Additional Evidence and Implications

In these discussions of women’s morality from the Greco-Roman world, it is not enough for the topos of “the good woman” merely to be described; such a woman must also be formed. Many of the texts have this twofold objective: to present the audience (composed of both females and males) with a certain point of view regarding “good women,” and then to motivate women to behave in line with that paradigm.^[1183] As a result, an educational goal stimulates the production and perpetuation of such literature because the authors are not content to postulate ideas; they also want to shape the way real women live.

But what kinds of “real woman” are envisioned as among the auditors (or learners) of the Pythagorean women’s texts? The main social marker given is that of the “free woman,” one who is lawfully competent to mar­ry.^[1184] That the word ελεύθερος, when applied to a woman, can mean either “free” or “married”^[1185] indicates the cultural perception that the two social states are nearly synonymous. These two Pythagorean texts articulate straightforwardly that their intended audiences are free women.

However, much other evidence shows that sophrosyne is also encour­aged for women who do not possess this elite social status. For instance, in the Renaissance manuscripts of the epistolary collection of Pythagorean women, Melissa to Kleareta is followed by Myia to Phyllis, a letter that advises a new mother on hiring a wet-nurse and on the care of infants. The wet-nurse’s personal characteristics become part of the job qualification:

Choose for yourself a wet-nurse who is most well-disposed and clean, and, what is more, modest and not predisposed toward sleep and nor indeed toward strong drink. For this is the kind of woman who might be judged best for raising free children,^[1186] if that is, she has nutritious milk and is not an easy conquest when it comes to bedding with men....

Conspicuously similar advice on the hiring of a wet-nurse is provided by Soranus, who provides a list of traits that should be exhibited: “one must select a wet-nurse who is... sophron, sympathetic and not bad-tempered, Greek, clean.”^[1188] According to Soranus, being sophron has two compo­nents: the wet-nurse should refrain from sexual intercourse as well as from drinking alcohol.^[1189] What is striking in these two sources on selecting a good wet-nurse is that such “working women” are expected to demonstrate the same feminine virtues as those women whose wealth would allow them to hire a surrogate nurse.

Certainly, wet-nurses are not considered to be of high social status,^[1190] as shown by a few extant papyri that record legal arrangements for this ser­vice.^[1191] Jennifer A. Glancy cogently remarks: “Human milk was a valuable commodity in the ancient world,”^[1192] so that a lactating woman of any social position would be an economic asset to the household. One such contract even stipulates sexual abstention on the part of the wet-nurse: while under contract to nurse a foundling, a certain Didyma will “take care of both her­self and the child, not spoiling her milk nor sleeping with a man nor be­coming pregnant again.”^[1193]

In fact, many wet-nurses were slaves, as is the case in P.Oxy. 91, in which a slave-owner acknowledges receiving wages for the services of his female slave who served as a wet-nurse. Evaluating the moral qualifica­tions of a slave wet-nurse would have been difficult, given that, as Glancy states, “Sexual access to slave bodies was a pervasive dimension of ancient systems of slavery. Both female and male slaves were available for their owners’ pleasure.”^[1194] If a female slave could not legally marry, and indeed was perceived to be a sort of sexual instrument, how could she ever be sophron? Yet that is precisely the trait that Soranus and Myia to Phyllis advise for their readers.

Widespread inscriptional evidence also shows that the virtue was taken up by a diverse population of what North calls “ordinary people.”^[1195] She finds that “Sophrosyne is the primary virtue of women in Greek inscrip­tions, often the only one mentioned, or the only moral virtue amid a list of physical qualities, social attributes, and domestic accomplishments.”^[1196] Thus, it seems that any woman could potentially display sdphrosyne espe­cially in the form of sexual faithfulness to one man. Any woman could learn self-control, and could refrain from drinking alcohol, from too much talking, and from angry emotional outbursts.^[1197] Perhaps there was some lesser grade of sophrosyne that was recognized as more appropriate for freed or slave women, a possibility that these texts do not clarify for us. For example, if a woman could not even be legally married, what standard should be used to evaluate her sexual virtue? Obviously, a wet-nurse was sexually active with a man at one time, since she needs to be lactating from a pregnancy of her own. But these texts instruct that the wet-nurse should “abstain from sexual intercourse,” or, as Myia to Phyllis has it, “is not easily overcome by bedding with a man.”^[1198] It is apparent that the in­tense cultural defense of feminine sophrosyne as sexual propriety toward one’s husband extends to women of lower social levels, perhaps especially to women taking on various child-minding roles.

The author of the New Testament Pastoral Letters evidently believed that the “ordinary people” in his reading-communities also could model sophrosyne, and his are the earliest extant Christian texts to espouse the virtue in its gender-differentiated forms.^[1199] The Pastorals were intended to provide moral instruction to a “co-educational” Christian community, so that they express the conventional Greco-Roman ideology that both sexes need to obtain this virtue. However, a literary analysis of the “male” and “female” versions of sophrosyne shows that it is positioned as one of sev­eral good qualities for men,^[1200] while for women, the virtue takes the highest priority.

E. Conclusion

The results of my investigation have described the topos of “the good woman” in a more complex way: it is not simply the case that women as women are expected to exhibit certain kinds of sophron behavior. Rather a map of the topos places sophrosyne at the moral epicenter of a woman’s life, with the closest and most important element of that virtue being her continued sexual fidelity to her husband. Extending out from this core concept are: (1) the belief that a woman’s faithfulness will enable her to bear legitimate children; (2) the instructions for quietness and modest bodily adornment that signal her sexual unavailability; (3) the warnings for circumspect interactions in arenas outside her household,^[1204] which also en­sure that she will not engage in extra-marital sex; and (4) the idea that a woman’s responsibility for the household management demonstrates her sophrosyne toward her husband-partner, bringing honor to both of them, while preserving the resources of the entire household. The texts I have examined furnish their readers with the necessary keys to understanding this “feminine moral topography,” promoting the ideology that sophrosyne is in every respect a woman’s home-base.

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