Women of Legend: Pandora, Helen, the Sabine Women and Lucretia

Legend first, then real life

This option asks what the ancient world thought about women, and it answers that in two very different kinds of evidence. **Legends** are stories, told and retold by male writers, about women who did something the culture needed explaining. **Law and upbringing** are the other half: how a girl was educated, when and how she married, and whose legal control she was under afterwards. Neither half is the whole picture. The legends tell you what men said women were like; the marriage law tells you what actually happened to them.

Five women, five stories

Two Greek, three Roman. Every one comes from a prescribed source.

Match each legend to what it explains

What is the Pandora story doing?

Hesiod tells how the first woman released suffering into the world. What is the strongest thing to say about that story?

• It explains why life is hard AND puts the blame on women, so it tells us as much about Hesiod's view of women as about the origin of suffering
• It is an early attempt to record what actually happened
• It is a warning against being too curious
• It is simply a story with no wider meaning

The sources do not agree about Helen

This is the most useful thing on the Greek half of this element, and the specification hands it to you by prescribing both texts. In **Homer's Iliad**, Helen is in Troy. She is present, watched, spoken about, and reproaches herself for being there. In **Euripides' Helen**, she never went. The real Helen was taken to Egypt, and what went to Troy was a phantom made in her likeness. The entire war is fought over an image. You are not being asked which is true. You are being asked to notice that a culture told two incompatible stories about the same woman, and to ask what each version does with her responsibility.

Reading Helen

Select the TWO statements a strong answer could make about Helen.

• The prescribed sources give incompatible accounts, with Homer placing her at Troy and Euripides sending only a phantom there
• The two versions distribute blame very differently: a Helen who never went cannot be responsible for the war fought in her name
• Euripides' version is the historically accurate one
• Helen plays only a small part in the tradition

Two ways to raise a girl

Legend aside, a girl's actual life depended enormously on where she was born.

Match each Roman marriage form

Whose family is she in?

A Roman woman marries **sine manu** rather than **cum manu**. What is the practical difference?

• She stays under her own family's authority rather than passing into her husband's, which keeps her ties and her family's interest in her property alive
• The wedding ceremony is religious rather than civil
• She cannot be divorced
• Nothing practical; the terms are only formal

Both halves in a paragraph

In Hesiod, _____ is made as a punishment for humanity and releases suffering into the world. In Livy, the rape of _____ leads to the end of the monarchy and the founding of the Republic. Turning from legend to real life, an Athenian girl was educated at _____ and married young, while a Spartan girl trained physically and married later. A Roman marriage in which the wife passed into her husband's legal control was _____, and the oldest and most formal ceremony was _____.

What the legends have in common

**"What do the legendary women of Greece and Rome have in common? (8 marks)"** "Each of these stories is told by a male writer and turns on a woman, but in every case the thing being explained is something else. Hesiod uses Pandora to account for why human life is hard. Livy uses the Sabine women to explain how a new city acquired a second generation, and their intervention to explain how it made peace with the people it had wronged. Lucretia is the clearest case. Livy makes her the model of Roman virtue, and her rape by the king's son is the outrage that ends the monarchy: a story about a woman is doing the work of explaining a constitutional change. So what they share is a function. These women are the hinge on which a political explanation turns, and reading them only as stories about individuals misses what they were for." The shape is worth copying: the shared feature first, then two or three cases proving it, then what the pattern means. A list of the five legends retold would not reach the last part.

Write about Sparta carefully

Almost everything known about Spartan women comes from writers who were not Spartan. Build a sentence that handles that.

Where is the political point?

A summary of the Lucretia story. Tap the TWO details that show the story is being told to explain a political change.

• Livy presents Lucretia as the model of Roman virtue.
• The man who raped her was the son of the king
• , and she called her family together and demanded vengeance before taking her own life.
• The outrage that followed drove out the kings and began the Republic
• .
• She had been found working wool late at night while other wives feasted
• .

What is a legend evidence OF?

A question asks what the Sabine women story tells us about Roman attitudes. Work out how to answer it.

• Is the story evidence that Rome really seized women from its neighbours?
• In Livy the women later step between the armies and stop the war. What does including that do?
• How should an answer put all that?

Your turn: legend against life

Explain what the legends and the marriage customs each tell us about women's position, and why you need both.

• Choose two legendary women and say what each story is used to explain
• Explain why the two prescribed accounts of Helen matter more together than apart
• Describe one difference between how Athenian and Spartan girls were raised
• Explain what cum manu and sine manu changed for a Roman woman, and why that is better evidence than a legend