ἐλάχɩστον … ἐν τοῖς ἄρσεσι κλέος: Thucydides, Women, and the Limits of Rational Analysis

Abstract

The comparative infrequency of references to women in Thucydides' history has often been remarked upon, and explained as due in part to the choice of warfare as his theme, and in part to the success of the Greek republics in excluding women from the political arena. As Pericles says in his funeral speech, women ought to give their menfolk the least possible cause to have to take note of them (2.45.2). But the exclusion of women from the subject-matter of historical discourse is peculiarly Thucydidean. Powell'sLexicontells us that Thucydides' contemporary Herodotus uses γ⋯νηs 373 times, while the number of references to women/wives, mothers, priestesses etc. in Thucydides is less than fifty. This does not mean of course that Thucydides has no interest in, or sympathy for, women: frequently he mentions them as the passive objects of military circumstances precisely in order to underline the tragic effects of warfare. But some of the references to women are decidedly curious. There is a clear example in the account of the unsuccessful Theban attack on Plataea in 431 B.C., with which active hostilities began. Thucydides tells us that some of the Thebans who were locked into the town escaped by breaking open a deserted gate without being noticed (2.4.4). Why does he gratuitously mention that it was a women – presumably a Plataean – who gave her enemies an axe: γυναικ⋯ς δο⋯σης π⋯λɛκυν Clearly, it is an overimplification to say that Thucydides ignores women.