Brüsewitz, Amber

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Ghent University Academic Bibliography

sehepunkte 15 (2015), Nr. 9Rebecca Futo Kennedy: Immigrant Women in AthensMetic women form a group that has often been ignored by modern scholars. Being either dismissed asnon‐influential or assimilated to prostitutes, it seems that these women were invisible in both ancientAthens and in modern scholarship. Enter Rebecca Futo Kennedy. She argues in her short but elegantlywritten study that metic women were not as minor of a group as previously believed and that they havemade extensive contributions to Athenian history: according to her, 'metic women played a role atalmost every social and economic level of the polis' (1). She aims to explore the lives of these women inher study and to nuance both ancient and modern prejudices against them.Chapter One examines the effects of Athenian legislation on the life of metic women, from the birth ofmetoikia to the Periklean Citizenship Law of 451, its amendment during the Peloponnesian War, itsreinstatement in 403 and finally the ban of metic‐citizen marriage somewhere between 390 and 371 BCE.Kennedy argues that prejudices concerning metic women were born as a consequence of the CitizenshipLaw and that these women were excluded from the citizen body. It is a shame that a study by SaraWijma, which focuses on the integration of metics into the Athenian polis through cult participation, ismissing in Kennedy's bibliography. Wijma shows convincingly that, after the Citizenship Law had put thecohesion of the polis under stress, the incorporation of metics into polis religion conceptualized meticsand Athenians as a homogenous worshipping community. [1]In Chapter Two, Kennedy describes the ideology of the metic woman in the fifth century, using primarilytragedies to reconstruct the (changes in) status of and attitude towards metic women. According to her,in plays from the first half of the fifth century, it seems that metic women are a threat to the city butare eventually incorporated. She interprets plays dated after the Citizenship Law, however, as portrayingthe same metic women as a group that should be excluded, eliminated or demonized.Chapter Three, then, focuses on the definition of hetaira and examines the life of Aspasia, wife ofPerikles. Rejecting the definition of the hetaira as a high class escort girl or prostitute, Kennedy believesthat hetairai were in fact elite (and sometimes foreign) aristocratic women who participated in sympoticand luxury culture as female friends, not 'companions'. She argues that the term only acquired itsnegative connotations over the course of the fifth century, where the term starts to refer to metic orsometimes citizen women who were unable to marry or lived without a kurios. Even then, however,'[these women] may all have counted as 'whores' in a certain ideological matrix, but that did not makethem actual prostitutes' (87). Not all may find her new definition of hetaira convincing. However, basedon contemporary literary, epigraphical and iconographical sources, Kennedy shows that there are someproblems with simply interpreting hetairai as 'entertainers' or prostitutes. By identifying these problems,Kennedy has opened the door to the re‐examination and possible re‐evaluation of this group of women.The focus in Chapter Four lies on the daily activities and legal struggles of metic women in the fourthcentury. Kennedy argues that the precarious legal position of metic women, combined with negativestereotypes about them, made them easy targets to be slandered or dragged into court by citizen menlooking to make a (sometimes political) profit. In one of the stronger sections of her study, Kennedy alsoargues against translation of the term pallakê as 'concubine'. She convincingly re‐examines the concept ofpallakia, which according to her seems to have been 'a contractual relationship between a citizen and ametic that carried with it some protections for the woman's rights and in which children might be anexpected outcome' (115).Finally, Chapter Five shows the everyday activities and occupations of metic women. In the introduction,Kennedy promises to discuss archaeological evidence like phialai inscriptions and tombstones and alreadygives us a taste, stating that many tombs of metic women show they were 'midwives, herbalists, nurses,priestesses of foreign cults, weavers, and shoemakers' (8). Kennedy does show through phialaiinscriptions that weaving was a probable metic woman occupation. It is, however, disappointing to findthat there is no epigraphic material whatsoever indicating that metic women served as priests and onlyone tombstone referring to a female midwife: it is unclear whether she is a citizen or a metic. In thephialai inscriptions, one single shoemaker and two nurses are mentioned. Kennedy defends the idea ofmetics‐as‐nurses by mentioning three tombstones, all of which might have belonged to slaves, notmetics. As Kennedy states herself, 'our evidence is full of holes' (153). Fully agreeing with her on this, onewonders why she paints a different picture in her introduction.There are some problems with the methodology of this study, two of which will be addressed: first of all,the evidence used in Chapter Two. Since the only literary sources we have on metic women in the fifthcentury are tragedies, they form a logical source for Kennedy to use in her research. While it is absolutelytrue that tragedies reflect not only on the mythical past but also, in some ways, on the time in whichthey were written, there are boundaries from what we can learn from them about subjects as specific asKennedy's. Especially when there are no other sources to verify or compare any observations about meticwomen based on tragedies to, one should be very careful with drawing conclusions from such anuncertain source: any interpretation remains just that and for every classical tragedy, there are sure tobe a dozen conflicting ones. In Kennedy's analysis, characters from various tragedies (such as the Danaidsin Aeschylus' Suppliants or even the Furies in his Eumenides) are boiled down to a 'metic' identity becauseof their foreignness. By analyzing these characters, Kennedy tries to distill the general public opinion onmetic women in fifth century Athens: their roles and actions in the plays are interpreted to be a symbolicrepresentation of anxiety about metics. By over‐analyzing tragic texts, taking every action and statementof mythical foreign women for some kind of a symbolic representation of fifth century reality, Kennedyseems to theorize more than the actual evidence can support. It should be noted that this criticism doesnot apply to her analysis of Antigone in Sophocles' tragedy of the same name. This text is vastly moreexplicit on the subject than the other tragedies: the term metoikos is actually used in the playmetaphorically to show Antigone does not 'fit in' anymore and Kennedy rightly observes that the use ofthis phrase implies a state of limbo.The second problem is the complete absence of metic men throughout the work. Kennedy justly pointsout that Whitehead ignored women in his famous study of metics. A problem in the methodologythroughout her own study, however, is that although she focuses on metic women exactly because theydeserve attention, she neglects to look at the differences between metic men and women. Men couldjust as easily have fallen victim to the Athenian emphasis on autochthony and their negative stereotypestowards 'outsiders', which Kennedy describes. Because there is no reference to what happens to meticmen, it stays unclear whether restrictions and regulations, slander and public opinion against meticwomen are gender‐based or not.These weaknesses aside: in her criticisms of the standard definitions of the terms hetaira and pallakê, inmaking a clear distinction between metic women and their citizen counterparts, as well as in showingmetic women had various occupations and cannot be assimilated with prostitutes as often has beendone, this study forms an important contribution to the study of the classical Athenian society.Note:[1] S.M. Wijma: Joining the Athenian community: the participation of metics in Athenian polis religion inthe fifth and fourth centruries B.C., Utrecht 2010, 309‐316.Rezension über:Rebecca Futo Kennedy: Immigrant Women in Athens. Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City (= Routledge Studies inAncient History; 6), London / New York: Routledge 2014, XIII + 177 S., ISBN 978‐0‐415‐73786‐9, USD 125,00Rezension von:Amber Brüsewitz Department of History and Art History, Utrecht UniversityEmpfohlene Zitierweise:Amber Brüsewitz: Rezension von: Rebecca Futo Kennedy: Immigrant Women in Athens. Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the ClassicalCity, London / New York: Routledge 2014, in: sehepunkte 15 (2015), Nr. 9 [15.09.2015], URL:http://www.sehepunkte.de/2015/09/25654.htmlBitte geben Sie beim Zitieren dieser Rezension die exakte URL und das Datum Ihres letzten Besuchs dieser Online‐Adresse an.

Rebecca Futo Kennedy: immigrant women in Athens

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Rebecca Futo Kennedy: immigrant women in Athens

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