this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024

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Living it up in Ancient Greece (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 140 points 6 months ago (2 children)

As long as you weren’t born a slave i guess.

[–] [email protected] 107 points 6 months ago

Statement holds true today as well

[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Or a woman.

Ancient Greece, generally speaking, hated women

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I’m interested in learning the context here.

Because modernity also hates women and I guess I’m ignorant but.. weren’t there options for women then..? Like midwife/doula-type things, herbalist/witch, spinster/seamstress-clothier?

Potentially more than they could have in modern history?

[+] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Remember that "ancient Greece" is our term for an area, rather than a singular nation / empire like Rome.

The area of Greece mainly had Athens and Sparta, and Athens is probably who you're referring to.

But Spartan women weren't that bad off, compared to other places in antiquity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_Sparta

Spartan women were famous in ancient Greece for seemingly having more freedom than women elsewhere in the Greek world. To contemporaries outside of Sparta, Spartan women had a reputation for promiscuity and controlling their husbands. Spartan women could legally own and inherit property, and they were usually better educated than their Athenian counterparts.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But Spartan women weren't that bad off, compared to other places in antiquity

We also white wash Spartan history pretty dramatically. Yes, Spartan women who were citizens were better off than their Athenian counterparts. However, that's not saying much when you consider spartan citizens were a fraction of the population of Sparta.

The vast majority of women in Sparta were helots, and were subject to chattel slavery. I don't think you can claim that Spartans cared about gender equality when they had an entire social class made up of the bastards produced by raping their slaves.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, they weren't like democratic utopias, lol.

The point being that Sparta was as shit as anything in history, but they were a bit less discriminatory towards women. Probably because they weren't really as posessive of them as many other cultures. For... some reason.

On the night of the wedding, the bride would have her hair cut short and be dressed in a man's cloak and sandals. The bride appeared dressed like a man or a young boy to be perceived as less threatening to her husband.

In Sparta [...] the cropping of the bride’s hair and transvestism likely aimed to transform her temporarily into an adolescent Spartan boy – a less threatening figure to the groom, who probably had made his own transition to adulthood via a close emotional and sexual relationship with an older male and was now in the position to sexually initiate other boys into Spartan society

[–] medusa 50 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Counterpoint: Antibiotics yayyy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just rub a fungus on the wound smh

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Burry yourself in manure as Hippocrates intended!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That is until you break a bone and learn that there are no pain killers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The ancient Greeks used electric rays to numb the pain of childbirth and operations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_ray

Not the most effective, but hey, better then opioid addiction

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

But they literally did have, well, not opioids, but opium.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium

Evidence from ancient Greece indicates that opium was consumed in several ways, including inhalation of vapors, suppositories, medical poultices, and as a combination with hemlock for suicide.

So no problem with pain medication, actually. @[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

She be begging donkey dick for bread by the end of the week