The lives of Greek women were lived mostly in private- with little opportunity for participation in publiclife. Pericles, in his Funeral Oration of 431 B.C.E. (as reported by Thucydides), comments on "female excellence," saying that "the best reputation consists of not falling short of their natural character, and that their glory is greatest when they are spoken of least by men—whether they are praised or blamed." In other words, the safest way for a woman to maintain a good reputation is to avoid becoming an object of public scrutiny and to remain in the private world of the oikos (household).

A major exception, however, was religious ritual. In Athens, womeri of the citizen class were priestesses in several public cults and took part in processions at the major festivals. In Aristophanes' Lysistrata (411 B.C.E.), an old woman...