Aristophanes and Plato: discourses on woman in Antiquity

Abstract

This text intends to analyze the discourse on women in antiquity, taking into account two different universes: first, through the prism of Aristophanes with his comic discourse; second, from the perspective of Plato with the idea of the female guardian in the Republic. Both discourses seek to express the feminine universe in ancient times, one uses the caricature, the other uses the exceptionality of position. However, we realize that in both there is the acting possibility of feminine powers parallel to the effective legislature. We made notes on the Aristophanic comedy, a literary form which could also be understood as a way of revealing informal social networks among women as well as their possibilities of association. The ideal of pure and submissive woman expressed in the legislative discourses of antiquity contrast to the caricature presented by Aristophanes and by the construction of the female guardian in Plato. Such discourses show that they had more freedom than the legislation of the time shows, making us raise the issues of the difference between the life of discourse and everyday life.