Book Description

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.