OUTLINE OF EVIDENCE & ARGUMENT RELATING TO WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS ROLES IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD:

CONSTRUCTING THE SOCIAL MATRIX OF WOMEN'S SPEECH AT CORINTH:
A CASE-STUDY IN THE USE OF EVIDENCE

Terence Paige

Associate Professor of New Testament, Houghton College

A Note on the Greek Text

I. INTRODUCTION

This paper is a kind of a case-study of the problems and complexities dealt with in trying to reconstruct a small piece of an ancient society: the social matrix of women's speech in first-century Corinthian society in general, and in the Christian church there in particular. What I mean by the "social matrix" of women's speech is the set of social values, boundaries, and practices which determine the acceptability of women's speech, its honor or shame, and which determine how women's speech serves to build up or endanger the social order. One also might think of the set of activities and relationships that are impacted by women's speech, and how they are impacted.

This interest arose out of a re-assessment of two apparently contradictory texts in 1 Corinthians that deal with women speaking, 1 Corinthians 11:5 and 14:33-36. Paul appears to give conflicting views on the public role of women in worship assemblies in 1 Corinthians, allowing that they may pray or prophesy in 11.5, 13, and condemning their speaking in 14:33b-36. Some have attempted to cut the Gordian knot by effectively disregarding one of these passages. Older commentators often held that in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul raises the possibility of women speaking in some "official" capacity merely for the sake of his argument, the point of which concerns head covering. In chapter fourteen Paul then gives his real opinion: they are not to speak at all.¹ On the other side of this dilemma are those who follow Weiss in regarding 14:33b-36 as a non-Pauline interpolation.² Paul never said it; his real opinion is that women can have an active role in worship (as per 11:5), and so there is no contradiction.

Others have tried to maintain that what is prohibited in 14:33-36 is simply disruptive chatter,³ or speech that threatens male (prophetic) authority in some way, usually by questioning the prophets.⁴ The older conservative view is strangely echoed in the work of one feminist interpreter who holds that Paul is opposing women prophets in Corinth, whom he views as a threat to his authority. He seeks to crush their gifts and relegate their talking to the home, the place of subordination.⁵ Others hold there was theologically questionable teaching being put forth by women, or that what Paul seeks to prohibit is a misuse of women's emancipation in Christ, exhibited in ecstatic behavior.⁶ These solutions hold that Paul is not actually banning women's speech altogether, only speech that threatens the theological order (and therefore health) of the church's worship, or perhaps interferes with its solemnity and people's focus on God [?? check out some of these].

A more satisfying solution will deal with all the textual indicators and the social matrix of these Greek Christians simultaneously. I would outline the textual data to be considered as follows:

(1) Paul's command to silence seems too absolute. Paul does not say, "I will not permit false teaching" or "women who disrupt the service are not permitted to speak" or some such qualification. He seems to prohibit their speaking altogether. Yet he never forbids men to speak altogether when there are false teachers who are men.

It has been suggested that the word for women "speaking" that Paul uses here suggests "chattering," annoying and trivial "blabber" (lalei'n), and so the term has been used for instance in Aristophanes.⁷ However, the problem with this theory is that the same verb is used by Paul for legitimate prophesying and speaking in tongues (1 Cor 14:2-4, 27, 29). ]

(2) Paul's command to silence must be understood simultaneously as not conflicting with his earlier allusion to women prophesying. There is no evidence-apart from one interpretation of this disputed text-that female prophesying was in and of itself looked on negatively for the first two centuries of the Christian era. It was viewed positively for at least that long, and probably longer. Acts 21:8-9 mentions four daughters of Philip the evangelist who prophesied. Eusebius mentions these women positively some three centuries later, along with a second-century prophetess from Philadelphia named Ammia.⁸ Christian texts which criticize women prophets do so for their association with men viewed as heretical, for greed or for false teaching and false prophesying, for being deluded by men and hence not being under the direction of the Spirit.⁹ Never in the earliest years are they criticized because they prophesied as women, nor does the basic right of a woman to prophesy ever enter the discussion-unlike other texts which deal with women teaching or acting as pastors. The very fact that whole congregations and pastors are said to have been led astray from time to time by a prophetess suggests that the church believed prophecy could be given by an inspired woman. And when Christian writers commend pious women as counter-examples, they do not praise them for not prophesying; rather, they are praised for not being deluded by heretical teachers.¹⁰ The earliest patristic text I can find that says that women ought not to prophesy because they are women and their speaking is shameful is Origen (writing in the first half of the third century). Even then he grants that in theory women have the potential to prophesy as Christians; he argues that it is not proper.¹¹ In later years prophesying in general came under increasing suspicion, no matter what the gender of the prophet.

(3) The reasons for Paul's command to silence are hinted at in his comments on the behavior and his proposed alternative:

(3a) the behavior is labelled "shameful" (14:35)

(3b) opposed to "speaking" is "to be subordinate / subject themselves"-though whom they are to subject themselves to is not explicitly stated.

(3c) "the law" is invoked, but not on behalf of the command to silence. Rather, it appears to justify the alternative solution of their being in subjection (14:34).

(3d) Paul opposes to "speaking in the assembly" a speaking "at home"; women are directed back to their own households for some reason.

(3e) Paul refers to Christian women "desiring to learn" something, which implies (taken with the command to silence) their speaking-or more probably, asking questions of someone. However, it is uncertain whether this reference to women desiring to learn is an echo of actual behavior at Corinth, reported to Paul by letter or visitor; or whether it is his own rhetorical addition. If the latter, it has the effect of making a "from the greater to the lesser" argument: even if the talking is for the noble purpose of learning by means of a question, don't do it.

(3f) Paul does not condemn teaching women, or women learning.

(3g) Women are directed to ask their own husbands, making an implied contrast with asking other men. This I deduce from the emphatic use of idious ("their own"), a word not otherwise necessary to the sense of the passage. Idious is also more striking than the common term that would be used to denote possession, aujtw'n. The former term stresses the nature of an object as unique to an individual, as belonging to one's private and personal affairs.¹² This means women spoke to non-family males.

(4) Paul implies this practice that he is criticizing is in conflict with that of other Christian communities, ones who preceded the Corinthians in time and honor (14:36).

(5) Paul exhorts the entire Christian community (ajdelfoiv having its usually inclusive sense of brothers-and-sisters in Christ) to "seek to prophesy" immediately afterwards (14:39; also 14:1, 5, 12).

(6) Paul's great concern throughout this chapter, and expressed again in his summary shortly after the passage 14:33-36, is that Christian worship be conducted in an "orderly" manner (14:40). He also uses the word euschêmonôs (eujschmovnw") for what worship ought to be like, which suggests something like good manners, dignity, and respectability all together.¹³

If we try to take seriously all the elements above, then Paul cannot be condemning women prophesying in 14:33-36 (conflict with # 2, 5 above).¹⁴ Nor can Paul be condemning women making critical comments on men's prophecy. Though this might be suggested by Paul's call for women to be "subordinate," the subordination referred to is probably that to a husband, not to males in general (as suggested by the comment on learning from their own husbands at home). Furthermore, "criticizing" or "judging" is not consistent with "asking questions," which suggests learning (if it is not rhetorical, 14:35). Here it strikes me that those who propose that the Corinthian women were asking questions of male prophets in a way that implied negative judgments on the content of their prophecy (or a challenge to male authority) are being over-subtle. Neither is there enough evidence to confirm that Paul is condemning ecstatic or glossolalic speech. He has already dealt with those issues in general earlier in this chapter, and he did not ban it absolutely. The only thing that suggests ecstatic, glossolalic, or prophetic speech is the context, since he has just finished with these. But the context also suggests "good order" and "good manners" are a key interest in this section (14:40), and there are other weightier indicators that Paul is interested in another issue. Another popular thesis that must be seriously questioned is that Paul is somehow threatened by, and quashing, women taking leadership in the worship services at Corinth.¹⁵ There is actually only one word in the entire section which could be taken to suggest this, namely the command "let them submit themselves" (hupotassesthôsan; I will explain below why the command to silence is not directed against leadership behavior). But without an explicit indirect object (submit to whom?), we cannot automatically assume this means "women in general must submit to all men in general, as the Law says," or "women must assume second-class status in the church." There is certainly evidence from the letter that some women were very interested in spiritual practices, to the point that they felt a need to separate from husbands and live celibate (7:1-16), and evidence that women prayed and prophesied (11:5), but there is no way to tell what proportion of the Corinthian prophets were women, nor does the evidence clearly state that such prophecy was ever perceived by Paul as a threat or as destabilizing the church, nor is such a thesis consistent with Paul's repeated exhortation to the community as a whole to seek the gift of prophecy.¹⁶

There are several things in 1 Cor 14:33b-36 which signal problems of boundary violations (for status or behavior): the terms "shameful" and "let them be in submission [or subordinate themselves]"; the contrast between the place of worship and "at home"; the implied contrast between the women's "own husbands" and other men; and even the implied contrast between behavior at Corinth and at other city's churches (14:36). In fact, there is nothing in this paragraph to suggest a theological problem (or false teaching) at all-other than the fact that it is happening "in the assembly" (ejn ejkklhsiva) and perhaps because Paul cites "the Law" (14:34). But Paul can cite the law for practical and moral matters that are not issues of "doctrine" in the narrow sense (1 Cor. 6:16; 9:8-10; Rom 12:19; 2 Cor 6:14-18; 8:13-15). Neither does the reference to women's desire "to learn something" prove a problem with false teaching, even if the phrase is not (as is likely) just a hypothetical example of an excuse for speaking in the assembly. Wanting to learn and wanting to teach are clearly not the same thing.

If the issue has to do with a correction of some boundary violation, what is the boundary and what is the behavior that is causing the violation? The answer to the second question seems to be something to do with speaking, particularly speaking "in (the) assembly." The answer to the first is not so clear. Why should female speaking be considered "shameful" (14:35)? This is not a typical way to describe false teaching. So what sort of speaking is meant? Why the mention of return to homes and husbands? What does subordination have to do with this problem (14:34)? Certainly if the behavior is banned because it challenges male headship in public, why should it be acceptable when done in private, between husband and wife at home? The implied contrast between "their very own personal husbands" and other men (noted above, no. 3g) means the Corinthian women spoke to non-family males. Would this be considered a problem? And is Paul's response idiosyncratic, peculiar to Judaism, or is there a wider mediterranean social norm shared by Paul and the citizens of Corinth?

The evidence thus far clearly indicates a "shame/honor" issue of some sort. A boundary has been transgressed or is in danger of being transgressed in a way that is perceived as destructive of the community's worship at least. The only way to do justice to all the variables involved in understanding this passage, and the situation at Corinth, is to investigate how the social world the Corinthians inhabited was constructed. Particularly, we will need to ask about feminine shame and honor as they relate to women's public presence and women's speech. And we will have to ask which social world or system was the dominant one in the church. Corinth was a Roman colony reestablishing an ancient Greek city in Greece, and the church there was founded and taught by an ex-diaspora Jew who was a Christian. Did the Corinthians and Paul disagree as to which set of values applied, or did some other element (such as Christian eschatology) cause the differences? Did the pagan Corinthian boundaries differ significantly from those of Christians?

In the next section we will look at the evidence and also note problems in using it as we try to answer these questions.

II. EVIDENCE RELATING TO WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS ROLES IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD:

II.1. On Method

As we begin asking what ordinary first-century Corinthians were like and how they compare to Jews or Christians, we must first make some cautionary notes regarding the use of the evidence. Perhaps these cautions may be unnecessary for readers who are familiar with Roman society; but in any case, it is good to be reminded.

The first problem is the question of the ethnic and social identity of the Corinthians in Paul's day: were they more Roman or Greek? This is currently a disputed topic. Some argue that Corinthian people and society were definitely Roman, based on the fact that (a) the site had been completely abandoned after its destruction by the Romans in 146 B.C.; (b) it was refounded as a Roman colony by Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., a very different and Roman city; (c) Caesar settled veterans there (hence the strongly Roman character of the population); (d) the majority of inscriptions from the late first century B.C. to the Hadrianic era are in Latin; (e) there is evidence that some temples restored during the early period of the colony were restored in the italic architectural style, rather than in the Greek style.¹⁷ As David Gill puts it, "Corinth was considered to be the centre of Romanitas in the province."¹⁸ On the other hand, there seems to be evidence that Corinth was inhabited during its supposed period of desolation, even though it was not formally organized as a city. Wendel Willis reports some 90 coins found dating to the era of `desolation' (146-44 B.C.), as well as manufactured goods (pottery, metal crafting), and two inscriptions.¹⁹ He also points out that the literary references to Corinth's destruction are either ambiguous about the site's desertion, or (in the case of Dio Cassius and Orosius) late and unreliable. Cicero reported talking with locals while travelling in 79-77 B.C.²⁰ As for as the archaeological remains of the early years of the colony, I am cautious about drawing conclusions about the ethnic and linguistic identity of the majority of a city's inhabitants based on the language or style of monuments erected by the conquerors and those who served them in the administration of state, or those who wished to flatter them. The Italian-style rebuilding of some (not all) prominent ancient temples in Corinth is a statement of power and patronage. Latin dedications to the divine Caesars are statements of submission and loyalty to the empire. We would hardly jump to the conclusion that the Gauls in Lyon of the first and early second century all spoke Latin or were thoroughly Romanized on the basis of some Latin inscriptions there. Irenaeus' comment about the language of daily life in his city being a "barbarous dialect" makes it clear that there was only a veneer of Latin culture-mostly among the elite-even in his day.²¹ Willis argues that the "Roman" colonists settled at Corinth were largely freedmen and "oriental," so that most knew Greek better than Latin.²² The continued use of ancient Greek worship sites-particularly ones of special interest to locals-also is some evidence of the strong Hellenic coloring of life in Roman Corinth.²³ And there are some Greek inscriptions from the pre-Hadrianic era of the Roman colony, telling us that Greek language and culture were very much alive here.²⁴ Yet it is no doubt true that this city, having once been a ring-leader of opposition to Rome, having been destroyed by Rome, and having been given a civic re-birth due to Rome's generosity and settled by those who had served Rome, was in light of all this no doubt eager to show her loyalty to the empire and in time to its emperors as deities.²⁵

The second caution to make is not to lump together "ancient people" as if they were some homogenous culture. I realize probably no one reading this needs to be told, but it is still part of proper methodology. Evidence needs to be carefully tagged geographically and chronologically (since cultures change over time). It cannot be assumed that society and law in Egypt was the same as in Rome or Greece; or even that all of Greece was undifferentiated.

The third caution is to weigh how the sources may have skewed their information due to biases of class, wealth, gender, national origin, or personal experience. The majority of our information about gender roles comes from written sources, either literary works, non-literary papyri, or inscriptions. So another factor to consider is the writer's purpose, if it can be known at all. Another source of information is Greek vase-painting, but here again there are many questions. The symbolism on the vases is not always clear. Whether a woman on a vase is slave or free, a matron or prostitute, legendary figure or deity is not always entirely clear. Apparently more attic vases portray prostitutes than honorable women; but this does not mean that most Athenian women sold themselves.²⁶ One thesis is that the brothels were located close by the potter's workshops in Athens, and these ladies provided a constant source of interest and of models for the workmen.²⁷ It is also likely that the interests of the potters' buyers determined their subject matter.

Fourthly, I wanted to know whether gender roles and gender-specific social expectations were constant across society, measured either along the class scale, or measured across the wide span of activities that made up ancient life. Did expectations change in moving from the profane to the sacred? What new twists did sacred times, sacred spaces, and sacred activities introduce? Were there different standards in moving from one's private home to the marketplace, to politics and public office, to travelling, to the baths? As it turns out, this is precisely the question I should have asked, and one which is too often ignored in New Testament studies that claim to elucidate women's roles in the ancient world and in Christian churches.²⁸ Even within one city and during one historical era, we may find multiple sets of standards depending on social space, class, occupation, the liturgical calendar, or other factors.

With these cautions in mind, we are ready to look at some evidence. I have divided the evidence into that relating to the profane (home and public life) and the sacred.²⁹ Within each of these sections I have differentiated between Roman and Greek practices.

II.2 ATTITUDES TO WOMEN IN PUBLIC: THE REALM OF THE PROFANE.

II.2.A. The Eastern Provinces: Greek Culture

The surviving literature of the Greek-speaking cultures describes as the ideal norm the woman who worked in the home, helped manage her husband's affairs, and was secluded away in her house from all public contact with men who were not her immediate relations. This picture is constant in traditional Greek homelands (Magna Graeca, the Greek mainland and islands, Asia Minor) from a very ancient time until after the first century of this era. The good wife did not accompany her husband when he went out in public, whether the occasion was political, business, shopping, or social entertainment. In fact, it was considered shameful for a wife to appear with her husband at a party and drink in public; that was what prostitutes did. Demosthenes attacks a foreigner wedded to an Athenian with the accusation, ". . . the defendant Neaera drank and dined with them in the presence of many men, as any courtesan would do" (Against Neaera 24). When one examines Attic vase-painting this same ideal is apparent, for the virtuous wife is never pictured at a banquet with men. Only prostitutes had free access to the symposion and are pictured entertaining their clients there.³⁰ This contrasts with the Roman attitude, as seen in Cornelius Nepos' comment on the social differences between Romans and Greeks:

Much that in Rome we hold to be correct is thought shocking in Greece. No Roman thinks it an embarrassment to take his wife to a dinner party. At home the wife holds first place in the house and is the centre of its social life. Things are very different in Greece, where the wife is never present at dinner, unless it is a family party, and spends all her time in a remote part of the house called The Women's Quarter, which is never entered by a man unless he is a very close relation.³¹

As the above passage indicates, Greek husbands also hold that it is dishonorable and shameful for their wives to be seen by, or speak to, other men. The women of the house have a separate section of the house, usually as far from the street and the entertaining areas of the home as possible. The women's area may have been on the upper story of the house,³² or it may have been on the ground floor, but with entrances designed to minimize or exclude communication with the men's areas, as at least one archaeological investigation has shown.³³ Classical writers make it clear that women's work is indoor work, and that women are suited for this by nature. "God prepared the woman's nature, it seems to me, for indoor work and concerns, and the man's nature for outdoor work and concerns," is the opinion of a model landowner to whom Socrates gives his praise.³⁴ In the home women have security, for the intrusion of anyone but a husband is regarded as a severe social transgression, a threat to the women's modesty, their honor, and their sexual purity. Lysias in a defense speech (early IV B.C.) plays on the horror that would be aroused in a jury who heard of someone breaching this social barrier. He says of a man who attacked his client in his own home:

. . . he came there at night in a drunken state, broke down the doors, and entered the women's rooms: within were my sister and my neices, whose lives have been so well-ordered that they are ashamed to be seen even by their kinsmen. This man, then carried insolence to such a pitch that he refused to go away until the people who appeared on the spot, and those who had accompanied him, feeling it a monstrous thing that he should intrude on young girls and orphans, drove him out by force."³⁵

In correlation with this, classical writers often regard women appearing in public for profane (i.e., nonreligious) reasons as a dangerous thing, risking dishonor or adulterous liaisons. Lysias argued in another speech that the beginning of the downfall of his client's wife was when she appeared in public for a funeral, where Eratosthenes (her future lover) spies her and plots to seduce her.³⁶ Aristophanes expresses an Athenian husband's typical suspicion that a wife who has gone out in the early morning hours must have been to a rendezvous with some lover.³⁸

And finally, if a woman should have occasion to set foot outside the house, she is expected not to speak to men.³⁸ "It is shameful for a wife [or woman] to be standing with young men" writes Euripides.³⁹ Again, this behavior is regarded by writers as like that of a prostitute. To speak with a man is almost tantamount to making a sexual advance on him; it crosses the social boundary set up around modest and virtuous women, especially married women. Such conversation signals a woman leaving her sphere of protection and inviting the attention of others-attention which is viewed as dangerous.

This view of women is fairly well documented in classical writers and up until about twenty years ago was widely agreed upon by historians as expressing the reality of women's lives with few exceptions. But there are several questions that have to be raised about the evidence before one can use such texts as illustrative of the environment of early Christianity outside Palestine.

(1) Did this attitude persist into the first century A.D. and beyond, or did Roman social conventions of the early Empire-which gave women more freedom in the profane/secular realm-influence the Eastern provinces? Keep in mind that the Corinth of the New Testament had been refounded as a Roman colony.

(2) What are we seeing when we read statements by classical or later writers about women's work and women's social space? Are we reading simple descriptions of the way things were? Are we seeing the values of the upper class only, with different standards for other classes of women? Is this the opinion of men only, or of men and women? Or are these comments reflective of mere idealizations, not to be taken as evidence of any actual persons' lives? And if not total idealizations, how far was this seclusion of women actually practiced?

(3) Was this seclusion of women practiced at all times of the year, on all occasions and in every area? Did it extend to the religious realm, or did a different norm operate for the sacred?

In answer to (1) above, there are several indications that the attitude of classical Greek writers persisted in the Eastern Roman provinces down to the first century and beyond. Plutarch, writing about half century or less after Paul, confirms this. Plutarch was an aristocratic and erudite man from Chaeronea in Greece. He was a priest at Delphi in his later years, well acquainted with both Roman and Greek customs (having spent some time at Rome), and was schooled in Greek literature and religion. We might expect that if any Greek writer of the Roman era would take a more liberal view of women, Plutarch would. Yet in his Advice to Bride and Groom he writes that wives should stay indoors, not expose their arms to public view (nor, presumably, most other parts except for hands, feet, and face), not speak in public, and should be subordinate (Øpot£ttousai, the same verb as in 1 Cor. 14:34) to their husbands:

Not only the virtuous woman's forearm should be withheld, but not even her speech should be public, and she ought to guard her voice from [being heard by] outsiders, regarding this with the same shame that she would if she were stripped naked before them, for her emotion, character, and disposition are seen by her talking.
Pheidias⁴⁰ made the Aphrodite of the Eleans with one foot on a tortoise, to typify for womankind keeping at home and keeping silence. For a woman ought to do her talking either to her husband or through her husband, and she should not feel aggrieved if, like the flute-player, she makes a more impressive sound through a tongue not her own.

Rich men and kings by honoring philosophers adorn themselves as well as the philosophers, but philosophers who flatter the rich do not increase their reputation, but only take away from their own. So it is with women also. If they subordinate themselves (Øpot£ttousai) to their husbands they are praised, but if they want to rule they are even more disgraceful than those who are ruled by them. A man ought to rule his wife, not as a master over a piece of property, but as the soul rules the body, empathizing with her and being welded together⁴¹ with her in kindness.⁴²

Notice how Plutarch highlights the immodesty of a woman speaking to "outsiders" by comparing this action to being stripped naked, like the prostitutes and flute-girls painted on drinking cups and vases.⁴³ Plutarch's illustration betrays the sense of sexual danger in this behavior: it invites adulterous attention. It also may be shaming the husband, if his wife's speaking suggests an independence and freedom from him. The perceived danger in this independence of action could be either due to the threat of adultery (as above), or simply that it makes the husband appear somehow weak or inept in the minds of his associates and family. The counterbalance Plutarch proposes to the woman's public speaking is twofold: that she make herself heard through her husband, and that she be "subordinate" to him.

Elsewhere Plutarch makes it clear that this silence in the public or profane realm is a solidly Greek custom. In De Genio Socratis he recalls a revolution in the city of Thebes, during which the women rush out into the streets and accost men passing by to ask them for news of their male relations, whether they are still alive or not. And if they did find a father, husband, or brother, they followed them through the streets. This behavior was a violation of "their Boeotian customs," excusable only because of the distress of the times (De Genio Socratis 598C). The reader gets the distinct impression that Plutarch excuses the Theban women's behavior for the benefit of his contemporary readers' sensibilities.

Dio Chrysostom, in his first Tarsian oration (early second century or possibly late first century) praises the women of Tarsus for their customs and modesty. In particular, he praises them that their face as well as their entire body is covered when they go out, and that they look only at the pathway straight ahead when they walk in public (Oration 33.48-49). Whether or not this is an "oriental" custom,⁴⁴ it is notable that Dio praises it as characteristic of their "self-control and severity [to; sw'fron kai; to; aujsthro;n, to sôphron kai to austêron]," an echo of past days when their society was known for its "well-orderedness" [eujtaxiva, eutaxia] (33.48). He finds nothing strange or unusual about it.

S. Pomeroy uses surviving marriage contracts from Hellenistic Egypt to illumine marriage and women's position there. In Egypt, women--particularly the Greeks and Macedonians related to the conquerors--seem to have exercised more legal power and to have had stronger bargaining positions in the marriage contracts than in any other location around the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic age, only to be equalled by women in Rome during the imperial era. For instance, women could stipulate in the marriage contracts that they co-determine with their husband the location of their abode, and that their husbands be forbidden from maintaining a concubine or bearing children by any other woman.⁴⁵ Yet even here in upper Egypt we find the traditional distribution of labor along gender lines, and the wife's movement restricted.⁴⁶ Women probably did have fewer traditional restrictions in the big city of Alexandria, however, than they did in the backwaters of Upper Egypt where the papyri come from.⁴⁷ Another interesting thing about the marriage contracts from Hellenistic Egypt is the recurring element of a wife promising to do nothing to dishonor her husband. The husband's concern for his honor is obviously very important, and is not limited to the possibility of his wife's unfaithfulness. A number of other actions which might be taken as immodest public dress or behavior, or which might cast doubt on her husband's masculinity (such as scolding him in public) could cause dishonor.⁴⁸ This same concern with modesty and honor--not only for husband and wife per se, but for the whole Christian community at Corinth as a body--lies behind Paul's admonitions in 1 Cor. 14:33-36.

Pomeroy also notes women's ability to conduct business and make contracts in Hellenistic Egypt as a significant advance over their limitations in classical Greece: "Respectable women participated in the economy of Ptolemaic Egypt to a greater extent than can be documented for any other Greek society and in ways comparable to the activities of women in later Roman society."⁴⁹

Ramsay MacMullen has shown that in the Greek East during the Roman period there was much more participation by women in the civic realm than older studies had thought.⁵⁰ Through a careful analysis of inscriptions and coins, he shows that women erected public buildings, served civic offices, and served as priestesses of important civic cults. They certainly were not serving in equal numbers with men, but they were there. One study of coins from 13 cities of the Eastern provinces produced the names of 13 women who served in the highest civic posts, compared to 214 men.⁵¹ They serve as eponymous magistrates (i.e., their names are used to date events in the city) and as high priestesses of the imperial cult or other important civic cults. There is some question about what proportion of these women held office as more or less honorific titles: the high-priestess of the imperial cult in Asia held her position as wife of the high priest, and other titles were sometimes given in the East as honors to wives of male office-holders.⁵² Women can hold public office at every level, though in far fewer numbers than the men. This is a great increase over the lack of access women had to public office in classical times. Yet Ramsay also notes some evidence of the older values: "women are rarely found in roles like that of grammateus which would require their speaking in public. They are to be seen, then, but not heard."⁵³ And among the praises applied to these benefactresses in inscriptions are a few that are used for their gender only, as "modesty" (swfrosuvnh). The small proportion of women to men in public offices tells us that we are nowhere near equal treatment, even though opportunities have expanded.

So we see conflicting evidence here: on the one hand, the attitudes of the classical era persist in the East when looking at literary authors, and to some extent they affect the marriage documents. But examination of non-literary evidence clearly shows that in comparison to the classical era women have more authority over their lives, a greater say in the marriage contract (at least in Egypt), greater access to the legal system, and far greater participation in the business of civic administration and patronage of important labor groups. How shall we weigh this evidence (question two above)? Many studies since the mid-seventies have rightly cast doubt on our ability to use the literary evidence of antiquity as if it contained objective descriptions of reality which are simply and easily extracted, or as if the view of the writers could be taken as representative of society as a whole. The writers are conditioned by gender, class, wealth, location and experience, not to mention the influence of the audience or the writer's patron (if any). And most writers are male and from the upper classes. What are we to make of it?

First of all, where the nature of the evidence seems to be more observations of society than discussions of norms we can credit the source with a high degree of reliability. While observations may be partial or biased, we do not expect them to be entirely false. In the example of Lysias' speeches used above, we have in On the Murder of Eratosthenes a simple observation of fact in the testimony of how Euphiletus' wife was secluded in the upper portion of the house, sending her servants out whenever she required something from outside the house. Similarly, in Against Simon the defendant describes the modesty of his sister and neices who live within his house and do not wish to be seen by other men, even kinsmen (!). We could also note that these two cases depend in part on the sympathy of the jury for their effect, so that Lysias must be assuming the jurors-and other Athenians-share the social expectation that modest women who are freeborn and married at least (and perhaps unmarried ones as well) stay at home and do not go out. And they share the expectation also that it is an occasion of social shame if a man should enter the house and see such women-whether in their individual quarters or not. If the situation of his clients' lives were very different from what he states, or if the jury's feelings about where the social boundaries and roles lay were very different from what is assumed, Lysias' case would fall to the ground. Again, in the comment by Cornelius Nepos (c. 99-c. 24 B.C.) there is no reason to suppose that he would falsify Roman practice in writing to other Romans. He might be tempted to exaggerate the differences between his people and the Greeks, but his comment on their women's more restricted social sphere only reinforces what we learn from Greek writers themselves.

On the other hand, Xenophon in his Oeconomicus clearly wishes to present a model of how things ought to be. Even if he draws on real-life characters, we cannot assume that all Greek women enjoyed the luxury of Isomachus' wife, having a wealthy husband with large landholdings and a flock of slaves to ensure that her only worry is keeping track of his possessions. And Plutarch is writing advice which includes some anecdotes from the past. How far Plutarch's attitude reflects that of the rest of his contemporaries is hard to measure. However, we might expect him to be more liberal than the average Greek, given his travels to Rome, his philosophic education, and his attitude toward marriage and educating women.⁵⁴ We also might expect that Plutarch would have had quite an influence at least at Delphi (where he served as priest and in public office) if not on the Greece of his day.⁵⁵ Yet in many ways his attitude is not all that far removed from that of classical writers. If this is so of a mild-mannered, well-traveled and erudite man such as Plutarch, we can hardly expect ordinary Greeks of his day to have taken a more liberal view of women.

Secondly, it has been noted that the same writers who present to us the ideal of a Greek wife as silent and secluded also give us evidence-sometimes inadvertently-that not all women lived this way. Other evidence of women's activity in public comes from inscriptions, papyri, art, and comparative studies. Slave women, most obviously, are not subject to the same social restrictions that married citizens and other free women are. Indeed, they cannot be, for they are their mistresses' principal means of communication with the outside world. The maids fetch water from public fountains,⁵⁶ go on errands, carry messages to and from lovers (meeting with one or more men in order to do so!),⁵⁷ and apparently do other business for their family in public without any sense of shame or impropriety. Next we must think of wives of farmers in the countryside, who must have participated with their husbands in outdoor work-especially in poorer families-in order to ensure that ploughing and harvesting were accomplished.⁵⁸ "From necessity the poor even use their own wives and children as servants, since they have no slaves," observed Aristotle.⁶⁰ Of course, slave women belonging to farm families could also be assigned to outdoor work, even though Greek writers like to speak of this as men's work. The distribution of a household's work along male-female lines is often ignored when it comes to slaves. Next there are poor women living in town. Remarks from classical writers indicate that poorer women had to work outside the home, often selling things in the market-place; and tombstones testify to lower class wives working alongside their husbands.⁶¹ This evidence is supplemented by vase-paintings indicating women working outdoors or selling.⁶² In antiquity it was regarded as a humiliating thing to have had a mother that sold vegetables or other things in the market-place, as seen for example in Aristophanes' (untrue) claim that Euripides' mother worked in this fashion.⁶³ A large part of the sting intended must have come from the implication that if one's mother was from the right sort of people, with the right sort of husband, she would not have to work in public. Selling things marks a woman as poor, lower class, of no account.

The evidence of the Greek world, taken as a whole, indicates that even in classical times not all women were kept in the house, out of public view. Those who did live this way would generally be free women and wives of citizens who were of some financial means. Due to her husband's income and her supply of slave labor she did not need to sully herself by mixing with the crowds. "The seclusion of women may thus become a status symbol, indulged in by those who can afford it, and emulated by others striving for respectability."⁶⁴ It would serve the same purpose as lily-white skin in the American old South, or a well-tanned body in a designer swimsuit in today's culture, signifying that this person is a woman of leisure, well provided for.

It also must be remembered that even in classical Athens, women always had free access to travel to other women's homes-to help in the birth of a new baby, to tend the sick, to share gossip with a friend. They had access to temples and could be away from home for several days for some religious festivals (e.g., Thesmophoria). It is a standard of Greek comedy that women use all the above as excuses to meet lovers, indicating that they were not truly house-bound.

As time goes by, there are increasing opportunities available to women in the political sphere in public office and as civic benefactresses in the Greek East, and more participation in business as well in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. However, the older attitudes are still present. Women have proportionately far less representation in public offices than men. Those with more wealth or important family connections may emulate the freedom of women in Rome, but the literary evidence suggests that the ideal of the silent, veiled woman who stays at home to care for her husband's property and guard her chastity is still very much alive both with men and with women, even though not all have the capital to support such a lifestyle. Ramsay MacMullen concludes thus after examining apparently contradictory pieces of evidence regarding women in the Eastern Roman provinces:

. . . Here may be the clue that resolves the conflict in evidence: women who imitated the changes in style that went on at the imperial court, changes depicted in the provinces by portraits of the ladies of the imperial house, were the richer ones, the more open to the new ways, and the more likey to belong to families on the rise. Women of humbler class went veiled, but these others behaved exactly like their counterparts observed in Italy, fully visible, indeed making their existence felt very fully in public.⁶⁵

II.2.B. Roman Society

It is well known that in the period of the Empire in Rome especially and throughout Italy generally, society allowed greater freedom of movement and participation for women in public. In Rome women went to the theater or even the circus with their husbands; they attended banquets with their husbands, and participated in conversation with men.⁶⁶ Apparently such behavior was not thought immodest, though dancing and singing were apparently off limits for respectable, upper class women.⁶⁷ The average woman had much more freedom of movement without contravening any behavioral ideals: "Women went out of the house in order to shop, to go to the baths, to pay social calls, to worship at temples or to attend some public spectacle. The wives of clients were sometimes dragged round by their husbands when they called upon their patrons, in order that they might claim a larger dole. With greater decorum, wives went with their husbands to dinner parties."⁶⁸ Even more astounding is the discovery that some time around the middle of the first century of our era the main bathing areas of the Roman baths were in some cities used by both sexes simultaneously (there being only one set of pools in the bath).⁶⁹ Roman satirists excoriate women who have (in their view) too much learning and too inflated a view of themselves, and who trot out their knowledge of oratory or history or philosophy or politics in front of men at banquets or other social occasions. Such satire shows that, annoying as a man might find it, educated upper-class women began to feel free to converse intelligently with men who were not family members. At Pompeii women might voice their opinions about political candidates in graffiti on the walls, even if they were only slaves or ex-slaves; women make small loans; women sell property "of middling size or less"; women administer estates, rent properties, and sue debtors in court.⁷⁰

Women in the Empire serve as patronesses or benefactors to workers' guilds and cities, and are honored in civic dedications to them.⁷¹ At Pompey one Eumachia served as a priestess for the city, and built a center for a workman's guild. The priestess of Venus there was "patroness of the colony itself, invoked on occasion even in favor of political candidates."⁷² "Both at the top and the bottom of society, women thus appear to take an active part in the common business of the city," and those at the top could swing a great deal of clout through their wealth and family connections.⁷³

The public presence of patronesses must have been welcomed at the very least at banquets they underwrote and in celebrations by the groups they aided--celebrations which could often have a religious side in a sacrifice to the patron deity. Can we imagine a wealthy woman milling about in a crowd, making small talk with the officials of a collegium and enjoying their honors? Not so rare as one might think; MacMullen estimates "perhaps a tenth of the protectors and donors that collegia sought out were women."⁷⁴ And turning to the legal system, we find that women began appearing in court to plead their own cases for the first time in the late Republic.⁷⁵

On the other hand, there is evidence that the old conservative values are held up as an ideal at least in word, if not in deed. Inscriptions on tombstones maintain an almost identical list of virtues as praise for the good wife, whether aristocratic or poor, virtues which show continuity with the old Republic: she is faithful to her husband, hard working, modest, decent, beautiful, home-loving, and (for wealthy women) one who managed carefully the husband's property and slaves.⁷⁶ MacMullen finds that in the case of civic banquets where food was publicly distributed (usually on the occasion of a religious festival for the patron deity of a city), "not only were women, more often than not, excluded altogether from these occasions . . . if they were indeed invited, they were generally put at the bottom of the pecking order." One inscription lists the proportions of food to be distributed, and women were given a portion one tenth the size of a town senator's.⁷⁷ Though women act as patronesses, it still seems debatable whether they could actually hold a civic office in Italy, and Fantham et al. hold that they could not.⁷⁸ Their power and influence, and the honors they received from cities, were due to their use of personal or family wealth.

For poor free women in the countryside, for slave and freedwomen, we find as in the case of Greece that they work outdoors alongside the men. Varro writes of women working with shepherds, cooking meals, carrying firewood, tending the field huts; "In many places they are not inferior to the men at work."⁷⁹

II.2.C. Summary.

The evidence suggests that the social expectations of women's public presence varied not only with time, but varied geographically as well. In the Greek East, restrictions relaxed somewhat though the old ideals were still very much alive. It became possible for women to act as benefactresses and even hold civic offices, if they came from the right sort of families. Roman influence may have dictated the fashion for wealthy women who had themselves portrayed in busts or tomb art as unveiled and with carefully made up hair. Yet the ideal held by wealthy and aristocratic males--and those who emulated them--had not changed much from the classical era: the silent and modest wife who faithfully minds the estate from the household, uses a veil in public, and avoids public life. Such a woman shows her class (and her wealth) by staying at home to tend the servants and domestic tasks. One feels it is still regarded as shameful for honorable women to mingle with men in public, or converse with them. And they still did not attend banquets. Middle class and poor women were not able to live up to such expectations due to economic necessity. Women who sold things needed to mingle with crowds and converse with customers.

In Rome and the Italian world of the Empire, women were much freer to travel, to attend civic and social events and still be held in respect as "proper" or modest women. The ones who could availed themselves of education and engaged men who were not immediate relatives in conversation-apparently without fear of social stigma. As in Greece, women sold wares of all kinds and continued to spin wool as from time immemorial. Oddly enough, there seem to have been fewer women participating in civic offices and honors in Italy than in the Greek East during the early Empire.

III. ATTITUDES TO WOMEN IN PUBLIC: THE REALM OF THE SACRED

III.1: The Greek East.

When we turn from the profane to the realm of the sacred, it is striking what a difference is to be seen. Even in the Greek world during the classical era--in general a more restrictive time for women everywhere than the first century A.D.--women are found participating and officiating at every level in religious cults, both private and public. "Whereas inequality between the sexes was the rule in the political sphere, it appears that honors and responsibilities in the religious sphere were divided according to some other principle. Priestesses seem to have had the same rights and duties as priests . . . . religion offered the only sphere in which Greek women could be treated as citizens."⁸⁰ Though excluded from some shrines, cults, or festivals (just as men are also banned from some), women and virgin maidens make up processions, serve as hierophants, priestesses, and other functionaries elsewhere. And this is not only in all-woman events such as the Thesmophoria, but in mixed-gender settings as well.

Honorable citizen women have a part in "public ceremonials and religious acts", and consider it a privilege not to be lightly shared with foreigners or courtezans, according to the upper-class view of Lysias.⁸¹ Of course all women, no matter what their social status, had access to the sacred area (temenos) of temples and shrines to say prayers and make offerings. One usually had to be of a certain class (at least a citizen) or from a prominent family to have an important and public role in a sacred procession, a public sacrifice, or some other key cultic role-at least when it concerned civic cults and major deities. Writers sometimes complain of women using their religious duty as an excuse to meet lovers; this complaint also tells us that travel to a sacred place for a sacred purpose was a freedom wives were not denied, though it might be resented by their husbands.

Not all these religious roles involved speaking (which is what this paper is more interested in), but even the mere fact that in the realm of the sacred women appear in public before men, are to be looked at and admired by men, and are regarded as a necessary and indispensable part of the sacred ceremonies, is in itself very significant. It is a departure from the rules for everyday life, and tells us something of women's heightened importance in this area. When we consider that in some roles women are necessary to initiate men into mysteries, to properly complete sacrifices offered by men, to pronounce the will of the god, perhaps even to sing hymns or pronounce blessings for the god, then it is apparent that there is something about sacral service that brings about a different set of boundaries, and different rules for what constitutes shameful behavior.

Let us turn to a few examples, beginning with women who serve as priestesses. There may have been some priestesses whose role was purely honorary, a consequence of her marriage to a priest.⁸² But it is impossible to maintain that all priestesses were merely honorary, held no religious authority or performed no sacrifices simply because they were women and Greek society limited women's power. The rules are different in the realm of the sacred. Blundell reports that more than forty major cults had priestesses attached to them in classical Athens alone.⁸³ These priestesses-like the male priests-were lay people with no special training, chosen not for piety but usually because of a hereditary right to the office or due to her family purchasing the office, which was usually not for life.⁸⁴ The most important of these at Athens was the cult of Athena Polias, whose priestess officiated at "the most important of the state festivals," the Great Panathenaea.⁸⁵ Such people received enormous honor and attention. "Priestesses are seen aloft on a throne in the theater, there to preside over the shows, or are crowned by the city or by the women and men of some cult group, or even thrice honorably received by the emperor himself; the deity they serve, they serve on an equal footing with priests; or they alone must preside over certain religious associations."⁸⁶

At the festival of the Anthesteria in honor of Dionysus, the wife of the "King-Archon" (archon basileus), styled the "queen," is "married" to the god. She was priestess for a night. What offerings she made on the city's behalf and what she did on that night are not exactly known, but her importance for the whole city and the sacredness of her part is seen in Demosthenes' outrage that a woman who is a foreigner and the daughter of a prostitute managed marry the king-archon and "performed on the city's behalf the rites that none may name, and was given as wife to Dionysus."⁸⁷

There were many officiants involved in administering the Eleusinian mysteries, but we may note that alongside the most important male officials-the hierophant ("high priest"), "torch-bearer" (dadouchos), and "sacred herald" (hierokeryx)-there were female ministrants: the priestess of Demeter, the hierophantis, and another torch-bearer (dadouchousa). These women performed important functions and were not necessarily the wives of the corresponding men. The chief priestess of Demeter at Eleusis held an eponymous position (years were dated in public records by her name and year in office), and she played a key role in initiating people into the mysteries; possibly she played the role of Demeter in a ritual enactment of the myth.⁸⁸ She was paid an obol by every initiate.⁸⁹ Kerenyi reproduces two ancient representations of Herakles undergoing purification in preparation to be initiated into the mysteries. Although the event is mythical, the ceremony and its symbolism were seen by Greeks annually. So it is interesting to note that in the center of these compositions we see Herakles veiled and seated, and standing over him is not the priest, but the priestess!⁹⁰ One Hierophantis claims in an inscription that she herself had crowned the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus with the garland which marked one's initiation.⁹¹ There is some debate whether the centerpiece of the mysteries involved something spoken (as information imparted ) or something enacted.⁹² Whatever the case may be, it is hard to imagine that the sacred officials never uttered a word to initiants; almost certainly here was a case of a woman speaking to men (and women) who were not her family on behalf of the goddess. We also learn from Demosthenes that the priestess of Demeter had the exclusive right to perform a particular sacrifice; the priest could not do it.⁹³ The Eleusinian mysteries continued long into the Empire and were eventually imitated in other cities, such as at Alexandria.

At Corinth there was a large temenos (or sacred precinct) devoted to Demeter and Kore, in use both in ancient times and after the Roman refounding of the city. Although the Eleusinian rites were not conducted there, it seems likely that the priestess(es?) who served there would also carry some of the prestige of the more famous sanctuary to the east.

In Hellenistic Egypt we have other examples of prominent priestesses, also eponymous-including three who introduce the dating formula on the Rosetta Stone.⁹⁴ Pomeroy believes these Egyptian priestesses were not married, based on the description of their family connections in the inscriptions honoring them.⁹⁵ It is likely that most of these priestesses were of Greek and Macedonian blood, with aristocratic ties to the ruling race. Here in Alexandria, as in other centers of Greek culture, "religion was the only state-supported activity that reserved an official place for women."⁹⁶ Women also serve a number of official positions in the cult of Isis, both in Egypt and the many places around the Roman Empire where it spread (including Cenchreae, Corinth's harbor). Isis was particularly popular with women, who also contribute a large percentage of the dedications to Isis from the Hellenistic and Roman eras.⁹⁷ Plutarch dedicates one of his books to Clea, a priestess of Isis.⁹⁸ In New Testament times her cult was widespread and popular, as R. E. Witt makes clear:

During the formative centuries of Christianity the religion of Isis was drawing converts to it from every corner of the Roman Empire. Her priests were dedicated missionaries like soldiers crusading on hallowed service. In Italy itself the Egyptian faith was a dominant force . . . In the captial, temples were built in her honour, obelisks were set up, and emperors bowed to her name. Women grovelled on their knees in the street in lamentation to her. She took possession of the traditional centres of Greek worship-Delos, Delphi and Eleusis, and she was well-known in northern Greece and in Athens . . .⁹⁹

In a mural from Herculaneum a priestess of Isis is pictured standing next to the priest and holding the sistrum and situla that marks Isis' worship.¹⁰⁰ We do not know exactly what her role was or whether it involved speaking, though we do hear of women called paeanistai who sing the liturgy to Isis.¹⁰¹

Women also served as prophetesses or ministrants of oracles in the classical world and on through the period of the Empire. Some of the most famous oracular shrines in antiquity were served by women. At Delphi it was a prophetess, the Pythia, who sat on the sacred tripod and was regarded as the instrument of the god Apollo. Questions were put to her written on slips, and she gave the answer. This ancient oracle had at one time been so much in demand that it employed three prophetesses, though by the end of the first century of our era it seemed to be drying up and had few visitors.¹⁰² The prestige of this office should not be minimized by drawing negative inferences from the circumstances of her service-that she was required to be celibate, and that male "interpreters" often served as intermediaries between the Pythia and inquirers. The latter two circumstances are sometimes taken to imply either that the prophetess in her service must become more like a man and less like a typical woman, so that her femaleness is suppressed somehow, or alternately that because she is a woman her voice cannot speak directly to the (usually male) inquirers and the true "power" of the oracle is in the hands then of the male interpreters. In this line of thought, the stark difference between the Pythia's public function and the usual seclusion of Greek citizen women is minimized. However, special rules for priests or prophets of a god are not unusual. During certain festival times or for other sacrificial occasions, celibacy may be demanded not only of the officials but even of worshippers, male and female.¹⁰³ Though this is not a general rule, there are instances of this outside Delphi. And a male mantic figure in Delos also requires a prophetes (as at Delphi) to "formulate his utterances."¹⁰⁴

The oracle of Zeus at Dodona-which claimed to be the oldest--was served in classical times by a triad of priestesses who were called "doves," and who may have spoken ecstatic, unintelligible messages requiring interpretation.¹⁰⁵ These are only a portion of possible examples, and we have not even considered cults in which only women are allowed to minister and attend the sacred events.

III.2 Roman Religion

When we turn from Roman social practices of the empire to the civic religion, there does not appear to be quite the same freedom as we find in the Greek world. In fact, many writers feel that women's role in Roman religion is rather restricted compared to the greater freedom that Roman society allowed them in other areas. John Scheid writes of the Roman matron: "As a woman, she was, if not excluded from religious practice, at least relegated to a marginal role. In fact women were so thoroughly excluded from Roman religion that they frequented suburban sanctuaries and the temples of foreign gods and, if the censorious comments of the pious are to be believed, threw themselves into all sorts of deviant religious practice and thought."¹⁰⁶With a few exceptions mentioned below, it seems that women in general-including priestesses-were excluded from sacrifice, just as they were excluded from slaughtering and butchering any animal in ancient times. ¹⁰⁷

There were certain all-female celebrations (often restricted even further, to married women, free women, or aristocratic women) at which women had more freedom, such as the Bona Dea, the Nonae Caprotinae, and the Matronalia. At these festivals women gathered without men and did make non-animal offerings. However, the women's authority shown in these festivals does not tell us much about whether these sacred times and places involved changes in social roles or boundaries, since there were no men present to interact with. If anything, they express in cultic form a segregation of the sexes. But perhaps we should not be overly pessimistic; there are some hints of freedoms that go beyond the norm. At the Bona Dea women, we are told, smuggle in wine to drink (normally forbidden them) under the guise of "milk" carried in a "honey pot," in a kind of ritual deception.¹⁰⁸ This festival also required the roasting of a sacrificial pig, and since no men were present it seems a fair deduction that either the Vestal Virgins who attended or some other woman performed the sacrifice.¹⁰⁹

Scheid does mention one sacrifice performed by Roman matrons to Fortuna Muliebris once a year at the fourth milestone of the Via Latina, "close to the archaic (and idealized) boundary of Roman territory." But this was highly unusual, and even its location suggests liminality-something on the border of what is acceptable.¹¹⁰ Another sacrifice is memorialized in an inscription for A.D. 204, one which accompanied public prayers by the matrons at the Secular Games, and presiding over it all was the empress Julia Augusta. This is one of the few pieces of evidence for women's voices being heard "officially" in a public Roman religious ceremony.¹¹¹ However, even in this inscription it is clear that the proper formulas for prayer are handed over to Julia by the emperor Severus, who thus safeguards and supervises the proper ritual as pontifex maximus.

There seems to be nothing in traditional Roman religion that parallels the role of priestesses at oracular shrines in the Greek world, or the exalted position of the Priestess of Demeter and the hierophantis at Eleusis, or a number of other priestesses at other sites where both sexes worshipped. When we finally come across a woman with a prominent role at a religious site frequented by both men and women-namely the cult of Isis in Italy-it is not a native cult but a foreign import, which explains the different operating rules.

In Rome there were the famous Vestal Virgins, who made sure the sacred fire never went out in the temple of Vesta. "Their presence was necessary at a number of the most deeply-rooted religious ceremonies of the State."¹¹² There was a feeling that the state's welfare was partly tied to their remaining virgins and properly carrying out their duties. They were wealthy and (unlike most women) independent before the law; they did not need any male to transact legal business for them. They represent the most respected and powerful of female cultic personnel in traditional Roman religion. They are also unique among Roman priestesses in some ways: they are required to be celibate the entire time of their service, some thirty years; they are not under the manus (authority) of any male in law, though they are answerable to the College of Pontiffs; they had the right to be accompanied by a lictor whenever they travelled the streets of Rome, and enjoyed other privileges usually only reserved for the ruling elite.¹¹³

There were two other priestesses who had some prominence in Roman life. The wives of the Flamen Dialis and the rex sacrorum-the flaminica Dialis and regina sacrorum respectively-held office by virtue of their marriages. It is possible they also had the power to sacrifice, though this is not certain. These women do have special positions, though, in that they seem to "complete" their husband's office somehow. The flamen and flaminica are appointed together, as husband and wife; and if the wife dies the flamen must step down and allow another to take his place.¹¹⁴ Some ceremonies cannot be performed unless the wife is present to assist; and she has a regular sacrifice to make every market day, just as the regina sacrorum (the wife of the rex sacrorum) offers to Juno a sacrifice on the first of every month.¹¹⁵ Did these women do the actual act of sacrifice themselves, drawing the knife across the animal's throat and butchering the carcass? Or did Roman custom require a man to be appointed to do this for them? This is not known for sure, but perhaps it is not necessary to measure priestly authority and power by this criterion.

Finally, there was the important post of the priestess of Ceres, "the only women besides Vestals who had the prestigious duty of administering a state cult."¹¹⁶ By the first century of our era, the cult had been highly Hellenized, being conformed in many ways to the Greek cult of Demeter. There were mysteries imitating the famous rites of Eleusis--though the Romans excluded men from these, so male-female segregation is again confirmed here. Though Ceres had originally been served by male priests, her ministers were now exclusively women, especially ones taken from Magna Graeca.¹¹⁷ Hence in its new Greek dress, this cult had become really an exception, like the cult of Isis. Its foreignness allowed it to operate with different rules, without challenging traditional Roman rites and values. Scheid's opinion is characteristic of many: Roman women did not have the power to speak in the name of a community, to issue commands or represent the community as a whole.¹¹⁸

III.3 Women in the Synagogue

Jewish practice, as defined by the traditional rabbinic literature written down after the second century A.D. (Mishnah, Talmud), prohibited women participating in leadership in a worship service or teaching scripture.¹¹⁹ The impression this literature gives is that women should not, and did not, play any part in synagogue service other than as passive listeners. However, inscriptional material provides evidence that some women in some places did serve as patronesses of local synagogues in the diaspora world, providing funds for building and maintenance, and held positions in at least some synagogues which probably involved administration of finances, participation in a judicial council, and perhaps reading scripture or even exhortation.¹²⁰ Their titles include "elder," "mother of the synagogue," "leader," and "head of synagogue."¹²¹ All of the evidence for these titles, except that of "priest" (whose meaning is disputed-a leader and teacher as in the case of the male, or simply the daughter or wife of a priest, as with the Hebrew term kôhenet),¹²² comes from outside Palestine: from Italy, Asia Minor, Crete, Thrace, Thessaly. Perhaps in the diaspora the synagogues felt free to follow a different practice than that pursued in Palestine. Away from the centers of power of the traditional sects, and influenced by surrounding cultures, the synagogues allowed women to lead in financial patronage and to participate as honored leaders in the running of the synagogue.¹²³ It may also be significant that in Palestine synagogue life was only one small part of the total culture, and there were other places one could go to for social and religious life; whereas in the diaspora, the synagoge was the center of all Jewish social life and religious identity, an island in a sea of gentiles.

CONCLUSION:

The practice of women prophesying at the church in Corinth would have had no negative reaction from Greek culture, at least not for being done by females. On the contrary, two of the most famous oracles of the Greek world had at their heart women who were used as vehicles to medate the message of the god. Women played key roles in the public celebrations of many cults, and there is little doubt that at least some of these roles involved speaking: prayers, words of consecration of the sacrifice, perhaps instruction in the mysteries or words of assurance or warning to initiates. The only trouble Christian prophetesses would have caused the surrounding culture would have been due to the fact that the religion was foreign and denounced traditional faiths as false. But this has nothing to do with women's roles.

There does not seem to be an office in any of the traditional Roman state cults corresponding to prophetess. There are some key roles for women in Roman religion (Vestal Virgins, regina sacrorum, flaminica dialis), and they may have involved sacrifice. Whether they ever involved speaking or instruction to a mixed-gender crowd is hard to say. If these officials offered public prayers, there was such speech. We also have some evidence from later in the empire of a group of aristocratic women together with the empress offering public prayers for Rome in what may have been a mixed crowd. The inscription makes it clear that, at the last named event, the emperor supervised and gave them the proper formula. A woman taking a key role in a religious cult may not have been intolerable for Roman religion, but it seems to have been far less frequent in Rome than in the Greek world. Those cults that became most popular with women, and in which women played leading roles as priestesses (Isis, Ceres, Magna Mater) were always foreign imports, or consciously modelled on Greek cults.

Early Christian practice seems to have broken from the Palestinian Jewish, Pharisaic practice in its inclusion of women praying and prophesying. There may have been some precedent for women praying on behalf of the congregation in certain diaspora synagogues. If there is any credibility at all to the Acts narratives, then we may well believe that prophecy was quickly given a theological justification: the new age is dawning; the prophets had predicted God would send his Spirit in this coming age on all of his people, women included; and prophecy is one manifestation that the Spirit has fallen, Jesus is risen, and the new age begun (cf. Acts 2:17-21, citing Joel 2:28-32 ET; Paul cites the end of this same passage in Rom. 10.13). Hence not only were women allowed to prophesy, but their doing so had evidential and apologetic value.

When it comes to the issue of women conversing with men during a worship service, the evidence is more complicated. Roman social conventions would have favored mixed-gender meetings and even conversation between the sexes at the highest and lower social levels. But the evidence that we have of this deals with the realm of the profane: the circus, theater, dinner parties. We do not know that Romans would have favored such conversation during religious worship. The picture that we have of Roman traditional religion as favoring order, solemnity, ceremony, dignity, and formulatic correctness does not mix well with the picture of mixed-gender conversations during a worship service. And the Roman character in general was not so amenable to enthusiastic religious experiences, or ones involving possession. It was "foreign" cults who thrived on this sort of experience. Could the women speaking at service be imitating the Roman upper class women and their social freedom? I rather doubt this option. Was the key motivating factor theological? Or something else?

If we look at the women's conversation in light of traditional Greek culture, we get several different answers. For the upper classes, this was definitely undesirable behavior. It brought shame to the woman and her husband; it would make the woman seem as if she was deliberately inviting romantic attention, crossing social boundaries which kept the realm of the honorable married woman distinct from that of men and public life. "Profane" speech, as distinct from sacred speech, was to be kept within same-sex boundaries. If, as Paul's letter clearly indicates, some of these women had non-Christian husbands (1 Cor. 7:12-16), then the problem is exacerbated. Imagine a husband whose wife goes alone to these meetings, probably in the dark (early morning or late night), with people who kiss her and call her sister, with people who it is rumoured have sexual practices that are loose even for Greeks, and she mingles and talks with other men-just like the prostitutes who entertain dinner parties. It must have seemed to Paul to be a great embarassment for the church and the gospel. He is concerned about the community's honor not only in God's eyes, but in the eyes of the surrounding community. Therefore he calls upon them to structure their behavior so that it is clear that any talking women do to men is only sacral speech, honorable and holy because it plays a role in worship. The presence of the veil (11:5) helps to emphasize the women's self-control: they thus show that as they speak they still embrace the cultural standards of modesty, and they proclaim their faithfulness to their husbands. Otherwise Paul asks that women be "silent"-and it seems he has in mind particularly speaking to other men.

Yet other evidence points us to the fact that lower class women conducting sales and business of all sorts regularly must have engaged other males in conversation (at least of a utilitarian sort) in their daily lives. The same would be true for female slaves. Would this lead them to consider it a trivial thing to converse with men at a Christian worship assembly also? Or would they behave differently since it was a sacral time and place, rather than a profane one? Would women have engaged men in casual chat in the course of religious ceremonies at a temple? Somehow it does not seem terribly likely. But Barton's shrewd observations on the existence of boundary confusion at Corinth may shed some light here.¹²⁴ These women are treating a church meeting as an extension of the private home (it was, after all, an ordinary house rather than a consecrated building), assuming the greater authority and freedom they would have had within their own households.¹²⁵ While staying within the same physical range of activity they had been confined to before (the home), they are able to extend the social range of their activity.¹²⁶ Barton also believes that the chief problem and threat here is one of authority; the women have extended their authority into the church, and are in danger of carrying this new freedom back into the home, to challenge the leadership of their husbands and of Paul, the "patriarch" of the church.¹²⁷ Paul declares that the "rules" for the time of worship in the house are that it is to be treated more as public space, and he reasserts the authority of male leadership-of husbands at home, of himself over the church.¹²⁸

While Barton's insights are extremely useful and perceptive, he has missed the signals as to what sort of boundaries are in question. This is not directly an issue of women's leadership, but of modesty. The "speech" that is branded as "shameful" by Paul in 1 Corinthians 14 is not sacral speech at all; it is ordinary conversation with men who are not relatives. At first glance this seems rather strange to modern ears. How can Paul allow something so solemn and authoritative as prophecy to be spoken by women during worship, and then turn around and ban ordinary conversation? But the strangeness of this solution is precisely the result of reading our cultural boundaries or expectations back onto Paul: if he bans conversation, he must naturally ban any serious speech as well. On the other hand, what seems to us to be an almost schizophrenic set of rules (1 Cor. 11:5 vs. 14:33-36) corresponds exactly to the shifting of boundaries that occurs in Greek culture when moving from the profane to the sacred. The main danger is clear from the fact that Paul turns them from speaking in the assembly to speaking with "their very own personal men" (and not some other man) and to do so "at home."

This is not to say that it was the Corinthian women's intention to solicit romantic attention from other men. That is possible, but it is just as likely that this behavior was a result of their use of Paul's theology and the ambiguities of a new social setting. The ability to speak with men freely may have been thought to be sanctioned by their new status in Christ. As "brothers and sisters" they have now been designated family, thus shifting previously existing social boundaries. It is alright for a Greek woman to converse with her brother, after all. There may have been confusion caused as well by the newness of this type of worship-gathering and its location: in a private home. Was this the realm of the profane or the sacred? If sacred, is this a household cult (for the group designated a "family"), or like the more public cults? If the meeting is in a home, do women have that greater sense of freedom to speak and work that a woman has in her own private home or when in the home of a friend? As spirit-filled people (Gal 4.6; 1 Cor. 12.13), equal in Christ (Gal. 3:28), enrolled in the life of the new age, do the women not have freedom to live as if independent of husbands and fathers? But whatever the intentions of the Corinthian women may have been, Paul sees the effects as dangerous.

Problems related to sexuality and marriage at Corinth are evident several other places in this letter. One man had tried to demonstrate his theological freedom in Christ by sleeping with his mother-in-law (1 Cor. 5:1). Paul had written to the Galatians--perhaps while at Corinth--that "a person is not justified by works of the law," but by faith, and that whoever approaches God on the basis of the law's works "is under a curse" (Gal. 2.16; 3.10, 11). Keep in mind that for a Greek the word "law" would point not only to a Jewish book, but to what we call "custom," or society's pattern of living. Evidently Paul's teaching was misunderstood to be an exhortation to be free from any tradition or moral restraint. Another attempt by Paul to (re-)define sexual boundaries for those who are in Christ is seen in 6:12-20. Having a prostitute is classed as "sexual immorality" (porneia), in the same category as adultery. This is unlike the normal Greek man's view of the boundaries for honorable or dishonorable sexual practices, since for them having a prostitute would be regarded with no more moral question than we have in renting a car. And chapter seven shows a desire of some women to remain physically apart from their husbands, celibate, either to promote a greater spiritual experience or because they believed they already had a superior spiritual existence that transcended the marital categories of this age. Some may have considered divorcing an unbelieving husband, thus making the separation total and permanent, perhaps because they held the husband to defile or endanger their spiritual link with Christ. In chapter eleven we hear of women who have disregarded the traditional Greek veil (11:5-10). Again, we can only speculate on the reason, but it seems highly likely that it is related to their sense of freedom and equality in Christ, and to their sense of being spiritually gifted (since the latter is obviously something the Corinthian Christians in general valued highly and were proud of possessing). They believe this empowering by the Spirit has allowed them, like the man of 5:1, to transcend old boundaries by their faith-empowered gifts and freedom from the "law." All this makes it very easy to see behind 14:33-36 another of these boundary-challenging behaviors. The age-old custom that well-bred women did not speak to men outside the family has been discarded. The fact that many of the Corinthian women came from the lower class (1:26-28), means that at least some of these would have been more used to speaking to men in a business setting, and this would certainly facilitate such behavior in the church assembly. As noted earlier, this could be viewed as especially threatening or dangerous by these women's husbands--pagan or Christian--who feel their wives have cut off their affection for them while behaving "loosely" with other men.

If the issue does not have to do directly with spiritual gifts, why should it be raised in this part of the letter? The answer is that it ties in to a wider concern Paul has for "good order" in the worship service (1 Cor. 26-33, 40; cf. 11.21, 33), as well as a concern for how the church's worship-conduct affects its reputation among its pagan neighbors, either hindering or promoting conversion (1 Cor. 14.23-25).

This may still leave the question of how, if the above analysis is correct, we are to take Paul's words about "submission" and his citing of "the law." Since at least the time of Chrysostom, "the law" has been taken to refer to Genesis 3.16, that the husband will rule over his wife.¹²⁹ And indeed, the "law" is given to support the call to "subordination." But the link is not very satisfactory. Paul does not actually quote any of this text he supposedly refers to (contrary to his frequent practice), and the Genesis text does not ask the wife to submit, nor use the verb hupotassô. It is still a possibility, of course, since the prophecy of the husband's "ruling" would have as its corollary the wife's submission to that rule. For a while I pursued another option entirely, considering whether Paul might be using the word nomos not in the sense of scriptural law, but in the sense it can carry in ancient Greek of "custom." In fact, the difference between social convention established by archaic patterns of living, and formal decrees of a ruler or other civic body was not always marked lexically. "Nomos does not so much denote a law in our sense of the word, i.e., a statute or the carefully documented precedent of court decision; nomos is rather `practice', and so may be expressed differently in different cases."¹³⁰ If this were Paul's use here it would make exegesis of this passage much easier, for there would be an explicit referent to the standard of the surrounding culture. However, the use of the word "says" with "law," coupled with Paul's citation of the (OT) law in other places in this letter as the nomos (14.21; 9.8-9 with "says," as here) make it unlikely that he refers to "custom" here. It is noteworthy, though, that Paul does not cite the law in direct support of his primary injunction, namely "silence." Why is that? I believe it is because the command to silence is a solution for a problem of immodest and shame-causing behavior, not a statement of a normative ordering of the Christian's world. Paul is attempting to restore order where there is confusion. Indeed, the Greek imperative usually translated "let them be in submission" or some such (hypotassesthôsan) strongly suggests being in the right order, and in one's place which is behind or under (hypo-) someone or something else. What if the "law" in question refers to the law against adultery? In this case, the type of behavior shown by the women appears to be heading in the direction of further encouraging the already existing sexual immorality; it invites sinful liaisons and encourages sinful thoughts in others. It also risks shaming the husband (v. 35), and his honor is very important to him as was seen in the Hellenistic Egyptian marriage contracts. Interpreted this way, Paul is calling on women to cease speaking to other men and to "come into right relationship under" her husband: to show her solidarity with him and her faithfulness and exclusive devotion to him, rather than acting like an independent woman without a husband, like a prostitute. It is to "her very own man" she must turn, not to another (14.35). So Paul seeks to secure the honor of the women and the church by urging them to accept the boundaries for wives in this one area anyway which characterized the upper classes in Greece and traditional Jewish society as well. And at the same time, because the gift of the Spirit has fallen on all in this new age who have faith in Jesus, he encourages a participation for all women in the worship service as prophetesses--a prominence that only some women had as officials in the Greek religious cults.

NOTES

1. E.g., John Calvin, Calvin's Commentaries: The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, transl. John Fraser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960; first Latin ed. = 1546); Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, new ed. edited by G. Burder & J. Hughes, vol. 6 (Philadelphia: Towar & Hogan, 1828), p. 458; A. Robertson and A. Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 2d ed. (London: T. & T. Clark, 1914; reprint ed., 1975), p. 325. Lenski seems to think that Paul allows women to prophesy anywhere outside a worship assembly (p.437), but where else would early Christians do this?

2. Johannes Weiss, Der Erste Korintherbrief, 2d ed. (Meyer's Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament, 9th ed.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910; reprint 1977, p. 342; C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 330, 332f.; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Transl. James Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), p. 246; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 697-705; cf. discussion of textual evidence in G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles. A Disquisition upon the Corpus Paulinum (The Schweich Lectures 1946; London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 17.

3. Kevin Quast, Reading the Corinthian Correspondence (New York: Paulist, 1994), p.86.

4. Jean Héring, The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, transl. A. W. Heathcote and P.J. Allcock (London: Epworth, 1962), p. 154; M. Thrall, The First and Second Letters of Paul to the Corinthians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p.102; W. Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians (University Press of America, 1982), pp. 245-55; D. Carson, Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), pp. 129-131.

5. Antoinette Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction Through Paul's Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), pp. 17, 153-58.

6. Ralph P. Martin, The Spirit and the Congregation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 86-87.

7. E.g. in Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 393 a woman gives a list of ill traits that Euripides attributes to women in general, blackening their character. One such trait is that women are ta;" lavlou", "blabbermouths", using a noun built on the same stem as the verb lalevw.

8. Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 3.31.2-5; 3.37.1;5.17. It is interesting that Montanus is said to have justified his prophetesses with reference to the example of Philip, implying that the church revered the memory of Philip's prophetess daughters (Ibid., and Epiphanius, Medicine Box 49).

9. Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 5.18.1-4, 7-8 (on the followers of Montanus); the followers of a certain Marcus whom Irenaeus alludes to (Irenaeus, Against All Heresies book 1 chap. 13); Cyprian, Epistle 74 (from Firmilian, against a letter of Stephen; A.D. 256), also mentions a woman who is said to have prophesied and led a congregation astray after her.

10. E.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.13.4: "But already some of the most faithful women, possessed of the fear of God, and not being deceived (whom, nevertheless, he did his best to seduce like the rest by bidding them prophesy), abhorring and execrating him, have withdrawn from such a vile company of revellers. This they have done, as being well aware that the gift of prophecy is not conferred on men by Marcus, the magician, but that only those to whom God sends His grace from above possess the divinely-bestowed power of prophesying; and then they speak where and when God pleases, and not when Marcus orders them to do so."

11. C. Robeck, ed., Charismatic Experiences in History (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1985), 116

12. See Liddell, Scott, Jones, & McKenzie's Greek-English Lexicon, 9th rev. ed. (=LSJM) s.v. idios.

13. LSJM suggest "with grace and dignity, like a gentleman"; for the cognate verb euschêmoneô "to behave with decorum"; of the adjective euschêmôn, "decent, becoming, . . . noble."

14. Unless one understands Paul throughout 1 Corinthians 14 to be saying, "Everybody, try to prophesy! Oh, I didn't mean you women! Now, everybody try to prophesy . . ." But this would be absurd.

15. Oddly enough, this thesis is argued by people on opposite ends of a theological debate: both by those who wish to use Paul's supposed ban as the model for contemporary church polity, and by those who which to paint Paul as one more example of ignorant ancient patriarchalists who can't support women's gifts.

16. Contra the thesis of A. Wire, who sees evidence in 1 Corinthians of a power-play by Paul to quash the exhibition of Christian women's prophetic gifts.

17. David W. Gill, "Corinth: A Roman Colony in Achaea," BibZ n.s. 37 (1993):259-64; and idem, "Achaia" in The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting, Vol. 2: The Book of Acts in its Graeco-Roman Setting, ed. David W.J. Gill and Conrad Gempf. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994, pp. 433-453.

18. Gill, "Corinth," 263.

19. Willis, Wendel. 'Corinthusne deletus est?' BZ 35 (1991):233-41. One of the inscriptions relates to a dispute that occurred between the Athenian and Isthmian guilds of Dionysiac artists around 134-112 B.C. (SIG 3d ed., 692); the other commemorates the transport of a Roman fleet across the Isthmus in 102 B.C. (Kent 8.2, no. 1).

20. Ibid.; Cicero, Ad Fam. 4.5.4.

21. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Introduction 3.

22. Willis, 241.

23. E.g., the temenos of Demeter and Kore; the Asclepeion; the shrine of Dionysios and Heracles; the cult of Medea's children; the cult of Bellerophon and Pegasos; the worship of Athena Chalinitis; as well as the restored fountains of Glauke, Peirene, and Lerna (sacred spots) and the Hero shrines.

24. Meritt (= Corinth: Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. VIII.1 [Harvard University Press, 1932]) no. 14 (A.D. 3), 69 (A Greek dedication to Heracles, I A.D.), 70, 75, 77, 72 (to Titus), 90 (to Tiberius?), one which may be to Mark Antony from the earliest days of the colony (101), and the occurrence of parallel Greek and Latin inscriptions from A.D. I-II that honor the same person (Meritt nos. 70, 76, 80), not to mention nos. 80-84 from Hadrian's reign, all suggest that the Greek language and culture was very much alive in the first and early second century A.D. at Corinth.

25. It is interesting to note the ratio of religious dedications to the imperial family or their genius versus dedications to other deities. Of the surviving fragments found in Corinth and reported in Merritt, West, and Kent, dedications to the emperors as divine (or to the genius of an emperor, or to the Nemesis of Augustus, or to the Genius of the Colony of Corinth-which indirectly honors Julius Caesar) exceeds the number of dedications to all other deities combined. I count 13 altogether to Aphrodite, Apollo, Poseidon, and others; while at least 15 in Latin and Greek to some member of the imperial family. In addition, there are many more fragments of inscriptions to emperors from Julius Caesar to Diocletian, any of which could have been votive, but too little remains to decide.

26. Dyfri Williams, "Women on Athenian Vases: Problems of Interpretation," in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1993), 97.

27. D. Williams, "Women on Athenian Vases," 97.

28. For instance, K. J. Torjeson's study, When Women Were Priests (Harper SanFrancisco, 1993) fails to distinguish sacral from private roles for women in pagan society, nor does she seem to appreciate differences for slave and free, wealthy and poor, at least until she takes note of women having influence at the very topmost layer of society. She does at least appreciate the greater freedom and responsibility women had within the realm of their homes. Even some monographs on ancient women by classicists lack a chapter, or even a section of a chapter, on women's roles in religion (e.g., Eva Cantarella, Pandora's Daughters: the Role and Status of Women in Greek & Roman Antiquity, transl. M. Fant [Baltimore: John's Hopkins University Press, 1987]; Roger Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life [London & New York: Routledge, 1989]).

29. It would make good sense to further subdivide the realm of the profane into private and public, but for purposes of simplicity in this paper they have been discussed together.

30. On the hetairai (eJtaivrai, prostitutes and entertainers) at symposia on vase and cup paintings, see D. Williams, 92-106; Elaine Fantham, H. P. Foley, N. B. Kampen, S. B. Pomeroy, and H. A. Shapiro, Women in the Classical World: Image and Text (Oxford University Press, 1994), 115-118.

31. Cornelius Nepos, praef. 6f; ap. J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Roman Women: Their History and Habits (Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishers, 1962), 201.

32. As described in Lysias 1.9.

33. Susan Walker, "Women and Housing in Classical Greece: the Archaeological Evidence," in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 81-91. Walker describes three fifth-century houses, two in Attica and one in Euboea. Xenophon's example of the ideal husband tells Socrates that the women's quarters are separated from the men's quarters in his house by a bolted door (Oeconomicus 9.5), although the reasons given there are "so that nothing which ought not to be moved may be taken out, and that the servants may not breed without our leave." Cf. Fantham et all, 103.

34. Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.22-43.

35. Lysias, Against Simon; III.6-7; transl. by W. R. M. Lamb (LCL).

36. Lysias I.8.

37. Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 520-532.

38. Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 135-136; S. B. Pomeroy, ; E. Fantham et all, 101f.,

39. Euripides, Electra 343f.; cf. Iphigenia in Aulis 821-834;

40. Pheidias was a famous Greek sculptor, and the Aphrodite one of his statues.

41. For 'welded together' one could read 'knit together', 'grafted'; literally, 'grown together' (sumpefukÒta).

42. Plutarch, Advice to Bride and Groom 142C-E; translation adapted from that of F. C. Babbit in the Loeb series.

43. Another translation for this line in 142D is: ". . . and she ought to be modest and guarded about saying anything in the hearing of outsiders, since that is like exposing herself naked."

44. As J. W. Cohoon and H. L. Crosby suggest in the Loeb edition (Dio Chrysostom, vol. III [Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1940], p. 319 n. 2.

45. S. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra (New York: Schocken, 1984), 86-89, citing P. Elephantine 1; P. Tebtunis I:104.

46. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 97.

47. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 83.

48. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 98.

49. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 171.

50. Ramsay Macmullen, "Woman in Public in the Roman Empire," Historia 29 (1980): 208-218.

51. Ibid., 213, referring to a dissertation by K. W. Harl.

52. Ibid., 214.

53. Ibid., 216.

54. He favored women learning-especially as taught by their husbands (Advice to Bride and Groom section 48 [=Moralia 145A-F]). On Marriage, Russell comments, "It is perhaps a testimony to the quality of family life in Plutarch's circle that he stands out among ancient moralists for his sympathetic and congenial attitudes to marriage and children And we may notice another thing: the way in which the women of this group [Plutarch's and his children's families] were apparently expected to have a good deal of literacy and philosophical culture, which was seen as a prophylactic against the feminine sins of frivolity and superstition" (D. A. Russell, Plutarch [New York: Scribner's, 1973], 5-6).

55. D. A. Russell notes that Plutarch's home in Chaeronea became "a kind of philosophical school," attracting young men from all over Greece who wished to study rhetoric and philosophy. And at his death the cities of Chaeronea and Delphi together honored him with a bust and an epitaph (Plutarch, 13).

56. As pictured on vases; an example occurs in Fantham et al., 108.

57. Lysias I.8, 20. In Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans even a prostitute is shown sending out a slave to purchase wool, to communicate with or spy on a client, rather than the mistress going herself (2.3; 9.1-2; 10.2).

58. Walter Scheidel, "The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women's Life in the Ancient World," Greece and Rome 42:2 (1995):202-217 & 43:1 (1996):1-10; see esp. 42:2:207f., 210f.; 43:1:1-3.

59. Scheidel suggests comparison with other-though later-slave-owning societies ("Silent Women," 422:208-210).

60. Aristotle, Politics 1323a5-7.

61. "For how is it possible to prevent the wives of the poor from going out of doors?" says Aristotle (Politics 1300a); cf. Fantham et al., 106-109, who cite Aristotle, Politics 1300a; Demosthenes 57.31-34, 45; Aristophanes, Wasps 1396-98; Lysistrata 447-48; Thesmophoria 443-58; and the evidence of vase-paintings. Wife and husband co-workers mentioned in Mary Lefkowitz, "Wives and Husbands," Greece & Rome 30 (1983): 44.

62. See previous footnote.

63. Alluded to in Aristophanes, Acharnians 478; Knights 19; Thesmophoriazusae 455-456; cf. Perseus Encyclopedia online: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lookup?lookup=Euripides, 8/14/1997.

64. Susan Walker, "Women and Housing in Classical Greece: the Archaeological Evidence," 81.

65. MacMullen, "Women," 218.

66. Balsdon, 200, 272, 278f.; Fantham et al., 280, 338-41.

67. Balson, 274.

68. Balsdon, 277.

69. Roy B. Ward, "Women in Roman Baths." HTR 85 (1992):125-147.

70. MacMullen, "Women," 209-210; Fantham, 334, 336.

71. Fantham, 365-368.

72. MacMullen, "Women," 209.

73. Ibid., 210.

74. MacMullen, "Women," 211, citing G. Clemente in Studi Classici 21 (1972): 160-213.

75. Fantham et al., 273.

76. Fantham et al., 318-20, 369.

77. MacMullen, "Women," 212f.

78. Fantham et al., 366.

79. Varro, On Agrigulture 2.10.6-8; cf. Fantham et al., 267-268.

80. Louise Bruit Zaidman, "Pandora's Daughters and Rituals in Grecian Cities," in Pauline Schmitt Pantel, ed., A History of Women in the West, Vol 1: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, transl. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992), 373. See also Fantham et al., 83, though their emphasis is on the contribution of all-female festivals to the Greek social world.

81. Against Neaera, 110-111.

82. This is another topic of debate. MacMullen ("Women," 214) believes tthe high priestess of Asia holds her office on account of her husband the high priest (for the imperial cult). But --?

83. Blundell, 161.

84. Ibid.

85. Ibid.

86. MacMullen, "Women," 215.

87. Demosthenes, Against Neaera 111-113.

88. George Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 231; Blundell, 161.

89. Mylonas, 231.

90. C. Kerényi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter, transl. R. Manheim (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), fig. 11 p. 54 (a sarcophagus) and fig. 12a-d pp. 56f. (a funerary urn). Kerenyi does not give dates for these.

91. Mylonas, 231.

92. Cf. Kerenyi, 82-102, who holds the climax was something acted out and viewed.

93. Against Neaera 116.

94. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 55-59.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid., 59.

97. Though never more than men do, Pomeroy notes, most likely due to their more limited finances (Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 39).

98. The Bravery of Women (= Moralia 242e ff.). Plutarch mentions Clea again in the preface to About Isis and Osiris (Moralia 351c-f).

99. R. E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), 20-21.

100. Witt, plate 23.

101. Witt, 93.

102. Plutarch, On the Obsolescence of Oracles 411e, 414b; Blundell, 161.

103. Celibacy demanded of the Hierophant (high priest) at Eleusis during the celebration of the mysteries (George Mylonas, Eleusis, 230).

104. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, transl. J. Raffan (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985), 112 and 392 n. 19.

105. Burkert, Greek Religion 114; Herodotus 2.54-57; Pausanias 10.12.10. ; Plato groups the prophetesses of Dodona with the one at Delphi as illustrating that "the greatest blessings come by way of madness" sent on them from the gods (Phaedrus 244b-c).

106. J. Scheid, "The Religious Roles of Roman Women," in A History of Women in the West: I. From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. P. S. Pantel (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1992), 377.

107. Scheid in Pantel, 379f.; Plutarch, Roman Questions 85 (=Moralia 284f).

108. Balsdon, 244.

109. Scheid in Pantel, 392.

110. Scheid in Pantel, 388-390.

111. Scheid in Pantel, 393-395.

112. Balsdon, 235.

113. Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken, 1975), 211, 213; Balsdon, 235-43.

114. J. Scheid in Pantel, ed., 384, 401-403.

115. Ibid., 384.

116. Pomeroy, Goddesses 214.

117. Pomeroy, Goddesses 215f.

118. Scheid in Panel, ed., 406.

119. Judith Romney Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 1988), 6, 146f., 153f.; Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 104.

120. Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982); see esp. pp. 20f., 32f., 38f., 55, 78.

121. Ibid.

122. Brooten, 78-99.

123. Compare similar thoughts in Kraemer, 123.

124. S. Barton, "Paul's Sense of Place: An Anthropological Approach to Community Formation in Corinth," NTS 32 (1986):225-246.

125. Barton, 230-234.

126. Ibid., 233

127. Ibid., 231-234

128. Ibid.

129. Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians 37:1.

130. Lefkowitz, 38.