Military spouses and patriarchal anxiety on the ancient Athenian stage

This paper considers the representation of soldiers’ wives in ancient Athenian dramatic plays which respond to, and at times critique, the militarized socio-cultural milieu within which they were produced. It argues that these texts reflect male anxieties that incessant warmongering, as a masculine pursuit, might destabilize the institution of the family, thereby also undermining the gendered norms and social structures on which both military violence and patriarchy depend. Fifth-century-BCE Athens was starkly patriarchal society where no distinction between civilian and military was assumed: every adult male citizen was expected to undertake military service, which meant that every family was a ‘military family’ and every wife a ‘military spouse’. This was also a period when armed conflict, whether against external invaders or neighbouring states in Athens’ pursuit of imperialist expansion, had been a continual presence for many decades. Dramatized representations of military spouses from the period highlight the complex interdependency of the military and the family as well as illustrating some of the ways in which the binary division of gender roles is placed under pressure during wartime. The paper focuses on three plays: Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata, and two tragedies depicting the mythical figure of Clytemnestra (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis).