The Role of the Women in Greek Mythology

In the text Mythology by Edith Hamilton, women are portrayed as being property and objects. During this time women were seen to be not as "good" as men. They saw perfection in relationships between men and young male adults as the best relationships to have. However, homosexuality was frowned upon. Men were considered knowledgeable and educated, but women were seen as a burden placed on man by the Gods. When it came to women nothing was valuable about them but their beauty. When a woman was beautiful she was wanted by many men: a man would do almost anything to have the possession of a beautiful woman and have her as his property. It was as if a woman’s role was to only be a man’s beautiful possession and to procreate the lineage of a male or if he had a daughter, the means to secure power through marriage.
Atalanta a character from the text Mythology, was a beautiful maiden who was the daughter of the king. When her father saw that he had been given a girl instead of a boy he was very bitter and disappointed, she was then left on a mountain side. From this, one can assume that men did not feel girls were worthy of being raised and taken care of in place of having boys. Instead of dying, she was taken care of by a she-bear, and she grew up to be a very fast, daring girl. Atalanta vowed to stay a virgin and would never get married. She was not interested in men except for as companions in hunting. However, many men found her to be beautiful and then became interested in marrying her. Because of this attention Atalanta then came up with a plan.
Thus, Atalanta decided she would have all the suitors race her, and whoever won the race would be her husband. If the suitors in the race were lapped by Atalanta or they lost, then they would be killed. Even on such hard conditions many men took the chance of risking their lives just to marry her and have her as their wife. Although she out ran many men, men would still attempt this race for her hand in marriage. In