Introduction 1. The Nineteenth-Century Paradigm of Greek Family History 2. The Family in Homer and Hesiod 3. Early Greek Law and the Family 4. Marriage and Adultery in Democratic Athens 5. Adultery Onstage and in Court 6. Public and Private in Early Hellenistic Athens Conclusion Notes Index
Cynthia B. Patterson is Associate Professor of History, Emory University.
Everyone who is interested in ancient Greek society will want to
think seriously about [Patterson's] conclusions...The ancient Greek
family is more complex and flexible than has usually been supposed,
and relationships by marriage and adoption could be as valid in
determining inheritance as blood relationships...Contrary to
previous assumptions, there does not appear to have been a moment
in Greek history when membership in a larger kinship group, such as
a clan, took precedence over the smaller unit of the family...As
Patterson shows, the spheres of public and private always
overlapped, and their separation from one another has been much
exaggerated, especially by historians who seek to portray the
ancient Greeks as keeping women in an oriental seclusion or for
treating them as socially and morally inferior beings. The complex
data in Patterson's book shows that it is grossly unfair to portray
the ancient Greeks as misogynists. Greek literature and drama
accurately reflect women's importance, both in the family and in
the larger society.
*Washington Times*
Patterson...offers an attack on the continuing influence of
century-old paradigms concerning the ancient Greek family. She
argues convincingly that the oikos (household) and the state were
closely interrelated, the state did not supersede or suppress the
oikos, and there was no clear public/private split, because one's
civic identity derived largely from one's oikos...[She] also
explores the family in Hesiod, Homer, and early Greek law; marriage
and adultery in Athens; and the family in Menander's plays.
*Choice*
[The Family in Greek History] is a welcome and useful addition to
the very recent body of scholarship that has appeared on the
ancient Greek family and, although the title might not at first
explicitly indicate it, to the much more considerable scholarship
on the role of women in the Greek world. It is a book with both a
broad ambitious and a definite thesis...It is an important
contribution to several on-going revisionist debates in the field
of Greek social history...Certainly all scholars with a particular
interest in ancient gender studies and the history of the ancient
family should read this book.
*Bryn Mawr Classical Review*
Patterson is to be commended for demonstrating so clearly that some
of the premises which stand at the basis of research into the Greek
family are not tenable in the face of the available
evidence...Patterson's study is eminently useful and has the
potential of becoming a fundamental work in the field of the Greek
family and society. It presents a forceful argument to rethink the
basic premises of how the transformation of Greek society from the
archaic through to the Hellenistic period defined the family. By
attacking historical myths such as that of the genos as the
quintessential family or the emergence of the state at the expense
of the public role of the family and of women Patterson makes clear
that ideas about the family in Greek history have been seriously
misconstrued. The result is an excellent and challenging piece of
scholarship.
*Scholia Reviews*
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