All ancient societies drew a distinction between the free and the slave, even if slaves were few in number. Ancient Egypt saw very little difference in law between men and women, while Athens (and most other societies) did. Athens also drew a sharp distinction between citizen and resident alien, between legitimate born and the illegitimate, and between the woman who was a wife and the one who was not wife. We lack information on the non-citizen but presumably they tried to copy what they would have perceived as the ideal.
With the notable exception of Plato, Athenian philosophers believed that women had strong emotions and weak minds. For this reason they had to be protected from themselves and they had to be prevented from doing damage to others. Guardianship was the system developed to deal with this perceived quality in women.
Every woman in Athens had a kyrios (guardian) who was either her closest male birth-relative or her husband. Although she could own her clothing, jewelry, and personal slave and purchase inexpensive items, she was otherwise unable to buy anything, own property or enter into any contract. Her kyrios controlled everything about her life. (Compare this with the Pater familias in Ancient Rome.) Citizenship for a woman entitled her to marry a male citizen and it enabled her to join certain religious cults closed to men and non-citizens, but it offered no political or economic benefits.
Girls in Athens were normally married soon after puberty to men who were typically in their late twenties or early thirties. Her father or other guardian provided the dowry and arranged the match. The betrothal symbolized the groom's acceptance of the qualities of the dowry as well as the qualities of the bride.
As in the rest of the ancient world the most important reasons for marriage were:
1. the management and preservation of property
2. the production of children as future care-givers and heirs
Love and affection may have been an important additional function in Ancient Egypt, but they played little or no part in an Athenian marriage. Only children whose both parents were citizens could become citizens. Simply being born in Athens was not enough. In arranging the marriage, then, citizenship and wealth were important considerations. Since a fair amount of property was involved, a guardian would want to chose the son of a relative or close friend, so marriage usually took place within a small circle. Rich married rich and poor married poor.
The marriage ceremony itself took place soon after the betrothal. In the evening, following a ritual bath and the wedding banquet in her own home, the bride entered a cart with the groom and joined in a torch lit procession of friends and family to the groom's home where the new couple were invited in by the groom's mother. The final act in the ceremony was the consummation of the marriage in a private corner of the groom's house.
A wife's duty was to bear legitimate children (i.e., heirs) and to manage the household. She was expected to remain inside her home except for attendance at funerals and festivals of the specific cults that were open to woman. A woman seen outside on her own was assumed to be a slave, prostitute, concubine or a woman so poor that she had to work. Child care, spinning and weaving were the most important activities in the daily routine of the good wife. One writer said that the best woman was the one about whom the least was heard, whether it be good or bad.
It is quite possible that Athenian reality never quite lived up to Athenian ideal. There is some evidence to suggest that at least some women could read and write and were well informed on the issues of the day. Vase paintings etc. would suggest that women frequently gathered together. Women and men, however, did not socialize together---at least, respectable women and men did not. If a man had guests in his home the women would be expected to remain in the women's quarter. (Compare this with the situation in Ancient Egypt where husbands and wives attended parties together and where the Mistress of the House always greeted her husband's guests.) There are few paintings that show husband and wife together after the wedding.
Wives and non-wives in athens
It is often noted that Greece was the culture that invented democracy. Before handing out kudos for this achievement, however, we should remember the rather large number of slaves and other non-citizens who were excluded from any role in government, and we should also remember that of all the major civilizations in the ancient world it was Greece that offered the worst treatment of its women.
Athenians divided all women into two groups: wives and potential wives in the first, and all others in the second. It was almost impossible to move from the second group to the first.
A Draconian law allowed a man to kill on the spot any man caught having sex with his wife, mother, daughter, sister or concubine. This goes well beyond the usual rule in the Ancient World defining adultery as sex with a married women not his wife, and appears to give a man ownership of the chastity of all "his" women.
Wives were people who produced and cared for children and heirs. They seem to have had little other use in the eyes of Athenian men. They were confined to their homes and were expected to stay out of sight if the husband invited guests to their home. There were cults to which women might belong and it was possible to socialize on occasion with other women, but beyond that women were expected to remain invisible at home. The best wife, according to one writer, was the one about whom the least was said, whether it be good or bad.
Non-wives were divided into several categories and it is probable that individual women moved from one to another as their luck, health and age changed. At the bottom were the women who lived in brothels. Most were slaves; all had a fairly miserable existence. Between customers it seems that many were expected to spin and weave to provide additional revenue for the brothel's owner.
The women on the streets were only slightly better off. Law limited the price they could charge, and required that if by chance two men wanted the same girl at the same time they could draw lots but they could not bid against each other. In Syracuse there was a law limiting to prostitutes the public display of gold jewelry and brightly colored clothes---a sort of uniform that anyone could recognize.
The next category included the heteras (call girls and courtesans). These were the women who offered more than just a warm body. Some could sing or play a musical instrument. Others were talented, knowledgeable conversationalists. Wives were thought to be a particularly stupid group of people with whom a man would want to spend as little time as possible. Heteras, on the other hand, knew something about the world at large and could be quite entertaining.
The Symposium was a gathering of men for eating, drinking and especially conversation. Heteras were often as important an ingredient in the success of such an occasion as was the food and drink. Sex was sometimes taken for granted, but very frequently the women went no further than light hearted flirting. They were hired for their ability to entertain intellectually and their charges reflected these talents not their physicality.
Some heteras were successful enough that they owned their own homes and entertained there as they pleased.
Concubines were women in a reasonably permanent relationship with one man. They were usually maintained in their own home and would roughly correspond with the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century mistress.
While female slaves were not immune to their masters' desires, it was normally considered bad form to engage in extra-marital sex in a wife's home and opportunities outside of the home were plentiful.
While Greece was not one of those societies in the Ancient World that believed sex with temple prostitutes was necessary to promote the regeneration of crops and herds, the non-wife was a very important part of the social system. A wife was a necessity in order to have legitimate children and heirs, but a man's normal desire for female companionship and sex was something to be satisfied outside of marriage. A woman's desire for male companionship was never given much thought.