The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks

This work surveys domestic and social customs of ancient Greece, using literary, artistic, and epigraphic evidence to reconstruct everyday life. It examines clothing and personal adornment, birth and childhood, education, marriage and the position of women, household routines, meals and entertainments, sickness, death and burial, athletics, music and dance, religious practice and public festivals, the theatre, warfare and seafaring, agriculture, trade, crafts, and slavery. Descriptive chapters combine illustrations and citations and assess differing source types, noting where poetic or comic exaggeration must be treated cautiously while assembling a composite picture of private and communal life.