Based on a sophisticated reading of legal evidence, this book
offers a balanced assessment of the status of women in classical
Greece. Raphael Sealey analyzes the rights of women in marriage, in
the control of property, and in questions of inheritance. He
advances the theory that the legal disabilities of Greek women
occurred because they were prohibited from bearing arms.
Sealey demonstrates that, with some local differences, there was a
general uniformity in the legal treatment of women in the Greek
cities. For Athens, the law of the family has been preserved in
some detail in the scrupulous records of speeches delivered in
lawsuits. These records show that Athenian women could testify, own
property, and be tried for crime, but a male guardian had to
administer their property and represent them at law. Gortyn allowed
relatively more independence to the female than did Athens, and in
Sparta, although women were allowed to have more than one husband,
the laws were similar to those of Athens. Sealey's subsequent
comparison of the law of these cities with Roman law throws into
relief the common concepts and aims of Greek law of the family.
Originally published in 1990.
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