'Polis' and 'Oikos' in Classical Athens

Author(s): J. Roy
Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Apr., 1999), pp. 1-18
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/643032 .
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Greece & Rome, Vol. xlvi, No. 1, April 1999

POLIS

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OIKOS IN CLASSICAL

ATHENS1

By J. ROY
This paper is intended to discuss the household in which Classical
Athenians typically lived, and the interest in it shown by the polis.
Aristotle saw the household - in his vocabulary the oikos, or sometimes
the oikia - as the basic social unit of the polis.2 He defines the primary
relationships within the household as: master and slave, husband and
wife, father and child. Clearly for Aristotle the household was paradeigmatically made up of the nuclear family together with whatever
slaves the family owned. Modern scholars, while often differing about
the roles of the members of the household, have generally accepted that
the polis, and in particular Classical Athens, was indeed made up of a
number of such households.3 The slave's role in the household, though
important, was obviously different from the roles of the members of the
nuclear family, and slaves will be left out of account in this paper.4
It is clear that relatives other than the nuclear family were often given
shelter within the household, such as orphaned children or female
relatives who were no longer attached to their own nuclear family. A
prime, if not entirely typical, example is provided by the household of
Aristarchos, who sheltered several female relatives during the Peloponnesian War.5 Moreover Gallant6 claims that the speeches of the Attic
orators indicate or imply that about three-quarters of newly-weds
continued residence with the husband's parents. The household certainly often contained, besides the nuclear family, other relatives under
the protection of the head of the family. Nonetheless Aristotle clearly
thought of the household as being essentially a single nuclear family, and
the relatively small house which was typical of urban life in Classical
Athens' would not have accommodated a very extensive social group.
The very recent study of the Athenian household by Cox takes a very
different approach to the oikos, stressing the importance of household
members other than the nuclear family, and also laying weight on the
changing membership of the household and on the dynamic relationship
which linked members of the household to others, both kin and non-kin.
Cox thus generates a model of the oikos more wide-ranging than the
nuclear family and also very fluid in its composition, and uses that model

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very fruitfully to analyse a range of social interrelations in Classical

Athens. Cox explicitly argues against scholars who take the oikosto be a
nuclear household.8 Even within Cox's model, however, the nuclear
family has a very important role, and - given that ancient writers
frequently apply the term oikosto the nuclear family - it seems legitimate
to analyse the relations between the Athenian state and the nuclear
Athenian family as relations between oikosand polis, without denying the
value of Cox's different approach.
The term oikos has a range of meanings, which have been examined
by MacDowell, and which can be grouped under three main headings.
One is simply 'house', and another is the property owned by one person.
These two meanings are less important for the present discussion,
though they serve as a reminder that coresidence was an important
aspect of the household, and that the management and transmission of
property was one of its major concerns. The third meaning is,
approximately, 'family', and, like the modern term, oikos can describe
both a sequence of parents and children over several generations and a
nuclear family constituting the principal element of a household.
MacDowell in fact devotes most attention to this sense of the oikos as
a continuing family,9 but he also cites10 the following from [Dem.]
43.19, referringto the five sons of Bouselos: 'And out of the one oikosof
Bouselos five oikoi came into being, and each man lived separately with
his own oikos.' In that passage oikos means the household set up by a
marriage and then in due course replaced by the new households of a
new generation, the same household which Aristotle presents as the
basic social unit of the polis, and which is the concern of this paper.
Modern scholarship too has frequently concentrated on this sense of the
word, as for instance Patterson: '. .. I suggest that Athenian marriagebe
understood ... as a composite process leading to or having as its goal the
establishment of a new household or oikos .. .'
That oikos can also mean a multi-generational family is, however, a
reminder that the household existed within a network of kin. The
importance of the household's relations with its kin, on both the
husband's side and the wife's,12 can readily be seen from, for instance,
the frequency at Athens of marriage with close relatives,13 or from the
concern with inheriting from kin so frequent in the Athenian law-court
speeches. The same evidence of interaction within a network of kinship,
however, also reveals the divisions among kin,14 and it is important not
to overemphasize kin solidarity, or to lay undue importance on the
legally defined kinship group known as the anchisteia.The anchisteiaof

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any particular Athenian was composed of relatives on both the father's

and the mother's side down to the children of cousins, i.e., first cousins
once removed or possibly second cousins.1" Its composition is instructive, showing us that kinship in Athens was seen as bilateral though at
each level of kinship males took precedence over females. The anchisteia
was not, however, a functioning social group but rather a template
which could be applied to the kin of any given Athenian in order to
decide who should undertake certain duties or enjoy certain advantages:
each individual Athenian would have a different anchisteia,though in the
case, for instance, of full siblings the membership of their anchisteiai
would very largely overlap. For the Athenian, however, membership of
any individual's anchisteiabecame important only when that person was
dead, and even then only in certain very particular circumstances. In
cases of homicide, if the dead person had no direct descendants, it fell to
the anchisteiato avenge the dead relative, and to decide whether the killer
might escape banishment.16 Ranking within the anchisteia also determined rights of inheritance from the dead person: and, on the death of a
man who had no son but a daughter or daughters, the same ranking
determined who should marry the daughters as epikleroi.17Whether it
was always necessary to apply the ranking of the anchisteiais unknown:
it is entirely likely that kinsmen often reached amicable agreement
among themselves about who should do what, without reverting to
legal procedures. What is important for the present discussion, however,
is that the anchisteia of a given Athenian had no function during that
Athenian's lifetime.l" Against any notion of solidarity among the
anchisteia can be cited the very interesting pattern of support provided
by kinsmen in the lawcourts of Athens, as analysed by Humphreys:
'frequency of attested interaction falls off rapidly outside the limits of
trust based on co-residence at some stage in a nuclear family unit.'19
Since much of our evidence for functioning relationships within
extended families in Classical Athens comes from lawcourt speeches,
and since kinsmen who took their affairs to the lawcourts were by
definition at odds with each other, frequently over inheritances, the
surviving evidence may well overemphasize disputes at the expense of
family solidarity, but the disputes were there. The nuclear family's
household thus existed within a network of kinship that was extremely
important but could be deeply divided, and might therefore generate
stress for the household rather than giving it strength.20
It is also true that, despite an Athenian concern for the ritual
commemoration of the dead, evidence suggests that families did not

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commonly preserve the memory of ancestors more than two or sometimes three generations earlier;21 presumably therefore kin groups
typically did not see themselves as linked by ancestors more than two
or three generations back, and such a relatively short perception of
kinship across time would limit the range of perceived kinship from a
common ancestor.
The oikos could be seen as generating tension between itself and the
polis. The issues were examined in two major and influential papers by
Humphreys, who emphasized the emergence in Classical Athens of a
distinction between public and private, and explored how the two
interacted.22Since then the interplay of polis and oikos has been used
by other scholars to explore various aspects of Athenian life, for instance
by Leduc arguing for the effects of democracy on Athenian marriage,
and recently by Leader on the construction of gender on Athenian grave
stelai.23 This paper is certainly not concerned to deny the tension
between polis and oikos, but seeks rather to explore another point
noted by Humphreys, namely that 'Athenian society changed radically
between Solon's reforms and the age of Demosthenes and Menander;
family law remained unchanged except for Pericles' ban on marriage
with non-citizen women':24 such restraint on the part of the polis from
interfering in the oikos is striking.
In fact, when the polis felt it necessary, it passed legislation which
interfered in a major way with the oikos. The clearest example is the laws
concerned with citizenship. The Athenian polis relied on the nuclear
citizen family to produce the new citizens of the polis.25 Begetting
children was seen as major purpose of marriage: from Menander's
Perikeiromenecome the often-quoted words with which a father betroths
his daughter: 'I give this woman for the ploughing of legitimate
children.'26 These children were Athens' new citizens. 'The vast
majority of Athenian citizens acquired their citizenship as part of their
patrimony on the basis of legitimate birth into a citizen family.'27Until
451/0 descent from a citizen father was a sufficient qualification for
citizenship: after the law proposed by Pericles in 451/0 descent from two
citizen parents was required.28The law of 451/0 was reenacted in 403/2,
whether or not it had been suspended or disregarded in the later fifth
century.29 Then in the fourth century two further laws, passed at some
date before the Neaira case ([Dem.] 59), made it illegal for a nonAthenian to live with an Athenian as spouse, or for the kyrios of an
Athenian woman to give her in marriage to a non-Athenian:30under this
latter legislation Athenians were in effect obliged to contract marriages

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which would lead to children qualified for citizenship. That the

Athenian state relied on the household to produce new generations of
citizens is made brutally clear in Thucydides' Funeral Speech (2.44.3),
where Pericles advises the parents of the dead, if they are still young
enough, to have more children, and reminds them that the new children
will contribute to the security of the polis - i.e., though Pericles does not
say it in so many words, that the polis will require these new citizens to
risk their lives in its defence as did their older brothers who have just
been killed. Moreover the state relied on the household not only to
produce new citizens but also to demonstrate that the new citizens were
in fact properly qualified to assume citizen status. As Scafuro has clearly
demonstrated, the household ensured that a child's status was demonstrated on public occasions in front of people who could later, if
necessary, bear witness that the child's birth and legal position had
been acknowledged. The first such occasion was the amphidromiaon the
fifth day after its birth, and other occasions occurred at intervals
throughout the child's life until marriage. There were more opportunities to acknowledge the status of a boy, who could be presented to his
father's deme and phratry, than for a girl, but even for a girl occasions
were not lacking, and marriage would be particularly important.31
By the changes in citizenship law the polis first discouraged marriage
between Athenian and non-Athenian, and then in the fourth century
made it illegal. This legislation was a major interference in the affairs of
the oikos, by restricting the choice of marriage-partner with whom a
citizen could create a new household. The polis thus did, on occasion,
exercise its authority over the oikos. The important question is not
whether the polis had such authority and felt free to use it, since it clearly
did, but rather how often the polis exercised such authority and how
often it refrained from doing so. There is also the question of how
effective laws passed about the oikos were in practice.
It should be noted that legislation by the polis occasionally had effects
on the oikoswhich can hardly have been intended. It is unlikely that the
citizenship law of 451/0 was passed in order to change the standing of
Athenian women, but, by making descent from the mother as important
as descent from the father for a child's inherited status, the law may well
also have given the wife a greater importance within the household. It
has been pointed out that from roughly the middle of the fifth century,
and probably as a consequence of the law of 451/0, women are
prominently represented on sculpted funerary reliefs.32 By the introduction of the state funeral for the war dead (at an uncertain date in the

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earlier fifth century) the polis took over from the oikos responsibility for
burying a member of the oikos who had died, in the ideology of
democratic Athens, a hero's death; and the polis went on to assume
other duties of the household by making special provision for the sons of
men who died in war.33To some extent that was no doubt a conscious
intrusion by the polis into what had been the functions of the oikos, and
by the late fifth century wealthy Athenian families were reclaiming their
own power to commemorate their war dead by setting up their own
elaborate monuments for men who were buried by the state.34Nonetheless state burial, and the funeral speech which accompanied the
burial, had ramifications which can hardly have been foreseen. KalletMarx, for instance, has explored how in the Thucydidean funeral
speech (2.45.2) Pericles holds out the prospect of great glory (megal?
doxa) to the widows of the war dead, giving these women also a status in
the public sphere.35
First, before considering the interplay of polis and oikos, some
comments on the nature of the oikos. Clearly marriage was the earliest
moment at which a new couple could create a household: if the newlyweds lived for a time with the husband's family, then the creation of their
independent household would come later.36We are not well-informed
about the ages at which men and women respectively married in
Athens."7 Hesiod's recommendation that a man should marry at the
age of thirty need have no relevance for Classical Athens, and when
Plato recommended 30 to 35 as the age when a man should marry, or
Aristotle 37 or a little earlier,38 we do not know how well their views
accorded with normal Athenian practice. Women could be married
from the age of fourteen, if not earlier, and Aristotle in recommending
that they marry at eighteen was explicitly arguing against earlier
marriage.39 An Athenian man might also marry fairly early: the speaker
in Dem. 40.12-13 explains that his father persuaded him to marry when
he was about eighteen, but his words suggest that it was unusual to
marry so young. It does at least seem likely that at first marriage an
Athenian man was normally, if not always, considerably older than his
wife, and it is commonly supposed that she would be in her earlierteens
while he was about twenty-five or thirty. The household created by an
Athenian couple, whether immediately on marriage or later, would last
at least until the marriage ended in divorce, or, no doubt more often, on
the death of a marriage-partner. There is evidence that after the
husband's death a widow sometimes maintained her own household
and managed her own affairs; but households run by a widow do not

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seem to have been typical,40 and all known widows of child-bearing age
either remarried or returned to their natural kin.41A widower could also
keep up a household, but the man, as the older marriage partner, would
have the shorter life-expectancy from age of marriage,42and so would be
less likely to outlive his spouse. We lack statistics on Classical Athenian
life-expectancy,43 and there were clearly some very long-lived individuals in Athens and some marriages which lasted long enough to see
their children marry. Nonetheless an Athenian husband, newly married
for the first time, could probably look forward to no more than fifteen
years of marriage on average, provided, of course, that his wife also
survived so long.44 That was obviously not long enough to produce an
adult son who could prolong the life of the household into a new
generation. And while remarriage was not uncommon,45 second and
later marriages were obviously likely to be shorter than first marriages.
Many a household must have come to an end, leaving kinsmen to shelter
the household's children and fulfil the duty of establishing their citizen
status.
For the polis it was not a problem whether the citizen status of a new
generation was secured by the household in which they were born or by
other relatives. Indeed the household as such does not appear to have
been recognized in Athenian law. In so far as members of the household
had legal obligations to each other, these obligations depended on the
personal relationship of the individuals concerned, not on their coresidence in the same household.46 The short life of many households,
however important the oikos in Athenian social life, did not concern the
polis.
It was also not a problem requiring action by the polis that conflicts
notoriously tended to develop within the household, and indeed it would
probably have been foolish for the polis to try control such conflicts by
imposing legislative restraints that went beyond the social convention
that families should show solidarity. Family discord was very frequently
brought to public attention in Athens, for instance when it was explored
again and again in Classical tragedy.47 Several scholars have in recent
years explored different aspects of such discord, and Strauss has not
only examined conflict between fathers and sons in the later fifth century
but argued that such father-son tension became a metaphor for other
anxieties in the society of the time.48 When family disputes needed
resolution, there was considerable pressure to settle them out of court,
and arbitrationprocedures were availableto achieve that.49 The polis did
however provide courts where the disputes could be brought if no other

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solution had been found. Humphreys saw the courts as 'a theatre for the
expression of what may perhaps be called the ideology of the oikos'.
When family quarrels arrived in court, it was common for litigants to
assert that such disagreements should be settled out of court, and indeed
that kinsmen should not quarrel."5Such assertions simply ignored the
many reminders, not only in tragedy but in the lawcourts themselves,
that Athenians were well aware of family discord. The lawcourts of the
polis thus provided a setting in which representatives of households
asserted the solidarity of household and kin while pursuing their
disagreements. As one speaker in a law-suit said, neatly illustrating
both the social pressure to maintain family solidarity and the bitterness
of family quarrels (Isaios 5.29): '. . . we do not value material wealth

more highly than we value our relations, even if they are of very bad
character.'51
Other circumstances that may have seemed anomalous to an Athenian also do not appear to have troubled the polis. Typically, as Aristotle
made clear, the head of a household, at least in its dealings with the
outside world, was a man, but some older widows in effect ran their own
households for a number of years.52Another, rarer, anomalous form of
household tolerated by the polis arose among bankers, where the bank
was located in the oikos, and the bank's personnel, sometimes originally
of servile status, succeeded each other in maintaining the oikos.53In the
case of the bankers Pasion and Phormion the polis facilitated the
anomalous development of their oikos by granting them citizenship.

In some cases the lack of legislation to check anomalous behaviour

was no doubt because public opinion was in itself a sufficient check to
undesirable behaviour. Thus, while there was a law forbidding the

marriage of children of the same mother, there is no evidence of a law

against sexual relations between full siblings.54 Such incest was presumably governed by unwritten law, and was not felt to need legislation.

On other topics, however, the lack of legislation is more striking. It is

particularlynotable that, despite the interest of the polis in the breeding
of new citizens, various practices to restrict populations were tolerated.

There has been considerable modern debate on whether Classical

Athenians, who certainly talked about infanticide, actually practised it
by exposing children. There is no clearly attested instance, though New

Comedy made much of foundlings exposed as infants and then

rescued.55 If men married at around twenty-five to thirty and women
at about fifteen, then, unless the female population was selectively
reduced to redress the balance of the sexes at age of marriage, there

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would have been fewer men available for marriage than women.56 At
any rate nothing suggests that any legislative action was taken at Athens
to prevent infanticide.
Riddle argues that Classical populations were somehow regulating
their family sizes, and sets out clear evidence that Classical Greeks knew
of and used what they at least believed to be contraceptives and
arbortifacients.57Contraceptives included the plant pennyroyal, about
which Aristophanes jokes.5sThe ingestion of a small amount of copper
ore was another method of contraception, mentioned twice in the
Hippocratic corpus.59 Abortion was also practised: the Hippocratic
writers knew that early abortion was preferable to late, and they name
a number of supposed abortifacients.60 Under Athenian law a suit
concerning abortion could be brought by any citizen, but its nature is
uncertain; the one attested case involved a widow pregnant at the time of
her husband's death, and it was possibly in those limited circumstances
that there was a legal bar to abortion."6Despite continuing uncertainty
about the methods used, particularly exposure, there seems little doubt
that some Classical Athenians made efforts to limit the number of
children born, and that the polis did little if anything to stop them.62
The laws of the polis also permitted other behaviour which both
weakened the oikos and made it less able to produce the new citizens that
the polis needed. Given the importance of the oikos as a source of new
citizens, it might have been expected that the polis would try to keep an
oikosin being once it was established, but in fact Athenian law permitted
behaviour which could only weaken the oikos. Married couples were
allowed to divorce, and the procedure could be initiated by the husband,
the wife, or the wife's father.63 Cohn-Haft has recently reviewed the
known instances from Classical Athens, eight from forensic speeches
and one from Plutarch.64He argues that this relatively small number of
known cases suggests that divorce was not undertaken lightly, and he
may well be right. If so, however, restraintwas due to social pressures, or
possibly to reluctance to return a dowry, rather than to the intervention
of the polis: the legal procedures needed to end a marriage, particularly
when the husband took the initiative, were very simple, and there is no
evidence that divorce in itself carried a stigma. Divorce might occasionally improve the chances that citizen children would be born: one known
instance of divorce was explained as being due to the desire of an older
husband, who had also had an earlier childless marriage, to end his
current equally barren marriage and allow his younger wife a chance to
have children with a new husband.63 Nonetheless, it would seem to have

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been more in the interest of the polis, which needed new citizens, to put
obstacles in the way of breakingup a marriageby divorce, but there is no
sign of legislation to make divorce more difficult to achieve.
Even more remarkablythe law allowed a father to expel a son from the
household and from the family by the procedure of apokeryxis.66Such
expulsion would exclude the son from family cult and deprive him of
any share in inheritance from his father. There are few, possibly no,
reliably attested instances of apokeryxis,but the legal authority of the
father to act seems clear.67 Such a step would obviously damage the
original household from which the son was expelled, and also make it
difficult for the son to acquire the wherewithal to maintain a household
of his own.
When Athenian law did affect possible behaviour within the oikos,the
law often lost its effectiveness. The laws of the polis regulated the
transmission of property from one generation to the next, and so
controlled one major concern of the household. There was at Athens
a regime of partible inheritance among sons (or their descendants),
while, if there was no son but a daughter (or daughters), the epiklerate
ensured that the estate passed eventually to the woman's descendants.
These rules originally left little scope for disposing of property by will,
except in the case where a man with no son adopted a son, married him
to his daughter, and bequeathed his property to him. By the fourth
century however we hear of men with sons of their own bequeathing
property away from the sons, and a striking case is Konon, who, out of
an estate of about 40 talents, bequeathed only 17 talents to his son.68
Illegitimate children had no right of succession if there was legitimate
offspring, but even then a father could bequeath a sum, reported as
either 500 or 1000 drachmai, to a nothos, and it may also have been
possible for the father in his lifetime to make a gift to the nothos.69The
evolution of testamentary succession at Athens was towards greater
freedom to bequeath at least part of estate away from the heirs who
would have maintained the oikos, or used the inheritance to strengthen
their own new oikoi. Adoption could also be used in the fourth century
to transmit property to persons who would not otherwise have been
entitled to inherit.70 In effect the polis exercised progressively less control
over how the household transmitted its property to its heirs.
If the property of the household was threatened by mismanagement
or incapacity on the part of the head of the household, the laws of the
polls offered legal procedures to protect the interests of other members
of the household."1 There were also laws to protect a ward against

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11

malpractice by a guardian, and to protect an elderly parent against a

son's failure to provide shelter and maintenance. Legal redress in such
cases generally took the form of a suit for kakosiswhich could be brought
by any citizen: such procedure was necessary when many of those at risk
were unable to act for themselves, being minors or women or possibly
senile."2 There was also a procedure involving the archon to oblige a
guardian to provide maintenance for a ward, but its precise nature is
unclear."3 Despite these various legal remedies, however, Humphreys
has argued, plausibly, that the law offered little effective protection for
abuses of authority within the household: the evidence from forensic
speeches suggests that little was actually done to protect wards against
their guardians until they came of age and could act for themselves.74 It
has been demonstrated by Davies that family fortunes fluctuated greatly
from generation to generation," legal remedies against mismanagement
notwithstanding.
Likewise some other laws supposedly governing relations between
members of a household probably had little effect. A law of Solon is
reported which allowed a father to sell into slavery a daughter (or a
brother a sister) if caught in fornication,"7but there is no known case of
a daughter sold into slavery under that law.7 The law required a
husband whose wife committed adultery to divorce her, and the penalty
if he failed to do so was very severe; but it could be imposed only if
another citizen brought a lawsuit and proved that the husband was
aware of his wife's adultery. Since it can be assumed that the wife and
her lover would normally try to be discreet, adultery must have been
difficult to prove in any case, and especially difficult without the
husband's cooperation, so that, if a husband so chose, he could feel
that he had a good chance of escaping any legal penalty for condoning
his wife's adultery."7We may also ask how effective was the law (if it
indeed existed) that a boy whose father hired him out as a prostitute was
not obliged in later life to provide the traditional maintenance for his
There
father, though he had still to carry out his father's funeral rites."79
is thus reason to believe that, when the legislation of the polis sought to
influence behaviour within the household, it was by no means always
effective.
One circumstance in which the polis apparently committed itself to
intervening in the affairs of the oikos was when the oikoswas 'deserted'.
[Dem.] 43.75 quotes a law that 'the archon shall look after orphans,
epikleroi, oikoi which are becoming deserted, and wives who remain in
the households of their dead husbands and claim to be
An
pregnant'.,s

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oikos would become 'deserted' if there was no male heir, and that could
be prevented by posthumous adoption. A man with no male heir could
of course ensure the continuation of his oikosby adopting a son, either in
his own lifetime or by will, and such adoption was common,8' but
concern about 'deserted' oikoi shows that it was by no means always
done. Posthumous adoption was certainly also practised at Athens:
seven cases are known.82 It was different from testamentary adoption,
in which the adoptive father designated the person who was to be
adopted as his son after his death, whereas in posthumous adoption the
adoptive father need have expressed no wish whatever." By requiring
posthumous adoption of the person claiming the legacy the polis could
have ensured that there was a male heir for a 'deserted' oikos, and
likewise the polis could have required that the husband of an epiklerosbe
adopted as the son of her father. Such obligatory adoption might of
course have caused problems in the natal family of the adoptee if he was
an only son. There is in fact no evidence that the polis required such
adoption.84 Whatever legal duties were laid upon the archon and
whatever public concern there was to preserve 'deserted' oikoi, the
evidence suggests that in the fourth century at least the polis took no
initiative, and the preservation of a 'deserted' oikos was in fact left to a
man's heirs (who often did not preserve it).5
To sum up, the oikos enjoyed a stable position as the basic social unit
of Classical Athens throughout the Classical period, but the individual
oikos faced various threats, of which the most obvious was an early end
to the household because of divorce or, more often, the death of a
marriage-partner.The polis needed the oikos to produce and authenticate new citizens, and more generally to provide a social framework
within which citizens could lead their lives. When it chose, the polis
passed laws which interfered in one way or another with the working of
the oikos, but it very seldom passed effective legislation either to protect
the oikos or to force the oikos to serve the interests of the polis. Such
legislation as there was concerning the oikosis, for the most part, difficult
to date, and it is consequently difficult to determine whether there was at
any period a greater or lesser willingness to legislate about the oikos. In
general, however, the Athenian oikos, though often quarrelsome and
short-lived, was largely left to run itself according to the complex of
social values to which Athenians subscribed. The Athenian citizens who
met in the Assembly and there considered, occasionally, aspects of the
oikos,were themselves members of an oikos,in most cases no doubt head
of an oikos. They had to assess the interests of the polis and the interests

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of the oikos, and, if need be, decide whether by legislation to interfere in

the oikos in the interests of the polis: most of the time they evidently
preferred that the oikos should be left to manage its own affairs. That
preference allowed them, within the publicly approved values of their
society, to negotiate behaviour that suited their own household, where in
turn - though we do not often see it happening - other members of the

oikos could also negotiate their own pattern of behaviour; and households may well have felt freer to adopt a pattern of behaviour that suited
their private interest when the choice could be made within the household rather than in a public forum, even if chosen behaviour might later
have to be justified in public. A comparison of the need of the polis for
citizen children with the household's decision on how many children to
have provides an example of how Athenians balanced the respective
interests of oikos and polis.8"
NOTES
1. A version of this paper was delivered at the annual conference of the Classical Association at
Lampeter in April 1998, and I am grateful for helpful comments made at the time, particularlyby
Lin Foxhall and Alan Sommerstein.
2. Aristotle, Pol. 1253b1-14; cf. Pol. 1260b8-27, Eudemian Ethics 1242a40-b2.
3. E.g., recently M. H. Hansen, ThePolis as an UrbanCentreand as a Political Community(Acts
of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 4: Copenhagen, 1997), 10-12, citing passages from ancient texts
to illustrate the conception of the polis as a community of households.
4. On slaves in the oikos see C. A. Cox, HouseholdInterests:Property,Marriage Strategies,and
Family Dynamics in AncientAthens (Princeton, 1998), 190-4.
5. Xen. Mem. 2.7.2. The exact number of female relatives sheltered by Aristarchos is not given,
but it consisted of 'sisters, nieces, and cousins'.
6. T. W. Gallant, Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece(Stanford, 1991), 21: he does not give
details of the study, save that it covered 52 newly-married couples. R. Sallares, The Ecology of the
Ancient Greek World (London, 1991), 196-7 states, without citing evidence, that, even when
brothers did not divide their father's estate, they did not live together.
7. M. Jameson in O. Murray and S. Price (edd.), The Greek City from Homer to Alexander
(Oxford, 1990), 171-95.
8. Cox, op. cit., 132-5.
9. D. M. MacDowell, CQ 39 (1989), 15 shows that oikos could mean descendants through the
male line, citing a passage from [Dem.] 43.48 which names four successive generations of men,
sons and fathers, back to Stratios son of Bouselos, and identifies them as the oikos of Stratios.
MacDowell (18) also cites [Dem.] 43.49-50, in which the line of descent is traced through the
woman Phylomache: MacDowell describes the passage as unparalleled. Likewise the concern, well
attested among Athenians, that an oikosmight be left empty shows a conception of the oikoslasting
beyond a single generation: MacDowell, 16.
10. Op. cit., 16.
11. C. B. Patterson in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women'sHistory and Ancient History (Chapel Hill,
1991), 60. Another recent example is Foxhall in N. Spencer (ed.), Time, Traditionand Society in
GreekArchaeology(London, 1995), 134; see also Foxhall in P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. von
Reden (edd.), Kosmos:Essays in Order, Conflict, and Community in ClassicalAthens (Cambridge,
1998), 52-67, tracing interaction both within the household and beyond. Cox, op. cit., 132-5
reviews critically the tendency to equate oikos and nuclear family, and points (134) to recent work,
e.g., Foxhall, CQ 39 (1989), 22-44, which has noted that 'oikos boundaries went beyond the

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nuclear family'. Though evidence for metic families is limited, the oikos no doubt had a similar
importance for metics resident in Athens over a long period as for Athenian citizens: see A. R. W.
Harrison, TheLaw ofAthens:theFamily and Property(Oxford, 1968) i. 195-6 for the responsibilities
of the polemarch concerning family matters of metics, and also S. B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical
and Hellenistic Greece (Oxford, 1997) 37, suggesting that 'metic oikoi seem to have functioned
according to principles similar to those governing citizen oikoi'.
12. See V. J. Hunter, especially 108-10 on women's connection to their natal kin in B. Halpern
and D. W. Hobson (edd.), Law, Politics and Society in theAncient MediterraneanWorld(Sheffield,
1993).
13. W. E. Thompson, Phoenix 21 (1967), 273-82 (marriage of first cousins) and California
Studies in ClassicalAntiquity 5 (1972), 211-25 (remarriages); S. Isager, Classica et Mediaevalia 33
(1981-2), 81-96; Hunter, Journal of Family History 14 (1989), 291-311 (widows).
14. See Cox, op. cit., 68-129, noting particularly tensions between father and son (84-8),
between stepfathers and stepsons (90-2), between brothers (109-14), and between brothers-in-law
(124-5).
15. On the composition and the functions of the anchisteiasee Harrison, op. cit., i. 143-9.
16. Harrison, op. cit., i. 143; MacDowell, op. cit., 18-19.
17. Or, in the case of a thetic epikleros,who should either marry her or provide her with a dowry:
Harrison, op. cit., i. 132-8.
18. Since ranking within the anchisteia could determine rights of succession, many Athenians
who might some day inherit from a given kinsman will no doubt have borne in mind their position
within the kinsman's potential anchisteia while he was still alive: but such awareness would not
require any activity on the part of the anchisteiaduring the man's lifetime.
19. S. C. Humphreys, GRBS 27 (1986), 57-91, especially 87-8, from which the quotation
comes.
20. The household also of course existed within a network of other social contacts, notably
friendships: see D. Konstan, Friendshipin the Classical World (Cambridge, 1997), and especially
Cox, op. cit., 168-208.
21. Humphreys in Humphreys, The Family, Women,and Death: ComparativeStudies (London,
2nd ed. 1993), 104-18 analysed the c.600 known fourth-century funerary inscriptions of Athenian
citizens with deme affiliations. While she was careful to note (82) that inscriptions found alone may
originally have been grouped with those of kin, the results are striking. Inscriptions which group
people who were not at some stage of their lives members of the same nuclear family amount to well
under 5% of the total. 17 three-generation groupings are found (113), 4 four-generation groupings
(116), and 1 six-generation grouping (117). The principal occasion for the ritual commemoration
of the dead at the tomb was the Genesia: as Humphreys observed (87-8), only those ancestors who
were buried together could be commemorated on the day of the Genesia. In law-court speeches
collateral heirs show very little interest in carrying out ritual commemoration of those whose
property they are claiming (L. Rubinstein, Adoptionin Fourth CenturyAthens [Copenhagen, 1993],
68-76, esp. 74).
22. Humphreys, ClassicalJournal 73 (1977-8), 97-104, reprinted in Humphreys, The Family,
Women,andDeath: ComparativeStudies;and 'Oikosand Polis', 1-21 in TheFamily, WomenandDeath.
23. C. Leduc in P. S. Pantel (ed.), A History of Womenin the West,Vol. 1: FromAncient Goddesses
to ChristianSaints (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 235-94; and R. E. Leader, AJA 101 (1997), 683-99.
Cf. the comments of B. S. Strauss, Fathersand Sons in Athens:Ideologyand Society in the Era of the
Peloponnesian War (London, 1993), 33-53. H. Foley, CPh 77 (1982), 1-21 already used the
opposition of oikosand polis as a tool of analysis, with important nuances. See also C. B. Patterson in
A. L. Boegehold and A. Scafuro (edd.), Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore, 1994),
200-3 examining the public role of the oikos, including its female members, and pointing out that
the opposition public/private does not entirely match the relation of polis to oikos.
24. Humphreys, op. cit. (n. 22), 8: Humphreys's main point is important even though Pericles'
law was not in fact a ban on marriage between Athenian and foreigners. Patterson, Pericles'
CitizenshipLaw of 451-50 B.C. (Salem, 1981), 29 n. 3 and 99-100, had already pointed out that
there is no reason to suppose that Pericles' citizenship law of 451/0 was directly concerned with
such marriages; and the fact that two subsequent pieces of legislation were adopted with the clear
intention of banning marriages between Athenians and non-Athenians (Harrison, op. cit., i.26-9)
suggest that such marriages had continued after Pericles' law.

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25. This proposition would be less true if one accepted the arguments of E. E. Cohen in G. Thtir
and J. Velissaropoulos-Karakostas (edd.), Symposium 1995. Vortriigezur griechischenund hellenistischenRechtsgeschichte,
Korfu 1.-5. September1995 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 1997), 57-95
that metics were astoi and that their sons were regularly enrolled as citizens: but Cohen does not
meet the arguments already advanced by D. Whitehead, The Ideology of the Athenian Metic
(Cambridge, 1977), 60-1 against the view that metics were astoi. Cf. D. Ogden, GreekBastardy
in the Classicaland HellinisticPeriods (Oxford, 1996), 69, rejecting an earlierattempt by K. Walters,
Classical Antiquity 2 (1983), 314-36 to argue that astos meant 'free resident of Attica'. Cohen's
arguments are in fact untenable in the light of the conclusions drawn by E. Levy, Ktima 10 (1985),
53-66 from a careful analysis of the uses of astos and polites:cf. C. Mosse, Ktima 10 (1985), 77-9
on the comparable feminine forms aste and politis.
26. Perikeiromene435-6 (K6rte). See Harrison, op. cit., i.18, 50.
27. S. C. Todd, The Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford, 1993), 177.
28. The purpose of the law of 451/0 is still debated, and it is not clear to what extent it imposed a
new pattern of behaviour, to what extent it confirmed what was already normal practice: see Ogden,
op. cit., 59-69 and R. Osborne, Past and Present 155 (May 1997), 4-11 for recent reviews of the
question.
29. On the evidence suggesting that in the later fifth century a law was passed that allowed a male
Athenian citizen to marry one woman and also have legitimate children by a second see Harrison,
op. cit., i. 15-17; cf. Todd, op. cit., 117 suggesting that the law of 451/0 may at least have ceased to
be applied in the later fifth century. Ogden, op. cit., 72-7 accepts that legislation was passed during
the later Peloponnesian War to allow Athenian men to have legitimate children by two wives. The
limited evidence on whatever change to laws on hereditary citizenship may have occurred in the
later fifth century does not suggest how an Athenian with two wives would have managed his
domestic circumstances - whether, for instance, both wives would have lived in the same
household. See also Cox, op. cit., 172-7.
30. Harrison, op. cit., i.26-8.
31. A. Scafuro, Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology, 158-65.
32. See Osborne, op. cit., arguing that the much greater prominence of women on sculpted
funerary monuments from (probably) the third quarter of the fifth century B.C. is due to the
changed status of the wife and mother in Athenian society. Other recent studies of these
representations of women take different approaches: K. Stears in N. Spencer (ed.), Time, Tradition
and Society in GreekArchaeology(London, 1995), 109-31 also acknowledges the impact of Pericles'
law and women's importance to the familial group, but with nuances about the exposure of women
to public view, while Leader, op. cit., stresses the projection of an idealized conception of the oikos
in the way women are shown. Cf. H. A. Shapiro, AJA 95 (1991), 629-56, on the iconography of
mourning in Athenian art, particularly vases showing funerary scenes.
33. L. Kallet-Marx in R. M. Rosen and J. Farrell (edd.), Nomodeiktes:GreekStudies in Honor of
Martin Ostwald (Ann Arbor, 1993), 140.
34. I. Morris, Death-ritual and Social Structurein ClassicalAntiquity (Cambridge, 1992), 141-4.
35. Kallet-Marx, op. cit.
36. On newly married couples living with the husband's family see Gallant, op. cit., 21.
37. There are recent discussion by Gallant, op. cit., 17-19; Sallares, op. cit., 148-50; Pomeroy,
op. cit., 23; Cox, op. cit., 120-2.
38. Hesiod, Works and Days 696-8; Plato, Laws 721b, 785b, cf. Rep. 460e; Aristotle, Pol.
1335a28-30.
39. Xen. Oik. 7.5; Aristotle, Pol. 1335a29-30.
40. Hunter, Policing Athens (Princeton, 1994), 29-33. To defend her interests at law, if need
arose, the widow would need a male kyrios, though not necessarily from within her household: see
Foxhall in L. Foxhall and A. D. E. Lewis (edd.), GreekLaw in its Political Setting:Justificationsnot
Justice (Oxford, 1996), 149-50 on the range of potential kyrioi available to a woman.
41. Hunter, op. cit. (n. 13), 298.
42. Except in so far as childbirth posed a particular danger for women: on the dangers of
childbirth see N. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhoodin Classical Greece(Baltimore, 1994), 7186.
43. See Sallares, op. cit., 107-29: he constructs (109-16), with considerable emphasis on the
problems and uncertainties involved, a life table for men (110) based on the skeletal material from

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Greece in the period c.650-350 aged by Angel: the table gives a man at age 30 a further lifeexpectancy of 15.9 years. Cf. Gallant, op. cit., 19-20.
44. Gallant, op. cit., 29-30 supposes a life-cycle of 24 years for an ancient household, and that
within part at least of the last 6 years of the 24 the household would consist of a widow and her sons,
besides any slaves. Exactly how Gallant calculates the figure of 24 is not clear: he supposes an age at
marriage for men of 25-30 (18) and an average life-expectancy for men of 40 (20), though he does
not say what further life-expectancy he supposes for a man who reached 30. He supposes that the
life-cycle of the household would repeat itself in a new generation after 24 years, but it is not clear
how that is to be reconciled with marriage for men at age 25-30. See also Cox, op. cit., 141-3.
45. Thompson, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 5 (1972), 211-25; Isager, op. cit.;
Hunter, op. cit. (n. 13); Cox, op. cit., 152-5.
46. Coresidence was an important feature of the typical Athenian household, but there must
have been numerous exceptions where members of the household (e.g., soldiers, sailors, traders,
and itinerant craftsmen) would often be absent for long periods: see Cox, op. cit., 155-66. Coresidence therefore could not be legally significant.
47. See, e.g., B. Knox, Wordand Action:Essays on theAncient Theater(Baltimore, 1979), 20-3:
but note the arguments of J. Redfield in J.-P. Vernant (ed.), The Greeks(Chicago, 1995), 163 that
'Athenian drama only permits the representation of domestic life as triply separated from immediate
experience' by being represented in public by men for men, as if it occurred in public, and set in
heroic time or, in comedy, in a 'fanciful suspension of time, space, cause, and effect'.
48. Strauss, op. cit.; also Cox, op. cit., 84-8. Cf., e.g., J. F. Gardner, Greece& Rome 36 (1989),
51-62 on husbands' anxieties over their wives' behaviour; and, generally on tensions among
kinsfolk, including cooperation and discord between siblings, Cox, op. cit., 68-129. G. Sissa in
J. Andreau and H. Bruhns (edd.), Parente et Stratigies dans l'AntiquiteRomaine.Actes de la Table
Ronde des 2-4 Octobre1986 (Paris and Rome, 1990), 199-223 sees kinship as a source of dispute
(203-5) and marriage between kin as a way of healing disputes (208-9).
49. Humphreys, op. cit (n. 22), 5-7; Hunter, op. cit. (n. 40), 43-69.
50. Humphreys, op. cit. (n. 22), 5 (from which the quotation is taken). Cf. K. Dover, Greek
Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), 273-6 on the Athenian's duty to
parents first, other kin second, and friends third; and the view (275) that 'litigationwithin the family
was a matter of great embarrassment'.Humphreys may be right (7) that written law did as much to
create disputes as to prevent them. However, when she suggests that at an earlier period family
disputes were settled by (7) 'well-informed public opinion in a village community' (cf. 9, 'local
communities which had once mediated between oikos and polis'), this supposed earlier stage of
Athenian society is not clearly defined or located in time, and may be questioned. Heads of
household who took disputes to court may have had various motives for doing so: see Foxhall, op.
cit. (n. 40), 137 on lawcourts as 'one of a number of arenas in which males competed with each
other'.
51. Dover, op. cit., 273-6, from which the translation of Isaios is taken.
52. Hunter, op. cit. (n. 40), 29-33. See L.-M. Giinther, Historia 42 (1993), 308-25 for a general
review of the position of widows.
53. See E. E. Cohen, AthenianEconomyand Society:a Banking Perspective(Princeton, 1992), 8290 on the 'bankinghousehold' (though one might question his view [87] that 'by the fourth century,
however, the traditional oikos had been significantly transmuted' if it is intended as generalization
ratherthan a comment on the special case of the bankers). See also J. Trevett, Apollodorosthe Son of
Pasion (Oxford, 1992), 1-49 on the family of the banker Pasion.
54. On incest see E. Karabelias in G. Thtir (ed.), Symposion 1985. Vortriigezur griechischenund
hellenistischenRechtsgeschichte,Ringberg24.-26. Juli 1985 (Cologne and Vienna, 1989), 233-51;
and C. Miilke, ZPE 114 (1996), 37-55.
55. There is a considerable modern literature on the subject of infanticide in Classical Greece,
and in particular in Athens. The arguments of D. Engels, CPh 75 (1980), 112-20 against the
possibility that exposure was practised were refuted by M. Golden, Phoenix 35 (1981), 316-31 and
W. V. Harris, CQ 32 (1982), 114-16. See also Patterson, TAPA 115 (1985), 103-23; Golden,
Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, 1990), 86-9; Sallares, op. cit., 151-7;
Gallant, op. cit., 21, 133; J. M. Riddle, Contraceptionand Abortionfrom the Ancient World to the
Renaissance(Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 10-15; Demand, op. cit., 6-8; Pomeroy, op. cit., 120. Cf.
M. Huys, Ancient Society 27 (1996), 47-74, who considers the evidence for infanticide at Sparta

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(where it is generally supposed that exposure was certainly practised), and shows that such evidence
is closely related to ancient utopianist thinking. R. Oldenziel in J. Blok and P. Mason (edd.), Sexual
Assymetry(Amsterdam, 1987), 87-107 provides the historiographicalcontext of modern discussion
of ancient infanticide.
56. Golden, op. cit.
57. Riddle, op. cit., 15-19.
58. On contraception and abortifacients, including pennyroyal, see Riddle, op. cit., 57-61 and
Eve's Herbs:a History of Contraceptionand Abortionin the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 35-63,
75-7. There are references to pennyroyal in Lysistrata85-9, Acharnians860-77, and Peace 706-12.
See Riddle, op. cit., 53-4 and op. cit., 1997, 46-7, and J. Scarborough in C. A. Faraone and
D. Obbink (edd.), Magika Hiera: Ancient GreekMagic and Religion (Oxford, 1991), 145 on the
properties of pennyroyal as an emmenagogue and abortifacient, and the dangers of an overdose.
Scarborough, ibid., 144-5, and Riddle, op. cit., 1992, 59 and op. cit., 1997, 46-7 see references to
these properties in Lysistrata 85-9 and Peace 706-12: but pennyroyal is not taken as a herb in
Lysistrata85-9 and is recommended to be taken by a man in Peace 706-12. N. R. E. Fisher, Classics
Ireland3 (1996), 82 n. 19 questions whether Riddle is right to see allusions to the use of pennyroyal
as a contraceptive in Lysistrata 85-9 and Peace 706-12. The Aristophanic passages show that
pennyroyal was well-known in Classical Athens, and, if any of the three passages referred to
pennyroyal as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancy (as Scarborough and Riddle suppose), we
could safely assume that the herb's abortifacient quality was widely known to Athenians: but further
argument is needed if the view of Scarborough and Riddle is to be sustained.
59. Riddle, op. cit. (n. 55), 74-6.
60. Riddle, op. cit. (n. 55), 23-4 (early abortion), 76-82 (abortifacients).
61. Harrison, op. cit., i.72-3.
62. It is worth remembering that infant mortality must have been high: no figures are available,
but Golden, Greece& Rome 35 (1988), 155 suggests that between 30% and 40% of children in
Greco-Roman society may have died in the first year of their life.
63. In certain circumstances, an epikleroswho was already married could be required to divorce
and enter into a second marriage with a kinsman: Harrison, op. cit., i. 11-12.
64. L. Cohn-Haft, JHS 115 (1995), 1-14: see also Cox, op. cit., 71-3.
65. Isaios 2.7-12: Cohen-Haft, op. cit., 10.
66. Harrison, op. cit., i.74-7.
67. The evidence is in Dem. 39.39.
68. Harrison, op. cit., i.151-3. On the estate of Konon, Lysias 19.39-40: the succession may
have been affected by the fact that Konon had property in Cyprus.
69. Harrison, op. cit., i.67; Ogden, op. cit., 38-9.
70. Rubinstein, op. cit., 76-86, especially 80: see also Cox, op. cit., 125-8, 148-51.
71. Harrison, op. cit., i.79-80 on the graphe argias and graphs (or possibly dike) paranoias.
72. Harrison, op. cit., i.77 (father), 112 with n. 4 (epikleros),117-19 (orphans and epikleroz).
73. Harrison, op. cit., i.104-5.
74. Humphreys, 'Oikos and Polis', 5.
75. J. K. Davies, Wealthand thePowerof Wealthin ClassicalAthens(New York, 1981), 73-87; cf.
J. N. Davidson, Courtesansand Fishcakes: the Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (London,
1997), 183-6.
76. Harrison, op. cit., i.73: the law is cited by Plutarch, Solon 23.
77. E. Fantham, H. P. Foley, N. B. Kampen, S. B. Pomeroy, and H. A. Shapiro (edd.), Women
in the Classical World:Image and Text (Oxford, 1994), 114.
78. Harrison, op. cit., i.35-6: see also Roy, Greece& Rome 44 (1997), 11-22, esp. 13-15.
79. Harrison, op. cit., i.37-8: the law is cited by Aischines 1.13.
80. Isaios 7.30 paraphraseswhat may be the same law as follows: 'All those who are about to die
make their own precautions so that their oikoi will not become empty, and so that there will be
someone to offer sacrifices at their tombs and perform all the customary rites for them. Wherefore,
even if they are to die childless, they do in any case leave adopted children. And it is not only private
individuals who make this decision; it is also a decision of public concern made by the polis as a
community [to koinon tespole8s].For it (the polis) orders by law the Archon to take care of the oikoi
so that they do not become empty' (translation by Rubinstein, op. cit., 105).
81. Rubinstein, op. cit.

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82. Rubinstein, op. cit., 25-8, 121-3: see also Cox, op. cit., 148-51.
83. Rubinstein, op. cit., 22-5 (testamentary adoption), 35 (posthumous adoption). The
procedures of posthumous adoption are obscure, and it is not clear whether it had to be ratified
by the archon or by a court before the adoptee was allowed to succeed to the inheritance of his
adoptive father (Rubinstein, 41).
84. In the case of epikleroiRubinstein, op. cit., 87-104 concludes that 'adoption was not a
necessary supplement to the epikleros-institution,and that the decision to continue the oikos of the
epikleros'father rested entirely with his heirs'. In the case of intestate heirs Rubinstein concludes
(105-12) that there was no legal obligation to be posthumously adopted or, if there was, it was not
enforced in the fourth century. She also concludes that any moral obligation to be adopted was not
strong enough to compel the heir to be adopted.
85. It also appears that posthumous adoption, ratherthan being an orderly process supervised by
the state, was frequently contested and difficult to control. Rubinstein, op. cit., 25-9.
86. Since this article was written there has appeared M. H. Hansen, Polis and City-state: an
Ancient Conceptand its Modern Equivalent (Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 5, Copenhagen,
1998), of which two sections - though written from a very different viewpoint - are particularly
relevant to the arguments presented here: pages 86-91 entitled 'The opposition between the public
and the private' (including at 86: 'The Athenians practised a separation between a public and a
private sphere of life') and pages 135-7 entitled 'Was the oikos a civic or a private institution?'
(including at 136-7: 'In Athens . .. the oikos belonged basically in the private sphere').

NEW

SURVEY

IN THE

CLASSICS

1999

This year's Survey, GreekScience by T. E. Rihll, will be published in

October and sent to all subscribers with the October issue of the journal.

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