Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:44:15.646Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

VIII. Money

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Get access

Extract

Public status for women, in a city, a craft-guild or a cult-group, very often depended on ability to pay the bills. This was not to be taken for granted. Women were generally thought to need guidance in financial matters, lest they fall victim to impulse or emotional blackmail or simple inexperience. In classical Athenian law, a woman had, by custom, unquestioned control of her clothes and jewels, her ‘personal effects’, which might be of great value. Her dowry, and any possessions or servants she brought to the marriage, were for the use of her husband. If the marriage ended, they had to be transferred to the man who next took responsibility for her. Without the authority of this man, her kurios, she could not in theory (Isaeus 10.10.2–3) contract for anything worth more than a bushel of barley, which sounds like an archaic equivalent of the week’s shopping.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)