GRST 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Frugality, Semonides Of Amorgos, Masculinity

• School: University of Calgary
• Department: Greek and Roman Studies
• Course: GRST 205
• Professor: Lindsay Gayle Driediger- Murphy

Document Summary

Gambling, arming, fighting, harvesting, athletics, studying, writing, acting, sculpting. Ancient greeks tended to use binary thinking . Masculinity and femininity were thought of as opposites. Male: hard, hot, strong, light, reason/self-control, culture/civilization, active. Female: soft, cold, weak, darkness, passion/instinct, nature, passive. Semonides (greek poet of 7th c. bc) on women (fragment 7) Describes women as a hindrance to men. A litany of complaints about different kinds of women compares women to animals and natural phenomena. The complaints reveal what greek men claimed to want from women: Respectable women required to be passive and demure. Expected to be virgins until marriage, then faithful to their husbands. Boys and men were expected to be sexually active. A respectable husband could still have relations with slaves, prostitutes, boys/ other men. High class courtesans (hetairai) sometimes had more opportunities that respectable" women.