'Women played a more important part in religion in Greece than in Rome.'
How far do you agree with this statement? Use a range of Greek and Roman evidence to support your answer.
Model answer
There is good evidence that women played a large part in Greek religion. Many goddesses were served by priestesses: in Athens the priestess of Athena Polias came from the ancient Eteoboutadai family, and the priestess of Athena Nike was chosen by lot from all Athenian women. At the greatest Athenian festival, the Panathenaia, girls helped to weave the new peplos for Athena's ancient statue, unmarried girls of good family carried the sacred baskets in the procession, and on the Parthenon's east frieze the priestess of Athena stands in the central scene beside the peplos, with maidens carrying jugs and incense burners. Women also had a ritual voice at sacrifice: in the Odyssey, Nestor's wife and daughters raise the sacred cry as the heifer is struck. Festivals such as the Thesmophoria were for women only. Above all, at Delphi, the most important oracle in the Greek world, Apollo spoke through a woman, the Pythia.
In Rome, by contrast, the main state priesthoods - the pontiffs, augurs and most flamines - were held by men, usually leading politicians. Women's roles were fewer. The wife of the priest of Jupiter, the flaminica Dialis, had duties of her own, matrons took part in public prayers in times of crisis, and the rites of the Bona Dea were reserved for women. But these were limited compared with the many Greek priestesses.
However, Rome had one female priesthood of enormous importance: the Vestal Virgins. Plutarch says that they served for thirty years, learning, performing and teaching their duties, and that they had privileges no other Roman women enjoyed: they could make a will while their father was alive, managed their own affairs, were preceded by a lictor like a magistrate and could save a condemned criminal they met by chance. They tended the sacred fire of Vesta, which symbolised the life of the state, made the mola salsa used in sacrifices and guarded sacred objects and important documents. The punishment of being buried alive for breaking their vow, as Pliny describes in the case of the Vestal Cornelia, shows that Rome's safety was believed to depend on their purity. No single Greek priestess had quite such a central role in the welfare of the state.
In both cultures women's religious roles were bound up with ideas of purity and with the family. Greek basket-bearers and Roman Vestals had to be virgins, and in both societies religion offered women a public role that politics denied them, but men controlled the main structures - Greek magistrates organised festivals, and the Roman Pontifex Maximus supervised the Vestals.
In conclusion, I largely agree. Greek women had more numerous and varied religious roles, from the many priestesses and festival duties to the Pythia at Delphi, while in Rome the official priesthoods were overwhelmingly male. Yet the statement needs qualifying: the Vestal Virgins held a position of unique importance at the heart of the Roman state, so Roman women's role, though narrower, was in one respect just as vital.
Explanation
Strong answers compare the breadth of Greek women's roles (priestesses, the Pythia, the Panathenaia, the Thesmophoria) with the narrower but crucial Roman roles (the Vestals above all, the flaminica, Bona Dea), using specific evidence, and reach a qualified judgement. Answers that discuss only the Vestals and the Parthenon frieze will lack range.
