Re: Athenian hoplites' widows

Ralph,

Like your sister, I as well remember once hearing or reading, in the dim
past, something of the sort .

For what it's worth, I had a quick look but didn't find any confirmation in
a couple of studies where one might well have expected a mention if this is
indeed true according to ancient sources :  i.e., neither in Richard V.
Cudjoe's 2000 Glasgow dissertation _The social and legal position of widows
and orphans in classical Athens_  [ I've alas  no access where I now am to
the version published ten years later at Athens by the Centre for Ancient
Greek and Hellenistic Law of Panteion University ), nor in Lisa
Kallet-Marx's article "Thucydides 2.45.2 and the status of war widows in
Periclean Athens" published (UMichigan Press) in 1993 on p. 133-143 of the
Festschrift _Nomodeiktes: Greek studies in honor of Martin Ostwald_ .

 - Laval Hunsucker
   Breukelen, Nederland


On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 12:21 AM Ralph Hancock <[email protected]>
wrote:

My sister told me that she had read that the widows of Athenian hoplites
> who had died in battle were excused paying civic taxes for the rest of
> their lives. Attempts to verify this with a web search failed between the
> Scylla of complaints about modern Greek taxation and the Charybdis of
> myriad papers on gender studies. Does anyone know whether it's true? Thanks
> in advance.
>
> RH
>