Charities for Greek Women

Author(s): Sarah B. Pomeroy

Source: Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 35, Fasc. 1/2 (1982), pp. 115-135
Published by: BRILL
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 Mnemosyne, Vol. XXXV, Fase. 1-2

CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN*)

BY

SARAH B. POMEROY

When Medea is pretending to be an ordinary Greek housewife,

she points out that a woman needs a dowry, in order to get a
husband1). Among the respectable classes throughout the Greek
world, all girls were expected to marry, and fathers usually provided
their daughters with the requisite dowry 2). Girls who succeeded
in marrying without any dowry were exceptional. Men who claimed
that compassion had inspired them to take a dowerless bride
counted on winning the favor of their audiences. A rich man like
Callias, it is true, might marry a penniless Elpinice because her
family's political connections were more useful to him than money;
yet the granddaughter of the revered statesman Aristides, widowed
and impoverished, was unable to attract another husband3).
Lydian girls earned their dowries by prostitution, and unattractive
girls in Babylonia were dowered from the proceeds of auctions of
pretty girls 4). These expedients for acquiring dowries were clearly
foreign. In Greece the obligation to provide a dowry for a girl
who needed one usually devolved on her kinfolk. At various times

*) I wish to thank the Faculty Research Award Program of the City

University of New York for a grant which supported the research on which
this article is based. I am grateful to Professors E. Badi?n, S. Burstein,
W. K. Lacey and M. Ostwald for their comments. The author alone is
responsible for the opinions herein expressed.
Journal titles are abbreviated according to the form in L'Ann?e Philologique.
Accepted abbreviations will be used for standard works,
i) Eur. Med. 232-3.
2) For general discussions of Greek dowry see: A. R. W. Harrison, The
Law of Athens: The Family and Property (1968); W. K. Lacey, The Family
in Classical Greece (1968); Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and
Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (1975); D. Schaps, Economic Rights of
Women in Ancient Greece (1979); and H. J. Wolff, ?????, RE 23 A (1957),
133-70?
3) Plut. Arist. 27, 2.
4) Herod. I 93-94, 196.
Il6 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

and in several places in the Greek world dowries were furnished

at the expense of the state.
When dowries were provided by the state, the fathers of the girls
had to meet at least one of the following qualifications: either they
were poor, or they were patriots who had served the state well. The
evidence from states other than Athens will be examined first, in
chronological order.
The first example, an inscription from Thasos d) includes benefits
for children among the honors paid to those who died fighting for
the state.
??a???fe?? d?
8 a?t?? ta ????ata pat???e? e?? t??? '??a???? t???
p??e??????? ?a? t?? ??a??at?a t?? ?????? ?a? ?a?e?s?a?
a?t?? t??? pat??a? ?a? t??? pa?da? dta? ? p???? ??t?????
t??? ??a???? : vac. d?d??a? d* ?p?? a?t?? ??ast?? t??
?2 ?p?d??t?? ds?? ?p?? t?????? ?a??????s??
?a?e?s?a? d* a?t?? t??? pat??a? ?a? t??? pa?da? ?a? ??
?
p??ed???? ?? t??? a???a? ?????? d? ?p?de????e??
a?t??? ?a? ?????? t????a? t??t??? t?? t????ta t??? a???a?.
16 ?p?s?? d' ?? a?t?? pa?da? ?ata??p?s??, dta? ?? t??
??????? ?f????ta?, d?d?t?sa? a?t??? ?? p????a????,
?? ??? ??se?e? ??s??, ???st?? ?????da?, ?????a,
???e???d???, ??????, asp?da, d???, ?? e??ss???? ???a
2? [t]???? ????, ?[?]a??e???? ?? t?? ????? ?a? ??a??e[??]?t?[sa?]
* ?? d?
[ta ????ata] ???at??e? ?s??, e?? pe??????[? ]
[ dta? ? tes]s???? ?a? d??a et?? ????[?ta? ]

8 'And the
polemarchs and the secretary of the council are to
their names and patronymics
inscribe on the roll of heroes and to
io summon their parents and children whenever the city offers a
sacrifice commemorating the heroes. The treasurer is to give to
each, on their behalf, as much as those receive who enjoy
official prerogatives e). Their parents and children are invited to
seats of honor at the games. The organizer of the games is to

5) Thasos, I, number 141.5.

6) The t?????? are those who possess a t???. On the interpretation of
?? see L. and J. Robert, La Carie, II (1954), 323?
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN II7

15 designate a section for them and to erect a bleacher for them.

Whoever of them leaves children behind?when
they come of
age?the polemarchs mustgive them, if they are boys, to each
greaves, a cuirass, a dagger, a helmet, a shield, a spear, worth
20 not less than three minas, at the Heracleia, and they must
proclaim their names. But if they are daughters, for the dowry
[whenever] they become fourteen years old

?e??????? is a synonym for p????. According to Hesychius it

connotes 'dowry' in the dialect of Thasos. ?es]s???? is properly
restored, since fourteen was the age at which Greek girls usually
married 7).
Various scholars give different dates for the inscription. The
conjectures range from the end of the fifth century B.C. to 60 years
later. Jean Pouilloux dates the inscription from Thasos to the first
half of the fourth
century, though he remarks that a punctuation
mark of three vertical dots appearing in line 11 is found in texts
from the fifth century as well 8). Jeanne and Louis Robert give a
date of around 360-340 9). F. Sokolowski, in contrast, dates the
inscription to the end of the fifth or beginning of the fourth cen-
tury 10). Most recently the inscription was reprinted under the
aegis of the Institut Fernand-Courby, with the date of around
350 u).
The text raises a question about the ambiguity of language. It
should be clear from line 16 that pa?da? refers collectively to children
of both sexes. This use of pa?de? is not, of course, remarkable.
For example the second-century B.C. epigraphical charter of a
school in Teos states specifically in lines 8-9 that the beneficiaries
are both pa?da? and pa??????? but in the remainder of this inscription
the children are referred to simply as pa?de? 12). The latest re-

7) On age of marriage see Pomeroy (supra n. 2), 41-2, 64, 85, 118.
8) Thasos, I, number 141. The dating is discussed briefly on p. 372.
9) Bulletin ?pigraphique, REG 69 (1956), 155, number 221a.
10) Sokolowski, II, number 64.
11) Institut Fernand-Courby, Nouveau Choix d'inscriptions grecques:
Textes, Traductions, Commentaires (1971), number 19.
12) For a discussion of S IG* 578, where pa?de? includes boys and girls,
see Sarah B. Pomeroy, Technikai kai Mousikai, American Journal of Ancient
History 2 (1977)? 52?
Il8 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

printing of the Thasos text shows that the same ambiguity that
surrounds the word pa?da? can affect the interpretation of the word
pat??a?. Jean Pouilloux translates pat??a? as 'p?res', but the
Institut Fernand-Courby gives 'p?res et m?res*. If mothers and
daughters are included in both pat??e? and pa?de?, or, of course in
either one, then Thasos would have made the earliest grant of
prohedria at games to women in Greece. (The next one I know of is
from the second century B.C. to a woman who made a donation
to her city to pay for a public feast13).)

That nude male athletes competed in the contests mentioned in

line fourteen would not necessarily have been a deterrent to the
presence either of young girls or of women among the spectators.
We should not generalize from what we believe to be unsuitable for
the protected existence of Athenian women to what might have
been permitted to women in other parts of the Greek world. Ac-
cording to Pausanias, married women and widows were not allowed
to attend the games at Olympia under penalty of being thrown off
the steep cliffs of nearby Mount Typaeum14), but unmarried
women (pa??????) were not debarred from watching15). From an
ode of Pindar honoring Telesicrates as victor in a footrace in full
armor, it appears that women and girls were present at athletic
competitions in honor of Pallas in Cyrene, for the poet states that
when they have seen Telesicrates they silently pray that they
might have such a one as he for a husband or son 1?).
Although the customs at Olympia and Cyrene might be thought
to be confined to Dorians?while Thasos was Ionian?there are also

13) Archippe was awarded prohedria by Cyme in Asia Minor. The in-
scription is dated to the first half of the second century by the first editor,
G. E. Bean, Two Inscriptions from Aeolis, Belleten Turk Tarih Kurumu 30
(1966), 527. H. W. Pleket, Epigraphica, II: Texts on the Social History of
the Greek World (1969), 11, gives the date as the second part of the second
century (cf. Bull, ?pigr., REG 1968, number 445).
14) Paus. V 6, 7.
15) Paus. VI 20, 9; he also makes a distinction between maidens and other
women in V 13, 10. For specific awards of the privilege of viewing games to
married women in Ephesus in imperial times see L. Robert, Les Femmes
Th?ores ? Eph?se, CRAI (1974), 176-81.
16) Pyth. 9, 97-100.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN II9

parallels for the attendance of Ionian women at athletic competitions

which were part of religious festivals. Thucydides reports that
there was an old festival on Delos attended by Ionians and neighbor
islanders, who came with their wives and children, and viewed
contests in poetry and music and nude athletics. He states that
Ionians in his own time celebrate a festival
at Ephesus, like the
old Delian festival, along with their wives and children 17). More-
over, if the Parthenon frieze represents the Panathenaic procession
as it actually was, young girls were clustered in one portion of the
procession, but they were certainly not prevented from looking at
men clad in nothing more than loose cloaks. Of course the women
themselves were not to be seen nude, but for the Greek the nude
male body was a source of pride, and the fact of nudity distinguished
Greeks from barbarians. That male nudity is commonly referred
to as 'heroic nudity' brings us back to the heroes of Thasos. The
presence of women in Thasos at the athletic contests honoring
their dead male kin is within the realm of the possible, and ac-
cordingly the words
pat??e? and pa?de? can include females.
Many of the provisions for children of men who died fighting
for Thasos appear again in a decree of the Rhodians reported by
Diodorus Siculus 18). (The similarities between the two decrees are
evidence of Diodorus's veracity here.) In 305 the Rhodians voted
that both the parents and the children of those who died in battle
should be maintained at state expense. Moreover, unmarried
daughters should be given dowries, and sons crowned at the
Dionysia and given panoplies.
By these decrees, the Thasians and Rhodians made certain that
the children of the brave did not suffer a diminution in social
status when they lost their fathers. They also provided for a new
generation of soldiers, fully armed, to replace those who had died.
As the comic poet Cratinus remarked on the rearing of boys at
public expense :

a?t?? ?pa?de?s?? <t* ??>???e?? te d???s???s<?>

????as?? e?? ????, ??a ?? p?t? ?????? ????a?,?.

17) Thuc. Ill 104, 3; see also Hymn. Horn. Ap. 146-50.
18) XX 84, 3.
120 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

'He reared them at the public charge and gave

them education in hopes that if war's havoc
came they'd help to save the nation'1?).

In granting dowries to girls, the Thasians and Rhodians were

seeing to it that citizen women would be able to marry and to

produce babies who would, in turn, become soldiers and mothers of

soldiers. In other words, both states were insured against a loss in
citizen population. However, the duration of the 'insurance' was
not necessarily the same in both cities. Because the beginning of the
Thasian inscription is lost, the reasons for its enactment are unclear.
It may have been framed for an emergency. But since no single

military engagement that could have inspired the decree is known,

the Thasian law could be a general promise to establish a welfare

system for the sons and daughters of all dead soldiers in the future.
In contrast, the Rhodian law was intended to rally support to
Rhodes in the face of Demetrius' great siege efforts; hence it was
extraordinary and without
general application.
The last Hellenistic
example appears in a letter of Laodice
from Iasus on the coast of Asia Minor, establishing an endowment to

provide dowries for daughters of impoverished citizens20).

?as???ssa?a?d??? ?as??? t? ? ?????? ?a? t?? d?-

??? ?a??e??. ??????sa p?e?????? t?? ?de?f?? ??
5 te ??t?????? t?? ?a?t?? f???? ?a? s???????
d?ate?e? p?????e??? ?a? ?? t?? ??et??a? p?-
??? s??pt??as?? pe??pes??sa? ?p??sd???-
t??? ??a?t?s??e??? t?? te ??e??e??a? ????
?p?d??e? ?a? t??? ?????? ?a? ta ???p? p??t??e?-
?? ta? s??a??e?? t? p???te??a ?a? e?? ?e?t???a d?-
??es?? ??a?e??, p??a???????? d? ?a? e?? a?????-
?a p??s<s>e?? t?<?> sp??d?<?> a?t?? ?a? e?te?e?a? ?a? d?a
t??t? ?ata??s?a? t??a e?e??es?a? ??? e?? t???
?s?e????ta? t?? p???t??, e????st?a? d? ???-

19) Suda, s.v. ????a??t? = Cratinus, fr. 171 K.; translation by Edmonds.
20) ASAA 45-46 (1969): new series 29-30 (1967-68), 445-53. number 2.
The editor, G. Pugliese Carratelli thought that the author was Laodice II,
wife of Seleucus II, and dated the letter to 228 B.C. For Phila's gifts of
dowries to the poor, Diod. Sic. XIX 59, 4.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN 121

15 ??? t?? s??pa?t? d????, ?e???fe??a St?????-

??? t?? d?????t?? ?f' ?t? d??a ?at* ???a?t?? p???? ????-
??? ?ed?????? '?tt????? e?? t?? p???? pa?a????-
???ta pa?ad?d??a? t??? pa?? t?? d????, ed ??? p??-
sete s??t??a?te? t??? ??? ta??a?? pa?a?a???-
2? ???ta? ta?t?? p?????? ??d????e??, t??? d? p??st?-
ta?? ?a? ??? ?? ?????? ?????te p????e?? dp?? t? ????-
?e??? d??f???? ?? t??t?? ?atat????ta? e?? p????a?
ta?? t?? ?s?e????t?? p???t?? ???at??s??, d?d??-
te? ?? p???? ??t?????? d?a???? t??a??s??? ???s-
?
25 t?? t?? s????????????? ?????????? ?* ???? e?? te t??
?de?f?? ?a? ?a????? t?? ????? ???? ????? ?a???e?
[?a]? t?? ap??t??
???? e?e??es??? ?e?????????
[e?]?a??st?? pe???s??a? ?a? ???a ? a? ep???? s??-
[pa?]as?e???e?? pa?t? t??p? ? s??e?t???e?? p??-
3? [a????]???? t?? t?? ade?f??" ?e??se?, ?ata??? ?a? a?-
[t?? ?]?a? e?te??? ????ta p??? t?? ?pa?????s??
[t??] p??e??, (vacai) ????s?e. (vacai)

The queen Laodice sends greetings to the Council and the people
5 of Iasus. I have often heard from my brother about the support
that he gives to his friends and allies and that he has restored
your city that was damaged by unforeseen calamities. He has
given liberty to you, and has established laws and taken other
io measures to enlarge the commonwealth and bring it into a better
condition. I have also made it a priority, following his example, to
act with his zeal and earnestness, and therefore to establish
something to benefit both the poor citizens and to be advanta-
15 geous to the entire population. I have written to Strouthion,
the director of finances, that for 10 years, annually, he should
convey to the city 1,000 Attic medimni of wheat and turn it over
to men by the city. Then, be so good as to order your
chosen
treasurers to take portions of the wheat and to sell it, and to
20 order your prostatai and whomever else you choose, to provide
that the profits from this be used to constitute dowries for the
daughters of needy citizens. They are to give not more than
25 300 drachmas of Antiochus to each of those who are married. If
122 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

the Iasians continue to be well disposed toward my brother and

our entire household and are mindful of our benefactions, I will
try to accomplish other benefactions which I devise, proceeding
30 in every way in harmony with the will of my brother, for I
understand that he is very eager for the restoration of the city.
Farewell?.

Laodice was the wife of Antiochus the third. She was particularly
responsive to the concerns of women and was worshipped in her
realm as Aphrodite 21). The Hellenistic Aphrodite had two person-
alities: one was the familiar goddess of love, the patroness of
prostitutes. But the other was a goddess of marriage, and what
better way was there to support marriage than by providing
dowries which enabled girls to wed?
The way that the dowries are constituted is interesting. Laodice
does not give the people of Iasus an outright grant of money.
Instead, one thousand measures of wheat are to be sent to Iasus
each year for ten years. The source of the wheat is not stipulated.
It probably would have been grown on some of the estates in
Laodice's possession. She directs that the wheat is to be sold at
Iasus, and the profits to be distributed in the form of dowries for the
daughters of indigent citizens. The amount of each dowry is not
to exceed the stated limit of 300 drachmas 22).
Other Hellenistic queens were also revered as Aphrodite incar-
nate 23), but Laodice was the only one known to have conferred
tangible benefits on her votaries. After he took Iasus in 197,

21 ) Bull, ?pigr., REG 84 (1971), 502-09, number 621, and ibid., 86 (1973),
165-66, number 432, Jeanne and Louis Robert have argued convincingly that
the wife of Antiochus III, Laodice III, was the correct Laodice, and point out
that she was particularly sensitive to the concerns of women.
22) The value of 300 drachmas of Antiochus would have been more than
that of the three minas stipulated in Thasos, I, 141 (supra p. 117). The
Seleucids used the Attic standard (4.3) whereas the Thasians used the Rho-
dian-Chian standard (3.9). I am grateful to Dr. Nancy Waggoner for
this information.
According to Dem. 43, 54, in Athens if the nearest male relative of an
?p??????? ??ssa did not want to marry her, he would have to provide her
with a dowry of 300 drachmas, if he were in the census class of knights.
23) See inter alia J. L. Tondriau, Princesses ptol?maiques compar?es ou
identifi?es ? des d?esses, BSAA 37 (1948), 12-33.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN I23

Antiochus must have been concerned with building up support

there as part of his Roman diplomacy, but the strategy of winning
men's hearts by dowering their daughters surely was due to his
wife's inspiration. Antiochus may have also wished to increase
the number of citizens in Iasus. And since there was no reason for
Iasus to be singled out for special favors among all the cities in
Asia Minor
taken by Antiochus, it is fair to speculate that dowry
foundations were established elsewhere in his realm. At any rate,
lines io-ii of the inscription state that the purpose of the grant
is to increase the citizen
body and bring it into a better condition.
This may merely be a general expression and not necessarily an
allusion to new citizens u). Yet it is obvious that the two objectives
are related: first, the lot of the citizens will be vastly improved
when they are able to marry off their daughters, and subsequently
the number of citizens will increase as babies are born to these
brides.
The evidence from Thasos, Rhodes, and Iasus that Greek states
sometimes expended funds for dowries is incontrovertible. Whether
Athens ever used public money in a similar fashion is more proble-
matic. The earliest Athenian example is the subvention to the
granddaughter of Aristogiton. Her parents had been among the
first Athenians to settle on Lemnos. When the Athenians discovered
that she was living on Lemnos, unmarried, owing to poverty, they
brought her back to Athens, found a good husband for her, and
gave her property in Potamus as a dowry 2d). With the gift to
Aristogiton's granddaughter as the precedent, not long after, the
Athenians generously gave dowries of three thousand drachmas
each to the daughters of Aristides after their father died. The
sources variously give the following information: the decree was
proposed by Alcibiades; allotments of money and of land in Euboea
were granted to Aristides' son ; and Aristides' daughters and grand-
daughter were maintained at public expense.

24) According to J. and L. Robert in Bull, ?pigr. 84, 503, s??a??e?? . . .

??a?e?? is merely an ''expression tr?s g?n?rale; pas d'allusion n?cessaire ? de
nouveaux citoyens: on am?liore la situation des citoyens".
25) Plut. Arist. 27, 4-7; see discussion in J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied
Families 600-300 B.C. (1971), 50-2, 474.
124 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

J. ?. Davies has rejected this decree as a fourth-century fabrica-

tion, principally on the grounds that neither Alcibiades II nor III
would suit the chronology; that the Athenians were not likely
to hold land in Euboea around 467 B.C. ; and that the entire subject
of the public maintenance of the children of benefactors is fraught
with questions. Finally, although Davies does not
specifically
reject the report of the grants of money to Aristides' son and of
dowries to his daughters, he states that neither the daughters nor
the granddaughter ever existed, and does not record them in the
stemma in Table 1.
Davies is not alone in rejecting the actual existence of certain
women who are referred to only in literary, and not in epigraphical
sources 2e). It seems to me that to argue that a woman did not exist,
merely because we cannot her name, is valueless.
give If Davies

accepts Aristogiton's granddaughter as having been given benefac-

tions, why not Aristides' descendants as well ? The first half of the
fifth century was the great age of Athens' proud expansion and of
national pride and success, so the great hero of the liberation from
the tyrants and the founder of the Athenian Confederacy whose
descendants were said to have been poor, were obvious targets for

26) M. West in ZPE 25 (1977), 117-9, has proposed that the poetess
Erinna never existed. D. W. Thomson Vesey in RBPh 54 (1976), 78-83,
asserted that the poetess Philaenis was not an historical person. C. Bonner
in AJPh 41 (1920), 257-8, has attempted to show that the story of Hagnodice,
the first woman physician in Athens, is nothing but a story. In American
Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977), 5t~6&> and ZPE 32 (1978), 17-22 I
have argued that Erinna and Hagnodice were historical personages. Davies
has not given any reason for questioning the actual existence of female
descendants of Aristides, other than that he disbelieves particular stories
about them, and that the women themselves are not attested epigraphically.
With the exception of tombstones and dedications it is unlikely that in-
scriptions would verify the actual existence of respectable women in the
fifth century. Nor do literary sources attest the existence of respectable
women. Athenian writers resort to circumlocutions rather than give the
actual name of a woman who plays a part in a law suit. New Comedy is
full of anonymous women who are known only as somebody's daughter.
As D. Schaps has pointed out in CQ N.S. 27 (1977), 323-30, to refer to a
woman by her name in a law court was to assault her honor. Hence we know
the names of Aspasia, Neaera, and both names of Neaera's daughter but
Demosthenes is reluctant to utter the names of his own mother and his
sister.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN 125

charities at the expense of the state. Or, on the other hand, why not
reject both stories on the grounds that it was most unlikely that
rich families should have lost their property in a time of prosperity ?
Such stories of public charity for the benefit of heroes are common,
but some may be true. While dowries granted to the descendants of
Aristogiton and Aristides would be additional examples of the
phenomenon discussed in the present article, they are not essential
to the argument.
An official Athenian of expressing
method gratitude toward men
who had served the state was the expenditure of public funds for
the benefit of their children. One example of such public expend-
iture is recorded on a stele from the Athenian agora 27) :

?d??e? t?? ???? [? ?a? t?? d?]???, ??t???-

[?]? ?p??t??e?e[. . . . 8 . . . .]? ???a???te?-
e?, ?a???s???? [? ?p]est[?te, Te?]??t?d??
e?pe? ?p?s?? ????a??[?] ?[p??a?]?? [?]?a?-
5 ?? ?a??t?? ?? t?? d???[a???a? ?]?[??]d?t-
e? t?? d?????at?a?, t??? [pa?s]? t?t?? e-
[?]e??es :?a? ??[e?]a t?? pat[????] a[?]t?? ??
[t]?[? d??]?? t?? '?0[??]a??[? ?a? ??d]?a?a?[?]-
?
a[?, . . . .]sa? t??? p[a]?s? a[. . . . . .] t[?t]?[?] ?-
10 [?]9^ov [t??] ????a? t[??f?? . . . 7 . . . .] d? t?-
?? ??fa??[??] ap?d?d? [s?.10.] t?
???ta?e?[? . . . ,]? a?t?? [...?.. ,]?[. . .]??
[. . 5. . .]aes?[.10.]?[.10.]s
7
[. . . . . . .]t?? ?s[.1?.]
15 d[???]?as?t? a?[t]?[?.1?.]
d?d??a? a?t[???.1d.?a]?-
?pe? [t]?? ?? t??
[.18.t]-
[?]? ??????ta??a? t?[ . ]a[.13.]
[. ?a??]pe? t?? ??fa?? [?.13.]
2? [ . . . . ]? ????a??? t??? [.14.]
6
[. . . . .]? ?a? [. . .]e?[. .] a?t? [. . .]??s[. . d . . .]
[. .]a??? e[. .]???[.19.]
[..*.. .]???a[_.22.]

27) Greek Inscriptions: Theozotides and the Athenian Orphans, Hesperia 40

(1971)? 280-301.
126 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

The decree is dated to 403/02 or a little later, a period of factional

strife and revolution in Athens. A limited group of men who died
fighting for the democracy are honored by the maintenance of
their children at public
expense. These children are also called
orphans. Both forthe words
children and for orphans are ambiguous
in that they can refer to males alone, or to males and females
collectively. Ronald Stroud, the editor of the inscription, comments
that it was usual to support orphans at the expense of the state
until they came of age. At maturity they would be furnished with
sets of armor. The editor believes that the beneficiaries are solely
male, and his interpretation is the most obvious one. There is a
precedent for the agora inscription. In the Funeral Oration that
Thucydides records as having been delivered by Pericles, Athens
undertakes to rear at state expense all the children of the men
whose funeral is being observed28). We must consider whether
only boys were recipients of the benefits announced by Pericles,
and later bythe agora decree, or whether the decree from the
Athenian agora had some of the same stipulations that we noted
in decrees from Thasos and Rhodes. If Sokolowski's date is correct
the decrees from Thasos and Athens may date from the same time.
The Athenian decree is very fragmentary ; the contents of at least
half of it are conjectural. It may have included an award of dowries
to daughters of the men who were being honored. The provisions
for the boys could have begun in line 11, and those for the girls
in line 16. ?a??pe? in lines 16-17 an(i 20 would mean certain proce-
dures to be followed
were 'in the same way', i.e., for the girls in
the way as they were for the boys. Accordingly,
same at Athens,
as at Thasos and Rhodes, the children of the fallen would have
been awarded panoplies if they were boys, and dowries if they
were girls. That the few extant names are those of boys may be
attributed to chance, or to the reluctance of Athenians to publish
the actual names of respectable women. On the other hand, as I
have maintained elsewhere 29), the situation of women in classical
Athens was worse than it was elsewhere in the Greek world, and

28) Thuc. II 46. Plato, Menex. 249a, limits beneficiaries to boys in his
funeral oration where the children are envisioned as arriving e?? a?d??? t????.
29) Pomeroy, supra, n. 2, 78 and supra, n. 12, 61.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN I27

so it would not be surprising if the Athenians awarded suits of

armor to the boys, and left the welfare of the girls in the hands of
their relatives.
The last example of dowries furnished at the expense of Athens
is recorded in a decree of 229/28. The Athenians voted several
honors for Timosthenes including dowries for his daughters30).
The Timosthenes thus honored was the grandson of another
Timosthenes who had aided Athens in its opposition to the Mace-
donian occupation, and whose benefactions toward the Athenian
state had been acknowledged in a decree of 306/05 31).
The evidence presented above establishes that Athens, like
Thasos and Rhodes, at certain times, presented dowries to daughters
of men who had served the state. Next it is necessary to determine
whether Athens ever took official action resembling that
taken by
Laodice III and actually furnished dowries to daughters of the
poor, or whether the state took other measures to alleviate the
misery of fathers who were too impoverished to provide dowries.
The subject of state concern for the welfare of women has
scarcely been described in works on Greek life. For
example,
despite the significance of dowry for the well-being of a Greek
woman, A. R. Hands completely ignores the topic in Charities and
Social Aid in Greece and Rome 32). Yet for a respectable young woman
the presence or absence of a dowry would be the most crucial factor
affecting her future. While the propertyless, but enterprising
young man might make his way in the world by joining a colony or
serving as a mercenary, his female counterpart had no opportunity
to improve her lot. A woman without a dowry might even have no
choice but to marry her homopatric brother. Although marriage
between siblings of the same father but of a different mother was

30) SIG*, 496.

31) IG II2, 467. Perhaps the stories about the earlier awards to the
descendants of Aristogiton and Aristides were created at this time to set a
'precedent' for the awards to the descendants of Timosthenes. J. K. Davies
(supra n. 25), 51, suggested that the decree for Aristides' children was forged
in the fourth century in order to demonstrate the generosity and philanthropy
of Athens. Chr. Habicht, Falsche Urkunden zur Geschichte Athens im Zeitalter
der Perserkriege, Hermes 89 (1961), 1-35, had drawn attention to other
decrees purportedly of the fifth century, but actually fabricated in the fourth.
32) (1968).
128 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

permitted by Athenian law, exogamy was preferred. Of the three

cases of incestuous marriage in classical Athens that are known,
two are in families whose fortunes had suffered serious reversals.
Because their father Miltiades had died a state debtor, Cimon
married his sister Elpinice, and a daughter and son of Themistocles
were wed33).
Throughout the classical period, Athens exercised official
surveillance over the dowries of at least one group of women, the
epikleroi**), a word which is poorly translated as 'heiresses',
because we have no exact equivalent in English. The archon was
responsible for epikleroi?as well as for male orphans?since these
children were obliged to perpetuate the ????? of their fathers.
The archon was responsible for finding a groom for the epikleros
among her male relatives, upon whom the duty to marry her
devolved in a fixed order. If the male kin did not want to marry her,
they had to provide her with a dowry so that she could attract a
husband. Solon was responsible for the law requiring that heiresses
be dowered, and Plutarch reports that he forbade dowries in all
other marriages, in order to prevent men from choosing brides on
the basis of the size of their dowries 36). As we have seen, the second
part of Solon's legislation was totally ignored, but perhaps, like
many of Plutarch's reports about Solonian legislation, it simply
was not true.
Athens was also concerned from time to time with the welfare
of women who were not
epikleroi, passed and
legislation that,
in effect, made it easier for Athenian fathers to find Athenian men
to marry their daughters. Pericles' citizenship law of 451/50
required Athenian parentage on both sides, for a child to be enrolled
as a citizen36).
There is very little prosopographical information on inter-
marriage before the date of the citizenship law. The meager evidence
is, as usual, from the upper classes, and shows that Athenian

33) Nep. Cim. ?, 2; Plut. Them. 32; and discussion in Harrison (supra
n. 2), 22-3.
34) On epikleroi see Harrison (supra n. 2), especially 48, 56.
35) Plut. Sol. 20, 4.
36) For the demographic effects of the citizenship law see Pomeroy
(supra n. 2), 66-70.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN I2?

men were marrying foreign women, some of whom were no less

than princesses. Yet, I think that we are dealing with a phenomenon
that was not confined to the upper classes37), nor, on the other
extreme, to individuals who desired to marry women of the demi-
monde like Aspasia. It is likely that by the middle of the fifth
century, Athenian men had their choice of respectable brides from
prosperous metic families as well as from Greek cities
throughout
their empire. Perhaps fathers offered generous dowries when
arranging for their daughters to many citizens of the hegemonial
city, for the investment would have yielded grandchildren who
were full-fledged Athenians. The citizenship law is equally harsh
on the children of an Athenian woman and a foreign man, but this
type of liaison would have been rare, since, in traditional agricultural
societies the tendency is to keep sons on the family farm, and to
use the daughters in marriage alliances that are intended to im-
prove the family's social status. We do not know any facts about
the reverse situation, that is, the undowered Athenian girl marrying
a wealthy foreigner, although the bride in fragment 524 of Sophocles,
Tereus does lament that some girls are sold to foreigners as brides.
Yet we do not find that as a result of such marriages Athenian
fathers complained that so many Athenian girls were marrying
foreigners that there were no brides available for Athenian boys.
(Of course the fathers of sons have never been so concerned as the
fathers of daughters about finding mates for their children.)
Accordingly, the people who potentially would suffer most from
intermarriage were Athenian girls, or rather their fathers, who
must have been concerned about finding Athenian men to marry
their daughters. The citizenship law eliminated the competition
by forcing Athenian men to marry Athenian women, if they
wanted their children to be considered citizens. But the citizenship
law must have been
disregarded in the first half of the fourth
century, when well-to-do Athenians like Demosthenes were
taking wives from other cities.

37) For a different interpretation see S. Humphries, The Nothoi of Kyno-

arges, JHS 94 (1974), 93-4, who adopts Jacoby's theory that the citizen-
ship law was intended solely to curb Athenian aristocrats from marrying
members of leading families from other cities.
130 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

There were a number of factors that led to this transition.

The devastation of Attica in the second half of the Peloponnesian
War, the uprooting of the cleruchs and the civic turbulence of the
early fourth century must have made it more difficult for many
Athenians to dower their daughters, or to find friends or relatives
who would contribute a
dowry out of pure generosity. Many
women had fallen so low that no one would want to marry them.
One could find citizen women doing jobs that were considered too
menial for citizens in the good old days of prosperity. A son of
such a woman was compelled to prove that he was a citizen in a
law court, by showing that both his parents were citizens38).
Boy babies were enrolled with their father's phratry soon after
birth, and at that time their legitimacy could be challenged.
But girl babies were never registered38*); consequently if their
citizenship was ever challenged it was far more difficult to prove
(though it was also difficult to challenge, as the case of Neaera
shows). In this case the speaker states that his mother's claim to
citizenship is being questioned because she sold ribbons in the
market and everyone had seen her. (It was understood that re-
spectable women should not be out in public for all to see.) His
mother had also worked as a wet nurse, a job which forced her to
live in a strange man's house, thereby compromising her respecta-
bility. But, the speaker says, the respectable image of his family
was tarnished due to the city's misfortune when everyone suffered,
and that in his day many Athenian citizens women worked as wet
nurses.
That we have many more orations dealing with intra-familial
disputes from the
fourth century than from the fifth is not to be
attributed to mere accident of preservation. The orations reveal
that Athenians were squabbling over their rights and duties to-
wards their kinfolk. A girl's guardian was supposed to furnish
a dowry and arrange a legitimate marriage for her. But the ful-
fillment of this obligation depended upon the goodwill of the
guardian, and was subject to abuse. In addition, in the fourth
century, Athenian men went abroad to serve as mercenaries. The
result was that not every respectable girl had a male relative
38) Dem. 57, 25, 34, 35, 40.
38a) But see Wyse on Is. 3, 6, 7.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN 131

who would assert that she of citizen

was birth, and who would
provide a dowry and arrange a proper marriage. Antiphanes, the
comic poet, speaks of a citizen girl who had neither guardian nor
male relatives and who was living as a hetaira :

?d?? eta??a? e?? ???t' ?f??et?

?st??, e????? d* ep?t??p?? ?a? s???e???,
???? t? ???s??? p??? ??et?? ?e?t??????,
??t?? eta??a?.

'She's Athenian born and bred, but there's no

guardian; all relations dead; a true 'companion',
gold without taint of blame'39).

Finally the Athenian state took action to put an end to the

tendency of Athenian men to
marry foreigners. Once again the
citizenship law was imposed. But the law was feasible only if the
woman was dowered, for how could a state expect a poor Athenian
to marry an Athenian woman without the financial support of a
dowry ? Previously, Athenian law specifically required that dowries
be provided only for epikleroi. As far as other girls were concerned,
the contribution of a dowry was purely voluntary 40).
There must have been a change in the law making the provision
of dowries to all girls mandatory by the time of the prosecution
of Neaera around 340. The charge against her was that she and
her husband passed off the children who had been born to her
in slavery in Corinth as Athenian citizens. The prosecutor, Apollo-
dorus, states: ?a? ol ??? ????? ?????? ???? ?s??ta?, ?? d? t??p?? t??
eta???? ?????? 6 t? a? ??????ta? d?ap??ttes?a?. ?ste ?a? ?p?? t??
p???t?d?? s??pe?te, t?? ?? a???d?t??? ????es?a? t?? t?? pe??t??
???at??a?, ??? ??? ???, ??? ?p????? t??, ??a??? p????* a?t? ? ?????
s??????eta?, ?? ?a? ?p?st???? ?et??a? ? f?s?? 6??? ap?d?* p??-
p??a??s???t?? d? t?? ????? ?f' ???? ?p?f????s?? ta?t??, ?a? ??????

39) Athen. XIII, 572a = Antiphanes, Hydria, fr. 212 K.; translation by-
Edmonds.
40) Harrison (supra ?. 2), 48; H. J. Wolff, Marriage Law and Family
Organization in Ancient Athens, Traditio 2 (1944), 62; L. Beauchet, Histoire
du droit priv? de la r?publique ath?nienne (1897), 262; J. H. Lipsius, Dos
attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren (1912), 489.
132 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

?e???????, pa?te??? ?d? ? ??? t?? p????? e??as?a ??e? e?? t?? t??
p???t?? ???at??a?, d?' ?p???a? dsa? ?? ?? d????ta? ??d????a?41).
Apollodorus merely refers to the ?????, and does not have it read
out, but since the law is tangential to his case, and merely men-
tioned in passing, there would be no need to quote it, nor does the
speaker need to lie about it. There can be no question that ?????
in the passage quoted means 'statute' and refers to a written piece
of legislation 42). Not only is that the normal use in Demosthenes
and in the orators in general, but it is also supported by the phrase
?? ????? ?????? ?s??ta? in ??2 (for what other ????? could be mentioned
as ?????? in a court of law?), and by the phrase p??p??a??s???t??
d? t?? ????? later in 113. On the other hand, the existence of this
law could be
questioned because we never hear of such a law
elsewhere; there are no cases mentioning a girl getting her dowry
under this law. Quite possibly the law was simply forgotten in face
of the Macedonian conquest and the major legislation of Demetrius
of Phalerum concerning Athenian women that ensued.
The stipulation that dowry is obligatory
the only ?? ?p?st????
?et??a? ? f?s?? d??? ?p?df is peculiar. No law could make an obliga-
tion to dower depend upon an assessment of what we would call a

girl's natural beauty. How would it be adjudged? The phrase

must mean something like 'unless her appearance was so un-
attractive' that a prospective
bridegroom would refuse her?or

perhaps had refused her?and

her dowry was not generous enough
to make him change his mind. At that point the guardian of the
Athenian girl was relieved from giving the girl a dowry at all,
for a dowry would be superfluous. What is at stake here can, I
think, be explained by referring to a passage in Herodotus tt).
The Veneti ranked marriageable girls according to their appearance.
At one extreme were the beautiful ones and at the other were the
ugly girls and the handicapped whom no man would ever think
of marrying, unless they were accompanied by a substantial
dowry. The Veneti had the ingenious custom of auctioning off the

4i) (Dem.) 59, 112-13; similarly, Isaeus 1, 39.

42) See M. Ostwald, Nomos and the Beginnings of Athenian Democracy
(1969), passim.
43) Herod. I 196.
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN 133

beautiful girls, and using the money collected thereby to furnish

dowries for the undesirable one.
Apollodorus goes on to argue that if Neaera is not convicted,
poor Athenian girls will consequently turn to prostitution. How
can this happen if a dowry is provided? The only way to make
sense of this argument is to suppose that there is some connection
between the two: that the same law under which Neaera is being
prosecuted, that is the citizenship law, also provides that all women
?even daughters of the poor?who are marriageable, be dowered.
Men would have chosen not to marryat all, and many families
would have died out. Legal compulsion had to replace moral
obligation and the state required the father and the male relatives
to dower every girl over whom they exercised guardianship.
In Demosthenes the obligation of the next of kin to make
certain that their female relatives are married is attributed to
a law of Solon, that brought into the sphere of codified law what
had hitherto been a custom of Athenian families u). It is impossible
to decide whether the law had actually been formulated by Solon,
fallen into disuse in the fifth century, and reimposed in the second
half of the fourth, or whether the attribution to Solon was merely
an attempt to lend the dignity of the revered lawgiver to an innova-
tive law.

The issue of the dowry and the state can also be examined in
terms of demographic consequences. Even a state like Athens
that was notorious for an official laissez-faire attitude toward
women obliged the relatives of an heiress to dower her in order
to make sure that she married and that her father's family did not
die out. Beginning in the fourth century and continuing in the
Hellenistic period, there seem to be many bachelors about and
families were dying out.
Polybius reported that Greek cities were
becoming underpopulated owing to the tendency to celibacy and
the reluctance to raise children 4d).
The daughters of families in comfortable circumstances always
were given dowries. Therefore such families limited the number

44) Dem. 44, 66.

45) Polyb. 36, 17.
134 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN

of children that they had in order to make certain that the standard
of living of the younger generation was not inferior to the parents'
standard. So the upper class (which mattered most to Greek
legislators) would decline. Among the poor as well, the compulsion
to dower daughters would lead parents to refuse to raise daughters.
Or, if they did raise them, but could not provide dowries, the girls
could not marry and the citizen population of the city would
continue to decline. In a rather problematic response to this
problem Athens mandated dowries for all girls, while Laodice
supplied them herself. The Athenian law and Laodice's endow-
ment would have produced totally different social effects: the
latter straightforwardly encouraged rearing of daughters,
the the
former would have discouraged the rearing of girls while assuring
a proper marriage for the girls who were reared. If the Athenians
had wanted to expand their population they would have either
furnished dowries at state expense, or passed a law making dowries
illegal. Or they could have revived the old law outlawing dowries
that Plutarch attributed to Solon, that has been mentioned above.
Demographic considerations are minor compared with the fact
that both the Laodice inscription and the Athenian law recognized
an obligation of the state to act in the area of dowries, and this
obligation was novel. In general, in the late classical and Hellenistic
periods the qualification shifted from merit to need as the basis
of state action in the provision of dowries. The Romans too were
concerned about of people to raise children.
the failure Under the
Empire, wealthy Romans, both men and women, established
private charities for the support of needy children46). The best-
known of these
is the alimentary fund endowed by Pliny at the end
of the first century A.D. in Como, his home town. In the second
century A.D. regular distribution programs for the maintenance
of children in Italy were established by the emperor Trajan.
Again in Rome, as we had seen in Greece, small private charities
were preempted and institutionalized by the state. One of the most
interesting differences between the Greeks and Romans is in their
approach to what they saw as a problem in depopulation. The

46) On the alimenta see, inter alia, R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of

the Roman Empire (1974).
 CHARITIES FOR GREEK WOMEN I35

Romans attacked the

problem directly and supported children,
whether or not they
had been born in wedlock, although marriage
was encouraged by the awarding of larger stipends to legitimate
children 47). For the Greeks, in contrast, marrying off their daugh-
ters and sisters was a point of philotimia and they would probably
sooner have seen a female relative dead than bearing an illegitimate
child. Supplying a dowry to such a woman was not only an issue
of practicality, but an act of charity.The Greeks had also anticipated
a pattern of charity that appears again in the late middle ages.
Throughout the middle ages wealthy private citizens had been
giving dowries to needy girls. Then, in the later middle
ages the
charity began to be institutionalized as Popes began to establish,
by personal testament, endowments for dowries for daughters of
the faithful poor 48).
Doubtless the Popes, like the Greeks and Romans, were motivated
by self-interest, as well as by feelings of charity. But what better
gift can there be than one which benefits both the donor and the
recipient? As Ovid shrewdly commented, res est ingeniosa dare,
'to give is a sign of genius' 49).

47) According to Paul (Dig. 23, 3, 2) rei publicae interest mulieres dotes
salvos h?here, propter quas nubere possuni.
48) On the dowering of needy girls as a public and private charity in
Genoa see D, Owen Hughes, From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean
Europe, Journal of Family History 3 (1978), 284-5. On the dowering of
orphans in Florence see R. C. Trexler, The Foundlings of Florence, History
of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1973), 261-2. On p. 280 n. 14 Trexler quotes from
the Archivio di Stato, Firenze, of 1454 on the founding of a conservatory
for indigent girls and giving them dowries: "... quanto sit utile rei publice,
quia ex predictis sequi habent infinita matrimonia et fieri nuptie, et per
consequens repleri et multiplicari hec civitas populo, et resultabit etiam ex
hoc novo pietatis opere, fama et reputatio magna huic civitati".
49) Am. I 8, 62.

New York, Hunter College