Ancient Greek Citizenship Analysis

Analysis

The following analysis questions the democratic notions of the ancient citizenship Athens and eventually attempts to clarify the development of democracy and its significant influence in Europe in respect to equality. Ancient Greek founded the democracy in Europe regarding the ideas of freedom and liberty. It is notwithstanding questionable how this civilization originated such notions without considering the relevance of equality: in ancient Athens, likewise in other citizenships around ancient Greece like Sparta, a male dominance is observable; only men at the age of eighteen are considered as part of the citizenship while foreigners, slaves and eventually, women are intentionally segregated from the community.

Such overpowering

The democratic political thought did not impact ancient Athenian women due to the aspect that their status in society opposed the general ideology of being a participant in the ‘polis’. Pritchard (2015) examines that the democratic notion revolutionizes political thought (p. 140), but excludes women from the participation in the citizenship (p. 144). Ancient Greek philosophers moreover evidence this extensively low status in their works on inferiority of ancient women: O’Pry (2012) examines certain observations of Greek philosopher Aristotle (c. 340 BC) as according to him ancient women were “utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy” (p. 8). Additionally females would bring several disadvantages to the dominant male society and therefore, hinder the revolutionary aspect of politics due to their ‘incapabilities’ (p. 8). The roles of female and male in the citizenships were therefore considered inherent hence self-evident in the ancient society. Such observation is moreover examined by O’Neal (2012) in his mythological approach to this issue. Traditional ancient Greek myths influenced the general societal thought of the citizenship: the roles of any individual were determined by divine order, essentially by male Greek gods and Zeus as the dominant authority of said

The limited equal status of ancient Athenian women is essentially caused by the concealed and unseen potential of females in general. The common ancient Athenian notion in respect to historical and political literature is moreover elaborated from an invariably “persistently male perspective” (p. 174) therefore suppressing the potential of women significantly by the extensive male dominance. The aspect that separation and limitation by these men prevented, even prohibited, certain possibilities of women ironically indicates the capabilities of which the ancient dominance could have been aware of. Pritchard (2015) moreover notes the prominence of ancient Athenian women in literature and arts, however, the lack of historical evidence that grants women a certain relevance in the Greek society refuses further approach to individual female notions in democratic Athens (p. 174). Furthermore, this unavailability of historical literature is an indicator for prohibited education for ancient Athenian women. It is also assumable that the ‘polis’ intentionally limited equal status of females: O’Pry (2012) examines that ancient women solely received a basic knowledge, sufficient enough to bear their responsibilities, nonetheless, never more than adequate (p. 9). Therefore, a possible potential of Athenian females in the ancient