About Ancient Greek Families!!!

ANCIENT GREEKS: FAMILY STRUCTURE AND ROLES

The structure of ancient Greeks families was so important for them culture, why? Because social life, include politic and economic, turned around family. Everyone person in the family played an important roll that I am going to describe next:

FATHER

He was the worker; he spent time at landscapes with animals and other economic activities. The work includes a lot of things, such as crops, sailing, hunting and manufacturing. Greece culture was so macho in everything, at parties the man was the person who drinks all that he wanted; men could chose the wear (women could not) and one of the most important: the player and the famous participant in Olympic Games. When a man had a son, he had to be naked and carried his child, in a ritual dance, around the household.

MOTHER

They had very limited freedom outside the home. They could not assistant to parties, just funerals or something related with religious festivals. What was the role? She was the responsible of the house, she had to run the house and bring up children, but they did not do like a wife house, ancient Greek women had slaves. In Olympic Games, they only could play chariot racing but only if they owned the horse.

CHILDREN

Children were youth under the age of 30. Their role did not have importance, they had to help their mother, and help in the fields, if necessary. What did they love to do? Played with many toys, clay animals and stick horses on 4 wheels, with yo-yo’s and girls preferred to play with dolls.


In brief

Greek families were so religious; they believed in a lot of “gods”, they were polytheist. Zeus was one of the most important gods at Olimpia with Demeter and her daughter Persephone. They had some ritual routines based on mythological situations, they believed in deities and legendary characters.

They were so different like us, cultures change and people change. Traditions at eastern are really different with western traditions, it depends at the history and maybe legends.


By Felipe Doblado