Attitudes to outsiders in Ancient Greece: Who is allowed into the household and why?

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AH7360        Student No. 061867039         22nd November 2010

Attitudes to ‘outsiders’ in Ancient Greece: Who is allowed into the household and why?

The Ancient Greek household has often been described as a place that contained many boundaries, whether physical or non-physical (Antonaccio 2000: 522). What could have appeared to be a normal room may well have been forbidden to certain types of people. In our attempts to explain the notion of public and private space in ancient Greek households, we have to disregard our modern notions of our own houses and attempt to think as a contemporary. Who, in the ancient Greek world, was allowed into the household or oikos and why? How did this idea of household privacy develop and when did it start? Was it an idea shared around all of ancient Greece, or did it differ from location to location? Indeed, how are we to define ‘outsiders’? Could they have been the average neighbour, or was this concept extended to others, like extended family members, slaves and the supernatural? In this essay, I shall also attempt to explore the cultural differences between settlements and how perceptions of the outsider were perceived as well as our own modern interpretations on the notions of public and private space, relating to ancient Greek households.

The symposium (or symposion) was a social institution - a common Greek cultural practice whereby groups of males drunk diluted wine amidst entertainment. If it is true that this practice was originally forged for a man of aristocratic class who wished to cement bonds of personal allegiance by feasting and drinking with non related aristocrats at his own residence, then we can go as far back as the twelfth to tenth centuries, where buildings at Kavousi, Vronda, Lefkandi, Toumba and Nichoria are all large enough to serve as houses and host large feasts (Whitley 1991: 349, 363-4). These large residences attracted others or ‘outsiders’ to associate themselves with the owner, as they knew they could receive a lavish feast (Whitley 1991: 349-50). In Lefkandi and Toumba, the association of an aristocrat (sometimes labelled as a ‘big man’) with his house was so great, that he was buried within it and no-one could use the house (Whitley 1991: 350). In this sense, the ‘outsiders’ would have been anyone trying to occupy the house.

Forty small buildings in the early tenth century BC phase of the settlement at Nichoria were similar in that none of them had internal partitions dividing up the house, so privacy may well have been obtained by perishable items such as curtains, if indeed at all (McDonald et al. 1983: 18). Larger structures had wider entrances, but again, there is no surviving evidence of temporary screens to uphold privacy (McDonald et al. 1983: 19-33). The larger area of this structure may have housed large groups and may also have housed elites. The late eighth century BC building Θ at the site of Oropos was another large structure and contains a large amount of feasting related finds (Mazarakis Ainian 1998: 196-8). Buildings from the mid to late 8th century BC phase at Zagora also contain many drinking related items (Cambitoglou et al. 1988: 83-4, 87-8, 96-100).

The larger, possibly elite houses at these sites (such as the one at Nichoria) may well have been occupied by several families (Mazarakis Ainian 2007: 167). Ritual areas (again, at Nichoria: McDonald et al. 1975: 141) could be easily seen by ‘outsiders’; though the inhabitants owned (or cohabited) it, they could be watched which might suggest that ‘outsiders’ might have joined in with ritual proceedings or no particular privacy was placed upon ritual practice. Though we might be able to see patterns emerging, we should be careful not to assume that ‘Dark Age’ Greeks were all doing the same.

 If Zagoran houses do indeed show a relation to the concept of an oikos (Coucouzeli 2007: 181), then it could conceivably mean that ancient Greek household as a unit existed before the fifth century BC. Coucouzeli argues that the symposion attracted greater prominence among the aristocrats of Zagora (Coucouzeli 2007: 181). The growing population of Greece at the time may well have promoted competition between aristocrats to host bigger drinking parties and as a result, it may have been necessary to keep women away from the numerous male guests (Coucouzeli 2007: 181), presumably so that they were not targeted by drunk visitors. Ironically, the female house members would have been outsiders in their own home!

By the seventh century BC, there was a significant shift in house architecture. Houses were built with high walls, narrow doors and smaller windows (Morris 1999: 309). Narrow door spaces at Zagora (700) and Miletus (600) were dissimilar from houses of the ninth and eighth centuries (Morris, 1999: 309). The smaller door space would indicate that who was allowed in was tightly monitored. The oikos itself was becoming more compact (Lang 2005: 18). This could represent the presence of other occupants in the house, such as the family son and his wife living in the same house but adapting the house to fit in (Lang 2005: 18). From a modern perspective, one might assume that the son would move out of the home and thus become an ‘outsider’; it may well have been common for extended family to stay in the same home. The larger structure of four room houses in (mid eighth century BC) Kastanas (Macedonia) could implicate extended relatives sleeping in the same area as the family (Lang 2005: 24).

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As house structures changed from a linear perspective to a radial one (Lang 2005: 26), single entrance houses would have required a different access system as it was impossible to walk in a line to get to the desired room. A transitional room with a similar use like that of a modern day hallway was used to allow access to different parts of the building (Lang 2005: 26). This would have made the house less ‘private’ as visitors that were invited in would have been able to see into more rooms, yet as rooms now had separate access, ...

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