Euripides' women : an enquiry into 'the most tragic poet's' portrayal of women in classical Athens

Abstract

More than any other ancient playwright, Euripides questioned the social order of his civilization. Through his works, he asked his audiences to consider how those with full political, social and economic rights -- i.e., the 30,000 citizens, all males -- treat the lesser members, to wit, women, children, the elderly, slaves and metic (resident aliens). The population of Athens at its peak was 415,000. The overwhelming majority of this surviving plays focus on the lesser members. While he does not champion women, slaves, and metics per se, he does portray them as noble or heroic, as ordinary or unremarkable, as venal or base, as intelligent or short-sighted, as the men with whom they interact. He was the first to do so. By setting his plays some 800 to 1,000 years before the fifth century B.C.E. -- most of Euripides' surviving plays are set in the time of the Trojan War and its aftermath -- he avoided calling directly into question the legitimacy of the Athenian empire and the Athenian polis' prosecution of the Peloponnesian War. Along the way he challenged his fellow citizens to consider how they treated their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. These women (and to a lesser degree slaves and metics) are not ciphers without feelings, he says. They have the same feelings and needs as the men who run the polis. To credit Euripides with pacifism or championing the oppressed is to incorrectly read late twentieth century United States values and attitudes into his plays.Leaving aside for the moment his unchallenged literary genius, Euripides' social genius lies in his recognition that the lesser members of his polis are exactly the same as those who have placed them in a subordinate position. Through his plays he urges those in charge to re-examine the values of their polis that maintain the inferiority of the lesser members. I have attempted to demonstrate in this paper how Euripides subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, called the social order into question.