The Uncertainty of the Life of Athenian Women

In the 4th century BC, there was still a stigma attached to the working woman. The law regarded her as a minor and virtually only one profession not relating to motherhood or the household was available: prostitution. Relationships between the sexes were no doubt complex but evidence suggests that men did not always have such an iron fist at upper hand. In Euripides's Trojan women, as Hector's wife Andromiki observed, "I offered my husband a silent tongue"