Let Her Story Be Told: Violence Against Women Within the Archaic Aegean and Ionian Oikos

Abstract

Violence against women can be found in poetry, legal codes, and osteoarchaeological records across the Aegean Islands and Ionian territory. These sources are cross-examined through an intersectional lens to identify a pattern of domestic violence between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. The evidence suggests that wives, daughters, and female slaves each experienced domestic violence. It will be argued that despite the differences in status, violence against women was condoned given that men were obligated to maintain control over their home; the behaviour of the women within it reflected on men's sense of self and public image. To ensure control, gendered stereotypes regarding women's nature and minds appear across all forms of poetry, including epic, lyric, and iambic, and these imbed the belief that women were execrable into social attitudes, daily life, and the historical record. This thesis shows that these beliefs were then used to justify domestic violence to such an extent that they were passed down through generations and appear online today to validate the same violence used three thousand years ago to control women.