and about their status as defined by law and by custom."--BOOK JACKET.

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