A Woman's Speech: "Women's Voice" and the Ancient Greek History

This article discusses the gunaikos logos, "woman's speech", as a problem in studies of ancient Greek history. Assuming the issue as a contemporary issue, it evokes the possibility of building historical knowledge about the political word and action of women in the polis, from readings of Greek tragedy and comedy as well as funerary epigrams dedicated to women and characteristics of the end of the 5th and early 4th century BC in Athens. It explores the dimension of everyday life as space/time of a constituent politics not necessarily centered on institutional spaces for deliberation and government. It claims that it is possible to perceive through these sources the persistence of female requests that fall short of the political right, validated by the community and the dimension of "common life", even if the "voices" are not amenable to identification by a female authorship.