In classical hellenistic world Woman was different than man,
but woman was not forbiden to speak,
the most favorite role for woman was to stay at home at γυναικωνιτης chambers,
to raise their children,
but that did not stop them to become even high priests. political persons etc,
and nobody force them in silence.
yet until their children become 7-8 years old they should stay at home,
just think that at themost typical of polytheistic religion
Deities were 12 and 6 were women,
and women had their own temples,
tottaly different than men,
just find out how many women play a political role in old testament.
That means nothing when we know that the ordinary flesh and blood women were secluded in their homes under a huge amount of restrictions and basically were second worse only to slaves. They were sometimes even mocked as little more than factories of sex and birth-giving. No, come on you. You shouln't confuse your appreciation for your modern ethnicity with an objective, down-to-earth evaluaton of the practices and customs of an ancient people to whom you're related 2500 years ago. Classical Greece was notoriously mysoginistic even for the standards of the Mediterranean Antiquity.That's just a statement, it has nothing to do even with whether it was better or worse than Christian Greece. Women's lot was in fact surprisingly similar to that reserved for women in the Arabian peninsula in the modern era. They usually didn't even leave their home without a good reason or a male authorization, and they had virtually no accepted role in the economic managament and trade businesses, unlike in later Rome and even, yes, many medieval women in parts of later Christendom (women famously were usually expected to be partners of their husbands not only in the homely activities, but in their public businesses, too) and even in early Islam (e.g. Khadija).The Roman era was much better, but still pretty sexist. There must've been some
rational reason for women to have been disproportionately represented among early Christian converts (early, not later, when the religion became much more institutionalized - and harsher, absorbing and legitimizing the customs of the societies around).
In the Old Testament, yes, there are some women with an important political and social role (even if unofficially), like Judith, Esther and Ruth. But that's not the point, especially because we've all asserted here that the ancient Jewish society was very mysoginistic, mcuh more strongly than Christianity in fact, so it's no use comparing Jewish society with Classical Greeek one, they don't contrast a lot. You can't judge the real life of ancient societies based on their mythology. Name some women who were important political leaders in the appex of Classical Greece, for instance. Not Greek deities, flesh and blood important women from the heyday of the Classical Greek city states. There are too few for a reason, maybe even fewer than in parts of medieval Christian Europe (where's the Eleanor of Aquitaine ofclassical, pre-Roman Greece?). It baffles me that you people really want to derive a supposedly "pro-women" society out of ancient societies like Classical Greece, basing your arguments not on historic evidence about real people, real women, but on their religious mythology (that's like evaluating the medieval Christendom based only on their supposedly revered New Testament, as if people were actually so consistent with their faith). As for their having priestesses, the average priestess were in practice not much more relevant politically and economically, but just as revered and culturally relevant and admired, as the nuns and abbesses of the Middle Ages. Many of them even lived in cloisters (o half-cloisters) like medieval Christian nuns. Again, they don't represent the average women of their society.
