Ancient Greece was the cradle of western civilization. It was a land comprised of small city states. Often in history books, the men of this time are only mentioned and the women are too easily forgotten, but we must not forget the women that lived in this time, for they played just as significant a role in creating and in making this culture inspiring to this day.

Women in archaic Greece were prepared for marriage and motherhood through dancing and singing and participating in other religious events. Athenian girls knew how to dance, but music was not something that was considered to be very respectable. In Sparta, and generally among Dorian city-states, women enjoyed more freedom and thus participated in music, dancing and telling stories without being looked down upon. An example of this was

Beauty and self-confidence were important to the ancient Egyptians. Art depicts men as slim, broad shouldered and muscular. Women are depicted as having rounded busts with small waists and flat stomachs. They hold themselves elegantly and wear fine clothing with luxurious hair and jewelry.

Unlike women in most other ancient civilizations, including Greece, the Egyptian woman seems to have enjoyed the same legal and economic rights as the Egyptian man. This notion is reflected in Egyptian art and historical inscriptions.

The position of women in Egyptian society was unique in the ancient world. The Egyptian female enjoyed many the same legal and economic rights as the Egyptian male within the same social class. However, one private letter of the New Kingdom from a husband to his wife shows us that while a man could take his wife with him, as he moved up in rank, it would not have been unusual for such a man to divorce her and take a new wife more in keeping with his new and higher social status. Still, self-made women certainly did exist in Egypt. However, how their legal freedoms related to their status as defined by custom and folk tradition is more difficult to ascertain. In general, social position in Egypt was based, not on gender, but on social rank. On the other hand, the ability to move through the social classes did exist for the Egyptians. Ideally, the same would have been true for all ancient women.

Drama and theatre express the emotions and minds of the whole community. It was through drama that the community's deepest sympathies, its secret fears, its ambitions and hopes were seen as a connection between the poet and community. The Dionysus festival was responsible for bringing the community of both men and women together to watch certain plays such as satyr plays, comedy and tragedy. Usually in drama and literature women are portrayed as weak and innocent figures. A striking aspect of ancient Greek tragedies is that these plays, written and performed only by men, frequently portrayed women as central, active figures. At one level, the frequent depiction of women in tragedy allowed men accustomed to spending most of their time with other men to peer into what they imagined the world of women must be like. But, the heroines portrayed in fifth century Athenian tragedies also served to explore the tensions in the moral code of society by strongly reacting to men's violations of that code, especially as it pertained to the family. The heroines, through their actions, are made to display masculine qualities. Antigone's character fearlessly faces a powerful man in a public debate about right and wrong. Euripides' heroine Medea, the main character in Medea produced in 431 B.C., reacts violently when Jason, her husband, proposes to divorce her in order to marry a richer, more prominent women. She uses magic to kill her and Jason's children and his future bride. Euripides' play Bacchae depicts the characters of Maenads. Maenads were female followers of Dionysus and his cult. They were often portrayed as wild women, flush with wine. The followers worshipped him in the woods where they became possessed, sacrificing animals and eating raw flesh.

The literary giants of the time were the male epic poets who wrote of wars, warriors and heroics. Poetry, actually, often looked like prose for the Greeks, emphasizing feelings and rhyme. Into the ranks of lyric poets came a female, Sappho who was to become the greatest female poet of classical times, and perhaps ever.

Drama was seen as an example of how society and its people should act. Greek drama sometimes emphasized the areas in which Athenian women contributed to the polis, publicly by acting as priestesses and privately by bearing and raising legitimate children, raising them to be future citizens of the state, and by serving as managers of the household's property.

Little information is available regarding the education of girls in Classical Greece. It is kno

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