Families in Classical & Hellenistic Greece: Representations & Realities

by Sarah B. Pomeroy

This highly original and authoritative account of the Greek family supersedes the only existing study in English by W. K. Lacey (published in 1968) and provides the first comprehensive survey of the subject. Taking account of a mass of literary, inscriptional, archaeological, anthropological, and art-historical evidence, some of which has only been made recently available, Sarah Pomeroy provides an excellent reference for one of the key aspects of Greek social history.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 1997

About the author

Sarah B. Pomeroy, Professor of Classics and History, Emerita, at Hunter College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She was born in New York City (1938) and earned her B.A. from Barnard College in 1957. She received her M.A. in 1959 and her Ph.D. in 1961, both from Columbia University. Pomeroy has been recognized as a leading authority on ancient Greek and Roman women since her book Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity was first published in 1975. Her other publications include Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (1994), Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities (1998), Spartan Women (2002), and, with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, the textbooks Ancient Greece: a Political, Social, and Cultural History (4th edition, 2017) and A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture (3rd edition, 2011).[i]