[from an Intellectual Heritage Program listserv discussion, 1/19/01]

First of all, let me say that these are important questions. Robin's response about the role of
women in lament is well taken.  The bit about women in 2.45.2 always gets students
interested, and there are ways to talk about it.  I had not read the Tyrrell and Bennett essay,
and after a quick reading think it is very worthwhile: they're trying to show a) why
mourning is absolutely essential in Greek funeral rites--this is part of their 'character' or in
Greek, 'human nature' (that word again!) and b) why Pericles tries to keep it muted (as part
of a general need for restraint during the Peloponnesian War.

(From an IH point of view, this last point is necessary.  Throughout Greek literature--from
the time when the Greeks in the Iliad build a mini-city during the siege of Troy and social
relations become complex, through the funeral speech, the Antigone, and the Apology and
Crito of Plato--Greek authors are confronting the tension between traditional 'heroic'
self-expression and the needs of a community:  the polis has its imperatives.)

Lisa Kallet-Marx has a fine essay on 'the status of war widows.'  I'm going to summarize it
here, because she makes points that can be adapted in IH 51 although we don't, probably,
have time to go into detail in class.  Her main point is that we're discussing not 'women' but
war widows, a special category, and that their treatment (they are honored as well as muted)
reflects the needs and benefits of the new democratic city, and the decline in prestige of the
'family.'  I go on so long about it that I'll respond to the other poitns in a sequel.

She insists that this is not a speech about women per se but about widows.  They receive
high honor as widows; like their sons, they have acquired a new guardian [the polis]; they
have new responsibilities, now to the polis and not to their husbands' families.  "Their
behavior affects the glory surrounding not only the war dead themselves but also that of the
polis, because of their husbands' new status as heroes... in the lifetime of their husbands,
any gossip about such women would have been a slight not only to their husbands' honor,
but to that of the entire oikos [keep in mind the ancient and current proprietary notions of
feminine honor among brothers, fathers, husbands throughout the Mediterranean--'cultures
where you get killed for messing with my sister'].  That is why these particular widows'
behavior--not that of women in general--is now, and only now, of special interest to the
polisas a whole,..."

Kallet-Marx also makes the important point that all widows are addressed as a group.
Athens depended upon its navy more than any other military power.  Traditionally, it is foot
soldiers and cavalry who get major funereal honors, mention in casualty lists, and so on:
they are from Chestnut Hill and the city recognizes them.  Now, in a procession supervised
by the city, with 10 coffins representing political groupings that were (by a stroke of
political genius) called "clans," the city moves.  Where families had honored their heroic
footsoldiers, the city erases the family, takes over the raising of the orphans and becomes
'husband' to the widows, and accords mere paupers--the sailors in the fleet--a state funeral
on the same plane as the rest. The funeral, so often a tool for establishing family prestige,
now makes clear the prestige of the polis. So Pericles' advice, as so often, represents
democratic ideology at work:  "the ribbon seller, peasant, and aristocratic woman were all
(equally) able to attain a great fame, as long as they did not allow their particular nature to
degenerate."

"Scholars [she continues] have noted a development toward the greater inclusion of women
from the public community of Athens coincident with the height of democracy in the age of
Pericles.  Although this can often be stated in far too extreme a fashion, it is reasonable to
regard women's participation in the public life of Athens as restricted chiefly to their
contribution to the religious life of the polis.... A remarkable exception is that of the
widows of war heroes honored by the polis, whose symbolic relationship to the polis set
them apart from all other women.  They, and they alone, are offered public esteem, ... as a
result of heir connection with those who have been made public heroes, their husbands.... I
suggest that the privilege and status of these war widows are peculiar to Periclean Athens,
to an age in which the polis as an entity exerted a hold over individuals and families whose
primary allegiance to the polis was made explicit, a hold exerted in both words and deeds
(in the Funeral oration, in the publicburial ... and in the 'adoption' of  orphans and widows
of war heroes).  The relationship, moreover, between polis and war heroes, their sons, and
their wives seems to have an inherent ambiguity, for public privilege comes at the cost of
family autonomy; the family loses aspects that both defined its integrity and saw to its
preservation (e.g. the burial of its dead, economic self-sufficiency, and control over the
behavior of its members).  The treatment of the war widows, then, offers us further insight
into the tangible ways in which the special character of Periclean Athens at the height of the
Athenian polis was manifest."
 

See:  Lisa Kallet-Marx, "Thucydides 2.45.2 and the Status of War Widows in Periclean
Athens," Nomodeiktes.  Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald. Ann Arbor, 1993, pp.
133-143.

Robin Mitchell-Boyask comments:
 

I'd add that one reason Pericles might have wanted to restrict lament
is class tension. Funerals were sometimes used by aristocrats as ways
to whip up clan loyalties and display wealth and power. The rich were
continually trying to find ways to display these attributes and the
state spent much energy trying to channel them into productive
outlets; like the liturgies to fund tragic choroi.  One can think of
few things more destabilizing to a polis at the outbreak of war than
to have a public, common funeral subverted by the wealthy.

Dr.  S. F. Shields sparked this discussion by referring IH faculty to a useful article:
 

   Pericles' Muting of Women's Voices in Thuc. 2.45.2"
   Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett,
   (A paper delivered at the 1999 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference)

   http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/perikflc.shtml