M I Finley says that the ancient Greeks were unapologetically sexist. Women were just assumed to be inferior makers of children and homes. There was no romantic ideal in which a man and a woman might meet as equals and fall in love. The greatest love depicted in Greek literature is between fathers and sons, or between male companions like Achilles and Patroclus. Women were excluded from the ceremonies at the heart of Greek culture such as feasts.

This doesn't mean women never took authority, but when they did it was odd. Per Finley, Greek gods were considered to be good and goddesses were suspect: disliked or feared, with the exception of Athena whose demeanor was masculine.

This was an overtly man's world. But when we say that, we're talking about ideals. Finley points out that on many fronts, we don't know how Greek life reflected the ideals expressed by Homer. For instance, we don't know to what extent the Greeks really believed in the divine intervention that drives Homer's epics. The lack of clarity stems from the fact that this kind of intervention was believed to be intermittent. The Greeks would ponder whether a certain event was truly the work of Zeus (and so good) versus Aphrodite (and therefore suspect.)

So with Greek sexism, the ideal might have played out on a spectrum between pure examples and points completely off the map. There may have been men and women who fell in love with one another, but it would have happened without any of the heavy mythology associated with such events in our world. I'm imagining that in such an event a man would have sort of descended from the ranks of the superior and the woman would have been freed, at least partially, from subjection. The two would have met in world apart from the culture that surrounded them. What is it that swims free of convention?

One answer is that it's a crippled version of cultured individual. Cut off from society, it's impotent, maybe finally nothing more than a failed fantasy. The alternate view is that it's something living and inviolate that was always down there below the dried leaves of culture, waiting to emerge and truly live if only for a moment.