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Essay about how alexander the great expand the greek culture
The impact that alexander the great had on ancient greek civilisation
The impact that alexander the great had on ancient greek civilisation
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Arsinoe of Egypt and Macedon by Elizabeth Donnelly Carney is an analysis of Arsinoe II during the Hellenistic Period of ancient Greece. In this book, readers read about Arsinoe II who is a woman who became a part of the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt. She is known to have promoted gender equality, since other countries outside of Egypt did not think women should be on the same level as men. Especially in Greece, the role of women was to stay in the shadows of the men. In her book, Carney shows how Arsinoe II was able to build a strong reputation for herself through her marriage to Ptolemy II, colleagues and very tight nit family. With her strong reputation was she then able to show the small world at that time that women were capable of being just …show more content…
as strong or even stronger than men. During her marriage to King Lysimachus, she became acquainted with Alexander III of Macedon, also known as Alexander the Great.
During his rule, Alexander III greatly changed the social aspects of Greece, which some might think was a source of inspiration for how she and Ptolemy II co-ruled Egypt. His vast cosmopolitan empire helped Alexander III gain the love and trust of Greece, which also resulted in women’s roles to change and for them to become slightly more involved in society. Not a great change, but still change. With this sign of progression, Arsinoe II takes it and runs to the hills; Egypt during the Hellenistic Period is known to have the best gender equality in the world because of Arsinoe’s contributions during her rule with Ptolemy …show more content…
II. The great sense of equality in Egypt is only one of the things Arsinoe II is known for advocating. With cities being named after her and her face being plastered on coins, Arsinoe II is the prime example of Lady Rulers who rule. Carney is the perfect historian to write about Arsinoe II, and she is also admired for her use of analogies when trying to explain how things worked in ancient Egypt, almost as a way to back up the way Arsinoe II lived her life. When discussing Arsinoe II’s messy marriages to King Lysimachus and later to her brother Ptolemy II, she begs for readers to avoid cringing at the thought of incest, but instead to think of it as a business merger, which it essentially was since Arsinoe II married Ptolemy II and the two co-ruled Egypt. Carney’s reasoning for defending Arsinoe II could be because she very well might be a feminist, and Arsinoe II was most likely an early feminist during the Hellenistic period because every country besides the powerful Egypt did not have gender equality and women around the world were treated like scum. Carney’s theme of women empowerment would show that Carney sees history as being motivated by the forces of gender.
Since the beginning of time, men and women have been competing for the spot of the ultimate sex based on physiological, mental, intellectual and emotional qualifications. We see examples of this in literature, sports and even current events. Arsinoe II is the perfect subject of women empowerment, and her life gives Carney a great example to show how women can be just as powerful as, or even more powerful, than man. Being able to live in many societies, marry many men to eventually swindle her way into co-ruling a powerful country with her husband supports this feminist ideology. Carney’s studies of women and queens throughout history aim to show readers of her works about how the accomplishments of women need to be
illuminated. It is very easy for readers to agree with Carney’s claim that Arsinoe II was a strong independent woman. Throughout her life, Arsinoe II went through many loopholes to assure her position in royalty, eventually even gaining power to help her husband Ptolemy II win the First Syrian War in 274-271 BC. This is proven in the first couple chapters of Carney’s book when she talks about Arsinoe’s life prior to her rule in Egypt. Her strong will gave Egypt the confidence to become one of the better countries during that time, and even put them ahead of their time when it came to the equality between the sexes. Carney easily supported Arsinoe II and her accomplishments and represented her very well to readers. I really liked this reading. Not only was it an easy read, but it was nice to be able to read a book about a powerful woman since I am a woman who constantly had assignments on books about powerful men. Not only was it an easy read, but very light too. Compared to other books, I only had to read about an inch worth of pages, which made it easy to convince myself to pick up and read to complete this assignment. All jokes aside, I do like Carney’s writing style being a matter-of-fact and how passionate she is about the history of Egypt and other surrounding countries during 400 BCE. Unlike our previous writing assignment, I did not have to do much side research on the subject of the book to be able to follow what was going on.
The achievement of gender equality is one of the most important movements for advancement of society. In the High Middle Ages, however, it was even more challenging to bring such sensitive debate. Christine de Pizan, a highly educated and religious woman, chose an unusual pathway for a woman in her era that she became a writer to support her family. Christine’s work, “The Treasure of the City of Ladies,” could be seen as feminist because she offered a broad view of how an ideal artisan’s wife should be.
As the poems of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight show, women have always had power, yet not as overt a power as wielded by their masculine counterparts. The only dynamic of women’s power that has changed in the later centuries is that the confines and conditions in which women have wielded their power has become more lax, thus yielding to women more freedom in the expression of their power. The structure, imagery, and theme in the excerpts from Beowulf (lines 744-71) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lines 2309-30) support the concept of more power in the later centuries, by contrasting the restriction of Wealhtheow and the power she practices in Beowulf with the Lady’s more direct assertion of power in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight five centuries later.
Women had very few rights, they lived as prisoners, serving men 24 hours a day. Women were sheltered from society, restricted to their husbands and their husbands houses, crying out for help and justice but there is no one to there to hear their screams. In the play Antigone when the title character had to sneak out of the house to meet up with Ismene. Ancient Greek men ruled a lot like over protective fathers with teenage daughters. Men were also scared of women gaining confidence and begin thinking on their own or worse taking action or speaking out against men, like in the play Antigone where Antigone confronts Creon by burying Polyneices after Creon strictly stated that no one bury him. If someone were to bury him, the whole Polis would stone them to death. When Creon found out that someone buried Polyneices, he did not even consider that it could have been a women that did it.
Women in antiquity did not have an easy lot in life. They had few, if any, rights. Surviving early records of the civilizations of antiquity from ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and Rome suggest the diversity of women’s roles differed little from region to region. There were a few exceptions, mostly concerning women of nobility and the city-state of Sparta. Excluding the rare instances mentioned most antique women were generally limited on education, mobility, and almost all possibilities interfering with domestic or childbearing responsibilities. The limited social roles of women in antiquity suggest the perceived c...
In the Middle Ages, the roles of women became less restricted and confined and women became more opinionated and vocal. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight presents Lady Bertilak, the wife of Sir Bertilak, as a woman who seems to possess some supernatural powers who seduces Sir Gawain, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale, present women who are determined to have power and gain sovereignty over the men in their lives. The female characters are very openly sensual and honest about their wants and desires. It is true that it is Morgan the Fay who is pulling the strings in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; nevertheless the Gawain poet still gives her a role that empowers her. Alison in The Wife if Bath Prologue represents the voice of feminism and paves the way for a discourse in the relationships between husbands and wives and the role of the woman in society.
...herself as a man and has misogynistic tendencies. Fortunately, the role of women in society today has changed very much from the roles that they played in classical mythology. Women are now seen as being able to play any role they desire, whether it is the role of a housewife or the role of a workingwoman with a successful career. It is no surprise that achieving the roles that women play today took such a long time when for so long even in mythology women’s roles in society were constantly pushed in the direction of domestics and when for so long women were portrayed as less then pleasant creatures. The fact that these sorts of roles were pushed on women in the Greco-Roman society was proof enough that it was a patriarchal society. It is astoundingly wonderful that the roles that women play in modern society have evolved so much since the times of classical myths.
In the Middle Age literature, women are often presented or meant to come off as an unimportant character; which can also reflect on how the author wants the women character represent. Women are usually shunned, have no say or control in what they do; due to what men desire; like Ophelia and Gertrude did in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But these female characters that I will discuss are women with power, control, and a voice. Majority of the female character’s appearances are made to represent wickedness, evil, or a seducer who challenges a man belief; and does not symbolize perfect women.
“The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It's a girl.’” (Chisholm). Where do women fit in the social order of society today? Many women today fit in the same role as they would have been expected to long ago. Though generally speaking, women have a lot more options today. The male hierarchy still governs most aspects of society, but with many more limitations because women are discovering that they can stand on their own, and have no need for constant regulating from their male counterparts. Patriarchal influences are the base of society. In Antigone Sophocles tells a tale about Greek values and women’s status. Antigone has just witnessed her two brothers kill each other; one brother died defending Thebes and the other died betraying it. Creon’s law keeps anyone from burying the traitor and Antigone is set on contravening this. Conversely, Ibsen’s playwright, A Doll’s House, is a story about an intelligent woman, Nora, who is misunderstood by her husband, Torvald. She takes desperate measures to keep her family intact but in the end wines up going out on her own. As the stories progress the both Nora’s and Antigone’s characteristics become very similar in that they are both rebellious, are subservient to male jurisdiction, and are resolute and strong-willed in their decision.
In my mind, Sonny Carroll’s poem perfectly represents what an empowered woman should be; firm, determined and able to stand on her own feet. The characters of Nora and Antigone, from Henrik Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ and Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’ respectively, completely fit my description of ‘the empowered woman’. As inspiring figures, they left me wondering how they maintained their identities even in their patriarchal societies. What touched my heart the most is the way they fight for what they feel is moral and just instead of following what society dictates. I believe that each and every woman possesses the qualities like ‘the empowered woman’ in Carroll’s poem. Through my essay, I’d like to show how females in both the plays, during the adversities and extremities of time, evolve into empowered women. I believe that the idea of female empowerment, through these characters, inspires fellow women to make names for themselves rather than being labeled or controlled by men.
... Egyptian women were looked at differently than men; their role was that of the nurturer and the caregiver, the bearer of a family’s future. They were just as important to the society as the men. Ancient Egypt was a very complex world, and just as complex was the role that women played in its society. They were not free, but they also were not enslaved. They were vital, but only in terms of their husbands and their children. Egypt offered women a far more free life than the rest of the ancient world. In the end, women played a secondary role to men putting their desires for achievement aside so their husband could be king.
A recent study reported that 6.7% of the top earners of Fortune 500 Companies are women. This number can seem low and discouraging to modern eyes. However, this statistic would probably seem an unimaginable leap forward through the eyes of female characters in historical fiction. Henrik Ibsen, the author of A Doll’s House, offers a glimpse into the restrictions on women in the 1880’s, when the book was written. These include limited opportunities for expression, personal fulfillment, and free will in a male-dominated society. The same restrictions can be seen as early as 440 BC, when Antigone was written. Sophocles, the author of Antigone, goes into immense detail about not only the expectations and roles of women, but also the treatment of women. Both of these authors, Ibsen and Sophocles, show the hardships that many women have endured over the ages. Their literary works offer great insight into the characteristics of Nora and Antigone, the two main characters of the books, who are not only determined, but also independent and brave.
Women were often subjects of intense focus in ancient literary works. In Sarah Pomeroy’s introduction of her text Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, she writes, “Women pervade nearly every genre of classical literature, yet often the bias of the author distorts the information” (x). It is evident in literature that the social roles of women were more restricted than the roles of men. And since the majority of early literature was written by men, misogyny tends to taint much of it. The female characters are usually given negative traits of deception, temptation, selfishness, and seduction. Women were controlled, contained, and exploited. In early literature, women are seen as objects of possession, forces deadly to men, cunning, passive, shameful, and often less honorable than men. Literature reflects the societal beliefs and attitudes of an era and the consistency of these beliefs and attitudes toward women and the roles women play has endured through the centuries in literature. Women begin at a disadvantage according to these societal definitions. In a world run by competing men, women were viewed as property—prizes of contests, booty of battle and the more power men had over these possessions the more prestigious the man. When reading ancient literature one finds that women are often not only prizes, but they were responsible for luring or seducing men into damnation by using their feminine traits.
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.
Because of one affair, and because of one man’s need for more riches and land, tens of thousands of men fought and died. King Agamemnon forced his country into a war because he held women and wealth on a higher pedestal than his men's lives, and his men fought because they considered death in battle to be honorable. Thousands of years ago a ten year war was fought because women, wealth, and war were glorified in society, and today the case is the same. King Agamemnon’s wife, Helen, was said to be one of the most beautiful women ever, but to the king she was a only a trophy.