Class in Ancient Greece

A lot of the things I’m still struggling to understand in the Odyssey are rooted in things I don’t understand about society in Odysseus’s Greece and especially about class in the Odyssey. So I did a bit of historical research to see if it could help me understand what Odysseus is dealing with.

First off – I understand that Greece was comprised of many small kingdoms ruled independently (kingdoms might not be the correct word, but you get the idea) and there was a lot of cultural variety and not everyone necessarily fit into a few neat class categories. I also understand that the Odyssey is set in a variety of locations and that it might have been written over an extended period of time. Nevertheless, I think some vague generalizations about ancient Greek culture might be useful.

Basically, the hierarchy in Ancient Greek society had male citizens at the top (including aristocrats with land, poorer farmers, and a middle class including artisans and traders), then foreigners, then semi-free laborers, and slaves at the bottom. Women fit into all these categories except women in the citizen classes didn’t have the rights of citizens.

So how does this class system play out in the Odyssey?

Odysseus definitely belongs to the aristocrat class. But more than that, he’s also the most powerful aristocrat in the area.

I think at least some of the suitors are also aristocrats, since they’re the sons of the most important men in Ithaca. But some of them might belong to the lower classes of citizens. There was some movement between classes, so I think someone of a lower class (but a citizen) could hope to marry Penelope. Apparently the ‘poorer farmer’ class also often had land farther from the city and sometimes formed small villages. In Book 24, we find out what happens to the suitors’ bodies and “The ones from distant towns were sent back home/by ship.” (418-419) “Towns” is somewhat ambiguous but it’s definitely possible that these suitors were poorer farmers from the area around Ithaca. If some of the suitors belong to the lower classes of poorer farmers or the middle class, that creates an interesting dynamic in which there’s a larger distance between them and Odysseus than between just a more powerful aristocrat and less powerful aristocrat. I can’t help wondering if the difference in class contributes to Odysseus’s willingness to kill all the suitors rather than just the worst. On the other hand, I’m not sure Odysseus has qualms about killing anybody, whether their class status is equal to his own or not.

I’m not sure what class Odysseus’s crew fits into. I don’t think they’re slaves because the slaves are pretty much always directly referred to as slaves. Eupeithes, the father of Antinous says that Odysseus “took many good men off to sail/with him, and lost the ships, and killed the men!” (24.427-428). Since Eupeithes brings up these men in the context of the suitors’ deaths and in a positive and not derisive way, I think it’s probable that the crew were citizens. It’s also possible that the crew consisted of semi-free laborers though. Semi-free laborers were basically serfs. They had no rights and were stuck working for whoever owned the land they lived on, but, unlike slaves, they couldn’t be bought or sold. In any case, if the crew members were of a lower class than Odysseus, whether lower status citizens or serfs, that might explain why Odysseus doesn’t seem to feel as much affection for them as he does for his hero friends (spot my last blogpost).

I also think it’s really interesting that foreigners had a separate status and that that status was somewhere between citizens and slaves. From the Telemachus’ travel outside of Ithaca, it’s pretty obvious that the class of a foreigner still matters. But the existence of a separate class helps me understand how Odysseus as a foreigner was grouped with the aristocrats in Phaeacia and the slaves in Ithaca.

I’m not going to talk about slaves in the Odyssey that much because I think the distinction between the slaves and free people is a class distinction that’s pretty clear without my limited explanation of class in Ancient Greece. Since people who kept records and centuries of historians of course never prioritized studying or writing about the life of slaves, there also just isn’t that much information about the specific roles of slaves, or at least not information that shows up in the first few pages of a google search. I will note that the slave women in the Odyssey didn’t get the honorable death the suitors did or the burial rights the suitors did because they were slave women. I also thought it was interesting that apparently a freed slave had the same status as a foreigner, which I guess is the status Eumaeus wishes for when he tells Odysseus in disguise that Odysseus would have “given/what kindly owners give to loyal slaves:/a house with land” (14.62-64).

A note on my sources: My main source here is an article called “Ancient Greek Society” written by someone named Mark Cartwright for something called the Ancient History Encyclopedia. Mark does not appear to be ~exactly~ an expert but he does cite some seemingly reliable sources. I also consulted a website titled “Women, Children and Slaves,” which was somewhat sketchy but published by the British Museum. In any case, I’m going more for another angle on what’s going on in the Odyssey than exact historical accuracy and precision. Here are the links to both sites:

https://www.ancient.eu/article/483/ancient-greek-society/

http://www.ancientgreece.co.uk/staff/resources/background/bg18/home.html