Since the publication of Sarah Pomeroy’s book
(Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical
Antiquity) in 1975, the awareness that women in antiquity
have been denied their own historical narrative has
increased, sometimes with controversial results.
Blundell’s monograph remains a groundbreaking
attempt to consolidate the existing scholarship on
the representation of women, with a clear objective
to provide an accessible overview. The introduction
to Women in Ancient Greece effectively illuminates
the limitations of the sources available, and recognises
that the scope of this book remains by necessity,
populated by specifically Athenian women who belong
to the ‘upper echelons of the citizen body’
(p.10). Blundell provides an additional caveat that
her historical focus is further narrowed to the period
from 750 BC – 336 BC.
Women in Ancient Greece is organised into four parts,
the first dealing with the representation of women
which Blundell characterises as having an ‘obvious
element of fantasy’ (p.10) while the remaining
parts pursue a chronological study of the social reality
of women during the Archaic and Classical Ages, finishing
with a short postscript. A comprehensive bibliography
and index compliment forty-five black and white illustrations,
the majority again from an Athenian context.
This remains an assessable sourcebook, providing English
translations for longer quotes and judicially employing
Greek terminology as required. Despite the monograph’s
unavoidable Athenian bias, Women in Ancient Greece
remains successful in achieving its core objectives
of providing an overview of women‘s social reality
and their place in the literary and visual representations
of the period. Blundell’s assessment and sharply
defined historical period aids the cohesion of this
evidence considered,
Review by Jamie Spracklen