Xenophon's Oeconomicus ("Dialogue on Household Management")
Assigned Pages
READ ONLY BOOK-PAGES (i.e., as printed on top of page itself) 73-114, 145-147.
I.e., skip the part devoted to farming.
Access to Reading
Click here for pdf to:
Xenophon. "Oeconomicus, on the Management of a Farm and Household." Trans. J. S. Watson. Xenophon’s Minor Works. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1857. 71-147.
Note that page 71 (to which the pdf automatically opens) is where the TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION starts.
Xenophon's text begins p. 73.
Journal Entries
Do positions explored in Butler's Antigone's Claim — in Butler's reading of Sophocles' Antigone — pose a challenge in any way to ways of seeing gender in Xenophon's Oeconomicus? How so, how not?
Background
Xenophon lived ca. 430 to ca. 349 BCE. He was an Athenian gentleman and conservative. Like Plato, he belonged to the circle of Socrates' friends and conversation companions.
Xenophon led an eventful life. He accompanied a force of Greek mercenaries fighting for Cyrus the Younger, a pretender to the Persian throne. When that ended badly, Xenophon was made leader of what remained of the famous 10,000, and helped guide them back to the Greek world from what is now Iraq. (Xenophon would write about it in his Anabasis.)
As a result, Xenophon became something of a fan of things Persian. But he also seems to have been a great friend of Athens' long-time enemy, Sparta. In 394, he fought for Sparta against his home city of Athens. Arguably as a result, he spent decades in exile, though he may have been able to make his peace with Athens toward the end of his life, and could perhaps have been allowed to return at some point before he died.
Like Plato and a number of others, Xenophon composed Socratic dialogues (dialogues featuring Socrates as speaker). In some respects, Xenophon's Socrates resemblres Plato's. But Xenophon's Socrates (unlike Plato's) interestingly shows a marked interest in practical matters. By contrast, Plato's Socrates very often serves as mouthpiece for a strikingly original and sophisticated metaphysics, logic, and ethics.
The present work in Greek is entitled Oikonomikos, short for Oikonomikos logos, or "Discourse on Estate Management."
In the Oeconomicus (Latinized version of title), we hear of how a Greek gentleman, a kalos te k'agathos, ought to manage his household, wife, farms — pretty much everything that ought to matter to a man of his class.
Basic Structure, Theme, etc.
The work starts out with Socrates exhorting Critobulus, sort of an Athenian playboy, though a married one (note that he's played both erastes and eromenos in pederastic affairs; cf. Xenophon's Symposium), to learn the art of household management, oikonomia, an art that, like the arts of war and agriculture, every gentleman should know. An important part of that has to do with marrying and training a wife as fellow helper. It is important to note at this point that Socrates gently chides Critobulus for paying more attention to his pleasures than to his estates. (pp. 73 ff.)
Socrates then proceeds to recount a conversation he has had with a man accomplished and knowedlgeable in the art of household management, one Ischomachus, evidently a man widely admired as a kalos te k'agathos. (pp. 96 ff.)
Thus we hear of Ischomachus' principles of educating a wife to be a proper helpmate (97 ff.), of Ischomachus' occupations, especially his approach to the proper care of farms and crops, and of his ideas on the art of ruling, which he evidently practices by virtue of being a master of his slaves and husband of his wife (pp. 145 ff.).
The work covers a lot of ground, but contains much having to do with relations between husbands and wives. I suggest you therefore try to read closely and even a little between the lines. I think you'll find a lot that both validates and challenges what we see in a work like the Against Neaera (see journal-entry prompt just below).
Study Questions
Journal Entries
Choose one of the following. alternatively, address your own concerns. . . .
- On the matter of matrimony, sex and pleasure, etc., how does Xenophon's Oeconomicus seem to validate a work like the Against Neaera? How might it seem to offer a different sort of picture of marriage?
- How today might Ischomachus be censured/praised for the way he treats his wife? How have things changed? Have they in any way stayed the same?
General
- What facts do we gather
about the lives of women in classical Greece, and in particular, about
their lives in classical Athens?
- What interpretations can
we apply to those facts?
- Taken together, how might
this reading help us understand the how the ancient Greek (classical
Athenian) woman's life was conceived of in relation to the ancient Greek
man's?
- Does Xenophon's Oeconomicus seem to present a Foucauldian or anti-Foucauldian view of relations between the sexes? Mixed bag? (Think about [a]symmetry, self control, and such.)
- How are men and women made
to seem to be equals?
- How do they come off as non-equals?
- In Xenophon's text, why this concern for the equality and/or inequality of husband and wife?
- Why the emphasis placed on the theme of command and governance, whether in the home, in the affairs of state, or on the battlefield?
Notes
73. "Domestic [i.e., household] management," in Greek oikonomia.
73. "... the name of an art. . . ." "Art" here in Greek is episteme, a systematized branch of knowledge, a science.
74. "House," in Greek, oikos (house, home, household, estate, family).
75. "Mistress" translates hetaira, a word for "prostitute."
76. Oaths "by Jove" or "by Jupiter" are oaths by Greek Zeus. (It was once customary to translate Greek gods into English with their Roman names.
76. "effeminacy of mind," in Greek malakia (softness, effeminacy).
76. "mistresses" translates despoinai, "mistresses" in the sense of women owners of slaves, property, etc. Different from above.
78-79. Socrates lists the sorts of public duties to which Critobulus' wealth obliges him. In democratic Athens, wealthy men were required to fund public expenditures like warships, theatrical performances, etc. The technical term is "liturgy." A trierarch is one required to pay for the construction of a warship, a "trireme." Think of liturgies as a form of progressive tax, though strictly speaking, a one-time obligation. (You could sue to prove that another Athenian had more money than you, and thus ought to undertake the liturgy. In that case, you had to be willing to exchange property with that person. They called that antidosis.)
79. "matters of amusement." The Greek reads paidikois ... pragmasi, "pederastic affairs." The translator bowdlerizes. Note that these are treated as if financially cumbersome.
84. "... some men have so managed their wives, as to find in them fellow-helpers in improving their fortunes." "Fellow-helpers" translates sunergoi (fellow-workers). "Improving their fortunes": the Greek has sunauxein, "to help in increasing." The Greek emphasizes, in other words, marriage as a kind of business partnership.
85. "But I consider that a wife, who is a good partner in household management, has equal influence with her husband for their common prosperity." "Partner" translates koinonos, one sharing in something with another. It can, but doesn't have to, suggest parity. Then as now, there could be senior and junior partners.
85. ". . . those arts which are called handicrafts are objectionable, and are indeed justly held in little repute. . . ." "Handicrafts" translates bausanikai (tekhnai): shoemaking, smithing, the sort of pre-industrial manufacturing done in a shop. Now we tend to think of that as skilled labor; the ancient Greeks tended to associate it with indoor, and therefore effeminate, work. Indeed, it would be shameful for a gentleman like Critobulus to pursue any vocation other than farming or war. The majority of classical Athenian adult male citizens weren't rich, but neither were they craftsmen (bausanikoi) or wage-earners. Most were middling farmers.
86. husbandry. I.e., farming.
86. satrap. A Persian military governor of a province.
88. paradeisoi. The Persian kings, following the example of their Mesopotamian precursors, maintained richly appointed hunting parks called paradeisoi. English "paradise" derives from that word.
94. "husbandmen." Farmers.
95. "fair and good." In Greek, kalos te k'agathos. Literally, "beautiful/handsome and good," it can be understood to refer to a man of quality or a gentleman. Again, Xenophon's aristocratic bias.
96. "Jupiter Eleutherius," in Greek, Zeus eleutherios, Zeus as patron of liberty.
96. "antidosis of trierarch," a law-suit to try to pass the duty of funding a warship onto to someone else. (Cf. above, pp. 78-79.)
105 ff. The analogy of the well-ordered Phoenician freighter. It is rather unusual for a Greek author to present as sympathetic a portrait of barbarians — in Xenophon's case, Persians and Phoenicians (modern Iranians and Lebanese) — as Xenophon does, both here and in his fictionalized life of Cyrus the Great (Cyropaideia).
109. "... apartment for the females ... that of the men...." The women's quarters in a Greek house were called the gunaikonitis, the men's quarters, the andronitis.
110. "housekeeper." In Greek, tamia, a female slave charged with overseeing the proper storage and use of resources, both material and human.
111. "senate." This is an old fashioned translation, hence Roman god-names for the Greek ones, and Roman-style words like "senate" to translate the Greek word boule, which means "council," the steering committee that set the agenda for meetings of the assembly.
112. "personal intimacy with one another." Literally translated, the Greek says, "Have we not, then, been brought together with a view to our sharing our bodies with one another?" i.e., being koinoinoi, "sharers," of one another's body. Ischomachus is talking about sex.
146. "Bailiff" translates epitropos, a slave (or possibly freed slave) entrusted with overseeing all that's done on a farm. A "foreman" or epistates will not be a slave. But in either case, we're dealing with someone charged with overseeing the workers beneath him.
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August 28, 2013
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