Women -- Greece -- Biography; Women -- Greece -- History
The Cyrenaic School, founded by Aristippus, the forerunner of the
Epicurean in its doctrine of pleasure, naturally attracted women,
especially courtesans, into its membership. The celebrated Lais the
Elder was numbered among the Cyrenaics; but there were also high-minded
women among its disciples.
Arete, daughter of Aristippus, continued the latter's teachings after
his death. Her father had given her a most thorough education, and
himself instructed her in philosophy. She was taught to despise riches
and luxury and to observe moderation in all things. Aristippus once
said: "The greatest thing which my daughter Arete has to thank me for is
that I have taught her to set a value on nothing she can do without."
Arete was also learned in natural history and in other branches of
science. She passed her time partly in Athens, partly in Cyrene and
other Greek cities; and wherever she went she aroused great interest by
the charm of her beauty and amiability. There is no reproach whatever
upon her good name: she appears to have been an ingenuous, highly
endowed woman, devoted to science and philosophy. As head of the
Cyrenaic School after her father's death, she had many distinguished
pupils, among them Theodorus and Aristippus the Younger. She was a
prolific writer; forty works are attributed to her, on philosophy, on
agriculture, on the wars of the Athenians, on the life of Socrates, and
various other subjects, showing the wide range of her interests. She
died at Cyrene, in the seventy-seventh year of her age; and in the
inscription over her grave she was styled a "light of Hellas."
The coarse doctrines of the Cynic school, founded by Antisthenes, were
not attractive to women, yet the school had one female representative
who has become famous and has been in recent years the subject of a racy
romantic poem. This Cynic was Hipparchia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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