Women in Antiquity

Charles Seltman

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781789124309
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

WOMEN IN ANTIQUITY is mainly about women in those Mediterranean civilisations which are the root of ours. After touching on the life of women in Palaeolithic and Neolithic times, Dr. Seltman comes to the first urban civilisations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the exaltation of women was bound up with the religious attitude towards love-goddesses and mother-goddesses. He discusses nudity and the wearing of clothes; fertility rites and sacred prostitution; heroines of the Bible; the cult of Isis. Fascinating pages deal with the women of Minoan Crete and of the Heroic Age (as described by Homer and confirmed by archaeological discoveries). A chapter on Sparta refers to the custom of exposing feeble infants, the annual flagellation of boys, the athletic prowess of girls, and the social and sexual codes. Coming to Athens, he appraises slavery and gives an imaginary Socratic dialogue to show how a 5th-century Athenian would have felt about some of our present Western ideas. This leads to the question: "Why is our modern world so preoccupied with sex and sin?" Dr. Seltman tells of the false 19th-century concepts of Athenian life and the position of women, discusses the hetairai ('girl-friends'), and contrasts the attitudes of Aristophanes and Plato to women. A chapter entitled "The New Woman" deals with girl athletes as typified by the story of Atalanta. Then we see how women fared in the Hellenistic Age and in the time of the Roman Republic and Empire. The final chapters show how anti-feminism was developed by the Fathers of the Church and frankly discuss monasticism and celibacy. The book is fully documented, and the carefully chosen illustrations are exceptionally interesting.

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{1} Lysistrata, lines 56 f.

{2} On their distribution in Africa (outside our terms of reference) see Sonia Cole, The Prehistory of East Africa (Pelican), 1954.

{3} A convenient collection of such things was made as early as 1913 by S. Reinach, Répertoire de l’Art Quarternaire. See also Seltman, C.A.H., Plates i, p. 8 a, b, c; and for late palaeolithic see p. 16 a, b (our Fig. 5).

{4} See A. C. Kinsey and Associates, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, Philadelphia 1953, pp. 363 f.

{5} James Laver, Homage to Venus (Faber & Faber), 1948, p. 2.

{6} Op. cit., p. 4.

{7} Perhaps they continue to deny it. The Australian aborigines certainly still deny paternity; see Cohn Simpson, Adam in Ochre (Angus and Robertson), 1953.

{8} Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, 1929, p. 20, commenting on Malinowski’s work, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-West Melanesia.

{9} Rebecca Reyher, The Fon and His Hundred Wives (Gollancz), 1953; and see Times Literary Supplement, 25th September, 1953, p. 618.

{10} Consider especially the classical Greek Thyiads; see Seltman, The Twelve Olympians, pp. 173 f.

{11} J. Langdon-Davies, A Short History of Women, 1928.

{12} Compare C.A.H., vol. of Plates i, p. 66. There is...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS IN PHOTGRAVURE
• LINE DRAWINGS IN THE TEXT
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• I-FEMINA SAPIENS
• II-THE RIVERS
• III-EGYPT AND CRETE
• IV-HEROICA
• V-SPARTA
• VI-IONIA
• VII-ATHENS
• PLATES
• VIII-ARISTOPHANES VERSUS PLATO
• IX-THE NEW WOMAN
• X-INTEGRATION
• XI-MISAPPREHENSION
• XII-ATALANTA REDIVIVA
• A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER