There’s a very odd article in today’s Observer about changing attitudes towards the role of women in ancient Greece. It starts off as follows:

Women in Ancient Greece were major power brokers in their own right, researchers have discovered, and often played key roles in running affairs of state. Until now it was thought they were treated little better than servants.

This was news to me, I’ve not actually read much history about the period. What I know about Mycenaean Greece has come mainly from Homer and interpretations thereof. And based on that it would never have occurred to me that women such as Penelope, Clytemnestra and Helen were “little better than servants” (let alone Medea and Ariadne). But there you go, apparently people did hold these ideas because, as the (male) professor being interviewed wraps up:

The problem has been that up until recently our interpretation of life in Ancient Greece has been the work of a previous generations of archaeologists, then a male-oriented profession and who interpreted their findings in a male-oriented way. That is changing now and women in Ancient Greece are being seen in a new light.

Well, there’s progress for you.