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22 The codes governing women’s (and men’s) economic behavior form part of what may be called the “economics of gender.” By this phrase, I mean a whole range of valuations and transactions conditioned by the different statuses of men and women. Primary among these transactions is marriage and, as a consequence, the production and reproduction in which women engage as wives. In many cultures, the role of wife encompasses a woman ’s identity far more than that of husband does for a man, with the result that whatever a woman produces from the time she marries is conceived of as part of her wifely role. Marriage in ancient Greece is not symmetrical— ideologically, functionally, or even linguistically—for the two sexes. When a man marries a woman, he does so in the active voice, while the same transaction places a woman in the middle voice.¹ Marriage transactions almost always involve a complex series of exchanges , whether of bridewealth or dowry or some combination of both.² Sometimes the bride herself is regarded as the most valuable of the gifts that change hands between two families connecting themselves through marriage . In Greek, the verb didōmi (give) is regularly used with the meaning, “give in marriage,” as when Telemachos says that he will give his mother to a husband (aneri mētera dōsō, Odyssey 2.223).³ Although the woman is sometimes thought of as being given to her husband, the man is never thought of as a gift to his wife. There is an astonishing range of different marriagerelated gift-giving practices across cultures, but certain basic principles are surprisingly widespread across time and space. Among these is the almost total inalienability of the dowry a woman brings into her marriage.⁴ On the other hand, cultures differ greatly when it comes to the reckoning of a married woman as part of her natal family or of her husband’s family. These differences may have profound implications for a woman’s power, prestige, and even survival. Once integrated into the new household, the Greek wife of any period chapter two M ARRIAGE and the CIRCUL ATION of WOMEN Lyons-final.indb 22 Lyons-final.indb 22 1/31/12 3:19:39 PM 1/31/12 3:19:39 PM M ARRIAGE and the CIRCUL ATION of WOMEN 23 was expected to bear legitimate children, to produce textiles (or oversee their production), and to guard the husband’s possessions. This does not seem to have changed much over time, as can be seen from a reading of works as far apart in date as the Odyssey and Xenophon’s treatise on household management, the Oikonomikos.⁵ That the faithful execution of these duties was conceptually intertwined is clear from the words of Odysseus in the Underworld, when he asks his mother if his wife still remains with their son and watches over all his possessions (menei para paidi kai empeda panta phulassei, Od. 11.178). Penelope herself repeats this formulation when she describes herself as staying with her son and keeping everything safe (menō para paidi kai empeda panta phulassō, Od. 19.525), and honoring the marital bed (eunēn t’ aidomenē posios, Od. 19.527).⁶ In Semonides’ misogynist account of the races of women, the only virtuous woman he acknowledges is the “bee-woman,” whose household prospers and who bears handsome children of good repute.⁷ These conventional notions survived long past the archaic age. A fragment from Euripides’ lost Melanippē Desmotēs (The Captive Melanippe) has the protagonist say that “women manage homes and preserve the goods which are brought from abroad. Houses where there is no wife are neither orderly nor prosperous.”⁸ Xenophon, writing in the early to mid-fourth century, represents Ischomachos as setting great store by training his inexperienced young wife to keep all the possessions of the household in order .⁹ Similarly, the speaker of the oration Against Neaira in the Demosthenic corpus says that the function of wives (gunaikes) is “to bear children legitimately and to be trustworthy guardians of our possessions” ([Dem.] 59.122). A similar pattern of thought can be found in Lysias’ oration On the Murder of Eratosthenes. Here Euphiletos, the speaker, says that once his wife had borne him a son, he began to trust her more with the management of the household. This trust, however, has in his view merely provided her with the opportunity to take a lover: Ἐγὼ γάρ, ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἐπειδὴ ἔδοξέ μοι γῆμαι καὶ γυναῖκα ἠγαγόμην εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, τὸν μὲν ἄλλον χρόνον οὕτω διεκείμην ὥστε μήτε λυπεῖν μήτε λίαν ἐπ’ ἐκείνῃ εἶναι ὅ τι ἂν ἐθέλῃ ποιεῖν, ἐφύλαττόν τε ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν, καὶ προσεῖχον τὸν νοῦν ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἦν. ἐπειδὴ δέ μοι παιδίον γίγνεται, ἐπίστευον ἤδη καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐμαυτοῦ ἐκείνῃ παρέδωκα, ἡγούμενος ταύτην οἰκειότητα μεγίστην εἶναι: ἐν μὲν οὖν τῷ πρώτῳ χρόνῳ, ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, πασῶν ἦν βελτίστη· καὶ γὰρ οἰκονόμος δεινὴ καὶ φειδωλὸς [ἀγαθὴ] καὶ ἀκριβῶς πάντα διοικοῦσα· ἐπειδὴ δέ μοι ἡ μήτηρ ἐτελεύτησε, Lyons-final.indb 23 Lyons-final.indb 23...

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