Women In The Iliad And Aeneid

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A Good Woman
Women in the worlds of Homer and Virgil were viewed as inferior beings to men like most societies did. While they were seen as inferior, they were always seen to be either “good” or “bad” when discussing how they were as women. In their stories, The Iliad, the Odyssey, and Aeneid, Homer and Virgil use the theme of piety to determine whether or not a woman was to be deemed “good” or “bad”.
In the Odyssey, women are seen as characters of lure and temptation as Odysseus's journey back to his home of Greece was constantly delayed by these temptations. One of these delaying temptations was Cassandra as she was raped by Ajax in a temple. The goddess Athena becomes angered upon hearing the news and punishes by prolonging Odysseus' nostos. Ajax could not do anything but submit to Cassandra's temptation as he had a sexual feeling that took him over. Homeric Greeks believed that once a man has a strong sexual feeling by a woman, he must submit to it, so that is what Ajax did. This temptation that Homeric women cause is one of the things that deems a woman to be "bad" as it caused a delay to the return of the Greek Homeric hero, Odysseus. Although he was not directly involved in the raping of Cassandra, the temptation that lured Ajax affected him as he could not see his wife and the son he had never met.
The theme of temptation appears again when Odysseus finds himself trapped by the nymph Calypso on an island. Through her sex appeal, Calypso seduces Odysseus for years as they engage in sexual activities. These activities prevent Odysseus from leaving the island to return to his home and family. “long ago the nymph had ceased to please./ Though he fought shy of her and her desire,/ he lay with her each night, for she compell...

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...style of keeping the household. His fate is to fight in the war like all the other men, while it is Andromache’s duty as a woman to not fight and tend to her household duties. This is what makes a woman to be “good” as she follows her obligation of being a woman while not interfering with the responsibilities of men.
The theme of piety comes up repeatedly in all of the stories by Homer and Virgil to show whether a woman was either “good” or “bad”. Almost all of the time, those women who decided to be impious, either suffered a terrible death, or caused the suffering of others, because of the actions they took to be “bad” women. Those who decided to be pious and follow their duties, were deemed to be “good” women and lived a life where they lived happily for the most part despite being reminded again and again that they were inferior to men in regards to their duty.

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