Re: Remind me again what the ex-labour cabinet are doing now?
"Progressive and Regressive are relative terms, in the context of their time Athens was Progressive, not Regressive."
Perhaps I used to wrong word there. I meant that, unlike the Spartan aristocracy where men and women had a high degree of equality, Athens retained a model in which women were, essentially, property. In the Iliad and the Odyssey this attitude is very clearly expressed - men could even sacrifice their own daughters to the gods, and Odysseus feels it within his rights to kill all his female household servants who have had sex with the suitors. There was a small class of hetairai, but the question of their status is still argued. Would the Peloponnesian Wars have gone on so long if Athens had adopted a more Spartan approach? Certainly reigning half your population to domestic duties wasn't exactly a progressive idea even by the standards of the time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
