Bibliographic Essay

The scholarship on violence against women in the Greek world is limited, although it is growing in impact. Virginia J. Hunter, ‘Gossip and the Politics of Reputation in Classical Athens', Phoenix 44.4 (1990), 299-325 and James Roy, ‘An Alternative Sexual Morality for Classical Athenians', Greece and Rome 44.1 (1997), 11-22 both explore issues beneath the surface of violence, including issues of reputation and honour.

It is Nick Fisher's ‘Violence, Masculinity and the Law in Classical Athens', in L. Foxhall and J. Salmon (eds.), When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 68-97, which first highlighted the probability of finding evidence for violence against women in the Greek sources and, subsequently, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones's ‘Domestic Violence in Ancient Greece' in S. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man: Essays in Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2011), pp. 231-66 was written with Fisher's work in mind and remains the fullest treatment of this subject to date.

The violent world of ancient Athens has been explored in two excellent studies by Danielle Allen: ‘Angry Bees, Wasps and Jurors: The Symbolic Politics of Orge in Athens', in S. Braund and G. Most (eds.), Ancient Anger. Perspectives from Homer to Galen (Cambridge:

51 Chowdhry, Veiled Women, p.

Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 76-98, and The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). The honour-shame nexus of the Greeks is best explained by Douglas Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones studies the realities and meanings of veiling in the Greek world in Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2003).

It is important to frame work on ancient concepts of domestic violence within current methodologies for exploring and understanding abuse, and to that end the following studies are invaluable: Rebecca Dobash and Russell P. Dobash, Rethinking Violence against Women (London: SAGE, 1998); Jeff Hearn, The Violences of Men (London: SAGE, 1998); June Keeling and Tom Masoon, Domestic Violence: A Multi-Professional Approach for Healthcare Practitioners (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008).

Given the paucity of the ancient evidence, anthropological studies have a particularly important role to play in the methodological rationale of the study of ancient domestic violence. J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family, and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), and David Gilmore (ed.), Honour and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean, AAA special publications series 22 (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1987) both explore ideas of machismo and honour.

Much important work forces on ‘traditional' societies of the Middle East, India and Asia. See especially: Prem Chowdhry, The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural Haryana 1880-1990 (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); Gwen J. Broude, Marriage, Family and Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopaedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1994); Veena T. Oldenburgh, Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); Pamal J. Chana, Domestic Violence: The Impact of Culture on Experiences of Asian (Indian Subcontinent) Women (Norwich: University of East Anglia Press, 2005); Sara Hossain and Lynn Welchman (eds.), Honour Crimes, Paradigms and Violence against Women (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Amir H. Jafri, Honour Killing: Dilemma, Ritual, Understanding (Oxford and Lahore: Oxford University Press, 2008).