Plutarch on Women and Marriage (original) (raw)
Related papers
Women in antiquity through the eyes of Plutarch
Journal of Gender and Power, 2020
ABSTRACT. This article deals with the writings of Plutarch and some of his radical views regarding women. Excerpts from Plutarch's texts referring to female nature are studied and presented. The main issue that occupied Plutarch and many other authors of his era was the question of virtue, a purely philosophical concept deeply rooted in the ancient Greek culture. For this reason, some of Plutarch's writings focus on the place of virtue in women's society. Plutarch tries to prove that virtue exists equally in women, that women are dynamic, lawful wives who have the power to take matters into their own hands and who can perceive also the ultimate matter of friendship. This paper, therefore, seeks to show the other side of the coin regarding the position of women in antiquity, among Plutarch's ethical essays, the Moralia.
Reading Plutarch’s Women: Moral Judgement in the Moralia and some Lives
Ploutarchos, 2018
Plutarch has two distinct bodies of work: the Moralia and the Lives. Increasingly, however, questions about the unity of Plutarch's work as a whole have been raised, and it has become of some concern to scholars of ancient biography to establish the level of philosophical content in the Lives. A comparative study of the women of the Lives and those in the Moralia may provide some insight into Plutarch's greater philosophical project and narrative aims. Plutarch's writings on and for women in the Conjugalia praecepta, Mulierum virtutes, Amatorius, De Iside et Osiride, and Consolatio ad uxorem lays a firm groundwork for the role of Woman in society and the marital unit.
The Speech of Greek and Roman Women in Plutarch's Lives (CP 2010)
Plutarch was not a social revolutionary but a traditionalist. He was willing to admire female initiative, but only when a female speaker was a member of the elite, driven to extremity by some personal or public crisis, and acting on behalf of her male relatives, who have either caused the crisis or have somehow failed to resolve it as they should.
Women, Politics, and Entertainment in Plutarch's "Symposium of the Seven Sages"
Illinois Classical Studies, 2019
In this article, I examine the two female characters featured in Plutarch’s "Symposium of the Seven Sages": Melissa, the wife of Periander, and Cleobulina (a.k.a. Eumetis), the daughter of Cleobulus. In particular, I explore how these two women relate to male characters in the dialogue and how they comport themselves within the male-dominated space of the symposion. Overall, I argue, Cleobulina and Melissa embody Plutarch’s ideals regarding female virtue and provide a role-model for young elite girls and adult married women respectively. ICS 44 (2019) 209-31
Persuasive ethics: The direct discourse of women in Plutarch's Roman Lives
This thesis examines the ways in which the speech of women and their interaction with men contribute to the ethical framework of Plutarch’s Roman Lives. In particular, it explores the significant features shared by the various examples of female speech: every Roman woman who speaks is a member of the elite; all speak at a point of civic and personal crisis; and all are portrayed as virtuous exempla. The lone exception to this model is Cleopatra, whose direct discourse functions as a philosophical and cultural contrast to the virtues espoused by the Roman women, although ultimately, Plutarch provides the Egyptian queen with a measure of redemption at the close of the Life of Antony. A close reading of these texts therefore offers a complex view of how Plutarch regarded gender, culture and identity under the rule of the Roman Empire. Chapter One analyses the public intercessions of Hersilia in the Life of Romulus and Volumnia in the Life of Coriolanus. In these episodes, Plutarch incorporates Greek tragic models and Roman cultural ideals in order to present female action and direct discourse as a dramatic articulation of the importance of sophrosyne and paideia for both the statesman and state. Chapter Two explores the more intimate speeches delivered by Julia, Octavia and Cleopatra in the Life of Antony. The discourse of these women serves to illustrate the ethical tension between eros (passion) and logos (reason), and the conflict between the pursuit of public and private goods. Chapter Three examines the spoken interaction between husband and wife in the Lives of Pompey, Brutus and Gaius Gracchus. The women’s speeches, modelled again on Greek tragic and epic archetypes, explore the vital difference between eros and marital philia (friendship), reinforcing the connection between private conjugal harmony, virtue and civic stability. Plutarch thus regularly deploys female direct discourse to dramatically reinforce his moral and philosophical themes at watershed moments of the narrative. As each speech is delivered not only at critical points of the protagonist’s life, but at critical moments for Rome, each scene dramatically exemplifies an unsettling mode of instruction within the narrative by questioning the statesman’s roles and responsibilities within Rome’s societal structures; and each subsequently reasserts the social and ethical foundations on which the protagonist (and Plutarch’s ideal reader) should rely.
Mediterranean Review (South Korea), Vol. 4, No. 2 (December), 2011: 1-48
This article focuses on some of Plutarch's texts on women, death and the body, based on a comparison with material from modern Greece, where we find many of the same opinions about women, death and the body among men, and which are different from the women's thinking about themselves. This article will also try to explain why we encounter many contradictions in Plutarch's work on the topics: Women are assumed to be ruled by their men, to stay indoors without exposing themselves or talk in public, a habit which is considered extremely unmanly in connection with, for example, mourning. Simultaneously, women who act manly while saving their home and city by exposing not only their bodies, but even their private parts are considered to be brave women. How can we explain these contradictions, many of which Plutarch shares with other ancient male authors of sources?