Women In Hipparchia Of Maroneia

In society, there seems to be a predetermined idea of what a woman should be. In antiquity, there are very powerful, strong, independent, and determined women who rose against this established sexist mentality, but because of the type of society they lived in, these women have gained a negative reputation and have become equated to characters such as Pandora, Medea, and Clytemnestra. These fictitious figures are the leading examples of what an independent and powerful woman has now become in the eyes of men, both back then and even now: a symbol for temptation, weakness, treachery, viciousness, impulsivity, irrationality, and lack of intelligence.

As Athens developed into a great democracy during the golden age, law began to enforce social

What is incredible about this woman is her Cynic rhetoric, her nonconformity to traditional gender roles, and her embodiment of anaideia, or shamelessness. As a teenager, she decided to adopt the Cynic ideology when she fell in love with Crates the Cynic, whom she later married. By marrying a Cynic, even though they see marriage as a social institution, thus unsuitable for someone with this creed, she performed her first Cynic deed of “changing the currency” (parakraitten to nomismata). This term “implied rejection of the prevailing social and political order in favor of an unconventional, self-sufficient life as a ‘citizen of the universe’ (kosmopolites)” (Piering, “Hipparchia”). By doing this, Hipparchia went against the societal expectations that were set up for her by her family and

It is chronicled that the couple consummated their marriage by having sex on a public porch. The Cynic belief is that “any actions virtuous enough to be done in private are no less virtuous when performed in public” (Piering, “Cynics”). This event became the premiere example of anaideia, and it heavily influenced Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. In Zeno’s Republic, though the work itself doesn’t survive, we know through the anecdotes and quotations from his critics and his followers that he advocates the idea of “free love”, in which people desiring to have sex should be able to do so whenever they wanted, wherever they might find themselves at the moment (Mastin, “Zeno of