Cited by 73Classical Antiquity StudiesAncient Mediterranean Archaeology and HistoryClassical Philosophy and Thought

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 70 of the 72 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 67 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Women's Commensality in the Ancient Greek World

Open access
Burton, Joan·1998·Greece and Rome

Abstract

Dining and drinking rituals in the ancient world have been the subject of much recent discussion, and the significance of these rituals, particularly for males, has been extensively studied. Scholars have often slighted the topic of women's part in the history of ancient Greek dining and drinking parties, however, and the broad generalization ‘Citizen women were never present at Greek symposia ’ is not uncommon. Admittedly, women other than hetairai, slaves, hired entertainers, etc., are not conspicuous in the evidence from which we must draw our history of ancient Greek symposia. The evidence, however, both written and visual, was created and preserved predominantly by males. Also, the view that there was a fairly narrow participation of women often seems based largely on evidence taken from fifth and fourth century B.C. Athens. Yet the roles of women at Greek dining and drinking partieschanged over time and place. This paper provides a survey, with examples, of the variety of women's dining occasions from the Homeric through to the Hellenistic age. The aim of this survey is to emphasize the value of paying closer attention to the female side of wining and dining in our discussions of occasions of commensality in the ancient Greek world.

Overview

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TL;DR

Burton surveys women’s commensality in the ancient Greek world from the Homeric through Hellenistic periods, arguing that the common view that respectable women were excluded from Greek dining and drinking parties is too narrow. She aggregates literary, inscriptional, and visual evidence to show women’s participation across men’s parties, women-only feasts, mixed gatherings, and female-hosted occasions.

Key findings

  • The generalization “Citizen women were never present at Greek symposia” is inadequate: women appear at male-dominated dining occasions in Homeric epic, tragedy, philosophical anecdotes, and Hellenistic poetry. Examples include Arete presiding at a Phaeacian banquet, Helen leading a drinking party in Sparta, Clytemnestra expected at a sacrificial feast, and Oedipus’ daughters regularly sharing his table.
  • Women held their own feasts and drinking gatherings. Athens’ Thesmophoria lasted three days and featured a state-sponsored women’s feast on the third day; other examples include the Skira, the all-night Haloa, the Adonia, Sappho’s circle on Lesbos, and likely private dining among Spartiate women.
  • Religious festivals and sacrifices provided major occasions for women’s commensality, sometimes with men. An early third-century B.C. decree of Athenian orgeones assigned shares to males and females in similar proportions; a Thasos inscription from about 470 B.C. shows women receiving shares at a sacrifice for Athena Patroia; the Heraia at Olympia, held every four years, gave victorious maidens shares of the sacrificial ox.
  • By the Hellenistic period, the range of women’s roles at dining and drinking parties was expanding. In Theocritus’ *Idyll* 14, Cynisca is a woman guest who is neither hired nor slave; Cameron is cited that by the third century B.C. “we need not automatically assume that any woman present at a symposium was a hetaira.” Hellenistic queens such as Arsinoe II sponsored public Adonia, and Cleopatra VII hosted a four-day series of royal symposia for Antony in 41 B.C.

Methods

  • Design: a thematic survey with examples, organized into sections on Homeric/heroic dining, women attending men’s parties, women-only gatherings, men attending women’s parties, women in charge, and mixed commensality on fairly equal terms.
  • Evidence: court cases, histories, biographies, travel texts, moral treatises, sympotic literature, inscriptions, scholia, visual art, poetry, plays, and fictive letters; Burton cautions that all this material must be read carefully, especially fictional works.
  • Analysis: qualitative historical synthesis rather than quantitative or systematic sampling; the aim is to aggregate evidence suggesting a wider range of women’s commensal activities than usually acknowledged.

Limitations

  • The paper states that evidence for ancient lives is limited and was generated and preserved mostly by men; it also notes that scholarship has over-weighted evidence from fifth- and fourth-century B.C. Athens, where respectable women’s roles appear more restricted than elsewhere.
  • The paper states that interpretation of fictional depictions of women’s lives is “a very delicate matter,” though such depictions should not be disregarded as supplements to other evidence.
  • Evident from the text: the argument relies on a wide chronological and geographic sweep with heterogeneous source types, and it often uses “probably,” “likely,” and “seems” for cases where direct evidence of women’s presence at meals is inferential.

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Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/gr/45.2.143

Cites

70 of 70 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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Verification

Claims the paper makes

58 Sources not found · 33 Own interpretation · 14 Own result · 8 Not checked yet · 2 No basis given

Show all 76 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 29
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 13
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
39 of 39
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The evidence for ancient Greek symposia, both written and visual, was created and preserved predominantly by males.

    “The evidence, however, both written and visual, was created and preserved predominantly by males.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Our evidence for women's life in the ancient Greek world is limited.

    “Our evidence for women's life in the ancient Greek world is limited, and many of our glimpses into women's lives come only in works of fiction.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Scholarly studies of ancient commensality have traditionally focused mostly on men, and women's roles (beyond hetaira at symposium) are often overlooked.

    “Scholarly studies of ancient commensality have traditionally focused mostly on men, and women's roles (beyond hetaira at symposium) are often overlooked.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Our evidence for ancient lives is fairly limited and was generated and preserved mostly by men.

    “One problem is that our evidence for ancient lives is fairly limited and was generated and preserved mostly by men.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The weight given to evidence from classical Athens is a problem, and respectable women's roles in classical Athens seem to have been more restricted than elsewhere in the Greek world.

    “Another problem is the weight given to evidence from classical Athens, where respectable women's roles seem to have been more restricted than elsewhere in the Greek world.”
5 of 5

Citations

Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 11

  1. Useful collections of articles on the ancient symposium include O. Murray, ed., Sympotica: a Symposium on the Symposion (Oxford, 1990);
  2. For the use of the term symposium 'to denote not only the drinking phase but the preceding dining phase as well, i.e. the entire feast', see B. Bergquist, in Murray (n. 1 above), 37.
  3. See O. Murray, in E. Gabba, ed., Tria corda: Scritti in onore diArnaldo Momigliano (Como, 1983), 259 ff.; Early Greece 1 (Cambridge [Mass.], 1993), 47-8.
  4. Fraenkel contrasts this with Athenian custom: 'The part played by the daughter in the sacrificial ritual of a company of men consisting by no means solely of her near relations . . . would be hardly conceivable within the limits of Athenian custom' (E. Fraenkel, ed., Aeschylus: Agamemnon, reprint, with corrections, 3 vols. [Oxford, 1962], vol. ii 141 n. 245 ff.).
  5. Thus, in the fourth century B.C., Demosthenes (19.196ff.) discredits Aeschines in court by reporting how Aeschines had a woman beaten almost to death for refusing to sing at a symposium terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1093/gr/45.2.143 , subject to the Cambridge Core
  6. For further discussion of these examples, see Dalby (n. 3 above), 172. 4Q. On the exclusion of males from this festival, see, e.g., Ar. Thesm.; W. Burkert, Greek Religion, tr.J. Raffan (Cambridge [Mass.], 1985), 242.
  7. B.C. (Ann Arbor, 1978), 114ff. On dining buildings in the sanctuary of Demeter at Corinth, see N. Bookidis and J. E. Fisher, Hesperia 41 (1972), 288 ff.
  8. An additional phrase 'for my boon-companions and yours' may have further strengthened terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1093/gr/45.2.143 , subject to the Cambridge Core
  9. see also A. S. Hollis, Callimachus: Hecale (Oxford, 1990), 341 ff.
  10. 186b, 464c, 496f), and Xenocrates (another pupil of Plato) also wrote a treatise on symposium manners (Ath. 186b).
  11. The English translation is taken from H. B. Hoffleit, ed. with translation, Plutarch's Moralia, vol. viii (Cambridge [Mass.], 1969), 335.

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Metadata

Authors
Burton, J.
Corresponding author
Burton, Joan
Venue
Greece and Rome
Published
1998-10
Volume
45
Issue
2
Pages
143-165
ISSN
  • 0017-3835 (ISSN-L)
  • 1477-4550
OpenAlex
W2144965846
Cited by
73
References
72
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 1
FWCI
4.04
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
Greece and Rome (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Classics › Classical Antiquity Studies
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology (arts and humanities) › Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Classical Philosophy and Thought
Keywords
hetairai, gender and food, Homeric period, Hellenistic period, Athenian women, women in ancient Greece

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