Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Kennedy here presents a full study, the first, of immigrant – metic – women in Classical Athens, seeking to delineate their legal status, their vulnerabilities and their work. In so doing she must also identify and strip away the prejudices with which these women were viewed, prejudices so powerful and widespread that most previous scholars have taken them as statements of fact. In this effort she has been, in my judgment, very successful. This book, brisk and clear, makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of both metic status and the position and perceptions of women in Athens." - Journal of Hellenic Studies
"This book certainly raises many questions about metic women, who they were individually as well as their identification as a group. By bringing metic women to the foreground of analysis, it successfully highlights the ancient ideological biases, allowing modern scholars to see the evidence with fresh eyes." - Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought
“[Kennedy’s] interpretation breaks down Athenian ideological constraints that have over-influenced modern scholarship on metic women. By distinguishing metic women from citizen women and prostitutes, this book does an important service to studies of women in Athens." - The Classical Journal Online
"This book is an important contribution because studies of gender in Graeco-Roman antiquity rarely account for racial or ethnic difference. Throughout the book, there is a great deal of source criticism and, at the same time, an excellent self-reflexive perspective on classical scholarship…an insightful analysis on the complexity of difference in classical Athens." - Rosetta
"With clear and punchy prose, Kennedy provides a helpful overview ofthe experiences of immigrant women and the structures that emerged to classify them. Her key concerns are to demystify the idea that they were all prostitutes, and to unpack Athenian social prejudices affecting female metics and our (mis)perceptions of these women." - David Roselli, Scripps College, Classical World
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Metic Women, Citizenship, and Marriage in Athenian Law 2. The Ideology of the Metic Woman 3. Aspasia, Athenian Citizen Elites, and the Myth of the Courtesan 4. The Dangers of the Big City 5. Working Women, not ‘Working Girls’
