Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Pandora's Daughters is a very interesting but boring book. As only a freshman in college I did not fully understand a lot of the terms the book used which made it seem unappealing. I learned quite a bit about women in Greco-Roman society when I read this book. If a person wanted to know about anything women did back then this is the book to read. It offers information ranging from family life to homosexuality among females and males. The most talked about issue in this book was the equality of women. I found out that there was never a time when women where equal to men except for a few brief periods in history. Even though a female wrote the book, she was not too biased, but liked to through her opinon in on alot of the material. The time period in which this book mainly deals with, is from about 500 b.c. to 600 a.d. The book ends around the reign of Justinian. The book is split into two parts. One part deals with the Greek world while the other deals with the Roman world. When reading the Greek part of the book I found a lot of mythology tied into society. It seems that a lot of the information we base on Greek society either comes from the works of Homer, vases, or from mythology. What I learned from this book is that the Greeks based their everyday lives from what they believed about their Gods just like what many religions do today with their God or Gods. I was stunned about some of the things Greek and Roman people did back then. If one was to read the book then they could read about some of the interesting things that happened. Even though I said the book was boring, it is well worth reading. I recommend it.

This collection of articles by some of the leading scholars on women in antiquity discusses a wide range of topics and covers a good deal of time. However, I got the impression that each scholar shares similar biases, that women were viewed negatively by their society. While this may or may not be true, it would have been nice to have this view proved and not merely assumed.