Women and Honor

In the Greek honor system, men prove themselves honorable and virtuous by defending women.  Explaining Achilles’ reaction to Agamemnon, Peter Walcot writes that “The law of reciprocity applies: when insulted or injured the man of honour must retaliate in at least equal measure if his personal prestige is to be upheld, and the man of honour is at his most sensitive when a woman from within the family group is in any way threatened.  Athenian law, for example, regarded homicide as justified if a man engaged in illicit sex and was caught in the act with a wife or even with other female dependents . . . of the killer.”

Crucial as women are to the honor system, the system is constructed in a way that excludes women from a share of honor.  Honor is won in competitive settings.  Walcott notes: ““Greek society was intensely competitive at every level, whether those engaged in competition were athletes, dramatists, statesmen, or soldiers.  And it was the relentless pursuit of honour, often at other’s expense, that made society so agonistic and, therefore, unstable.”  These agonistic settings are precisely the settings in which women have to place.  Honor is publicly bestowed; it is bestowed on public actions, and women cannot act in public.  For women, virtue is not found in honor but in shame.  Not even a woman’s name should come up in the public world of men: “Women especially must exhibit shame, keeping well out of the way of men: the great glory of a woman, Pericles claims in the Funeral Speech, is to be least talked about by men whether they are praising or criticizing her.”