The Pnyx, Athens

The Classical Greek family, who lived in the period from 500 BCE – 350 BCE had a vision of the world based on their new idea of democracy. The husband and wife understood their place and it was a place ordered by rules and principles written and conceived by three men: Draco, Solon and Cleisthenes. This is not intended to be a comprehensive in depth analysis of the politics of the time but an overview to guide you through the main points of classical Athenian politics that led to the creation of the first democracy and the rules put on the family.

This is the Attic Peninsula, as you can see it is a triangular peninsula that juts out into the Aegean Sea and is divided in the north from Boeotia by a 10 mile/16km long mountain ranges of Cithaeron and Parnes, from the 11^th century BCE Athens became the central place in Attica and by 900 BCE and the basileus or King/Chieftain of Athens was the preeminent person in the region of Attica. Archaeological evidence tell us that rich graves dated to the 9^th century BCE show a growth in wealth and overseas trade, so we know the region was trading with areas outside of its own borders and we also have evidence to show that in the 8^th century BCE the population around Athens sharply increased as there is evidence to show that new settlements appeared throughout the Attic region, by the mid-8^th century BCE the Attic towns and regions had merged together into one political unity under Athens.

This was important for the Attic population because it meant that, in theory, all the citizens of Athens could take part in the government of Athens. I say in theory because the reality was that most of the population lived in the countryside and were farmers so it was unlikely they had the time to travel to take part in the government when they had a farm to manage, especially if you consider it would be a 3-day journey for a farmer just 15-20 miles away. Also, the top jobs went to the aristocrats, not a lowly farmer, so the theory was great but the reality was very different for those at the bottom of society.

By the late 8^th century BCE, the chiefs of Attica replaced the main or paramount Basileus with three civic officials they called ‘Archons’ or ‘leaders’, these three roles were divided up amongst the aristocrats and each Archon had a specific job and title, first we have the Basileus who administered the cults of the polis and judged lawsuits about cult property and other religious matters, next came the Polemarch, or war archon, he commanded the armed and judged disputes involving non-citizens and finally and most importantly was the Archon, this post was the most prestigious as he had overall supervision of public affairs, this included presiding over the council and the assembly and judging non-religious cases – he was named the eponymous archon because he gave his name to the year. Six Thesmothetai – were added later and this was six men who were judicial officials. The name means ‘layers down of rules’

This makes up a body of nine Archons. They were annually elected from a group of candidates picked from the small group of aristocratic families who were known as the Eupatrids - ‘the people with good fathers.’ The Council of Areopagus met on a hill sacred to Ares, the pagos (hill) of Ares and with the archons they governed Athens, it is believed that citizen men also took part in the assembly but how it worked it still unknown to us.

That’s a lot of titles to throw at you but the main thing to understand is that although in theory all of the citizens had a voice in the running of Attica, in reality it was run by the aristocrats who were born in certain families.

Now we come across our first of the three men – Draco, and the first thing to say about him is that we know virtually nothing about him, so that’s a good start! all we have are his laws, or some of his laws. One in particular is very important as it changes the focus in disputes. We know that around 620 BCE Draco codifies the Athenian laws and the ones that are best known relate to homicide. Before Draco, if a family member was killed the bereaved family were entitled and obliged to avenge the death unless the family could be persuaded to accept compensation for the death.

Draco transformed these disputes into a trial where the next of kin, backed by his phratry (tribe) would prosecute the accused killer in front of magistrates and they, the magistrates, decided the appropriate penalty, not the next of kin. This change in the focus of a dispute meant members of society began to see the state as the authority over the family, it put the rule of the state over the rule of family.

And this was fine when all was well but as time went on there were pressures on the poor and crops that meant more changes were needed. Attica had a poor, stony, dry soil and an ever-rising population which meant the Athenians were struggling to feed themselves, so to survive they had to barter what products they could grow in their poor agricultural soil, for example: olives, vines, figs and barley with the much-needed grain. Their most significant export was their excellent high-quality olive oil which was loved across the Black Sea and in Italy, the Etruscans in Italy especially bought it up in the case load, and we know this as their tombs have been found to contain many fine attic vases.

The problem to grow enough crops became an issue for the farmers in Attica where there were two groups of farmers that were struggling to survive above all others. One was the ‘hektemoroi’ or sixth partners, who paid 1/6^th of their produce or the equivalent of this to the wealthy landowner. This was a form of protection money they were forced to pay, so because of this many were getting into debt and being in debt meant they risked being enslaved. The second group were what was known as ‘failed debtors’, these farmers had borrowed against their property and also of themselves and were now unable to repay their debts, so they too risked enslavement.

These oppressed groups and their families, under the law, became slaves of the debtors if they could not meet their obligations and they wanted the abolition of debts and the redistribution of land because the aristocrats owned all the best producing land.

Solon (c.630-560 BCE) was an aristocratic poet, a member of the noble or Eupatrid clan, and a man with an intelligent mind. He became Solon the archon of Athens in c.594 BCE and he immediately repealed all of Draco’s laws except the ones relating to homicide for the main reason that they were, as Plutarch says, ‘too harsh and prescribed penalties that were too severe’ (P.61 Greek Lives) because ‘a single penalty – the death penalty – had been fixed for almost all crimes’ (P.61 Greek Lives) and at the request of the Athenian people he wrote a new law code to help the suffering poor. Our source for Solon’s laws comes from Plutarch (c. 50CE- c.120 CE) where he writes about Solon in his ‘Parallel Lives’ series, a set of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, Plutarch was, incidentally, a Greek from Boeotia who became a Roman.

Plutarch tells us that Solon’s new laws cancelled the debts, freed those enslaved because of debts, cancelled the obligations of the hektemoroi and made it illegal for loans to be secured on anyone’s property or person, this became known as the ‘shaking off of the burdens’ and even went so far as to recall back to Attica those people sold into slavery in other areas for their debt.

He then assessed the property qualifications and created a new system where in this new system he added a fourth class at the top. The four classes were based on what you produced and they started with the Pentakosiomedimni, ‘500 measure men’, these were estates that produced at least 500 medimnoi (bushels) of produce, this could be any combination of grain, oil or wine. Next you had the Hippeis or ‘horse-men’, they had an income between 300-499 medimnoi and could afford to keep a horse for cavalry. The third group were the Zeugitai and they had an income between 200-299 medimnoi and could afford a team of oxen, finally, the largest group were the Thetes and they had an income of less than 200 medimnoi, including some poor farmers and agricultural workers and some artisan workers.

These groups were used to decide who was eligible for which jobs in the legal system. For example, a chief magistrate would only be a member of the pentakosiomedimni or hippeis classes, zeugitai could hold lower state offices and thetes could join the others in the assembly (ekklesia) which met regularly.

Men who were citizens, from any of the classes could serve in the heliaia, this was a pool of prospective jurors who could serve in the courts that were set up to receive appeals from the judicial decisions of the archons, both Plutarch and Aristotle say that this right to serve in the law courts was to be an extremely important right. Solon’s most revolutionary contribution to the Athenian judicial systems was that any male citizen – not just the victim or victims’ family – could bring an indictment if he believed a crime had been committed. This was a bold move that meant justice was now in the hands of the community of male citizens and it was this ability to bring an indictment that proved to be one of the major features of a developed democracy.

After the law courts, Solon turned to the councils where he initiated two councils. One was the Areopagus assembly which was made up of each year’s former archons. This assembly was already in existence in one form or other by around the 8^th century BCE, a fact Plutarch notes ‘on the contrary, the Council of Areopagus existed before Solon’s archonship and legislation’ (P.63 Greek Lives) because in one of his laws it states that ‘those who were disenfranchised prior to the archonship of Solon are to regain their rights except those who were convicted by the Areopagus’ (P.63 Greek Lives).

The other he initiated was the boule, which he did for the reason, as cited by Plutarch, that ‘the cancellation of their (the common peoples) debts had made them more assertive’ (P.62 Greek Lives). The boule was a council of 400 which was made up of 100 men selected from each of the four tribes who debated issues before they reached the people and ensured the Areopagus assembly was not given any motions that had not been through this process of deliberation and to keep them in check he also established ‘the upper council as a general overseer of the state and guardian of the constitution’ (P.63 Greek Lives).

The laws he created that affected women’s lives were laws designed to regulate women’s behaviour as he thought this was an essential element to a well-ordered society and so deemed that their role was limited to the private sphere, he effectively removed them from the body politic. He did something that might seem counter intuitive in a society where women were seen as property and generally had not met their husbands to be before their marriage started - he abolished doweries and instead stipulated that the bride was to only bring with her to her husbands house three items of clothing and some inexpensive household items and nothing else, with his thinking being that it would take the mercenary and commercial aspect out of a marriage and make child bearing, mutual gratitude and affection ‘the point of a husband and wife living together’ (P.64 Greek Lives). He also had a law that when a woman was outdoors ‘she was not to wear more than three items of clothing, nor carry more than an obol’s worth of food or drink or carry a basket more than a cubit in length’ (P.65/66). This was not about controlling women, but about conspicuous consumption by rich families and his concerns over the excessive power of the aristocrat families and these laws relating to marriage and sex reflect the traditional Attic view that a state was a combination of the oikoi.

When it came to sex, Solon was quite sure about how to price a woman’s modesty. An adulterer (the man doing the adultery not the wife) who was caught in the act could be killed, if you raped a free woman the fine was 100 drachmas, whereas seduction of a free woman was a fine of 20 drachmas, but he excluded all prostitutes as they would have sex with anyone who pays their price, he also made a rule that it was illegal for a man to offer for sale his sisters or daughters, unless one of them was unmarried and was no longer a virgin. Solon’s reforms were widespread, he also had rules on access to water, where you could plant trees, how to behave at a funeral, slandering people, citizenship, weights and measures and olive cultivation.

He visualised a society where he virtually established the idea of citizenship itself, by establishing the principle that the Athenian citizen body would, as a whole, guide the Athenian state and that neutrality was unacceptable when the country was in a state of civil strife, he was determined that all the male citizens took an active part in the civic affairs of their city state.

A distant relation of Solon was a man called Pisistratus (600BCE – 527 BCE) and in 560 BCE he carried out a coup and seized power, he was then driven into exile in 555-546 BCE for a second time but this time he got a mercenary army and money and came back to Greece, defeating his opposition in battle he then ruled for over 10 years, dying of natural causes on 527 BCE.

Pisistratus rule was classed as a tyrannous one that he made legit because he kept Solon’s system in force but manipulated it to ensure his friends and relations were elected as archons. He also used an old trick of using his oppositions children as hostages and kept any opponents in check with his mercenary army. The word ‘Tyrant’ in ancient Greece has a slightly different meaning to what it does now – it meant someone who had taken power unconditionally, usually by force or by inheritance. Herodotus says in his ‘Histories’ that Pisistratus initially ruled Athens even-handedly and fairly but by his third stint as ruler he was more tyrannous, that he sent the hostage children to Naxos and exiled the Alcmaeonids (a powerful family who we will return to later), whereas Aristotle maintains that he ruled more in a constitutional way and less like a tyrant.

Pisistratus did have some good policies that helped Athens and Attica. He strengthened the economy by offering land and loans to those in need and he encouraged the cultivation of the olive with the result that trade expanded as exports began being seen throughout the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Also, either he or his sons issued the first silver ‘owls’, this was a silver coin with Athena’s head stamped on one side and her owl on the other and because of this the silver owls became the soundest currency in the Aegean.

Pisistratus also initiated some good building projects in Athens, like replacing private wells with public fountain houses, this had the advantage of providing jobs for the poor and taking control of the water supply out of the hands of the aristocrats because the aristocrats were controlling over the private wells. He also rebuilt the temple of Athena on the Acropolis and started to build a temple to the Olympian Zeus, he never finished it and to be fair to him and everyone after him, it was only eventually finished under the Roman Emperor Hadrian 700 years later. Pisistratus also commissioned the first editions of Homers Iliad and Odyssey.

But all great tyrants come to an end and his death left a hole that was initially filled by his son, Hippias who took over the role of tyrant, who was in turn helped by his brother, Hipparchus. This is contested as some ancient writers say Hippias ruled solo, anyway in 514 BCE Hipparchus was murdered in a plot by a pair of lovers that was supposed to kill both brothers. After this Hippias rule started to faulter as paranoia and oppressive behaviour began to rear its ugly head, as a result he started murdering Athenian citizens. By 510 BCE his tyranny was on the verge of collapsing when the Alcmaeonids – a wealthy and powerful family - came to the rescue of Athens by manipulating the Delphic Oracle when the Spartans came to Delphi for advice. Every time they went to ask for advice for a future project the answer she came back repeatedly was ‘First Free Athens’. So they did. King Cleomenes of Sparta blockaded Hippias on the Acropolis and captured his children. Hippias caved in and capitulated, willingly departing with his family to Sigeum.

This left a political vacuum into which trouble and strife filled. There were two men vying for the top job. One was Isagoras who was elected archon in 508 BCE and had the support of King Cleomenes of Sparta, his rival was Clisthenes, leader of the Alcmaeonid family, who had the support of the masses. For once having a king in your back pocket did not help and Isagoras was forced to surrender the leadership and the leadership was handed to Clisthenes and his followers.

Cleisthenes (570 BCE – 508 BCE) was not given the powers that Solon had been given, so everything he proposed had to be passed by the assembly. This made his wide-ranging changes he made to society even more ground breaking, as he made changes that the people of Athens welcomed.

The first thing Cleisthenes did was create a whole new set of tribes, 10 of them and these tribes or phylae formed the foundation of the council or boule which he increased from Solon’s 400 men to 500 men.

He started by dividing Attica into 3 geographical areas: the city, the coast and the plain. Each of these 3 areas he subdivided into10 thirds or trittyes, which was made up of residential units that were called demes (villages or townships). So, we now have 30 groups or thirds.

What he did next was ingenuous. He made a phylae (tribe) by putting together 3 of the trittyes (thirds) – one each from the city, the coast and the plain. This meant every phylae was a cross section of the different regions and every region was represented in the phylae. Every phylae would represent special local interests and would consist of 1/10^th of the Attic citizens. To make this work and to get the phylae to connect together, each phylae was assigned a hero as a fictional ancestor and they adopted his name. This might seem to us like naming a family after Superman or Spiderman, but the ancient Greeks were deeply religious people to whom gods and the reverence of gods and superheroes was no joke, they took it very seriously. Each phylae now had, as they saw it, the protection of one of the mighty dead whose graves they had revered for centuries, graves that they believed had special powers emanating from them. Cleisthenes had set about unifying them by using the cult practices they already revered.

The phylae had to work together for the system to work politically. The new council of 500 was where the citizens had their most important voice, each phylae had 50 seats, in the boule or council. The job of the boule was to debate and discuss issues that were to be presented to the ekklesia or assembly and to draft decree proposals. This is not to be underestimated as the only way the ekklesia could work in a meaningful and productive way was because of the preparation work that the boule had done – the boule’s main purpose was to bring the will of the entire citizens of Attica to Athens attention. These reforms were adopted in 507 BCE. This was true proportional representation and why he was called the ‘father of democracy’.

Around 500 BCE a meeting place for the ekklesia was carved out of the rock on the hill called the pnyx and from then on the ekklesia met there regularly and formed the policy for the state. Today you can go to Athens and stand on the spot where democracy first started, it sends a shudder down your spine when you get to visit it.

The Pnyx in Athens, from here you get a great view of the Acropolis

My boyfriend is a classic car mechanic and restorer. He eats, sleeps, dreams in cars, especially those of the 1920s-1970s with a special love of Aston Martins (and who doesn’t to be honest) and he also loves driving. So with this in mind, when we plan trips to get me to ancient sites (see my previous essay on the Roman Trier road trip) it’s always a plus if we can find a car or technology museum as well.

What I have found fascinating iwhen we walk around these museums is how many of the vehicles are names from the classics. The car pictured above is a ‘Minerva’, these three motorbikes are called ‘Hercules’ and ‘Apollo’ …

… there’s also a classic car called ‘Atalanta’.

So it set me pondering as to why the motor trade has been so keen to use classical references? Is it about power and strength, force and energy? What is the connection between engines and the Gods? Do these names just shout ‘Power!’ or ‘’Force’ ? Or is it a simple case of those designing the cars and motorbikes in the past were classically educated along with their schooling and so were familiar with the names and the attributes of the gods.

The only other time (to my limited knowledge) that classical names are used is in space travel - Apollo and Artemis spring to mind. But again, why?

I do not have any answers but am quite fascinated by the links and connections we see everyday that hark back to an understanding and knowledge of the classical world, especially now when we are in a sad period of educational history where the humanities and ancient world studies are being cancelled, cut back or (worse still!) totally ignored.

When I look around and see the delivery company ‘Hermes’

and the Artemis project with Artemis I launched in 2022, Artemis II in 2026 and in the future there’s set to be Artemis III (2027) and Artemis IV (2028) and a recently stumbled upon motorcycle group in a motorway services called ‘Lex Legio’ who, incidentally, when I very nervously asked one of the chaps if I could photograph his jacket, he wanted to ask me about the helmet depicted on the patch and if it was authenticity shown !

Although it can appear the classics is not given the credit for what it has given humanity - democracy, philosophy, botanical, medicine, art etc etc - it does make me smile when I see a motorbike called ‘Hercules’ in a German car museum and wished I had one too.

The second discussion was Germany, and specifically Trier. My passion is obviously, Ancient Greece and Rome, Graham sent me a text saying ‘Have you looked at Trier?’ I knew the Roman history of course but to be quite honest, no, I hadn’t really looked at what it was like now. So I googled it, my mind was blown, and I replied ‘wow we have to go’.

So after months of planning and musing we set off in our red SLK and took an amazing road trip. We left the Cotswolds at 4am on Tuesday morning and drove to Felixstowe, got on the channel tunnel and journeyed to Calais with the destination of Trier firmly in our minds.

We took two days to arrive in Trier and what a place. Before we get too carried away a little background history might be useful. Trier is in the southwest of Germany in the Moselle wine region and near the Luxembourg border. A shrine of the Treveri tribe, a Germanic tribe, is known to have existed at the site c.400 BCE. But it was ‘officially’ founded by the Romans under the Emperor Augustus when the Treveri tribe were subdued and ‘Augusta Treverorum’ was established in c.16 BCE. It’s prominence rose as a commercial and administrative centre due to its strategic position and by the 2nd century CE it was the capital of the Belgic division of Roman Gaul and after the 3rd century crisis it became the seat of the emperor responsible for Gaul and Britain during the Tetrarchy period. It carries the epitaph of first German city and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

The city boasts a three story Roman gate, built around 180 CE, the Porta Nigra, it has been remarkably preserved, mainly due to it being converted to a church for a while and is acessible and well worth a visit. To say its impressive is an understatement, it is the largest Roman city gate north of the Alps and the construction is impressive.

This is taken inside the gate, the carvings date to much later when it was converted to a church, but this along shows the scale of just one wall on only one floor.

As well as the gate there is the large amphitheatre which is the largest north of the alps, the underground passages were used to hold animal cages that would be sent up to be fought and are still accessible for visitors today. It is positioned, as many were, on the edge of town and it is said to have held gladiatorial games for up to 20,000 spectators.

Next stop was the Kaiserthermen, or Imperial Baths, built in the early 4th century CE they are one of the largest Roman baths ever constructed and are huge. It was really hard to get a sense of how they might have worked but the underground service tunnels were extensive and made for an interesting visit and what remained above ground was impressive.

As you can see the back section is still standing and if I turn around you can see a large space with a low wall that would have been the gymnasium, no visit to the baths was complete without a little exercise and gossip first!

So three down and time for a little light lunch of Bitburg beer, bread and cheese, which the Romans might well have loved as much as we did in the heat.

The final site we got to visit was Basilica of Constantine, again this survived due to its change into a church but wow are we glad it was. Its an impressive building and was built in the early 4th century CE and was the grand throne room of the Emperor Constantine the Great, its been damaged, bombed and rebuilt over the years but that it still stands as the largest surviving single-room structure from antiquity is a testament to its importance in Trier.

A visit to a Roman site is never complete, in my world, without a visit to the museum (The Rheinisches Landesmuseum) and I would recommend the audio guide (we didn’t! and I spent a lot of time googling museum labels!) to make your life easier. It contains a vast amount of finds from the pre Roman, Roman and later periods and if we had had another day I would have spent a lot longer, but we had a car to play with and Luxembourg, Belgium and France were beckoning! But what impressed me was the large mosaics, one especially of a square floor with nine squares within it and four of these squares contained images of the four muses - just stunning, wall plaster showing Aeneas and Dido, a large sculpture of a wine ship (below) and a lot of Roman gold and silver.

If you are intending visiting - and I highly recommend you put it on your itinerary - the Trier Tourist office is right by the Porta Nigra and they do a 25 euro ticket which gives you entry to five of sites.

We left Trier after two days and mooched along the Moselle valley, a beautiful green valley with the river cutting through it, on either side as far as your eyes could see there were vineyards, some nearly vertical, we had to sample the wine and we can quite honestly say it was some of the best white wines we had ever drunk.

I thought that was the end of the Roman history part of the trip, a car and vintage museum was on the cards for Graham in Bitburg and we drove via Piesport for a lunch stop and we found, right by the car park, a Roman mile marker! I’ve never seen one before so it was quite an exciting find for me. Piesport was on the Roman Trier-Mainz arterial road which travelled from Trier to Cologne and these milestones were used to mark the next most important settlement or town, this one marks Augusta Treverorum and was erected in 213 CE during the reign of Caracalla. It stands 18 Gallic leagues from Trier, which is around 40km and just up the road from this we found some water troughs that also date to the same period, so okay we’re done with Roman right?

We drove on through the valley to the town of Bitburg, home of the famous German beer and a car museum, we parked up and walked for a couple of kms to the museum, on the way we found….yep you’ve guessed it more Roman history. It turns out that Bitburg was one of the roadside settlements established about 10 CE as a stop over between Trier and Cologne that eventually became a vicus (town). After the German invasions of the 3rd century CE the Emperor Constantine the site was fortified and it became a Roman fort of roughly circular design with walls of concrete ore faced with limestone blocks reaching 3.80m thick, it had 13 circular towers and two gates and standing on the site of the road is some pieces of wall, the Jupiter column and carvings found during excavations.

A section of Roman wall at Bitburg

A few of the carvings left above the wall to see.

The Jupiter Column

And that’s it for Roman Germany, we set out to discover Trier and found a whole lot more and had such fun hunting for the Romans in places we did not expect to find them.

So far, we have looked at the main crops and additional crops. But there is another area of food production we have to look at, the garden or kepos. The kepos can be best translated as the kitchen garden and as it is mentioned frequently in ancient literature we know it was as common as farmland.

The kepos would be similar to the allotments or vegetable plots of our time, translated simply as ‘kitchen garden’. It was where the greens, vegetables, herbs and several kinds of fruit were grown for the table. Theophrastus is explicit in the list he puts forward where he says what is sown and when, he tells us that

‘the ‘winter’ period begins after the summer solstice in the month Metageitnion (ie. July), in which they sow cabbage, radish, turnip and what are called ‘secondary crops’ […] beet, lettuce, rocket, monk’s rhubarb, mustard, coriander, dill. cress: and this is also called the ‘first’ period of cultivation. The second period beings after the winter solstice in the month of Gamelion (January) in which they scatter or plant the seed of leeks, celery, long onion, orach. The third period, which is called the ‘summer’ period, begins in the month Munychion (April): in this are sown cucumber, gourd, blite, basil, purslane, savory.’

(Enquiry into Plants book 2, VII, 1 and 2)

Interesting to note that these are called by Theophrastus ‘pot-herbs’, not vegetables, so they would have been used as herbs to add flavour and interest to the food, you have to consider when you look at this list, at how diverse and flavourful the classical diet would have been if you had the space and seeds to grow everything here. It is also thought that the kepros would be a used to cultivate new seedlings and so this is where experimenting with new forms of plants were tried out and grown.

If we add to this list the foods that are mentioned in the medical treatise Regimen II attributed to Hippocrates, written around 400BCE, where it gives a summary of an ancient Greek diet, some of those not on Theophrastus list are sesame, safflower, asparagus, sage, gourds, turnip and pennyroyal. The different kinds of fruit grown for the table and are also mentioned in Hippocrates are mulberry, pears, apples, quinces, service berries, cornel berries, pomegranate, grapes, figs, almonds but also other nuts and acorns. Quite a veritable feast of vegetables and fruits.

Known by the farmer was tricks that are used today with some seeds, nowadays, for instance, to grow sweet peas it is recommended by professional gardeners that you soak the seeds overnight in warm water to get them started. Theophrastus has the same trick

‘Some even soak the seed of cucumber first in milk or water, to make it germinate quicker’ (Enquiry into Plants, book 2, VII 6)

There is good evidence to suggest that most gardens were located in an area that was close to the owners oikos, this makes sense when you are looking after new seedlings and plants that need to be kept watered and are needed to be handy for cooking. As the kepros was a way of adding variety and interest the yield of produce it produced would have been high and so the garden would be tended less by the man of the house, as he had enough to do with farming and managing the main crops of wheat, barley, vines and olive groves, but because it was close to the oikos it could be looked after by all members the household.

This is one area of food production that we can suggest that the classical wife might have had a voice and contribution to. As she is doing the cooking for the whole oikos, by choosing what was planted, helping to sow and nurture the plants, she would be on hand to ensure that she got the best possible vegetables, herbs and fruits that she wanted to cook with. Cooks and people who love to feed and create food cannot be a modern phenomenon by any means; there would have been women from the ancient world who also enjoyed growing and cooking the best food they could with which to feed their family.

But the classical Athenians liked the taste of good interesting foods, like we all do and so a lot of time and energy went into producing them, but what about the other crops like legumes, grapes and olives, where and how were they produced?

Legumes, such as garden peas, lentils, chickpeas and broad beans, do not exactly sound exciting but they added a lot of extra protein and calories to the diet of our classical family and was essential to supplement the meagre, protein poor diet. Meat was not something that would have been eaten every day, it would have come in fits and starts and mainly as a result of festivals or religious acts, so the addition of legumes boosted their protein intake – a bit of a catchword for the 21^st century! It was also known by the time of the classical period that growing legumes helped improve the soil, they might not have understood the science that the roots fix the nitrogen into a usable form, but they knew it helped.

Also, two points that seem less important to us now but to the classical wife would have been very important – legumes were not a large crop in volume and would have been easy to dry and store, and secondly, they double up as a nutritious food for their livestock as well as humans.

If we have a look at some of the legumes and what the sources tells us about them in literature, we can start to understand their status in the classical period and their usefulness to the classical wife.

Lentils are amongst one of the earliest crops to be found in ancient Greece, they are found in archaeological contexts back to the neolithic period. They are mentioned in the plays of Aristophanes and other Greek writers, and Aristophanes tells us lentils are the food of the lower classes and Theophrastus tells us that lentils should be grown in dry dung.

Chickpeas have a high protein content of 20-22% protein and along with the carbohydrates and oil found in chickpeas they supply considerable energy, but along with lentils they are also considered the food of the lower classes. Evidence in literature for the chickpea is the same as for lentils with chickpeas also being mentioned in Aristophanes.. Theophrastus tells us that it was not unusual to sow two crops of chickpeas in a year, this was because it was so quick to ripen at 40 days, but that it would exhaust the soil more than any other legume.

The broad bean, or fava bean as it is sometimes known, is a useful multi-purpose crop and like the chickpea has a high protein content at 20-25% protein. It can be sown to be used for animal fodder or for green manure but also for human consumption and it grew well in the dry Mediterranean climate. The ancient reactions have a mixed reaction to the broad bean but it was regularly grown and consumed throughout antiquity so it cannot have been all bad. The broad bean was also used to fertilize the soil so for this it was a valuable crop.

Lastly the garden pea. The pea was well adapted to both the warm, dry Mediterranean climate but also cooler temperate climates. It was traditionally used fresh or dried and also has a secondary purpose of being a green manure. Peas are found alongside wheat and barley in some of the earliest settlements in the Near East and Greece but even so, it is mentioned rarely in ancient literature but Theophrastus does tell us it is one of a few crops that should be sown late.

Vines and Olive trees became part of the Mediterranean Triad very early on in agriculture in ancient Greece, and one of the reasons must surely be that both vines and olive trees were well suited to growing on the poor, stony soils that made up marginal land as they both have long roots, which helps them survive by pushing down deeper into the soil to collect water. They could also use the heat absorbed in the rocks around them during the day when the air cooled at night, but water supplies and irrigation were a problem that had to be solved to help feed the family.

‘All the pot-herbs are lovers of water and of dung […] Rain water is good, for it also appears to destroy the pests which devour the young plants […] Most herbs are watered early in the morning or at evening, so that they may not be dried up […] In general water seems to be extremely beneficial, especially if it is mixed with dung for, they say, pot-herbs often are hungry’ (Theophrastus, Enquiry into plants, book 2, VII 2-3)

The kepos was the area of farming that was recognised by its intense level of cultivation and so it is the area which needed irrigation more than any other. The climate in the Mediterranean in ancient Greece, then as now, meant that the average rainfall was low and areas could go a long time between rain showers. The farmers relied on precipitation for water supply and the archaeology and literature tell us that watering the farmland by irrigation was hardly ever used. They farmed their land in a method called ‘dry farming’, where the aim of the farmer was to preserve the limited amount of water in the soil to save on irrigating the land, but scholars have agreed that the kepos was the area that was irrigated. This is another reason why it would have been located as close to the oikos as possible as the house would have had stores of water that could be used for the garden.

Amphora showing youths collecting the olive harvest, Image: The British Museum

Socio-economic studies inform us that a farm would need to be 2-5 hectares to support a family of 5, the ancient Greek land was measured in ‘plethra’ and this would translate to 20-50 plethra. Demographic, epigraphic and textual studies also tell us that the size of a farm may have depended on the status of the owner farmer, and with this in mind it has been suggested that a ‘hoplite’ farm may range from between 40 to 60 plethra, or 4-6 hectares.

A hoplite was a soldier who provided his own armour, spears and shields and was considered what we might call a ‘middling’ level of society. The armour was made of full bronze, this would have been expensive to make and not accessible to all, there was a cheaper alternative which was made of padded linen. Only those who could afford the weaponry could fight as a hoplite and this has translated as the middle classes. The average peasant-farmer hoplite would not be in a position to own or buy any armour but would carry a round shield, a spear and, if they were lucky, a helmet. This then tells us that a hoplite farm was the farm of the middle classes. For the wealthy Greek farmers their farms were considered to be 200-300 plethra or 20-30 hectares.

Getting into the nitty gritty of farming means analysing the two types of farming methods that could or would have been used by the ancient farmers.

First is the traditional or ‘extensive farming method’. This is the method where the land was worked on a biennial fallow field system - simply put the crops which were mainly wheat and barley, were alternated with fallow fields and these were ploughed to reduce weed growth, help restore the lands moisture and help increase the nutrient contents. This system of farming was one that meant that no other land maintenance work was done and so there was believed to be no manuring of the plots or terracing of the site.

The second type is the ‘intensive farming method’. This is where the cultivation of grain crops (wheat and barley) was alternated with pulses and it was these pulses that provided fodder for their animals. The nature of this system meant the maintenance of the land intensified and so it is believed it would be manured and terraced which give the farmer land that was more productive. This method would mean that smaller herds of animals would graze close to the settlement, to make it easier to get the manure onto the fields and it also saw an increased amount of labour that would done by either be free or slaves because of the extra work involved in working all the land instead of only some of it, which is the case with the extensive farming method. The adoption of this method is believed to be due to the growing ancient Greek population and ‘land hunger’.

There are two issues that are still contested in the scholarly debate on land management. How much did the ancient Greeks actually fertilise their land with manure and how much the land was terraced.

The ‘manure or not’ debate concentrates its arguments on the level of pot sherds found scattered in fieldwork. So why would pot sherds indicate manuring? If you remember when we discussed the house and pots we talked about the domestic rubbish pits that were in each house, the cesspits. The argument goes that in these pits went all the household rubbish, and by all this includes broken pots and bowls. The contents of this pit then contributed to the compost heap or mulch pile which then could have been used to manure the homeowners’ fields and on the fields went everything from the pile, including the pieces of broken pots.

This theory has met with some criticism amongst classical scholars as it is hard to prove using archaeological evidence that manure was brought from the home to the field but textual sources do indicate that manure was an important commodity and that as a commodity it was bought and sold. For example, an inscription from the Tegea area of Greece lists the sale of dung and we have evidence from other leases that are mentioned in Xenophon and also in Aristophanes that prohibit the removal of manure from a farm. This would only happen if manure was considered of value aid if it was removed and put onto the fields.

The issue with terracing that one group of scholars believe there is a lack of archaeological evidence, there is a contradiction in that there appear to be possibly two different Greek words for terracing. One scholar says it means ‘marginal land’ and because of the nature of it being ‘marginal’ it would mean land that needed additional work done to it so the terracing would be used to retain the soil on the slope, limit the effect of erosion, help keep the soil moist and stop the cattle from straying. But another word that has its academic critics is the word ‘haimasia’ which has been used since the time of Homer and is found in many texts in literature and inscriptions and it corresponds with ‘terrace’, the issue comes in that it can also refer to two physical objects (1) a freestanding dry-stone wall that is usually enclosing a specific land area and (2) the land itself which is enclosed by a dry-stone wall. A knotty problem indeed, and added to this is the question of how to identify terraces. Archaeology has identified abandoned systems of terraces, for example, on the western slopes of Mt. Hymettus that can be dated to ancient times and one particular scholar, Lohmann, has done a lot of work in the Atene territory and has recorded large areas that were made into terraces in the valleys of Thymari, Charakas and Aghia Photini. Also, on the island of Delos there has been identified and dated to the 4^th and 3^rd century BCE agricultural terraces in the Northern and South Eastern part of the island.

The method of dating terraces is an issue that not all scholars agree on with the problem being the lack of datable pottery and /or the absence of other buildings that are near the terraces which can be dated. There does though appear to be a growing body of sites in many of the southern suburbs of Athens where terraces can be dated by ceramic evidence, these can be dated to the 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE that have been excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service in the last few years.

There is a phrase that pops up when looking at ancient produce, and this is ‘The Mediterranean Triad’.

The Mediterranean triad is the three staple crops that cultures from previous periods around the Mediterranean had traditionally farmed and that the ancient Greeks continued to farm as their staple crop. They are barley or wheat, olives and vines. Although this triad had some changes mainly due to the intensification of farming before the classical period it was still the staple of the Mediterranean farming calendar. Alongside the triad was the secondary crops that boosted their diet and helped feed their animals – legumes, figs and millets.

It is also believed that the ancient Greeks used companion planting to get the most from their space, barley and legumes are thought to have frequently been sown between rows of vines and if they were using the extensive farming method the land could still be productive in the fallow year if it was used for pasture or if legumes were sowed, which gave the added bonus of being a soil improver.

The middling classical family (which ours is) would have had at least 3 hectares of land that they farmed as this is the minimum amount needed to feed a family of five using either method, the average amount for a hoplite farm is 4-6 hectares. If we consider that our classical wife and her husband had the 4 hectares considered a hoplite farm and they farmed using the extensive farming method, they would be able to be self-sufficient with a little over for hard times. They would therefore have grown wheat or barley for their bread and cakes, olives for the fruit itself and the oil and vines for their all-important wine, added to this is the legumes sown in the fallow fields every year to feed their stock and feed the soil.

What it is important to remember is that all of this land management was done with incredibly simple tools, there is obviously no tractors or mechanical tools to help, the only tools would have been a homemade ‘Ard’ for ploughing the field. This was not a plough that cut and turned the soil, this was more basic than that – it just broke the soil and made a channel in the land, metal was not attached to it to make it better until the Roman period! The main purpose of the Ard was to prepare the seed bed; the clods of earth would have been broken up with a mattock after the Ard had ploughed the field. The farmer would have also had a wooden spade to help dig and cover the seeds over after sowing. How the plough/Ard, spade and mattock were combined was dependent on the crop being sown and the soil as different soils were worked in different seasons. Farming was an incredibly labour-intensive job for the farmer husband and the classical wife had to do her part in supporting him, by storing the food in the large pithoi that have been found in houses and making sure it lasted until the next harvest. The real skill and knowledge for the farmer was in timing and in an intimate knowledge of the local landscape and climate. The real skill for the wife is ensuring that they do not run out before the next harvest is due in.

The land that the average Athenian family had was the only land they had, and they had to utilise it to the best of their ability, and with it they had to feed their family for a year off each harvest. One bad harvest and your family goes hungry and so it was crucial that the classical husband and wife worked as a team to ensure the survival of their oikos.

(Plowman. Attic black-figure band cup. Around 530 BC. Louvre Museum)

The ancient sources can be quite useful as a starting point for working out how and when in the year the land was worked. Hesoid, for example, a poet of the 8^th century BCE, wrote a poem to give moral and practical instruction for husbandry in a work titled Works and Days. Another treatise that discussed land management and farming is Xenophon’s The Estate Manager or Oeconomicus, in this Socrates talks to Critobulus about the branch of knowledge they call estate-management. (Oeconomicus is the root of the English word ‘economics’)

The Estate Manager is not an Athenian guide on to how to farm, it is a treatise on the activities of an estate-owner highlighting what he must do, when he must do it and how to do it along with sections on how to treat his wife (which we looked on the section on make-up) and slaves and because it is framed as a Socratic dialogue it can also be considered a quasi-philosophical, moral treatise.

Okay all well and good I hear you say, but what can they tell us about how the Athenians farmed?

What they can both do is start putting the structure of the farming year together and so form the framework to which we can add more information gathered from archaeology and iconographic evidence. Hesoid and Xenophon therefore both give us clues or information about what was done and when to do it to produce the grain for the family to live off.

Let us start with ploughing, Hesoid says ‘take heeds when you hear the voice of the crane high in the clouds […] it brings the signal for ploughing, and indicates the season of winter rains’ (line 449) a little vague for us I know, but the ancient Greeks would have known when the crane migrates, he carries on to tells us to be ‘getting on with it good and early so that your fields may be full’ (line 449) and to ‘go over it first in spring’ (line 460). Xenophon’s treatise is a discussion between Socrates and Ischomachus with the conclusion being that ‘This job should probably be undertaken in the Spring then’ (p.342). So, with a bit of delving into the texts we know that the Athenians would have ploughed the land in the spring ready for sowing, not exactly earth shattering I know but we can never make assumptions about anything in the ancient world.

Hesoid is clear the start of spring is when ‘Pandion’s daughter […] the swallow, comes forth into men’s sight’ (line 567) therefore when the first swallows appear and after ‘Zeus completes sixty days of winter after the solstice’ (line 564) which academics say is the end of February onwards. Socrates tells us that he thinks that ‘it is best to make use of the whole sowing-season’ (page 343) so that the food can be harvested over a longer period and not all need to be collected in in one big harvest, while Hesoid says to ‘sow the fallow while it is still light soil’ (line 462) where ‘the labourer just behind with the mattock […] covering up the seed (line 465). This is a bit fuzzy I agree but it is logical to think that sowing would have happened after ploughing so we are looking at later on in the spring – March onwards.

Harvesting will have happened in June because Hesoid is clear that the grain is thrashed ‘as soon as mighty Orion appears’ (line 597) which is in the second half of June and here Hesoid says that ‘As for the labourers, spur them to thrash Demeter’s holy grain’ (line 597) whereas Xenophon tells us that ‘draught-animals are used to thresh the corn’ (p.347) and here draught-animals are defined as oxon, mules or horses, they are encouraged to walk on the corn that the threshers throw under the animals hoofs. The threshed corn is then winnowed to remove the impurities, next is to ‘collect it carefully in the jars with a scoop’ (line 599).

Wine was an important part of Athenian life and Hesoid has instructions about how to go about making it. The timing of this has been analysed and academics have set the time as early September.

‘When Orion and Sirius come into mid-heaven, Perses, and rose-fingered Dawn meets Arcturus, then set about cutting off all the grape-cluster for home. Expose them to the sun for ten days and ten nights. Cover them over for five, and on the sixth draw merry Dinoysus’ gift off into jars’ (lines 609-614)

I am not sure how good wine that only brewed for 15 days would be and I wonder if it would be more like grape juice than a very alcoholic beverage, cider can, I know, be made in two weeks, so can we assume that the same process would work with grapes? It would be interesting to try – I do think that the heat of the mediterranean sun would make a difference as well!

Something else Hesoid takes time writing about is listing is the days of the month that are good or bad for different things. For example, the holy days are the 1^st, 4^th, 7^th, 8^th and 9^th,. On the 4^th bring a wife into your house and being building narrow ships, but avoid the 5^th as they are difficult and dire, the 6^th is not a fit day for a girl to be born but good for gelding kids and rams and a kindly day for making a sheep-pen – so that’s alright then.

On the 8^th it is an excellent time to geld a boar or a bellowing bull and the 9th is altogether harmless for men, it is good for planting and for being born, both for men and women – it is never a wholly bad day, the 10^th is also good for a man’s birth.

The 11^th and 12^th of the waxing moon are excellent for mortal tasks (what tasks can man carry out I wonder that are mortal!?) whether for shearing sheep or gathering the grain in, but the 12^th is better as the high floating spider spins at the full of the day and so is a good day for a woman to set up her loom and start weaving, also on the 12^th geld toiling mules. Avoid the 13^th of the standing moon for beginning sowing – it is also the best day for bedding in vines.

The middle 6^th (16^th) is very unsuitable for vines, but good for a man’s birth but for a girl it is not suitable either to be born or to marry, on the middle 7^th (17^th) cast Demeter’s holy grain on the well-rolled threshing floor and have a woodcutter cut house planks. The middle 9^th (19^th) is a better day towards the evening (I find this precision wonderful). On the 20^th, in the full of the day, father a learned man and the 21^st of the month is best after sunrise but it is worse towards evening. Finally the 30^th is the best day of the month to oversee work and distribute rations.

How he put this together and with what information is unknown but the fact he did shows it was important to him and maybe he felt it was vital it was written down and passed on to future generations. (all contained in lines 766-828)

Sources:

Hesoid (Translated by M.L. West) (1988) Theogony and Works and Days, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Xenophon (Translated by Hugh Tredennick and Robin Waterfield) (1990) Conversations of Socrates, London, Penguin Classics.

Furniture in the Classical world has given archaeologists and classicists a headache as furniture is usually made of a material that does not often survive for archaeologists to find and that material is wood.

The Attic Stelai does help us by giving us the names of some pieces of furniture and wordsmiths have deduced what the words relate to, in many cases there are a few words to describe, what is believed, to be the same or a similar item so I am going to have a look at some of the items that are more likely to relate to our classical wife.

If we consider our own homes and have a think – what are the items that might be considered the most universal in ours and most people’s homes? I had a look around my own home and I came up with a chair, a table, a bed, a wardrobe, and a sideboard/chest of drawers, I feel all other furniture is just versions of these few items and I am eliminating kitchen equipment straight away as there were no fridges or washing machines in Ancient Greece!

First thing to be aware of is that it is believed there was no difference in the construction methods of a couch, as used at a symposium or for dining and a bed for sleeping in and there is also no evidence that the bed-couch was only used for sleeping or feasting so we will start by naming this item a ‘bed-couch’, and it’s Greek name is a ‘kline’.

A kline could be made of marble, wood, or straw, as in a straw mattress and they are listed amongst the furniture confiscated in the Attic Stelai, sadly we have no intact bed to survive in a domestic setting but some pieces of legs from a kline have survived in a funerary context. An extension of this is a klinter which is a type of couch or a reclining chair. A soldier might have a skimpous which is a low, humble pallet bed which could be used by a soldier as a field bed, all these bed frames would have been made of wood.

Image of a Greek vase showing men reclining on a kline at a symposium, image from: La peinture des vases Grecs par Georges Nicole – 1926 (public domain)

Chairs come in a range of styles and each has their own name attached. An anaklisis was a comfortable chair with a back attached, a bathron was a bench or stool or single seat. A diphros is detailed as a precise item – a stool without arms or back and a thranidion was a bench only and finally a chair with a back was called a prosklintron. Very precise names for very precise items. A word we will recognise the root of is thronos and this was the chair of honour or the seat of authority that was not political or divine but, as Pritchett says in his papers on the Attic Stelai, pedagogic. A thronos was used in tombs to hold the ashes of the deceased, where the ashes were put in a box and the box was placed in the seat of the thronos.

A look at the Parthenon Frieze that is at the British Museum gives a lovely example of both a thronos and also a simpler diphros on the Marble relief (Block V) from the east frieze of the Parthanon where the frieze in question shows the quite famous image, of the procession of the Panathenaic festival which commemorates the birthday of the goddess Athena. The block shows, on the left-hand site, Hera sitting next to Zeus with Zeus is sitting on a thronos, his arm leaning on the back of the throne and in his right hand is a thunderbolt or sceptre. To the extreme right of the frieze sits Athena and Hephaestus (he is identified by his crutch under his arm) sitting on plain stools, as befits the lower gods and goddesses.

(The Parthenon Frieze: detail of Hera and Zeus where Zeus is sitting on a throne, Museum no:1816,0610.19, image: The British Museum)

(The Parthenon frieze: detail of Athena and Hephaestus sitting on stools. Museum no: 1816,0610.19, Image: The British Museum)

Pritchett gives two types of tables that are given on the Attic Stelai, and they are, firstly, the trapeza which was a low wooden table that could be made of maple wood, citrus wood, wicker, or ivory and were of a light construction to enable them to be moved around several times during a meal and low enough to fit under the couches when not in use. They were designed with three legs, two in the corners of one end and one in the middle of the opposite end and it is believed these were the most common tables used mainly for food. In vase paintings and funerary wall paintings the image we have is of items being hung on the wall for storage and tables are absent and where tables are shown it is during meals, in workshops or in ‘wedding’ scenes where they are generally the surface to make cakes on. Archaeologically the traces of tables are fairly non-existent with none being found at Olynthus and it is a similar story with other Macedonian sites. The second table listed is a phatne whose meaning is a little fuzzy as it is believed it relates to a manger or table or most likely a dining table. The problem with translating a ‘dead’ language is that the only way to work out what something means is to find other examples of the word in a different context but the contexts do not always match up, so a bit of code breaking is required.

Boxes would have been used for storage and the literary sources tell us that boxes are for storing clothes, for example in Aristophanes Wasps the chorus-leader, mid poem says

‘Yes, save up his phrases and put them in store/like fruit, in your clothes box’ (line 1056),

And in Book 21 of Odysseus

‘She stepped onto a plank where chests stood tall, brimming with clothing scented sweet with cedar’ (line 51)

Also, jewellery and precious objects, as Priam describes in book 24 of Iliad

‘Then down he went himself to his treasure-chamber, high-ceilinged, panelled, fragrant with cedarwood and a wealth of precious objects filled its chests’ (lines 228-234)

And money, as described in ‘Against Eratosthenes where the main character goes to get a talent of silver to pay off the men and he says

‘I entered my bedroom and opened the chest […] ordered them to seize what was in the chest’ (lines 10-12)

Along with scrolls, documents, and tools. The Attic Stelai gives us the names for two types of boxes, a kibotos which is translated as a chest or box and a koite which is translated as just a chest.

Under the heading of furniture is also Doors, which to us may seem strange as they generally come with the house but, again in the Attic Stelai, they are listed as separate items of furniture and were therefore treated as movable pieces of furniture, it is also clear from the evidence that the houses they came from could be sold or rented doorless. There are four different names for doors and they are Thyra which is just translated as ‘door,’ kepaia which is a garden gate, klisiades is a broad double door, the type a cart could get through and finally a phliai is a door jamb.

Shelves are an interesting one as the archaeological evidence for them is never the shelf itself, being made of wood and so perishable, but what is found by archaeologists is either the nails that secured the shelf to the wall or a heap of objects found on the floor by a wall, so the evidence for shelves is actually a lack of evidence!

Similar happens with Open Cupboards where no actual definite open cupboard has been found because, again they are made of wood. There has been found, in the area of Toumba Thessalonikis, a large amount of everyday vessels and carbonized wood in situ leading to the conclusion that it was a wooden cupboard and Nicholas Cahill in his ‘Household and City Organisation at Olynthus’ says that in ‘the house of the comedian’ there was in the north east corner of the kitchen there was kitchen objects (plates etc) clustered in the corner and these were ‘probably stored in a cupboard or chest’ (p.139) and sometimes in archaeology this is as good as it gets which is unbelievable frustrating but that is the world of the ancients. Academics believe there is enough evidence in the literary and visual sources to prove that open cupboards were in use, I visualize a sideboard with no doors, similar items were found made of stone at Skara Brae obviously this is much earlier being from the Stone age period but it does show the concept had been around for a long time before the classical period.

(Skara Brae hut interior, Skara Brae | History, Beautiful Photos & Visiting Information accessed 23/3/26)

Sources:

Andrianou, D. (2009) ‘The Furniture and Furnishings of Ancient Greek Houses and Tombs’ Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,

Ault B.A. (2005) ‘The Excavations at Ancient Halieis Volume 2’, Indiana, Indiana University Press.

Cahill N. (2002) ‘Household and City Organisation at Olynthus’, New Haven and London, Yale University Press.

Edwards M.J. and Usher S., (1985) Greek Orators I: Antiphone and Lysias, Oxford, Oxbow Books

Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles) (1990) ‘The Iliad’, Bath, The Bath Press

Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles) (1996) ‘The Odyssey’, Bah, The Bath Press

‘The Spartans were abstemious, the Boeotians coarse and given to gluttony, the Thessalians gourmets, the Sicilians gourmands, the Athenians renowned for simple tastes’

so says Brian A Sparkes in his excellent 1962 paper on ‘The Greek Kitchen’ and it is an interesting idea that back as far as the Bronze Age areas had food identity, much like our modern world now, for example – I mean, are the English still bad at salads?

The Ancient Greek diet was based on bread, porridge, groats. Athenian loaves and cakes were celebrated and by the end of the 5^th century BCE bread could be readily bought in the market and we even know the name of one prominent Athenian baker at this time – Thearion. There is not a lot of evidence for communal bakeries except for two 6^th century BCE terracotta’s that show groups of figures depicted in the different processes of breadmaking but we have, from archaeology, the evidence for bread making in the home in the mortars and saddle-querns as discussed above. Bread was made from barley meal or wheat meal and both needed a secure bin for storage, terracotta jars have been found archaeologically that have an inset lip that is shaped for a well-fitting lid to keep out the insects, a wide base to keep it steady and not allow it to tip over and two vertical handles for lifting.

To make wheat bread the grain had to be crushed using the holmos to remove the husk, but as barley is a cereal their husks cannot be removed by thrashing so barley needs to be roasted beforehand and for this the Greeks had a flat plate made of terracotta with either a handle (see image) or with a loop to put the thumb through, this was sometimes called a barley parcher or more often simply a frying pan.

(Frying pan, c. end 4^th-beginning 3^rd BCE, Image: Acropolis Museum, Athens)

Along with the holmos or mortars a kneading trough was needed to knead the dough and these could be made of pottery, stone or wood, but stone was expensive and wood was the most likely material used by the average household, another theory is that louters were multi use and could have been used both for washing and for kneading and we have iconography to show this and archaeologically louters are found in association with grinding assemblages in a number of contexts.

To go with the bread a large range of vegetables was added, like beans (see below), garlic, radishes, beets and salads and fresh or pickled fish, for those living in the city with little access to fresh fish, with main dishes of fish like copaic eels, phaleric sprats, tunny, anchovies and pontic herring but also eaten were sardines, tuna, sea bass, sea bream, eels, swordfish and anchovies, along with prawns, squid, octopus and crayfish and it was an important food source for the Classical Greeks.

Like us, the ancient Greeks had three meals a day. Acratisma was the early meal, their breakfast and it was a frugal meal of barley bread dipped in wine that was sometimes accompanied with figs and olives, they did also have two forms of pancakes. One was called a tagenites (which basically means fried), this pancake was made of wheat flour with olive oi, curdled milk and honey and the other was a staititas which could be eating with cheese, honey and sesame seeds. There was also a ‘super-drink’ called a kykeonas drank at breakfast that was said to have medicinal properties, that was made of barley that was boiled with either thyme or mint to flavour it.

Arison was the midday meal and like breakfast was also quite a frugal affair eaten around noon and would consist of generally fresh fish and some type of legume. Legumes were an important part of the diet of the ancient Greeks and included broad beans, chickpeas, lentils or peas, the ancient Greeks understood that legumes had the ability to provide nutrients and replenish the exhausted soil and they were grown for this as well as to be eaten.

Bread was always eaten with lunch, like breakfast this could be barley bread or wheat bread, these would be enjoyed an accompaniment of eggs – either boiled or eaten raw, cheese, nuts, fruits, dates, figs and apples (which were highly esteemed) or olives.

Deipon was their main and most important meal of the day which was taken at nightfall, usually after the working day was over. The ancient Greeks liked the large ‘congregational’ type of meal where many people gathered together to share food and it is still a part of Greek culture today as a mezze style meal consisting of a large assortment of dishes that were laid out for people so they could take what they wanted. Dishes of fish, meat, vegetables, olives, cheese, soups and stews. Poultry was common fare but with a much wider variety than modern times where pigeons, pheasants, mallards, doves, quails and moorhens were eaten, and although there were pigs, cattle, sheep and goats the poorer levels of society could not afford such animals and were restricted to chickens and ducks, but pork sausages of a type similar to our black pudding, consisting of the great gut of the pig or other animal stuffed with intestines, were eaten by rich and poor alike and especially those who lived in the city where meat was very expensive. Cattle, sheep and goat meat was a secondary use of the animal, they were kept by the wealthy for their skin, wool or milk first and they principally eaten because of religious sacrifice.

Vegetables could be costly in the city so the poorer families would have to make do with dried vegetables and they commonly ate oak acorns, but commonly available were carrots, radishes and turnips with leafy green vegetables usually eaten as salad, like romaine lettuce, rocket, cabbage and cress. The spectrum of vegetables available also included garlic, leeks, celery, fennel, asparagus, artichokes, squash and cucumber and all these could be flavoured with seasonings and spices that we would be familiar with – cumin, coriander, dill, fennel, anise, rue, celery and celery seed along with the ever present olive oil which was given to them by the goddess Athena at the birth of Athens and was used for cooking, pickling, as a garnish and a dip, olive oil was the one thing that was always on the dining table at meals

There was pudding too, in the guise of dishes that were the ancestor to baklava, these were plakous and kortoplakous and made of thin sheets of pastry dough with nuts and honey and this could be accompanied with dried or fresh fruits like figs, pomegranates, grapes and raisins.

When you read through the lists of food available it is quite hard to believe it was the Bronze Age with such a range of tastes and spices, admittedly I am sure the poorer Athenians had a lot of meatless stews and basic breads but there was variety and interest at a level I find quite amazing.

Sources:

Ault, B.A, and Nevett, L.C. ‘Digging Houses: Archaeologies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek Domestic Assemblages’ (pp.43-56) in: Allison, P.M. (1999) ‘The Archaeology of Household Activities’ Routledge, Abingdon.

Rittika Dhar, “Ancient Greek Food: Bread, Seafood, Fruits, and More!”, History Cooperative, June 22, 2023, https://historycooperative.org/ancient-greek-food/. (Accessed February 16, 2026)

Sparkes, B. A. (1991) Greek Pottery: An Introduction, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Sparkes, B. A. (1962) The Greek Kitchen, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol 82 (1962), pp.121-137

Hestia is the fire and the fire is Hestia. Hestia is the goddess of the hearth and so was the fire which burned in the domestic fireplace of every Greek house. She was one of three gods, the other two being Zeus and Athena, that, according to Plato, were worthy of a place on the Acropolis in Athens. Plato also said that as the hearth in the house was immovable this is the reason why Hestia is unable to take part in the procession of the gods, we can interpret this to mean that Hestia as the Hearth in the home is a permeant fixture, many ancient writers thought Hestia and ‘Oikos’ or home, were synonymous with each other.

Before we look at what Hestia’s role was in the house we should understand the change from fireplace to brazier, most likely brought on by the change from the simple early Greek one or two room house to the ‘new’ classical single entrance courtyard house. As in my previous chapter on the Classical house, the single entrance courtyard house was a house that followed the new philosophical lines of democracy where every man had a voice and the right to control his family and his future.

The change to the courtyard house meant that the early fixed hearths of the Iron Age and Archaic Greek houses where the hearth is a very visual centrepiece of the house, that could dominate the space and was used for cooking and heating in its central position, were being to be replaced with braziers.

Some Classical houses still did have hearths and almost all the hearths found have either been centrally placed in a room and defined by stone kerbs so useful for warming the one room or placed against a wall in the porch and these have archaeological evidence of being used for cooking as evidence of cooking ware has been found in them.

What archaeology has shown us is that from the late Archaic period onwards many Greek houses were built without a hearth and these houses, when excavated, do have braziers in them. Braziers are better for the courtyard house where there is more multi-purpose and multi-use rooms, they are small in size and light to move around and so a terracotta brazier would have provided portable heat.

Classical braziers have two main forms and both types are found in a 5th century BCE context in Athens and in other sites. Pictured above is a low, conical type that has a broader open fire pan and it is often flanked with short vertical projections that have been interpretated as spit-rests, this one is best suited for heating the space around it. The second type is a short cylindrical shape that has pierced holes in its top and sides, with vertical lugs or horizontal supports found on the top that carried a ‘chyrta’ or ‘lopas’ (a terracotta cooking pot) above the heat of the charcoal.

Hearths that sit as a fire on the ground use wood as a fuel supply but for efficiency a brazier would burn charcoal. As a heat source charcoal is more economically efficient, it is lighter than wood to move around, it uses less store space and less is needed to cook food or heat a room, and in a city like Athens charcoal would be a cleaner fuel so would be a optimum choice for the Athenian city dweller.

Sadly because braziers do not have the ‘wow’ factor that the stylish figured ware has they are often lost in the pages of the archaeological reports, but they are shown to be found in Corinth, Athens and Delos, and where they are found they are often found in multiples, so suggesting that a house (or shop) often had two or more braziers, so like a portable heater they might have been used in the workrooms of the day to heat the space.

Interestingly at Olynthus there are braziers shown in the archaeological reports but they are never found in the same houses where hearths have been discovered, so suggesting that either the hearth or the brazier was the heat and cooking source. A very impressive bronze brazier was found buried under the floor of a room in House A xi 10 at Olynthus waiting for its owner to return to collect it after Philip of Macedon had finished his rampaging.

(Image of bronze brazier from the original archaeology reports of Olynthus)

The Hearth and Domestic Cult

The hearth or Εστια (‘Estia) was the location of rites of passage for the Classical Athenian family and was used for the domestic cult. Some scholars believe the hearth fire cleansed, others that it symbolised the oikos or household, but what is certain was that at three important points in a persons life - birth, marriage and death - the hearth was the central feature.

After the birth of a baby in the Athenian family there was a decision to be made as to whether to keep the baby or not. This was done on the fifth, seventh or tenth day after its birth and if the baby was to be kept the father had to wash, strip and run naked around the hearth several times while holding the baby. This was an ancient ritual which is documented in the ancient sources as being called ‘amphidromia.

An Athenian wedding ceremony was a three day affair and on the second day the bridal party had a banquet at the bride’s family home, where at the end the couple was escorted to the house of the husband’s family, which was now to become the couples family home, carrying a torch, and here her husbands mother met her at the door, led them to the hearth whereupon the hearth was lit from their lighted torch. It was at this point the couple were showered with a mix of dates, coins, dried fruits, figs and nuts called the katachysmata in a symbol of sweetness, health and fertility.

When a death occurred the family carried out the prothesis. This was where the deceased was laid out, the eyes and mouth were closed and the body was washed by the women of the house as a

mark of respect and care. Then women would cry, wail and tear their hair before the deceased was taken to the cemetery to be laid out to rest and it was here at the cemetery that offerings were made to their gods. The family then returned to the house and held a funeral banquet, or perideipnon, at the hearth of the deceased.

Something that we have no evidence for in Athens but we do have evidence for in Argos is that when a man died the fire in his family’s hearth was extinguished, I would suggest that it was probably done in a ritualistic way.

These are three very important moments in a Athenians life that needed to be done correctly, so if there was no hearth, and as we now know from archaeology that Classical Greek and Athenian houses did not have a hearth, then the brazier must have served the purpose as a ‘fire’ and given the appropriate sacred symbolism needed as a centrepiece for the family’s rites of passages.

(A range of storage vessels, including ancient amphora, from a small family run olive oil producer in Türkiye, photo: my own)

Well it’s an old one and probably only those Brits over the age of 50 will know who Eric and Ernie were (the funniest double act EVER) but while musing over how to write a few thousand words on the everyday pots of the Classical Athenian wife, this was the only title I could come up with so that’s what you get…. anyway let’s crack on shall we?

There is a problem with trying to trace the everyday pots of our wife and that is, as Bradley A Ault and Lisa Nevett put it in their paper ‘Greek Domestic Assemblages’ ‘Traditionally, Classical archaeologists have tended to display relatively little interest in exploring the domestic context in comparison with the attention which has been paid to public monuments and funerary sites’,(Page 43) which actually made me feel a little better as I have been reading, researching and googling for a couple of weeks to find the information I need but everything I was finding wasn’t quite right and I was beginning to wonder if I was asking the right question.

They go on to look at a few sites and highlight some of the problems. In Delos, for example, where the structures excavated are some of the first Greek houses to ever be excavated, it was evident that what the excavators wanted was the architecture because ‘the finds were generally simply cleared away and received little attention in the publications’ (Page 44) and so become invisible to future researchers. A similar problem had occurred more recently when an area around the Athenian Agora was excavated, it was known that large numbers of finds were recovered from the Agora area, and it is believed that many of these were from domestic contexts, but ‘the publications include little information about either the architectural contexts in which they were recovered or what other objects were found with them’ (Page 45).

When extensive inventories of pottery and the other small finds is included, say for example in Attica, they ‘do not include details of where the majority of the objects were found’ (Page 45) so yes, we get a valuable picture of the domestic assemblages as a whole, but the information giving us the opportunity to reconstruct some patterns of house activity is not available.

One conclusion of Ault and Nevett, in this paper, is that the common thread in these studies and is, that the material is there to answer a few questions on the general layout of the houses and dating of occupation but do not go any further than this.

Which gives a researcher like me a headache. To try to understand how my classical wife worked and moved through her house, the archaeology of those left behind is my starting point. I look at archaeology reports of known sites of houses lived in during the classical period and use them to find where the assemblages of household ware has been found, with this information we can try to figure out the areas the classical wife worked and lived, from this we can try to figure out if she did actually have a kitchen and where did she cook? (still a debated point), did she have a space of her own to sleep and rest? where did she weave? where did she store her goods? and how much storage did she have?

All of these questions I am trying to answer so I can understand her life, and all of these questions require interesting sites and good archaeology, but all is not lost as we have the site of Olynthus so help us, at this site the archaeology of the everyday has been recorded in a way that mean we can start to unpick our classical wife’s life.

Let us start by having a wander through the pots and vessels that were available to our classical wife and see if we can put some names to some images and understand what they were used for.

For ease I have grouped them into ‘Household Ware’, ‘Symposium Ware’ and ‘Ladies Toilette Ware’.

Household ware

If we start with the ‘heavy duty shapes’, as Brian A Sparkes calls them, starting with the big transport amphorae. This is a large jar for storing, sealing and moving wine, oil, fish etc, they had a long body, narrow neck and two vertical handles. Amphorae of different sizes and types were used for storing and transporting goods, the transport amphorae is usually the most recognizable shape. Of the 13 houses re examined by Cahill at Olynthus, 8 had the remains of storage amphorae.

(Amphorae, c.550-500 BCE, Museum no: EA22345, image: British Museum)

The ‘Ali baba’ pithoi were large pots used for storing goods, some of pithoi ones found at Olynthus can hold 1000 litres and out of the 13 highlighted houses by Cahill, only 2 do not have evidence of pithoi, in some cases there 3, 4 or 5 pithoi and as many Greek households aimed to store a year’s supply of food these pithoi were needed to do this but not all houses had these facilities and so it would seem that families would make the choice between storing food or relying on the local market to buy supplies. The pithoi held dry or wet produce and, because of their size and weight when empty, they were dug into the ground as moving them was not an option, and this is evidenced by the rooms at Olynthus that are labelled ‘storage rooms’ due to the presence of pithoi and in House A8 at Olynthus the pithoi was dug in up to its neck.

(Pithos, c.600-500BCE, Museum No.1868,0405.158, image: British Museum)

Also required for the household was large mortars, it is known that along with grindstones there were two types of mortars that had specific names and specific different jobs, in archaeology reports they are commonly known as mortars but if we look at them individually, we can see they have different properties. The thyeia, (in Latin the mortarium) had the job of grinding grain for flour, in the evidence for Archaic and Classical Greece indicates that it was a pottery vessel and was a common item in every Greek household many of these were found in Olynthus.

The second type is the holmos (in Latin the pila) which was a large pounding trough commonly made of wood or stone, and like the thyeia it was also a common household item. Hesoid tells us the holmos was often made of wood and used a wooden pestle, also of wood, to pound food into a pulp, Hesoid also recommends that the ideal mortar was three foot and three cubits for the pestle. At Olynthus 14 stone holmoi were found but also listed in Cahill’s re-examination of the 13 houses are grindstones, moratoria with spouts and stone mortars.

Also found at Olynthus were 15 saddle querns (of which 7 came from one house, considered to be a business), which have been used since the Neolithic to grind grain for flour, made up of a rectangular lower stone and a oval upper stone, whose undersides are often scratched with narrow grooves to make the grinding more effective and the flow of grain more flowing. At Olynthus 39 of the ‘hopper-rubber’ type of grinders were found, these are more sophisticated as they had a reservoir in the upper stone to trickle the grain for grinding and a handle to move it side to side to grind the grain.

The last of the ‘heavy-duty’ pots was the shallow basins with stands, two handles and a spout, called ‘Louterion’ or ‘Louteria’, from a word meaning ‘wash’, these were found in nearly all the 13 houses Cahill looked at and were used for water for bathing. This is not a cooking pot but I have included it as they are a common occurrence in ancient Greek sites.

(Louteria, c.600-575BCE, National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

The other coarse ware items necessary for cooking and producing food include a ‘chytra’ a form of kettle or cooking pot that had either one or two handles and could be lidded.

(Chytra, various types, c.500-400 BCE Museum no. 1864,1007.1802, image: British Museum)

For water collection there are buckets (kadoi) that had two vertical handles at the neck for threading rope so they could be let down a well, also the ‘hydria’ jar, this was designed with one vertical handle to use for pouring and two horizontal handles for carrying, they were made of terracotta, like many of the more ornate pottery, but also found were bronze ones, like this stunning example from the British Museum:

(Bronze hydria, with the figures of Dionysus and Ariadne, c.350-300 BCE, Museum no. 1875,1110.1, image British Museum)

An item found in many of the Olynthus houses was a ‘Lekane’ or ‘Lekanai’, this was a large household-ware basin or bowl that had two horizontal handles and could be lidded, it had many uses in the kitchen for food preparation and other everyday uses.

(Lekanis, c.425 BCE, Museum no.1864,1007.1569, image: British Museum)

For use in the kitchen there were ‘olpe’ or jug, this was usually a slender shape with no separate neck and an unusually low handle, there was also a jug called a ‘oinochoe’ whose name literally means ‘wine-pourer’.

(Left: Olpe, c.440-430 BCE, Museum no. 1873,0820.381. Right: Bronze Oinochoe, c.450-400 BCE, Museum no. 1886,0312.4. Images: British Museum)

One item that pops up in a lot of the houses at Olynthus is the ‘salt-cellar’, this name is a bit of an anomaly as it seems to be the name given to any small pot, this one (below) is glazed with black slip and the black slip was a common way to finish some of the everyday pots of the classical Greek wife.

(Salt-cellar, c.450-400 BCE, for size its diameter is 5.25cm, Museum no. 1894,1101.135, Image British Museum)

Another item that was common and also found in many of the houses at Olynthus and elsewhere, is the ‘krater’. The krater came in many different styles, the column-krater, the volute-krater, the calyx-krater and the bell-krater but they were all basically large open bowls for mixing wine with water because in Ancient Greece the wine was always watered as they considered it quite barbaric to drink wine un-watered. Some kraters are highly decorated and are everything we think of as ‘Red-figure pottery’, like this example from the British Museum,

(Bell krater with image of the purification of Orestes at Delphi, c.380-360 BCE, Museum no:1772,0230.06, Image: British Museum)

Also made of coarse-ware was the brazier or ‘Eschara’, this was used to heat a room and to cook food. For a fuel source it used charcoal instead of wood because in the city, especially Athens, charcoal took up less space, was lighter to move and burnt with less smoke, so was more city friendly. But we will look at the brazier in more detail a little later.

(Terracotta brazier, c.5th-4^th century BCE, Athens Archaeological Museum)

So, we now have a selection of household pots for the classical Athenian wife - the pithos for storage, the amphorae for transport and the chytra that food was cooked in and the lekanis, olpe, oinochoe, hydria, krater and salt cellar to put the cooked dishes, wine or water in for serving at meal times. I would suggest there would be other types of pots for cooking or pots that were multi-functional, so they could be listed in archaeological reports, for example, as an olpe for serving water/wine but that does not necessarily mean they were never used for cooking or warming sauces in.

Lunch? … anyone

Like us, the ancient Greeks had three meals a day. Acratisma was the early meal, their breakfast and it was a frugal meal of barley bread dipped in wine that was sometimes accompanied with figs and olives, they did also have two forms of pancakes. One was called a tagenites (which basically means fried), this pancake was made of wheat flour with olive oi, curdled milk and honey and the other was a staititas which could be eating with cheese, honey and sesame seeds. There was also a ‘super-drink’ called a kykeonas drank at breakfast that was said to have medicinal properties, that was made of barley that was boiled with either thyme or mint to flavour it.

Arison was the midday meal and like breakfast was also quite a frugal affair eaten around noon and would consist of generally fresh fish and some type of legume. Legumes were an important part of the diet of the ancient Greeks and included broad beans, chickpeas, lentils or peas, the ancient Greeks understood that legumes had the ability to provide nutrients and replenish the exhausted soil and they were grown for this as well as to be eaten. Fish was readily available so it was an important food source and included sardines, tuna, sea bass, sea bream, eels, swordfish and anchovies, along with prawns, squid, octopus and crayfish and for those living in the city salted or pickled fish was available.

Bread was a big part of their staple diet and this was always eaten with lunch, like breakfast this could be barley bread but wheat and semolina bread was also available, these would be enjoyed an accompaniment of eggs, cheese, nuts, fruit, dried or fresh, or olives.

Deipon was their main mean and most important meal of the day which was taken at nightfall, usually after the working day was over. The ancient Greeks liked the large ‘congregational’ type of meal where many people gathered together to share food and it is still a part of Greek culture today, where a mezze style meal of a large assortment of dishes were laid out for people to take what they wanted. Dishes of fish, meat, vegetables, olives, cheese, soups and stews. Poultry was common fare but with a much wider variety than modern times where pigeons, pheasants, mallards, doves, quails and moorhens were eaten, and although there were pigs, cattle, sheep and goats the poorer levels of society could not afford such animals and were restricted to chickens and ducks, but pork sausages were readily available to all and especially those who lived in the city where meat was very expensive. Cattle, sheep and goat meat was a secondary use of the animal, they were kept by the wealthy for their skin, wool or milk first.

Vegetables could be costly in the city so the poorer families would have to make do with dried vegetables and they commonly ate oak acorns, but commonly available were carrots, radishes and turnips with leafy green vegetables usually eaten as salad, like romaine lettuce, rocket, cabbage and cress. The spectrum of vegetables available also included garlic, leeks, celery, fennel, asparagus, artichokes, squash and cucumber and all these could be flavoured with seasonings and spices that we would be familiar with – cumin, coriander, dill, fennel, anise, rue, celery and celery seed along with the ever present olive oil which was given to them by the goddess Athena at the birth of Athens and was used for cooking, pickling, as a garnish and as a dip, olive oil was the one thing that was always on the dining table at meals

There was pudding too, in the guise of dishes that were the ancestor to baklava, these were plakous and kortoplakous and made of thin sheets of pastry dough with nuts and honey and this could be accompanied with dried or fresh fruits like figs, pomegranates, grapes and raisins.

(Part 2 to come- Symposium ware and the wife’s Toilette Ware)

Sources:

Ault, Bradley A. and Nevett, Lisa C. Digging Houses: Archaeologies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek Domestic Assemblages’, pp.43-56, In: Allison, Penelope M. (eds) (1999) ‘The Archaeology of Household Activities’ Routledge, Abingdon.

Britannica Editors. “Greek pottery”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Oct. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/art/Greek-pottery. Accessed 9 February 2026.

Rittika Dhar, “Ancient Greek Food: Bread, Seafood, Fruits, and More!”, History Cooperative, June 22, 2023, https://historycooperative.org/ancient-greek-food/. (Accessed February 16, 2026)

Sparkes, B. A. (1991) ‘Greek Pottery: An Introduction’ Manchester, Manchester University Press.

(The Hemispherical Greek Sundial from Ai Khanoum, Afghanistan. c.3nd-2rd century BCE)

So I went off in search of an answer to a very simple question ‘What were the hours of daylight in Ancient Greece?’ and I know the logical answer is ‘the same as in modern Greece silly!’ and that would be correct but what I did not expect was to discover that the daylight hours changed with the seasons.

This is because in Ancient Athens the daylight hours were traditionally divided into 12 equal parts, a division that was called ‘seasonal hours’. This means that the length of the hours varied with the seasons, so, for example, in summer an hour could last 75 minutes and in winter it could be around 45 minutes.

The seasonal hours system was a practical way for the daily life of the ancient Athenians because it aligned with the natural rhythms of daylight and meant they could work more efficiently.

But how did they tell the time?

With a sundial. The earliest sundial has been found in ancient Egypt and was believed to be used to measure work hours, it is also known from ancient Babylonia astronomy, and in both societies they date from c.1500BCE . For the ancient Greek world it was Herodotus who first mentions an ancestor to the sundial, the gnomon and the principle of the gnomon is so simple - a stick that is planted in the ground casts a shadow on a plane that one can determine, following previous observations, the hours of the day and periods of the year.

The ancient Greeks developed many principles and forms of the sundial, these principles were introduced into Greece by Anaximander of Miletus c.560 BCE. The important piece of science that was developed was the science of ‘geometry’ and for the purposes of a sundial, understanding the ‘conic sections’ that are traced by the ‘sundial nodus’, it was this knowledge that was crucial for developing the science of the sundial.

This is a more modern sundial but it gives you the parts that I have mentioned, it’s so much easier to see it than describe it. You can see on the ‘arm’ or ‘style’ a notch called the ‘nodus’ and the nodus has a very important job - as the sun gets higher in the summer or lower in the winter, the shadow the nodus will trace a different path each day, called ‘declination lines’ and they allow the sundial to tell the date.

The ‘conic section’ or ‘quadratic curve’ (see image below) is a curve that has been obtained from a cone’s surface intersecting a plane, the conic sections were studied by the ancient Greek mathematicians which culminated, in c.200 BCE, with Apollonius of Perga’s systematic work on their properties

(Images courtesy of Wikipedia)

From a very simple question came a big rabbit hole I fell down and now have a better understanding of Greek time and the principles of the sundial - even if my maths is a little shaky!

I find it very difficult to jump in ‘midway’ in a timeline so before I make a start on the pots and pottery used by the Classical Athenians I did have to quickly understand how they got to that point in the history of pottery, so here is a brief history of pottery and pots from the early man to the potters wheel.

Humans have been making things out of the clay from the earth for over 30,000 years, with the earliest recorded evidence of the use of clay going back to the late palaeolithic period (the palaeolithic period covers a span from 50,000 -10,000 years ago) in central and western Europe, where we have evidence of fired and unfired clay figurines.

China was way ahead of Europe where they were using clay to make vessels 20,000 years ago where there is evidence of pottery to be found in recently redated shards that were found in the Xianrendong caves in the Yangste region of China. These have been dated to around 19,200 - 20,200 years agoand the pots are believed to be bag shaped made with local clay that had inclusions of quartz or feldspar, some even had decorated walls.

But for the purposes of Classical Greece I shall stick to the European side of pottery because when we stray to China we step a long way out of my knowledge zone. In the Czech republic is a site called ‘Dolni Vestonice’ and it is here they found the most incredible figurine that dates to 31,000-27,000 years ago. It is called the ‘Venus of Dolni Vestonice’ and is a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure. (see below)

(Photo credit “Petr Novák, Wikipedia” https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2682270)

It is not a large item as it stands only 4.4inches tall but it is significant because it is our earliest European ceramic item. Visually it follows the same shape of other Venus figures that have been found (carved from stone in some cases) with exceptionally large breasts, belly and hips and because of these features it is considered a fertility symbol. Interestingly she has 4 small holes on top of her head which archaeologists believe could have held 4 feathers and so she would have been seen wearing a headdress. The Venus is not the only clay item found here, they also found animal figures that consisted of bears, lions, mammoths, horses, foxes, rhinos and owl, and also more than 2,000 balls of burnt clay.

At the Dolni Vestonice site there is, about 80 metres away from the main site and in an isolated spot, a lean-to shelter dug into the embankment and it is at this spot that the Venus, along with 2,300 clay figurines of various figures were found in and around the remains of a ‘kiln’ which may be, according to archaeologists, the first instance of a covered oven hot enough to fire clay although it is generally believed that items like these would have been ‘fired’ in an open fire. It is known that the open fire technique could reach temperatures of 600-900 Celsius and there are example also of Middle Nile Egyptian vessels using this method that date to 10,000 years ago.

If we jump forward from the earliest fired clay to the early neolithic and 8,000 BCE, we move to the Near East where special ovens, used initially to parch cereal grains and for baking bread, were just being built, this coincided with humans starting to adopt an agriculture lifestyle and so they had the need for things to store food and grain or seeds in. These ovens had the advantage of allowing people to control the fire which produced a higher temperature, thus creating the possibility of firing pottery. By using a kiln, with the simplest form being a ‘kiln pit’, to fire pottery and not an open fire you can achieve higher and longer temperatures that can be controlled easier and so the ability to create fired pots is achievable.

The earliest form of pot making was by creating long clay sausages that were coiled on top of each other and then pinched and smoothed together to create the body of the vessel. We have evidence, on the base of pots, of leaves, and archaeologists believe the early coiled pots were often put on mats or large leaves to make them easier to work as it is easier to turn a mat than constantly move around a pot being made, which moves us on nicely to the invention of the Potters Wheel.

The oldest form of potters wheel was developed as an extension of the turned mat and are called ‘tourneys’ or ‘slow wheels’. Tourneys were in use in the Near East from around 4500BCE and were turned by hand slowly pile the coils of clay were put on top and shaped. Older designs required a lot of time to spin by hand or foot and it seems only a limited number of potters used them as only a small range of pots were fashioned on the tourney. We do have evidence of a tourney from the Iranian plateau where a clay slow wheel that turned on animal bone that dates back to 5,200 - 4,700 BCE.

(Interesting side note: The potters wheel turntable pre-dates the wheel as the earliest wheeled vehicles didn’t arrive until around 3500-3350 BCE in Europe and Asia)

By the mid-late 3000 BCE the ‘fast wheel’ was developed and was operated by being charged with energy by either pushing it around with a stick or kicking it. This is the flywheel principle which uses the energy stored in the rotating mass of the heavy stone wheel to speed up the process of spinning. With new inventions come new techniques and with the ‘fast wheel’ came a technique I think many of us have heard of, called ‘throwing’ clay. This is where a lump of clay is put in the middle of the wheel and as the wheel is turned it is squeezed, lifted and shaped into a pot.

Where the first potters wheel was developed is open to scholarly debate, with Egyptologists wanting to say it was Egypt, and it may have been, but scholars suggest the first potters wheel was developed by the Ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia as a stone potters wheel has been found in the Ancient Sumerian city of Ur which dates to 3129 BCE, along with this were fragments of wheel thrown pottery of an earlier date that were discovered from the same area.

Although south eastern Europe has claimed, along with China, to be possible places of origin and a potters wheel has been found in Western Ukraine which has been attributed to the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture, this has been dated to mid-400 BCE and is the oldest ever found, so pre dating Mesopotamia by a few hundred years. It is still considered amongst some scholars that Egypt is most likely the place of origin of the potters wheel, which included the turntable shaft that was lengthened about 3000 BCE and the flywheel added.

Confused! Yes I agree it is rather messy isn’t it, but what we can say is that the exact origin of the ‘fast wheel’ is unclear but we have evidence of a wheel from the Ukraine region around 4500 BCE and also in Ur around 3200 BCE and there were Egyptian adaptions to it in 3000 BCE.

By the time we get to the Early Bronze Age, c.2,400 BCE, the potters wheel is widespread with the earliest image of the use of a potters wheel being from Egypt, in Egypt being able to make pots meant you had a high level of talent, so potters were believed to have high social status in the Ancient Worlds.

So now we have the potters wheel part 2 will delve into Greek pottery - what was common ware, what was symposium ware and how we know so much about it.

(Image: Some different types of potters wheels)

Sources:

The History of Pottery: From Ancient Craft to Contemporary Art - potterspad.com (Accessed 25/1/26)

Potter's wheel - Wikipedia (Accessed 25/1/26)

Dolní Věstonice (archaeological site) - Wikipedia (Accessed 26/1/26)

Pottery in Antiquity - World History Encyclopedia (Accessed 26/1/26)

When Was the Potter's Wheel Invented? - Malevus (Accessed 28/1/26)

Sparkes, B.A. (1991) Greek Pottery: An Introduction, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

(Image of a pottery model kalathos, or wool-basket, with accompanying textile production tools, c.6th BCE, British Museum accession no. 121904401

I am including this final accessory because of its symbolism for our Classical wife. A kalathos or wool basket was used to gather and store raw wool but also as a storage container for the balls of yarn the women would have produced from the raw wool.

It was an item that, as many of us will understand, many uses, we all have that container we bought to store one thing but then realise how useful it is for other things and its use changes, well the kalathos is that item. The literary sources say it was used to hold wool, food like bread, cheese, milk, fruits and vegetables, small animals (I love that someone could have looked at a kalathos and a lamb and wondered if it would fit!) or flowers, but apart from its most common function of storing wool it was also used as a toy container.

The kalathos was a woven basket mostly made of willow rods and had a round base with a cylindrical, wide mouthed, upward flaring body, it is not shown on iconographic images to have had any handles or a lid and the surviving images we do have, mainly on vases or funerary markers, show it containing combed or carded wool that was all ready for spinning but it is also shown holding finished balls of yarn and the kalathos is particularly well documented on Greek vases.

So why am I including it alongside shoes, belts, make up and jewellery? Because like all these items the kalathos is used as a symbol of a well run household, a domesticated well-trained wife and, when put with a bride and her husband on an image, it becomes a symbol of a future marital arrangement. As an item it is not required to produce yarn or textiles but it is an easy to recognise symbol, in a mainly illiterate society, of the wool working skills that every Athenian wife was expected to have and so it is a symbol of her domesticity and compliance to societies expectations.

(Make up in pyxis. Image from Athens Archaeological Museum)

‘with a great deal of white face powder so that she might appear paler than she was, and with plenty of rouge so that she might seem to have a more rosy complexion than she truly had’ (Xenophon, Oeconomicus,10.2)

When looking for evidence of make-up, the iconographic and literary evidence is scarce and the above quote is the one generally used to prove women were discouraged from using make up. It is taken from Xenophon’s ‘Oeconomicus’ where Ischomachus is telling his wife off for wearing make up on her face but for the women who wanted to attempt to achieve a fair complexion they would turn to make up to lighten their skin or redden their lips and cheeks or emphasise their eyes.

This was because for our Classical wife a fair complexion was a visible indication of her privilege and virtue, it meant her husband was wealthy enough that he could afford to keep her at home and sheltered so by using slaves to do the jobs outside the home his wife would be kept sheltered. But what of the average Classical wife whose husband was not one of the wealthy elites? To look at her it would have been obvious that a percentage of her time would have been out and about in the sun, running errands or dealing with jobs that ensured the household ran smoothly and therefore her not so white skin was a stark reminder that she was the wife of a poorer man who had to have his wife out of the house to do some type of work.

Apart from the section in Xenophon, there are references in Aristophanes to women using make up to appear younger in Assemblywomen (878, 928, 1072) and Wealth (1064) but there is not a whole lot more. Iconographic evidence is not helpful either as although we do have images of women holding up mirrors to look at themselves, there appears to be no images of women actually applying make-up, add to this the fact that the black and red figure technique in pottery art make it difficult to add the detail of make up to women’s faces.

So although the iconographic and literary evidence is scarce or non-existent we do have archaeological evidence and this evidence is widespread because in women’s graves we commonly find the ceramic boxes that contain tablets of white lead carbonate and red alkanet along with (or as well as) cosmetic spoons and applicators made of ivory and bronze, these items are exclusively found in female graves so we can confidently say that cosmetics were used by women only.

The Classical Wife’s Toilette

First things first, let us look at what the possibilities were for our wife. There were four elements that served as a woman’s make up box that relate to skin care, skin lightening, rouge, and eye enhancer.

Skin care used ingredients like olive oil with herbs and saffron which were used to anoint or rub the skin with the result of cleansing or softening her skin. Skin lightening was achieved using white lead, ivory powder, or chalk and to add colour a rouge was make up of alkanet root, orchil dye (ie seaweed) or mulberry juice and this tinted the cheek and lips for colour and to enhance her natural beauty. Eye enhancer was also used and was made from kohl, stibnite, soot, and other ground minerals with the result of darkening the eyes and eyebrows (a mono brow was quite fashionable at the time!) where it was used as mascara and eyeliner too.

The ceramic boxes, or Pyxis (see image above) were small round lidded boxes of various shapes and sizes, used to store cosmetics, powder or jewellery and it is these that were put in the tombs of dead women to go with them to the afterlife and in many cases the make up was still present. By analysing the contents of these pyxis we can discover what they were made of. For example small cubes of white cosmetic material found in a small terracotta toilet box from the grave of a woman excavated in Corinth in 1930, dated to c.400 BCE was analysed and show to be lead carbonate. Another sample from near the Athenian Agora, dated to c.5^th-4^th centuries BCE was described as ‘lumps of smooth white pigment found in a grave with remains of a vessel’ was found to contain artificial white lead, i.e. man-made lead carbonate. Another three samples from tombs excavated at Demetrias, Thessaly, which date from end of the 4^th century BCE to 3^rd century BCE after analysis were shown to contain cerussite (the mineral form of lead carbonate), a mix of cerussite and hydrocerussite (the mineral form of white lead).

In Sicily cosmetic samples from the West and South West of the island, which are dated to the 6^th-5^th centuries BCE, are shown to be variously coloured as white, black, blue and red or pink and contained gypsyum and antiydrite and cerussite, gypsum and litharge (red oxide).

Therefore we know that the most important type of make-up for a Ancient Greek woman was white because apart from the coloured samples from Sicily, the rest of the samples are all white in colour, and we also know that pale or white skin was important to an Classical woman, so it would confirm that make up was used to make her skin lighter and make her conform to what was considered the Classical ideal.

So what would our Classical wife had used or had? When she was in public, at a wedding maybe, it is likely she used the white lead to whiten her arms and face and put a little rouge from mulberry juice on her cheeks and lips to add colour, her eyes might have been brightened with kohl or soot. It is unlikely she would have worn it out to collect water or go to the market as she would not have wanted to be confused with a hetaireia (paid companion) or worse still, a prostitute.

A hetaireia was recognised by their bold use of make up with dark kohl, vibrant rouge and white lead to create such striking contrasts on their face because for her beauty was central to her role as a paid companion. Their influence over the elite men they spent time with meant it was vital they looked young and beautiful because it was their appearance that made their profession, so for them cosmetics became a source of their power.

Outside of a wedding it is likely one of the other limited times a young women wore make up in public was as a kanephoros or basket bearer in a ritual procession, where more subtle make up was used to present her as a refined and polished girl. In this role her arms and face might have been carefully lightened because it was important to be seen correctly as she was a visual representation of her family’s status.

Sources:

A Chemical Study of the contents of an Ancient Greek cosmetic pot or pyxis by Andrew Hardy and Gavyn Rollinson

Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece by M.M. Lee

Dress and Adornment in Ancient Greece. Chapter 12 Glammed Up Greeks: Cosmetics in Ancient Greece by Anna Harley

(Greek vase showing wedding preparations, c.440-415 BCE, source The British Museum)

In Classical Athens scent was everywhere and a part of everyday life. Scented oils were used in ritual and to anoint cult statues, for example the ‘ompholos’ of Delphi was smeared daily with perfumes. At festive times like marriages the bride would wear perfume to add to her beauty. Perfumes were used in funerary rituals with perfume used in the preparations of the corpses and cloths, on the funerary bed, in the pyre or with inhumations. At banquets men wore scented oils at the symposium.

Evidence for perfume is not easy to uncover but we do have vases and jars that have specific uses that are linked to perfume and perfume production. The images found on vases and the writings of Theophrastus, whose treatise ‘On odours’ or ‘Concerning odours’ written at the end of the 4^th century BCE gives us some good information on perfume production.

What was ancient perfume?

Ancient perfume was made up from a variety of oil bases scented with different products. The oils that were used as bases ranged from oil from green olives as the most common, to Ben oil from the horseradish tree, drumstick tree, or Ben oil tree (it has a variety of names) was the most valuable, but also used was bitter almond oil and sesame oil, sesame oil was considered the best for fixing the smell of roses.

Once you have your oil the next step was to add an astringent ingredient like aloe, jennt or sedge to astringent the fats, which was done by heating the oil and astringent together. It was important to make the oils astringent as this meant that the oils helped stabilise the scents and prevented them from evaporating too quickly, which meant the perfume was effective and lasted longer. When you had the astringent oils the next step, while it was being heated, was to add flower petals or herbs to create a scent.

The history of Perfume can be traced back to Ancient Mesopotamia where, recorded on cuneiform tablets, is the first women chemist named Tapputi, whose existence as a perfume maker is dated to 1200 BCE and it was Tapputi who lay the foundation for methods of scent extraction techniques. We also have archaeological evidence of the oldest perfumery, it was found on Crete and was discovered in 2004-2005. The site dates back 4000 years to the Bronze Age and covered just short of an acre (0.99 of an acre) which is a big site and shows how industrial the production of perfume was.

The most common florals used in perfume in the Classical period were rose, lily and iris, but also used were herbs and spices from plants such as spikenard, saffron, cardamom and marjoram. Resins were also used to produce perfume and two common ones were myrrh and frankincense. There were very specific perfume containers used to store the finished perfumes and they can tell us a lot about who used the perfumes.

The aryballos vase was a ball shaped or ovoid oil pot with either one or two handles, it either had feet or was footless and some are made in the shape of a head, animal, or bird. This vase is linked to men as it is one of the vases that is believed to have held pure unscented oil and it is seen as part of the ‘athletes’ package’ where it is linked with the sponge and the strigil (scraper), images of the three items together can be seen in iconography hanging on the wall behind athletes.

Core formed glass aryballos. c. 550-375BCE. Image: The British Museum. Museum No. 1868,0501.11

The alabastron is also used for perfume but this vase is associated with women. We can find images of the alabastron on iconography where they show women getting dressed, doing their hair, choosing their jewellery and using a mirror to look at their reflection, these images are used frequently to show the adornment and preparation of a bride before her wedding (see image at top of this essay) and so the alabastron is very much a vase that is an attribute of the feminine. It is also, along with its fragrant contents, part of the items of goods that allow the oikos to show off it’s wealth due to the cost of perfume and this is especially true during the wedding ceremony

The alabastron has a broad, flat mouth, a narrow neck, thin bag shaped body. It sometimes has lugs and is usually footless. This shape means the best way to get the contents out is with a dipstick and these are sometimes shown on the iconography as well.

Core formed glass Alabastron, c.550-375 BCE. Image The British Museum, Museum No: 1856,1226.1156

For a man going to a symposium the perfume of choice would be rose, quince, myrrh, saffron, marjoram and wild thyme and there was an idea that men were more suited to the perfumes that were lighter (like rose or lily) whereas women were more suited to the heavier perfumes (like megaleoin or sweet marjoram).

Perfume was an expensive commodity and it is believed that the prices in Athens in the 4^th century BCE had a quarter litre of perfume costing between 5-10 mina. Trying to extrapolate modern amounts from the ancient equivalent is notoriously hard but just to give an idea of the cost, 1 mina is equal to 100 drachma and in Ancient Greece 1 drachma could buy enough wheat to feed a family of four for 4 days or sustain one person for 16 days. (on a side note during the Peloponnese War (434-401 BCE) Athenian soldiers were typically paid one drachma per day, indicating its value as a daily wage for labourers.)

This tells us that perfume was an expensive commodity and even when the sources suggest that there were huge price variations, it is considered that even the cheapest scent was an expensive luxury compared to the oil that it was based on and those families on low incomes would probably only ever afford it for very special occasions.

One of the reasons perfumes were so expensive was that, according to the recipes we have preserved, most perfumes contained at least one non-Greek ingredient and the most sought-after perfumes were the ones that contained ingredients like myrrh, cinnamon, or cassia that came from exotic places. To get these ingredients meant there was access to and trade with places from Asia Minor, Egypt, Southern Arabia, and the Indian continent. Therefore a small thing like a bottle of perfume opens up a world of possibilities on how the Greek world was connected to trade from regions far from the Greek state.

(Image of marble grave stele of a woman from the late Classical period, c.375-350 BCE. Source: The Metropolitan Museum, NY)

The question of veiling in western Europe can be an emotive subject where it can be understood that women were veiled as a control and coercive ideal. So let us look at the realities of veiling in Ancient Greece, especially the Classical period, would our Athenian Classical wife have routinely veiled themselves when they left the house?

The answer is an emphatic Yes, a woman of the Classical period, along with the earlier Archaic and later Hellenistic periods, would have veiled themselves when in public places. When we look at iconographic images the veil is nearly always missing which has led earlier classical authors to dismiss or ignore the veil completely but the argument has been put forward that what the artist is construction is a different version of womanhood, a kind of fantasy woman, a more open, sexy kinda woman, there are a few images what show a veiled woman so we know the ability was there to do so but it was not what the artists image was about.

As we have said when looking at the house, the inside areas of a house was the domain of the woman with the outside areas the domain of the men, so the act of veiling gave the Greek wife a small amount of freedom to be in the male public space unimpeded and able to interact with other women. Veiling could also allow a Greek woman a means of self-expression as it empowered her to negotiate her social situation which would have been impossible if she did not veil.

As a part of clothing, the veil is a factor in the classification of a Greek woman’s social roles, her social position or class was defined by her husband’s social status and could change with his future. Her external appearance reflected his social worth and moral value and it is important to realise that economic status was not distinguished from ethical behaviour in the Greek civic ideology. Therefore female social rank was a concern for the men and also the legitimacy of heirs. The legitimacy of heirs is the all-important point and was an issue of great anxiety to the men in Ancient Greek society, therefore the chastity and social control of women was crucial in the social structure. The men had to be sure that their sons was theirs as the future of the oikos depended on it.

By wearing a veil and concealing herself from the eyes of strange men a woman marked herself out as sexually inviolate and the property of one man, by veiling herself she is reinforcing both her and her husband’s honour and showing she was not the public sexual property of all men but the honourable wife of one man. We have not enough evidence to say whether female slaves did or did not veil or regularly veiled but we can say that by the late Archaic/Early Classical period there is evidence to support the idea that women of the aristocracy and outside the aristocracy were veiling themselves. There is also no single answer to ‘why did Greek women veil?’ other than the assumption that honour and shame were the main ideals behind the ideology of veiling.

We have two Greek words that help us understand their thinking, ‘aidõs’ and ‘sõphrosynê’. In Greek thought female aidõs in its most simplified form means shame, reserve, modesty, and respect and is closely connected to sõphrosynê which is an idealistic standard of dignity and discretion. So a woman displaying aidõs and sõphrosynê would be a silent, submissive, passive, and virtuous woman who does not draw attention to herself at all, a woman with a veil over herself in fact. In artistic images of woman these two concepts – aidõs and sõphrosynê – are reflected in a woman’s head being bowed and eyes downcast.

What is, I think, important to remember, is that the description of a silent, submissive, male controlled wife I have just described is really an ideal and a desirable state. In every society there will be levels where the families could not afford the luxury of the wife being kept at home, not everyone had or could afford to keep slaves,. Therefore the domestic chores a slave would do – fetching water, running errands, earning extra income – had to be done by the wife.

There is an important point to remember and it is this - seclusion and separation are not the same thing, a woman could be separated from men outside of her family by the use of a veil when she was out and about, that doesn’t actually mean she was secluded. This important difference sometimes gets forgotten or the edges get blurred, but it is a difference none the less that is important to continuously highlight when discussing how women lived in the Ancient Greek world.

A gesture we see often in iconographic images in relation to the veil is the ‘anakalypsis’ gesture where the face of the woman can be seen. In these images the veil is shown over the head but it is held away from the face by the woman’s hand, as if she was just removing it and it is a gesture usually performed by woman. This image is early in the Greek world and is seen as early as the 7th century BCE and from then on becomes a standard artistic repertoire well into the Roman period. It’s also used in the context of the unveiling of the bride. As an image it always shows the gesture where a woman raises part of her veil with one arm which is extended in front of her so the veil makes a large and distinctive flap of cloth that covers the face.

So yes women veiled themselves and now we have a little understanding why. But what were the veils and what were they called? The sources give us two types of veils used by the Archaic period. The Pharos veil or mantle which could be pulled over the head or across the face to create a veil, and the Himation veil which could be pulled over the back of the head to create a veil. By the time we get to the Classical period the over fold of the Peplos is shown in iconography as being used as a veil. (See previous essay on '‘The Classical Athenian Wardrobe’ for explanations on the clothing types)

By the early Classical period the draped cloth of the pharos was becoming quite plain and some of its elaborate decoration was disappearing. The pharos mantle was made from a large rectangle of fabric, as most of the period’s clothes were, but it was so bulky and large it must have draped across the chest and thrown over one shoulder as well as covering the head and shoulders.

There is evidence of the Himation veil in the late 6^th century BCE. It was draped around the lower torso and hung over the shoulder and in this way it crossed the body on a diagonal line and went under one arm and over the other arm, it could then be pulled over the head as necessary. We see images of it from around 520 BCE and was a popular fashion through 5^th and into the 4^th century BCE, it is the one we see frequently on grave stones.

Sources:

Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd (2003) Aphrodite’s Tortoise, The Classical Press of Wales, Swansea

Lee, Mirelle M. (2015) Body, Dress and Identity in Ancient Greece, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Red Figured Kylix, showing an old cobbler at his work in his shop. Above him are items that characterize an Athenian cobbler workshop with two pieces of leather cut out ready for an upper and a sole of a shoe, a hammer, a boot, a sandal and a tool. c.480-470 BCE

(Image: British Museum, museum no.1865,0722.14)

Shoe fashion does not immediately spring to mind when you think of the Classical world but shoes were an important part of the attire of our Classical Athenian woman, like all things Ancient Greek they were infused with social meaning. Proper footwear was the norm in public, people did not go about bare feet and shoes were removed when you entered the house. The women of the house would have a pair of perisaki, or soft Persian slippers to pad around their courtyard houses in but if a woman’s budget couldn’t stretch to a pair of luxurious perisaki she could have a pair of peribades or plaited straw slippers to wear inside instead. Even the slaves would have worn some type of footwear, most probably just a simple thong sandal.

Sandals were the commonest type of footwear, which seems logical in the heat and dust. Many were the basic thong type but we can also see in iconographic images are a more complex sandal with sturdy overlapping patterns of straps, they were often lightened or whitened by soaking the leather in a salt solution. A pair of krepides was a multi-strapped, multi-looped, criss-crossing strapped affair and at their most complex the heels and toes were covered with mesh or net-like patterns of leather.

Soldiers wore a pair of trochades, a type of shoe where the heel and sides of the foot were covered with solid leather and which had laces and straps over the toes and these were made of goatskin. Another type of male footwear which was commonly worn at banquets and the male symposium was a luxurious sandal that was decorated with golden brooches that were called blaute.

Boots were also common and but would have looked very odd to us as they had open or partially open toed front. There was the short hunting boots called endromis, these had the open front, a long tongue and were primarily worn by athletes - seen on the legs of Artemis statues sometimes. A taller boot with inner lining of felt or fur for cold temperatures was called embades, these were made of a softer leather and are considered a Thracian invention adopted by the Greeks and Xenophon tells us they were made of leather to prevent chafing while riding a horse. They were worn by soldiers and horsemen and are visible on the calvary men that are carved into he Parthenon frieze, by our Classical period these are the most prevalent type of boot worn and are different from the old fashioned endromis.

The boot frequently associated with women was the kothornos or korthnoi, a knee or shin length boot that were worn in daily life and worn usually unlaced, they were made of soft leather they would have been comfortable.

As shoes and boots are mainly made of leather they rarely survive for archaeologists to find so our information about them comes from either ancient writings or iconographic evidence - carved friezes and pottery for example - although occasionally the soles of shoes survive.

Wooden soles from a pair of 4th BCE shoes found at Troy, Türkiye.

(Image: Authors own taken at Troy Archaeological Museum)

A range of tanned or raw animal hides were used, mainly cattle but also ox, sheep, goatskin, doe and even fawnskin. The soles were constructed of layered leather, wood or cork and believe it or not, the platform shoe was height of fashion in Ancient Greece with women the only gender allowed to wear platform shoes to increase their height. If men wore them they were considered effeminate, which Aristophanes used to his advantage when he puts his actors in feminine platform shoes for cross-dressing fantasies or scenes where men dress as women.

Fragment of a terracotta female figure where we can see on her foot is a sandal with a high platform sole. c.330 BCE

(Image: British Museum, museum number: 1859,1226.180)

Sexy Shoes

Shoes and feet were closely linked to female sexuality, sensuality and eroticism. The Hetairai women (paid companions) were often closely associated with footwear in literary and artistic representations. There are images on vases of Hetairai where close by are shoes or boots discarded under a couch, also scenes of nude women either putting on or taking off their footwear which can be construed as preparing for seduction or putting shoes back on after sex.

Scholar Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones has written highly on women, dress, the veil and many other aspects of Greek life and he believes shoes may have acted as a tool of seduction as they heighten the hetairai’s beauty and sexuality, the removal of footwear was a highly erotic gesture and was meant to signal intercourse was imminent, something Aristophanes used to his advantage in his play Lysistrata, where Myrrhine, in the seduction scene where she disappoints her husband for the final time, exclaims

‘See I’m just removing my shoes!’

Sources:

‘Body, Dress and Identity in Ancient Greece’ by Mireille M. Lee published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

‘Dress and Adornment in Ancient Greece’ by Allison Glazebrook published online: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Statues at the ‘House of Cleopatra’ in Delos, Greece, men and woman wearing a Himation

(CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80864, accessed 16/10/25

The Classical Wardrobe

The first thing to say is, unlike the lucky Egyptologists, we don’t have any complete garments at all from the Classical period. What we depend on is the images, often stylized, that are represented in sculpture and vase paintings to get a picture of what was worn.

Most Greek garments were uncut and unsewn, they were worn as they came off the loom, as a rectangular piece of fabric.

They did have ways of dying fabric, we do have archaeological evidence for dye works and also flora and fauna would have been used, most likely at home where our Athenian wife would dye to suit herself, for example yellow came from saffron and the highly expensive purple from the murex shellfish and textual sources tell us of garments of black, white, yellow, purple and simply ‘dark’. There are fragments of fabric from the Kerameikos in Athens which include woven red stripes and embroidery with red thread. Also the fabrics could be decorated with surface decoration in that coloured bands were woven into the fabric .

We know that gold foil attachments would have been stitched onto the fabrics and some of these have been found in an archaeological context and there is the possibly that images or decorations were simply painted on.

So let’s start with the Endumata literally ‘under garments’

Spargana – swaddling cloths were used at Athens and other cities and Plato tells us in ‘Laws 7.789’ that babies were swaddled to help their limps develop correctly. Special cloths were woven just for this, maybe as training pieces for young women.

Diazoma/Perizona – As we can only work from statuary or vase images this one is hard to tell for sure for but the diazoma was the loincloth. Thucydides tells us in his ‘Histories’ that the Greeks did wear loincloths (1.6.5) during athletic competitions but ditched them and competed in the nude as the Lacedaemonian’s did.

Ladies in briefs – These are shown on a number of vases and in sculpture but only on athletes, acrobats and dancers and none of the images reflect the ‘everyday’ image of an Athenian woman.

Strophion – Breast band. This is a hard one to decipher, there is literary evidence that women did bind their breasts but the actual visual evidence for their use is sparse. In most images of women the breast shape is visible so it’s clear they’re not using a band. It is seen being used in images of the ‘impossible female athlete’ like Atalanta but this is a breast band with shoulder straps (think modern sports bra). From what we can tell the ‘mortal’ women who wore breast bands were dancers and entertainers, unlike our modern world, breasts were not highly sexualised in the ancient Greek world.

Peplos – This is described as a rectangular piece of woollen cloth that was draped around the body and suspended from the shoulders by pins, the open sizes could be sewn together but not always, at the neck the top section was folded double. This was then girded (tied together) with a zone or belt which was tied over or under the over-fold.

The peplos was the item of clothing the earliest people in Greece wore and Homer names it as a primary garment of women and goddesses, it was used to cover or shield and control the female body.

Chiton – This was full length, sleeved garment made of linen, it would have been made from one or two pieces of fabric that were sewn together to make a tube. They would have used buttons to along the shoulder seam to make a sleeve and this could also be belted with a zone, a typical chiton reached to the floor, this was called a chiton poderes. By the late 6^th/early 5^th CE it was generally worn only by women, the men wore a himation.

As it was floor length, white (linen doesn’t take dye well) therefore difficult to keep clean, with sleeves that got in the way, too voluminous to be practical and prone to tangle it was seen as a garment of leisure and was a marker of luxury.

There were a few different versions of the chiton.

· Chitoniskos – Developed in the mid-6th BCE and was part of the developments in military attire, it was worn underneath the curiass. Active females are also shown wearing them, like Artemis, Atalanta and the Amazons, plus female entertainers like dancers. The idea would seem to be that for ease of movement it was the best piece of clothing available to them.

· Exomis – like the chitoniskos but worn over only one shoulder, typically the left shoulder, and is considered a garment of male workers like craftsmen and warriors. A belt was usually worn with it so it could be hitched up when working.

· Xystis – A long sleeved, voluminous garment worn by charioteers. This was often bound to the upper body with cords or bands to stop it flapping around in the wind.

These are all then what are considered endumata or ‘under garments’ Now to the Epiblemata or ‘over garments’, these were worn over the endumata

Himation – Probably the most well known of ancient Greek clothing. A himation was a type of mantle worn over the chiton or worn alone, it was never pinned, was not pre shaped and could be worn in any number of ways. Men wrapped it in such a way that their right arm was free, whereas women would drape it over each shoulder. I feel it’s like a big shawl or thick scarf. The way it is shown on vase paintings and sculpture, with big folds, suggests it is made of wool.

Proper women did not wear only the himation, it was always worn with the chiton and it would be used in different ways depending on the social context, for instance it could be used as a veil when the woman was out in the market.

Chlaina and Chlamys – These are like capes that are worn by men and are fastened at the shoulder or neck with a button or fibula. The chlaina is essentially a masculine item where as the chlamys was worn by professional female dancers, acrobats and used for ritual purposes, it was worn in many different ways to cover more or less of the body and was used as a way to show your identity, many were brightly coloured or highly decorated and as there was variety in how it was worn it could also have erotic connotations.

There would have been other mantles worn by women apart from the himation.

But for our average lower to middle Athenian wife her daily clothing would most likely be a woollen peplos next to her skin, girded around her waist with a zone. Next would be her linen chiton to keep her body covered for modesty and over the top of this was the himation, a useful item with which to veil herself if she bumped into nonfamily male members or while in the market or collecting water for modesty. We have no idea how common breast bands or loincloths were but I would suggest the average classical wife did not bother too much with them.

Sources:

Lee, M. M (2015) Body, Dress and Identity in Ancient Greece, (Chapter 5: pp.89-126), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

White ground Oinochoe, image of women using a drop spindle to make thread.

(Image: British Museum)

Making Threads

First thing to say, and I will say it again later! is that we have no complete items of clothing from the Ancient Greek world, all our understanding of what was worn comes from the ancient texts and images on vases and in sculpture, so by mining the sources and carefully analysing the images we can get a good picture of what was worn by whom.

In the classical period clothes were made of linen or wool. Silk is alluded to in sculpture but this is uncertain and could just be artistic licence, there is also a discussion in the classical world about whether linen was coated thinly with olive oil to made it translucent like silk, no conclusion has been come to yet but it’s an interesting idea.

Therefore our Classical Athenian wife would have had sheep to look after and take the wool from, also there is evidence flax was grown in Ancient Greece for its fibres but whether an average family would have enough spare land to grow flax or whether they bought it at the market is to be discussed in a later chapter on what was grown on their land.

The process for making thread for our Athenian wife starts with the raw wool or flax plant:

Making Thread - wool

For wool thread the starting point is the sheep. It makes sense to suppose that the sheep would have been kept for both meat and wool, there would not have been enough spare resources in the bronze age for two flocks for different reasons. It is not known who removed the fleece but we are certain it was the men who raised the sheep as there is mentioned many times in the Greek plays of shepherds and men looking after sheep on hillsides. It is now known that the sheep have now evolved to the point they do not moult, so it would have been incredibly unlikely the sheep were sheared, they would have collected it as it moulted or combed it out, combing it out gave a finer softer fleece, and then worked it into thread when there was enough.

The raw wool needed cleaning first to remove any burrs and debris, then it was washed to get rid of the lanolin oil. Next was to comb it and rolled it into fluffy sausages of fibre ready to be spun into yarn.

Spinning of wool was done with a drop spindle, we know they were a common object as archaeological sites of ancient Greece are always turning up spindle whirls (the heavy weight at the bottom of the spindle) as can be attested to the numbers we see in museums. The whirl’s shape and weight provided extra tension and could improve rotation when making the thread, many of them were made of clay but they could also be made of wood.

Making thread - Linen

The flax plant is first pulled, not cut, from the earth and the seeds would have been extracted for future use. The stalks were first softened in water in a process called ‘retting’. They then left to air dry and stored for at least a month to ‘cure’.

Next the stalks are then pressed and scraped to remove the remaining wood casing, this is called ‘scutching’. The fibres then need to be combed through to get the fibres straight and to separate the fibres into individual fibres and removes the shorter fibres, the short ones were called ‘tow’, sometimes this was done on a of bed of nails and the process is called ‘heckling’. Once they’re at this stage they can then be spun into thread.

There are two schools of thought on how they were spun. On a drop spindle, but there’s a feeling amongst some of the technical classicists that as the flax fibres are so much longer than wool fibres (flax can grow to 4ft long) a drop spindle would not be the most efficient way and as it would be quite difficult when you start with such a long piece to drop and add the next bit, so there is a theory it would be better to spin flax fibres on the thigh, possibly with the use of a ‘epinetron’ which would work well.

An epinetron is a ceramic shape used to protect the thigh when creating thread or carding wool, both opinions are valid and neither holds sway over the other. It is an item that was created for women and it was believed that originally spare roof tiles would have done the job but a specific item was created by potters and painters. The epinetron that have been found archaeologically are highly decorated (see image below) and have been found in a grave context giving the belief that these decorated ones were designed especially for a funerary or a religious context.

Black-figured Epinetron, c.500 BCE Image: British Museum

The start of the weaving process was to create a header band, from this the warp threads came off to be tied onto the loom weights, it could have been don in a couple of ways, by a band loom or by tablet weaving, so briefly…

Band Loom: A weaving job that could be done solo although we have practically no archaeological evidence for a band loom we do have fabric woven on a warp weighted loom which required a header band to be made to work. The simplest form of a band loom is a ‘back-strap loom’ where warp threads are tied to a tree, post or other large immovable object with the other end being tied around the weavers waist, the tension in the warp is created by the weaver literally leaning backwards, obviously the width of fabric that can be created is limited but for the band that starts a piece of cloth it’s an ideal method.

Tablet Weaving: Like the band loom, this was also a solo job. It dates to the 8^th century BCE where it’s found in areas that the warp-weighted loom is found. Historically it was used to create either the header band or to create decorative bands to embellish clothes. We know from Aristophanes that women sold ribbons in the market and for a widow or woman with no family to help her, this was a way she could make a living, it was also a cheap and easy item to produce but to the limited kit needed. As you can see from the image (below) the tablets or cards are used to create the ‘shed’ through which the weft is passed. Like the band loom one end would be tied to a tree or post and the other end around the waist of the weaver.

(Source: By Eyrian at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21895672. Accessed 12/10/25)

Actually weaving on a Warp Weighted Loom

The Components of a Warp-weighted Loom, as used in Ancient Greece. | Download Scientific Diagram (Accessed 10.10.25)

The warp weighted loom is like today’s iPhone, it was the most up to date piece of kit a family needed - actually to weave a piece of fabric what was needed was two looms, the warp weighted loom and a band loom – the band loom made the starting band that the warp threads came off to create fabric, but if we start with the warp weighted loom and work backwards, as it were. In this image can see the loom weights tied to sections of warp thread at the bottom and pulling the threads tight to make the finished cloth even and tight. The size of the loom weights directly linked to the thickness of the thread and therefore the thickness of the finished fabric, big weights meant chunky thread and so thicker fabric (think wool) but small weights meant thinner thread and so a finer fabric (think linen), both fabrics, wool and linen, were used for clothes in the classical period. More about that threads and loom weights later.

When setting up a loom the vertical threads, called the ‘warp threads’, come down from the header bar, each thread is basically (and this is the easiest way to understand it) a long piece of thread, folded in half and the middle is the bit joined to the header bar. This header piece was made on the small handheld band loom. (see above) When there’s enough threads going widthways across the loom, meaning the warp is the width of the piece of fabric that’s being made, they are tied off at the bottom in groups onto the loom weights.

Next is to attach the ‘heddle’ bars to the warp threads. To weave fabric one half of each of the warp threads must move back and forwards through the other half of the threads, creating a shed (i.e. space) to pass the horizontal thread through, in our modern days this thread would be wrapped around a shuttle.

One half of the warp (vertical) threads are tied onto the heddle bar, so of those two sides of thread that come down one of them is attached to the heddle bar by a piece of thread and the weaver moves the bar forward, passed the shuttle along the line of warp threads, then move the bar back, and pass the shuttle along again. This process is then repeated until the piece of fabric is the length its needed.

Warp Weighted loom as seen at the The Museum of Troy, Türkiye. Picture: authors own.

Experimental archaeologists using bronze age warp weighted looms realised that weaving could not be a solo job. As the fabric progressed there would be times when the fabric would be getting close to the ground, the top bar holding the header tape with the warp threads attached then needed to be turned so the fabric that was being created could be wound round it. This top bar with the fabric, threads and loom weights was heavy and the experimental archaeologists concluded you would need three women to do the job of winding the fabric up, even the actual weaving would most likely need two women.

Sources:

Haland, E.J. (2006) Athena’s Peplos: Weaving as a core female activity in Ancient and Modern Greece, The Journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society 20: 155-182

Zamir, E. (2019) Epinetra at Large: Textile Tools from the wider Greek World, University of Texas at Austin. Dissertation.

Barber, E.W. (2024) Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, New York, W.W. Norman & Company Inc.

This statue of the fates, or more correctly The Moirai, stands on my mantlepiece next to a statue of Athena. Unwittingly I have lined up next to my pot plants the mythological imagery of textile production.

When I started researching this chapter on textile production and was asking the question ‘What technical skills did my Athenian wife need to know to produce an item of clothing?’ little did I know I would end up down a rabbit hole of reading on how spinning and weaving has been used by classical writers, who were nearly all men, to use the production of textile to symbolise a myriad of aspects of life.

The Moirai were the personification of destiny and each sister had a specific job. Clotho was the spinner who made the thread of life, Lachesis was the sister who allotted the amount of thread to each individual, human or divine, and finally Atropos was the one who cut the thread of life and she was considered a metaphor for death.

By using weaving as a metaphor for life and death the ancient Greeks linked, consciously or subconsciously, what was considered lowly women’s work to the most basic element of human life - the amount of allotted time on this earth each human gets.

For a society who were apparently so ready to ignore or silence the voice of women this is an interesting idea and by looking at other areas where weaving is used to demonstrate points of life, death and decision, we can start to get a better understanding of what was important to the ancient Greeks.

Let’s start with Pandora. Most of us know the basic story, Prometheus, a titan, gave fire to humans, in this case fire is not just fire, fire is knowledge, civilization and meant societies could flourish. In anger Zeus decided to punish the humans:

‘I shall give them an affliction in which they will all delight as they embrace their own misfortune’ (Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 58-59)

and that misfortune was Pandora. Athene as goddess of weaving (among other things) was directed to teach her how to weave and to dress her. Other goddesses chipped in and gave her different skills, for example Aphrodite gave her charm, her name reflected this - Pandora means ‘Allgift’ - she would be the gift that just kept giving. The point is that Pandora was taught how to weave as soon as she was conceived, that was the thing a woman needed to know above all else.

In The Odyssey the alternative story behind Odysseus faffing around trying to get home for ten years, being waylaid by various women who he just had to sleep with for the sake of, well because they asked, is the story of his long suffering wife Penelope. Besieged by suitors who thought because her husband has been gone for ten years fighting the Trojan war they would just move in, eat her out of house and home and refuse to leave (oh we’ve all had those friends) until she choose a lucky ‘suitor’ to marry. She came up with a ploy to hold them off as long as possible:

First a god gave me the inspiration to set up a great web on my loom here and begin weaving a large and delicate piece of work, saying to my suitors, ‘My lords, my Suitors, now that noble Odysseus is dead, restrain your ardour do not urge on this marriage til I have done this work, so that the threads I have spun may not altogether be wasted. It is a shroud for Lord Laertes’ (The Odyssey 19.139-145)

and so by day she wove the shroud but

‘by every night I had torches set beside it and undid the work’ (The Odyssey, 19.150-152)

In The Odyssey there are two women that waylay Odysseus: Calypso and Circe. When Odysseus and his men first turn up both are both busy at the loom:

‘Inside, Calypso was singing with her beautiful voice as she went to and fro at her loom, weaving with a golden shuttle.’ (5.61-63)

‘They could hear Circe within, singing in her beautiful voice as she went to and fro at her great and everlasting loom, on which she was weaving one of those delicate, graceful and dazzling fabrics that goddesses make’ (10.221-224)

When you read these sections it’s useful to consider what else a stressed wife, an immortal goddess and a witch could be doing other than weaving, and the fact that for the ancient Greek male the only thing a woman of any sort should be doing while waiting for a man is weaving.

In The Iliad there is a touching scene between Hector and Andromache where Hector is searching for Andromache, he finds her on the tower of Ilium where she is watching the battle. When they meet she begs him to stay away from battle so as to not make her a widow and therefore a slave (being on the losing side she would be enslaved and their son killed) but she also points to him the places in the walls that are weak:

‘Station the people by the fig tree, where the city is most easily scaled and the wall is open to assault - three times their best men have made an attempt there’ (The Iliad, 6.433-435)

His reply? To remind her who he is - Hector Tamer of Horses - and his people will think him a coward if he does not fight even if there is a risk she will be enslaved, but as Hector tells her, he’s not ready to die yet and she must:

‘Go back to the house and take charge of your own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and tell your woman servants to go about their work. War must be the concern of men’ (The Iliad, 6.490-492)

Again, what else could a woman possibly be doing but weaving? She’s desperately trying to help him by pointing out the weak spots in their defence that she can see from the tower to save him and everyone else - after all, he will be dead, she is the one that will have to suffer the shame of being enslaved and the horror of seeing her son murdered, but his reply is to send her back to her loom.

In all these images of women and weaving there are metaphors to be read.

Pandora is most famous for her ‘jar’ but to my mind she is the jar, not a physical item. Her story is told twice in ‘Works and Days’ by Hesiod and in the first telling there is no jar, box or anything when she is taken to man, the jar appears in the second telling of the story (that’s the one I have quoted).

‘Formerly the tribes of men on earth lived remote from ills, without harsh toil and the grievous sicknesses that are deadly to men. But the woman unstopped the jar and let it all out, and brought grim cares upon mankind. Only hope remained there, inside her secure dwelling, under the lip of the jar’ (Hesiod, Works and Days, 92-97)

For Hesiod, a woman is seen as the bane of man’s life and her gift of weaving is the one thing about her that is useful. It’s worth noting that when Hesiod is writing about women, he is writing about them from his point of view, it has been said by some classicists that he didn’t really like women or brothers and both are treated harshly by him.

In Homer, women weaving is seen as a way of looking at life and characterising the different women. Calypso and Circe sing and weave, happy in the knowledge they have the edge as a sorceress and a witch, they have skills and are not owned by men. Andromache is trying to help her husband and is told to shut up and get back to weaving. Penelope is doing all she can to stretch out the inevitable remarriage by weaving and un-weaving every day for three years. Penelope has been a faithful wife to Odysseus for over ten years, and has to take another husband before everything she and her son have is taken from them by a suitor, at no point does any of the men bother to ask her what she wants.

Weaving is used to reflect their characters. Circe and Calypso are singing while weaving, content in their world. Andromache has weaving thrown at her as a way to keep her quiet and for Penelope weaving reflects the pain of the years she’s been waiting and the nights undoing her day’s work, she’s on a relentless treadmill of work and worry.

There are many images of women and weaving in the Classical World, this is just a few of the ones that stood out while researching textile production. Myth and metaphor are everywhere in the sources and it can be fascinating to look at the different ways spinning, weaving and textile production are used to tell us something else. What it tells us about the ancient Greeks is that weaving was central to the household (the oikos) and Greek life, and as Haland points out in her paper on Athena’s Peplos

The Greeks inherited a 7000 year old tradition of weaving and weaving is a metaphor for birth and rebirth of the world.

There’s another element to weaving that was vital to the Athenians, that was weaving the annual peplos (dress) for Athena Polias that was to be presented to her image at the Panathenaea, the festival of Athenians.

The Panathenaea was the most important festival of the Athenians ritual year and it marked the start of the new year. Creating the peplos was imbued with ritual. The wool was combed, spun and wove by young girls, older girls and married women. The warp was put on the loom on the last day of Pyanepsion (October-November) about the same time the grain was being sowed for the next years harvest and when the olive harvest was being gathered in. This was around nine months before Panathenaea so the peplos took nine months to create.

Let’s break that down a minute shall we?

So the wool was combed by young girls, spun by older girls and wove by married women, this is about girls becoming women and understanding that they will progress to the different stages in the production of textile as they age in the same way they will progress to become a married woman in time.

The warp was put on the loom and the weaving of the peplos was then started. Effectively the seeds were sown onto the loom at the same time and exactly like the seeds being sown in the earth, and nine months later you had a dress, in the same way that it takes nine months to create life.

When the dress was finished there was a great procession along The Street of the Parthenia that was also the Sacred Way. The procession’s job was to dedicate the now sacred peplos to the virgin goddess, Athena, and Haland argues convincingly that when this happened it confirmed a pact between Athens and Athena Polias that could be seen as a form of marriage settlement, with the peplos being a common wedding present at the time.

There is no coincidence that it took 9 months to weave and that young girls played a role in this. It’s also no coincidence that a female dominated activity, weaving, was at the centre of the most important festival of ancient Athens.

Once again we have a paradox. Women’s voices are silenced in the sources and in their life in ancient Athens and yet we see the Athenian’s using weaving to honour their most honoured goddess. In ancient literature weaving is used by the writers to put women in their place and to characterise them.

Weaving is becoming a bit of an enigma to unravel (excuse the pun). Silenced, honoured, characterised and put in place - it appears to do many things on many levels, but what it does tell us loud and clear is that weaving was incredibly important to the ancient Athenians, otherwise they would not have used it so much. Also it tells us that weaving was so infused in all levels of society that it was second nature to the people of Athens, otherwise the metaphors, imagery and use of it would never have worked or been understood.

Sources:

Hesiod, Works and Days, (1988) Trans. by M.L. West, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Homer, The Odyssey, (1946) Trans. by E.V. Rieu, Penguin Books, London

Homer, The Iliad, (2011) Trans. by Anthony Verity, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Haland, E.J. (2004) Athena’s Peplos: Weaving as a Core Female Activity in Ancient and Modern Greece, Cosmos (20)