ve the house a male escort – presumably a family member.Lefkowitz and Fant touch on this a little more. They site an example of papyri that was discovered that gave a short narrative of two women who go out without escorts. Gorgo, a housewife who visits her friend Praxinoa on the day of the festival of Adonis in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE makes small talk before going to the ‘house of the king, rich Ptolemy’. They’re excited because the queen has done a beautiful job of decorating the palace – a story about seemingly nothing. But really of common life and housewives being allowed out of the domestic sphere and able to visit their friends and go to public places without escorts.Another improvement in the lives of Hellenistic women that they enjoyed was that of a heightened amount of legal rights. One of these and most prominent is that of the right for women to not need an escort or chaperone to places or in legal matters. A guardian was required in the legal field when a Greek woman made a public declaration or incurred a contractual obligation concerning persons or property. This is most notable in the distinction between the women in mainland Greece and those of Egypt. In the Hellenized world women were now allowed to leave the house and do the projects that the slaves would do – such as buying food and other commodities. But women’s emancipation in the legal realm reached further than this. Women now were able to construct marriage contracts that ensured a myriad of legal binding conditions. One case is that of a marriage contract between a man and a women in Egypt – Heraclides of Temnos and Demetria, respectively – that ensured that if Heraclides brings home another woman or begets a child with another woman or indulges in fraudulent machinations against Demetria – and she proves it in front of three men that they both know and have picked – he shall have to re...
