In ancient Greek society women lived hard lives on account of men’s patriarch built communities. Women were treated as property. Until about a girl’s teens she was “owned” by her father or lived with her family. Once the girl got married she was possessed by her husband along with all her belongings. An ancient Greece teenage girl would marry about a 30-year-old man that she probably never met before. Many men perceived women as being not being human but creatures that were created to produce children, please men, and to fulfill their household duties.
A bride would not even be considered a member of the family until she produced her first child. In addition to having a child, which is a hard and painful task for a teenage girl in ancient civilization to do, the husband gets to decide if he wants the baby. A baby would be left outside to die if the husband was not satisfied with it; usually this would happen because the child was unhealthy, different looking, or a girl.
Women had very few rights, they lived as prisoners, serving men 24 hours a day. Women were sheltered from society, restricted to their husbands and their husbands houses, crying out for help and justice but there is no one to there to hear their screams. In the play Antigone when the title character had to sneak out of the house to meet up with Ismene. Ancient Greek men ruled a lot like over protective fathers with teenage daughters.
Men were also scared of women gaining confidence and begin thinking on their own or worse taking action or speaking out against men, like in the play Antigone where Antigone confronts Creon by burying Polyneices after Creon strictly stated that no one bury him. If someone were to bury him, the whole Polis would stone them to death. When Creon found out that someone buried Polyneices, he did not even consider that it could have been a women that did it. Why were women treated like animals?
Greek society would not function without women, everything a man needs for proper living, food, clothing, wealth, sex, the continuance of human existence were all traits that women inquired. However women are also highly sexual beings that could overpower, hypnotize, and stimulate men’s minds and soles. Similarly in modern society where a lot of men have lost families, jobs, money and their lives due to sexual addiction. In an ancient Greek mythology a myth called “The Judgment of Paris ” explains how women can take control of men and what the possible outcomes are.
Paris a young prince who has to give the golden apple to either: Hera, wife of Zeus and the goddess of power, Athene, Goddess of wisdom and war, or Aphrodite Goddess of beauty and love. Whichever Goddess he chooses to give the apple to, that Godess will give him some power that she posses. The Goddess lined up and presented their power to Paris. Last one in line was Aphrodite she offered Paris sex with Helen, the most beautiful women in the world. Paris could not hold back the proposal and gave the apple to Aphrodite.
Due to Paris not thinking clearly with his brain and allowing a women take control of his emotions: the Trojan war began and lasted for ten years, Paris’s parents were killed in front of him, on top of all that the sex was not even up to his expectations. This myth teaches and warns men of the danger women can bring on with their physical, emotional, and natural powers. Bernal, writer of Black Athena , said that “claims about the past are really statements about the present”.
If in ancient Greece women were property of men and women were not getting the justice and respect that they deserved, then in present modern society women are still struggling to break through a male dominated world! Has the United States ever had a woman be elected president? Has the Congress or Senate ever had more female than male representatives? Basically the point is that modern society learned from the ancient Greeks and only with time will there be an equally balance between men and women. Hence, balance is perfection in not just ancient Greek philosophy but in western and other cultures also.