What Were Athenian Family Life and Education Like

An Athenian family

About the object

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The painting

The scene shows an Athenian family. In the centre stands a human who is clearly a warrior. He wears trunk armour made of layers of linen glued together so that it was light merely strong. He holds a spear and the round shield typical of the heavy infantry called hoplites. At his waist he has a sword. His caput and face are protected by a helmet and he wears bronze greaves on his legs. He shakes hands with the man on the left, who is shown to be older through the staff that he carries. These two figures are unremarkably taken to be father and son. On the correct a adult female stands holding a wine jug and a special type of bowl, known every bit a phiale, which was used to pour wine equally an offer to the gods. She may be the younger man's mother or his wife. Although the handshake and the offering to the gods are potentially ambiguous, this scene is interpreted as 1 of departure for, rather than return from, war.

The younger homo

Written sources nigh Greek and specially Athenian customs of the menstruation allow us to understand something of the background of this representation. When he was a 5-24-hour interval old infant, the young man's father accepted him into the family past conveying him effectually the hearth of the family home. If the babe had been weak or sickly, he would probably have been taken outside the city boundary and left to die, though it is suggested past some scholars that the importance of having a son and the high mortality rate of babies might take given him a risk of being rescued by a childless family. After x days he received his name and for the rest of his early years he was brought up past the women of the household. In Athens, as in most other Greek cities, boys connected their education in the home and through their interactions with the men of the family; the sons of amend-off families sometimes had professional teachers or went out to school. At the heart of a fellow's education were the values and skills he needed to accept on his futurity responsibilities as citizen and head of his family: agreement the family business organisation, the skills of statement and public-speaking, knowledge of literature and culture, and peculiarly physical fitness and the arts of warfare. At the age of 21 he was received into the citizen body of Athens and could accept part in the running of his metropolis. All male citizens were expected to fight for their city. The very wealthy were cavalry; those who could afford to buy the necessary equipment fought as hoplites; others served every bit lightly armed troops and, in Athens, the poorest as rowers in the navy.

The older man

At Athens as elsewhere in Hellenic republic the family household, known equally the oikos, was the bones unit of society. The oldest male person was the head of the oikos, which consisted of his wife, his sons and unmarried daughters, the sons' wives and children and the slaves. He was ultimately responsible for the well-being of the oikos, controlling its property and wealth and arranging his sons' and daughters' marriages. Landowning and agronomics were considered the nigh prestigious ways of earning a living in classical Athens, and even poor farmers were more than highly respected than men who made money from commerce or manufacture. Average life expectancy for a man in ancient Greece was around forty years, with only well-nigh a fifth of men reaching the age of fifty and fewer again reaching sixty. When the head of the oikos died, his eldest son took over his responsibilities, even to the extent of becoming the guardian of his own mother if she was still live.

The platonic lifestyle for the Athenian man was to have enough wealth to be able to live a life of public duty, dedicating himself to conveying out his cult responsibilities, taking part in social activities and playing his role as a citizen by holding public role and participating in the political life of the city. Men were very much the public face up of the oikos as also of the larger political units in Greece.

The woman

In contrast, an ancient Greek adult female'south office was bars almost entirely to the habitation. Women had two main responsibilities: to run the house and to produce children, preferably sons. Women'southward life expectancy was lower than men's attributable to the dangers of childbirth. Girls were married as young as twelve and could be expected to start having children within the first years of spousal relationship. Running the dwelling involved looking subsequently the young children, ensuring the firm had the supplies of food and other goods it needed and supervising any slaves in cooking, cleaning and purchasing supplies. Cloth making was an of import attribute of a woman'southward duties. Because of its practical importance for the oikos, spinning and weaving also caused a symbolic significant: where war was the prototype of a human'southward role, making cloth was that of a woman.

Women also played an agile part in the realm of organized religion - the woman on this pot is preparing a ritual cooler to attempt to secure the gods' assistance in allowing her son or husband to return domicile. Faith was the just loonshit in which women participated prominently in the public life of the city. Many cults – in the example of Athens, the cult of Athena herself - required priestesses and /or female attendants. Women were also seen playing a public role in the context of funerals and the commemoration of the expressionless. Wealth and status (gratis denizen or resident alien) further affected the degree to which a household could afford or wished to forego the labour of women in the fields, fetching water or selling appurtenances in the marketplace in order to keep them isolated in the house.

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Source: http://www.teachinghistory100.org/objects/about_the_object/an_athenian_family