Theban Sacred Band

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Ancient Greek women not unlike today's Arab and Muslim women were usually forced to stay inside the house at all times and completely isolated from any part of society. Ancient Greek Society was entirely male apart from the household, and in such a society homosexuality is common, the men where rarely with women, and you develop affection for the person you really spend your life with, not the person you see once a month (On top of being confined to the house women would also be confined to the womens quarters whenever there was company and that is where they usually slept to).

It is not an insult to say that Ancient Greek Society promoted homosexuality, if you have any doubt and don't feel like studying the society, just read Hypolytos.

The Romans on the other hand really where liberal, Roman Women where better of then women in most countries today in terms of laws and practices.

Pap, Rot, the residual of Victorian scholarship (and bias) and the construct of Feminist and Foucault inspired historians fitting selected facts into their pre-conceived ideological framework.

First which Greeks are you talking about Athens, Boeoetia, the Western Greeks in Italy, Ionia? Greece was hardly a unitary and monolithic entity, laws and morality varied widely in both time and space.

Second if Hippolytus(a fictional work of drama) is an argument for Greek homosexuality, why not argue that Lysistrata or the Eccleesiazusae demonstrate female emancipation in Greece?

Homosexuality was common and pervasive? Well aside from the fact that homosexuality as such is a modern construction that fits not all that well on any particular Greek situation; consider the testimony of both Plato and Xenophon; they suggest rather a more variable situation – with outright homosexuality (as the modern definition would have it) legal and accepted in Elis and Boeoetia, outlawed in Ionia and ambiguous in places like Sparta and Athens.

Ancient Greek women not unlike today's Arab and Muslim women were usually forced to stay inside the house at all times and completely isolated from any part of society.

A completely ridicules statement.

Sure maybe in some ideal aristocratic fantasy (as conveyed by some literary evidence) women were secluded. But I have to wonder how Socrates’ midwife mother carried out her profession in oriental seclusion? What about all the women attested in Athenian curse tablets: Shop Keepers, Tavern Owners, Smiths, etc, they do not seem to have languished in seclusion. How about all those women at the theater? Mentioning seclusion where is the archeological proof anyway, no Athenian house yet excavated has provided much support for a secluded women’s partition. What about the wives and daughters of the not rich Athenians Aristotle notes who worked in the fields since their families could afford neither slaves nor hired help; hardly secluded…

What about women’s role in Religion? One could hardly be segregated from men while being the Priestess of Athena at Athens and providing pivotal input into events like the Democratic revolution or the decision to trust in Themistocles’ wooden wall (of ships).
One did not become the butt of Arstophanes’ jokes by being out of the public eye, yet two women Priestess managed to become the basis for his characters in the Lysistrata.

If you are going to cite Euripides how his sentiment expressed elsewhere that “ And in matters concerning the gods, for I consider these matters to be most important, we women have the greatest share.” Religion was like politics at the very heart of the polis, women could hardly have had a central role if they were busy locked in their houses.


Don’t misunderstand me were women distinctly second class citizens/people, sure, but he same goes for just about any society before the modern western democracies of the last 50 years or so.

The Romans on the other hand really where liberal, Roman Women where better of then women in most countries today in terms of laws and practices.

I’m sorry to say I just don’t buy that. Perhaps you need to revisit the ‘Patria Potestas’, the very male head of a Roman household had power over the household’s women that an Athenian ‘Kyrios’ never approached.