Preview

Etruscan Women

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
872 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Etruscan Women
Etruscan Women:
An Analysis of Larissa Bofante’s Article

The comparisons between the Etruscan, Greek, and Roman way of life are similar in many respects and each contributes to the other, however, each civilization has its differences. The Etruscan society in the 5th to 7th c. BCE was one of luxury, lust, innovation, and they are thought to have been very skilled technicians: these attributes made them stand out among the rest. Larissa Bofante’s article, Daily Life and After Life, points out these distinguishing factors of the Etruscan society that left everyone else envious to what they had, even though most thought them to live barbarically. In Bofante’s article she discusses all aspects of the Etruscan life, from architecture, jewelry, art, religion, sex, wealth, festivities, and more in all great detail. An important aspect that Bofante chooses to discuss in her article is the role of women in the Etruscan society, and this is very important to know when learning about their culture. In this analysis, I plan to maintain, as Bofante points out, that women were of much greater importance in the Etruscan culture than in Greece and Rome.
Larissa Bofante’s article Daily Life and After Life highlights many points about the Etruscan way of life, and the part that I found to be the most interesting was about Etruscan women. There is substantial evidence to show that they were held at high regard and were considered equal to men. Bofante points out a few passages written from Greek writers and historians who depict scenes of the Etruscan life, she argues that while these may be “cliché”, the information may have come from eye witness accounts of Greeks who travelled to Etruria: of these scholars there was Theopompus, a Greek Historian of the 4th century BCE and Athenaeus, a Greek writer in 200 AD. Atheneus has a passage written in his book titled, Brilliant Dinner Party Conversation, about women and men dining together and sharing in multiple sex partners. Women

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    When doing your assessment of a patient, regardless if it is an admission, surgical, emergency visit or just routine visit, you need a method, pattern to ensure completion. I am going to focus on the admission assessment. When a patient comes to the hospital, the initial assessment will plan the care. “The physical examination requires you to develop technical skills and a knowledge base.” (Jarvis, 2012)…

    • 366 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author’s goal in writing this book would be to inform people about ancient women focusing more on Egypt and sounding areas. Women were not very popular in ancient times; therefore people know less about them compared to men. Because of the lack of information many people argue about the status of ancient women, Pomeroy wrote this book to provide as much information about women as she could to inform her readers. Pomeroy also tends to focus on the women who achieved great goals in life as to say that even women in ancient times did great things and were not just treated as dirt.…

    • 1813 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Art 204 Final Essay

    • 2576 Words
    • 11 Pages

    The progression of Greek art does not simply begin with the Olympics in 776 BCE, but finds its origins in all of the civilizations that gave rise to the Greeks – the remnants of the besieged Mycenaeans, and all who conquered (and traded) with them. The loss of great civilizations often leads to dark periods, but from the ashes of Greece’s dark age emerged a civilization that revered humanity and went to great lengths to incorporate the idea of philosophy into all aspects of their empire – including art. City states joined forces, democracy was established, and skills lost during times of turmoil (reading, writing, painting, sculpting, architecture) were not only rediscovered, but reinvented. From the eastern inspired geometrics of earliest Greece, to stylize humanism in the Archaic, the mathematical perfection of the Classical periods, and the flowery realism of the Hellenistic - Greek art remains the standard by which all future art will be judged. This article will mainly focus on changes in Greek sculpture as an analogy for the changes in all of Greek art, simply because an attempt to chronicle all of the changes in the historical period would require much more than a short essay, and it’s my belief that sculpture most thoroughly reflected how art reflected the greater changes in the society. Regardless of historical argument about whether or not Greek culture and society were as great or as evil as either extreme proclaims, the fact remains that incredible works of art were spawned by great thinkers. Sure, maybe there was slavery, and maybe women were treated poorly, but that doesn’t negate the artistic value of the truly innovative art forms, starting with the very earliest pieces attributed to the Greeks, those in the period of the first Olympics, which also marks the point when the Greeks themselves considered their various city states united as one people, citizens of “Hellas” – distinct in that they spoke a…

    • 2576 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The women of ancient Sparta, those who were born to Spartan parents, had many roles. They were very important and essential for the stability and running of the ancient warrior society. The woman’s role in Spartan society was highly regarded by the state as equal in importance to that of a man’s, but they could not rule or hold public office. They were given the freedom, power, respect and status that was unheard of in the other polis, along with the rest of the classical world.…

    • 2150 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Nelson, Sarah M. Women in Antiquity: Theoretical Approaches to Gender and Archaeology. Lanham: AltaMira, 2007. Print.…

    • 2096 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    References: Blundell, Sue. Women in ancient Greece, Volume 1995, Part 2. New York: Harvard University Press, 1995.…

    • 2045 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women in classical athens

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Being a woman in classical Athens cannot have been much fun, if one can rely on the majority of the accounts of women's position in the Greek city-state. The Athenian democracy, traditionally held in high esteem in many other ways, was a democracy of the minority. Women, foreigners and slaves had no influence or true civil rights. They lived in the shadow of the Parthenon and the Acropolis.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Women have not been considered equal to men throughout history. The Etruscans were an ancient civilization that thrived in central Italy around the sixth century BCE. Little is known about the Etruscans, but what is known can be extracted through art-producing culture. Their artistic culture is related to but distinct from the civilization of ancient Greece. The ancient Greek civilization spanned from the tenth century to the end of antiquity. This civilization made enormous contributions to science, politics, and art. The Etruscan art may have resembled the Greek art in some cases, but ultimately they each possessed their own styles which were heavily influenced by their unique cultures. Moreover, the Etruscan culture viewed women more as equals than the Greek culture. Etruscan women were more valued by their husbands, they enjoyed more rights and leisure and the Etruscan goddesses were respected more in comparison to their Greek counterparts, all of which is confirmed in their respective culture’s artworks.…

    • 1804 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Xenophon and Aristophanes

    • 1833 Words
    • 8 Pages

    In Greek society women had little control over their lives. A husband wanted to be able to control his wife so she would run his household as he saw fit, so she did not damage his reputation, and so he knew the paternity of his children. A husband wanted the girl to be closely controlled by her father before she married for the same reasons. Aristophanes’ comedies and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus contain very different depictions of a Greek citizen woman’s life before she is married and during the time shortly after she is married. Both the comedies and Oeconomicus examine how girls were educated, how closely guarded they were in their father’s household, and their willingness to deceive their husbands. In Oeconomicus, Xenophon wrote about the ideal girl, but she was exaggerated in the direction of perfection. In the comedies, however, some the female characters were almost the exact opposite of the girl in Oeconomicus. Even though ideas about how girls were raised and how they behaved after they were married are very different in Oeconomicus and in Aristophanes’ comedies, both sets of ideas get at a husband’s desire for his wife to have been closely controlled by her father, and then by him. Aristophanes and Xenophon illustrate this desire by presenting the ideal characteristics of a wife and the characteristics men fear. They also use exaggeration to make the distinction between the good wife and the undesirable wife even clearer. Because husbands wanted their wives to be controlled first by their fathers, and then by them, women spent their entire lives under the control of men.…

    • 1833 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To gain a well-rounded understanding of Greek culture, not only must the roles of men be examined, but also the roles of women. Thus, women’s roles in Greek culture merit investigating. In examining of the roles of women, the Greek works the Iliad, written by Homer, and Works and Days and the Theogony, both written by Hesiod, prove useful. Although Hesiod and Homer do not write extensively about Greek women, they still convey the roles of women in Greek culture either explicitly or implicitly through their writing. While the women in the Iliad, the Theogony, and Works and Days had a variety of roles, their most basic role was that of an obedient contributor to the oikos. And women contributed primarily through domestic and sexual duties.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Like many of her previous topics, the author is compelled to limit her claims to the Egypt because it offers the most concrete evidence. By comparing and contrasting Egyptian and Greek domestic patterns, Thompson demonstrates both the unique and the universal elements of the standard Egyptian family structure. For example, papyri evidence demonstrates that “resident mothers,” a staple of the Greek household, were also quite common among native Egyptians. Furthermore, married households were more common than virilocal (i.e. non-conjugal) living situations, which is congruous with the standard Greek household structure as well. However, Thompson also cites key differences that underscore the diversity of domestic life in the Hellenistic world. For example, papyri evidence (i.e., family archives) demonstrates that slave ownership was very uncommon among the majority of Egyptian households. In truth, only a select number of city-dwelling Egyptians adopted the Greek custom of slave ownership. Additionally, Egyptian ritualistic practices pertaining to birth, matrimony, and death were all particularly distinct from their Greek counterparts (in Thompson’s estimation). Specific examples include provisions for women in prenuptial contracts, female property rights, polygamous marriages, mummification, and the development of a distinct familial nomenclature (i.e., parents-in-law). Again, the fact…

    • 1629 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    There is no denying that it is man’s innate desire to want more, to be better, and to strive for perfection. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, that same desire is what drives the World State to construct a “civilized” society where happiness determines “Community, identity, stability (Huxley, 3).” Juxtaposed to a Savage Reservation, this “Brave New World” eventually reveals itself as being anything but a Utopia, because nothing is perfect.…

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Roman Empire, women supervised the household, and also could inherit property. Although they were greatly confined to domestic duties, they had limited freedom, depending on the husband. In the Athens, the only freedom the women had was the domestic duties. They lived in buildings separate from their husband, and could not even eat meals with them. This is very different from the Minoans civilization. They worshipped many female gods, which resulted in them having a great respect for the women of their societies. The women were equals with men, and had a great amount of freedom.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ancient Greece

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Cheris Kramarae once said, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people”. In today’s society marriage is a romanticized idea of living a life with the person you love, while in ancient Greece this was the last thing women were thinking about. In ancient vc cGreece women endured extremely difficult situation in many aspects of their lives. From marriage, to inheritance, to social life, lives of women were extremely difficult and these three elements combined created a civilization of submissive women.…

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays