ABOUT ATHENIAN POTTERY

History tells a lot about the importance of art in ancient Greece and how it influenced culture. Various scholars have pointed to the Athenian civilization as one of the most sophisticated and distinguished ancient western civilizations. Examination of Athenian art pieces, such as Athenian pottery, showed the roles and functions of men and women in society. Throughout history, men were thought to be philosophers, rulers, and architects. Some people wonder what the women were up to and what their position in society was. Women played key roles in the ancient Greece society for example the democratization of education and politics was their archetypes. Women occupied a subservient category and they were meant to operate in the shadows of their male counterparts. The major roles of women in the society were domestic roles as well as sex work. Womanhood in the Athenian society was defined by two major options; a whore or a mother and their lifestyles were mutually exclusive. The roles and the lives of women in the Athenian society are portrayed by the images on the Athenian art. The images drawn on the Athenian pottery shows what women were doing in the society and how they were viewed. The paper will talk about the roles and lives of women in the Athenian society as represented through the images on the Athenian pottery.

The images on the Athenian pottery are considered as the most reliable sources of information concerning the role and position of women in the ancient Greece society. However, some information has been extracted from mythology and the religious practices in ancient Greece. Tangible evidence is found in the images on the pottery found within homes of the Athenian residents. The images on the pottery is an indication of the layman’s view of the world and other things that took place within the society. Despite the changes and advancements that took place as years continued to elapse, the images on pottery in the Athenian society can be interpreted correctly to reveal what the images meant about women and their roles within the social setup. The interpretation of the pottery images need to be based on a clear understanding of the Athenian ideology. The Greek pottery offers a medium to understand the roles of women as goddesses, whores, and keepers of domestic life.

The depiction of women as caretakers within the Athenian culture brings out a glamorized image of a domestic life. The picture of women as caretakers uncovers the details of sexual politics that were common within homesteads. Pottery is one of the few high forms of art that are consistently and commonly found within homes of people with diverse classes and levels of income. The consistency of the pottery with images suggests that the art on pottery communicates the opinions of the Athenian citizens concerning varied matters particularly the position of women and their roles. An example is the amphora vase with an iconography. The vase was commonly used within homes to carry wine and was common in all homes. The vase had ideas and scenes that would be conversant and agreeable to the average citizen. Despite the representation on the pottery, conventional opinions are not always founded on punctiliously comprehensive and historically perfect records. The images on a lidded container, circa 470 BCE reveals details about lives of women and their roles in the Athenian society. The container was used by a follower of Douris and was used to hold jewelry and makeup and it has images that demonstrates a scene of adornment. Such scenes on vase paintings sheds light on the sphere of women in the Athenian society. The scenes were centered on the romanticized and the prurient image of womankind, deeply entrenched in the male contemplation. Some historians claim that some images did not represent what really happened in the Athenian society but rather, what most of them wished to happen in the society. The images showing large gatherings of women seems unrealistic since women were always isolated and they spent most of their times within their houses and it was not common for women to be in the company of others. In addition, some pottery images represented the admirations of people for instance the images of women painted with a blissful and ultra-famine atmosphere of beautification and wedding preparations instead of being depicted as the permanent occupants of their houses.

Lidded container, circa 470 BCE shows women as caretakers and a romanticized image of domestic life.

The domestic life also included young women or else girls. The images on a red figure jar traced back to 430 BCE and attributed to an ancient painter shows the images of young girls being taken through lessons of dance. The dance lessons train young girls and prepares them to become hetairai. The art on the jar suggests that girls were not accorded a childhood; instead, they were taught how to become good women at an early stage in life.

Young girls in dance lessons

The chances of girls to enjoy the privileges like those of their brothers depended on the families they came from. Women from rich or powerful families got opportunities of being educated like their brothers. On the other hand, women from poor or the medium families only got access to the knowledge of being good women and domestic workers. The images on the pot is a presentation of the life and roles of women particularly from families that were not wealthy and powerful. The scenes and the images on the jar suggests that even the girls that were grouped together with their mothers and put in a common category of domestic role performers, were expected to practice and perfect on the sex and domestic workers that awaited them when they become grownups.

Pottery images reveals the relationship between beauty and divinity in the Athenian way of life. The pottery images that depicted myth raised the woman form to divinity, a superiority that went hand in hand with gorgeousness. The paintings also supported the model that a major defining feature of women was beauty. There was a belief in the Athenian culture that more beautiful people were seen as more divine. Despite the Athenian gods not being real human beings, they were represented in the image of beautiful women. A red figure bottle circa dated 350 BCE has images based on the story of beauty contest that led to the Trojan War. Beauty was described as major component of divinity and superiority of goddesses was decided by the level of beauty between the gods. A part from the images presenting beauty as a key component and a determiner of a woman’s position in the society, it also degraded the meaning of the goddesses to mere beautiful images. The consideration of beauty as a key feature implies that beautiful women had privileges over others and were given opportunities to serve other roles apart from their usual sex and domestic works.

The portrayal of the female form as a goddess introduces a point of attention particularly on the importance of the female body in the Athenian culture. The images as well as the physical shape of a vase was significant. The 500 BCE black drinking cup that was decorated with various images and shaped like the female breasts goes further than the portrayal of females as objects of sex; instead, it factually transmutes an object into an article of women sexuality. The images points on the assertion that women were taken and sources of leisure through sex. The images on the cup as well as the shape uncovers the role of women in marriage. Since the images concentrates on the entire body and to specific body parts that were considered attractive for instance the breasts suggests that their role in marriage was to satisfy the sexual desires of their male partners. The depiction of women as sexual objects provides a context of the culture of Athenian culture in relation to their sexual way of life. A red figure hydria dated to 470 BCE shows a scene that has been interpreted by most historians as a transaction between a youth in the company of his father and a young lady. Some scholars assert that the image demonstrates dynamics of sexual power as opposed to the demonstration of domestic life. Despite the varied interpretation of the image by various scholars, the image gives a hint concerning the illustrious roles based on gender in the Athenian culture. The images are precise indication that men were in charge of the economic activities and women were compensated by males who sought sexual favors from them or their husbands. However, some arts on the pottery uncovers that the roles of women was also dependent on the family in which a woman lived or comes from. Women from upper class families had mixed roles because apart from their roles of taking care of homes and performing other domestic chores, they were as well involved in economic activities. Some paintings show women buying wool and converting them to other products through weaving. The advantage of women from upper class families is that they had assistance from slaves. Despite many activities being performed by the slaves, the supervision roles were attributed to the women. Women from poor families were limited to their daily activities since they did not have support of slaves and the only thing they were capable of doing was to attend to their household needs.

The life of women as demonstrated by the pottery images was largely reliant on their social position within the Athenian society. The Athenian society was characterized by three classes of women; the first category was the wives class. The wives were supposed to stay within their homes and involve themselves in simple activities like weaving. They were not allowed to move from their homes only when going for crucial religious functions. The paintings on the Athenian red figure pottery pyxis of 425 BC shows women from the wives category seated in their homes chatting and doing other activities based in their houses. The category was considered a respectable group of women. The second class was the concubines and it consisted a group of women like the widows, abandoned girls, and the prostitutes. They did not command any respect from the members of the society. The hetaerae class consisted women that were considered more educated that the wives class. They were only married to men that paid expensive prices and were considered to be the companions of men from powerful families because they only met in parties and festivals that only accommodated the mighty. What a woman did in the society determined her position in the social setting. Apart from the prostitutes that were available for sexual exploitation, art preserves evidence that women were highly protected by their parents during a period prior to their marriage. It has been indicated through art in the ancient Greece that respect of a woman was dictated by her sexual purity. Sexually pure women commanded respect and were highly revered in the Athenian society.

Evidently, the Athenian pot painters presented the life and role of women in the Athenian society basing on the dominant ideology of feminine behavior. Women were only presented through art in varied positions for instance as mothers, brides, celebrants, and symbols of beauty. In spite of the pottery imagery showing the life of women in different life cycles, the information acquired from the images concerning roles of women in the Athenian society is patchy because the images fail to cover some stages in the life of women. Some areas private to women for example widowhood are not presented through pottery images. There are some contradictions between the pottery images and literature as sources of information about position and roles of women in the Athenian society. However, the pottery images remain the most reliable source of information since the literature was extracted from the interpretation of the images and the contradictions are attributed to the variations in the interpretation of the imagery on pots and other places like monuments. The painting on pottery in the ancient Greece offers sufficient evidence about the limited roles the women were expected to play and how they were viewed in the Athenian society.



















Bibliography

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MacLachlan, Bonnie. Women in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook. 2013.

Stewart, Andrew F. Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.