Abstract

In Xenophon’s Oeconomicus Ischomachus instructs his wife in the management of their household. The detailed account of this subject which emerges has no parallel in Greek literature. Textile production is an important aspect of this household’s implicit self-sufficiency, which in this respect is still Homeric. Ischomachus’ division of his and his wife’s spheres of activity between outdoors and indoors also corresponds to Hector’s admonition to Andromache in the Iliad (6.490-93). There is a fundamental dissymmetry between Ischomachus and his wife. His rationale for the division of labor between men and women reappears in another form in Aristotle’s account of the origin of the polis in the Politics.