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Inequality In Ancient Greek Literature

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Inequality of Women Throughout Ancient Greek Literature
Throughout history women have always been degraded my men. In ancient Greek literature, the prominent characters were power hungry men who believed that a woman’s only purpose in life is to serve them. This theme is prevalent in a majority of the stories we covered. Women were virtually powerless against men at this time, so the cycle was not easily broken. This caused conflict throughout time and lead to an uprising of feminism for equality. Although women are typically equal to men today, that wasn’t always the case.
Imagine being enslaved, then pawned off between two men as a war prize. This was the treatment Briseis in The Iliad endured from Achilles and Agamemnon. Women in Ancient Greece were treated like items, rather than like a human. Originally, Briseis was awarded to Achilles as a war prize. But Agamemnon stole Briseis from Achilles as compensation for losing his prize, Chryseis. This treatment was common among powerful men of this period. This is just a glimpse of the terrible ways men viewed and …show more content…
In the story Agamemnon, a beautiful woman named Cassandra gained the attention of Apollo. Apollo was so infatuated with her that he offered Cassandra the gift of foreseeing the future. Like anyone would, Cassandra kindly accepted the offer. Apollo however, did not do this out of the kindness in his heart, rather to trap Cassandra into bearing his children. Once she found out his true intentions, she rejected his proposition. At this point it was too late, and Apollo was unable to take back the gift. Instead of accepting that Cassandra did not want to have children, he cursed her gift and made sure no one would ever believe her visions. This was a terrible thing to do, but Apollo saw no wrong for his actions. At this time in history, men believed that it was their right as a man to have offspring, and women were only here to make that

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