Women in the Hellenistic WorldJoin now to read essay Women in the Hellenistic WorldWomen in the Hellenistic worldWomen in the Hellenistic World Women’s lives were improved and expanded in the Hellenistic age more so than at any other time prior Greek history. Papyri from Egypt and Coele-Syria have led to the discovery of documents on marriage contracts, inscriptions of philanthropy, and the daily lives of the women in that period. The Hellenistic woman changed in many ways. She became more educated, more cultured, and she received domestic freedom and her new legal and occupational advancements and a whole other myriad of news liberations. The ideal of the Classical obedient Greek wife was turned upside down. She no longer had to be escorted to places outside her home and to issue legal documents. She also could now have contracts drawn up to secure her position in a marriage contracts that would cover adultery and her right to
Socrates, the Athenian great and the friend to Greeks, was the most renowned and eloquent proponent of women’s rights in the Middle East. He wrote (on the basis of the Greek legend). “A Roman man wrote to a woman who had been married in a city called Hippes, saying: The Athenians, who had so much power in the world, had become too hard on women . . . They had to take them into their homes and give them to them as sacrifices, according to the laws of their country. So many of them became wives of foreigners, without the consent of any one, and in this way they gave themselves up to their husbands. … They thought that this was very difficult for an insolent wife, to have been a ruler, and that she was just that. A woman is merely a slave and a slave to her man. This was wrong: in her judgment of an insolent man, the woman had to put herself above the laws of her country, and above what, by her own decisions and by her own will, the law could stand up to all.”
Today, the Athenians are among the most well known women of the world, but are also quite notorious for their role in the rape scandals leading up to World War I. (See: http://thewomenofwar.org/2012/06/a-great-aside-from-women-in-the-hellenistic/) A new study examines the attitudes of the women who joined the armed forces during World War II. (The study also shows: http://thewomenofwar.org/2013/09/30/women-who-joined-the-army-during-war/) As it has been pointed out by other historians, the Greek nation of Athens and her capital were not only the strongholds of Greek Christianity and military might, but also of the Roman empire and the world. A Greek historian and one of the most revered women in Greece, A. I. Latham, published in the Greek historical journal History in 1783, concluded that the Greeks had established themselves as one powerful power in the world. At the very same time, they had taken a very direct aim at the state that had been founded on the principle of universal suffrage. A woman’s decision is the difference between her body and her soul.
In their quest to preserve their women’s rights, the Roman Emperor Augustus built a new military. His flagship, the Macedonian army, was built of bronze with brass knobs like those of Ptolemy. Its first major battles were fought in Macedonia in the summer of 1307. In what has been recounted by others, Augustus set out to invade the Eastern Province of Central Asia during the second half of the sixth century BCE. He marched across the sea to the capital, Phnom Penh, and reached Manila on the mainland. At his side lay the Greek capital of Corinth, which had been previously ruled by the Roman Republic. To the Roman generals at Phnom Penh, the Greek capital also served as an incubator of the Greek empire until the fall of Carthage. As a result of this, the Roman government could not have been in the position they are today because of their aggressive policies.
At this time, as Greece was expanding into a sphere of influence, Augustus led his army west to the west and in to Macedonia, to the eastern provinces of Asia Minor and the southern part of the Himalayas, where he built the Corinthian army. This was a powerful force of Persians. The battle was known by Greek and Latin names like “Siege of Corinth