Did Domestic Abuse Occur in Ancient Greek Society?

To that question I answer yes. But I need to qualify this by offering a few propositions.

(1) Domestic violence happened, but infrequently; it was regarded as abnormal

This is the (perhaps over-) optimistic opinion of Leslie Dossey, who argues that ideas of male comportment meant that they were ashamed to beat their wives and that wife-beating was hubris against the wife because it treated her as a slave.

Real men, she suggests, fought their equals, thus to fight a woman brought humiliation. This, she thinks, is why, more often than not, husbands went after adulterous lovers but left the wife alone.^{^[800]} But there is nothing in the sources that suggests this, and how do we know the wives were left alone? Transgressive wives simply fall off the public radar.

Henderson too has argued that wife-beaters were frowned upon.^{^[801]} It was illegal (and undemocratic) to strike a male citizen, and therefore, he argues, physical violence against women was disapproved of as well. He suggests that in the sources only drunks and scoundrels beat their wives. I do not see this in the evidence presented here.

(2) Domestic violence happened frequently but was considered a private affair and therefore has not reached the sources

This is a possible scenario, at least if we believe that domestic abuse was so shameful, humiliating and distasteful to Greek society that it was not spoken of in the community at large; this sits awkwardly with the ancient evidence and the anthropological ‘norm'.^{^[802]}

(3) Domestic violence was so routine that it did not warrant mention in the sources

This is the most probable answer to the question posed above. Domestic violence was part of Greek society's norms. There was no shame attached to the act because it was a cultural construct by which gender roles and expectations were measured.

Domestic abuse does not reach the sources

because, as an Indian proverb has it, ‘a quarrel between a married couple is of

no consequence.

In all societies particular institutions are recognised as having the authority to name and define what constitutes a crime or what constitutes justifiable punishment. The word, I suppose, is ‘power'; he who names it owns it. If the concept of ‘domestic abuse' or ‘domestic violence' or even ‘abuse of women' is absent from the Greek sources, it is simply because the Greeks had no need for the concept. Violence was endemic in Greek society, and violence within the oikos was a component of the same violence that displayed itself in public situations. It is logical to regard the honour-driven code of male life permeating the walls and social fabric of the oikos, for in Greek life the private could often be very public: an intimate awareness of what was happening within the community at all levels, public and private, was maintained through multiple levels of social networking. The private lives of the Greeks was very public business too.

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Source: Fagan Garrett G., Fibiger Linda, Hudson Mark, Trundle Matthew (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 756 p.. 2020

Did Domestic Abuse Occur in Ancient Greek Society?

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