What Life Was Like For Women In Ancient Greece

Life in Ancient Greece was not a lot of fun for women. But if you lived in the right city-state or wound up with the right job, things could be a little bit easier. From lady Olympics to religious rites, here’s what life was like for women in Ancient Greece.

Name something, literally anything, and Ancient Greek men probably banned women from doing it, watching it, or participating in it. Working? Nuh-uh. Politics? No way. Even just walking around the market? Totally frowned upon. This included the Olympic Games.

But women did actually have their own version of the Olympic Games called the Heraean Games. Held every four years, the games consisted of 16 women from various city-states competing in footraces. The winners received olive branch headdresses, plus part of a dead cow, and statues with their names carved on them were dedicated to them. Spartan women apparently won a lot of the time, as you'd expect.

Some historians don't believe the Heraean Games actually existed, since there's very little evidence for them. But others say this is just a sign of the insignificance of women to the Ancient Greeks.

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The Lady Olympics in Ancient Greece | 0:13
Priestesses lived the good life | 0:58
Festivals and forgetfulness | 1:34
Limited choices | 2:11
The Spartan paradise | 2:51
Rights? More like wrongs | 3:46

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