Las mujeres, la tierra y los animales: naturaleza femenina y cultura política en Grecia antigua

Abstract

The comparison between women, earth and animals was highly popular in the Greek world and a basic ideological concept explaining the functioning of the polis. Through this both women's fertility and nature's fertility were considered equal, so that marriage and agriculture were put on the same level and, as means for controlling reproductive forces on the hands of men, they became distinguishing marks of civilisation, opposed to natural/feminine savagery. Thus, the oikos, the institution where both marriage and primordial land's exploitation were carried out, was the basic social cell of Greek civilisation, and through it women and nature were integrated into the culture of the polis.