Fact Check: Women Weren't Allowed to Attend Ancient Olympics?

Claim:

Women were not allowed to attend the Olympic Games in ancient Greece.

Rating:

Mixture ( About this rating? )

What's True:

According to historical sources, "women" — specifically meaning, in that time and culture, married, childbearing females — were not allowed to attend or participate in the original Olympic Games in ancient Greece.

What's False:

The same sources say "maidens" — a category comprising unmarried women, young and old — were allowed to attend, though they could not participate in the Games themselves.

What's Undetermined:

Although most historians appear to agree that unmarried women were allowed to attend the Olympic games but married women were not, some have raised doubts about the certainty of the evidence.

In social media posts during the 2024 Paris Olympics, users shared a purported detail in the history of the Olympic Games. In this Aug. 4 X post , for example, a user stated that during the original Olympics held in ancient Greece, women were not allowed to compete in or even attend any events:

(@sales_belinda / X)

Snopes' research found that the laws surrounding gender in those ancient Games were rather more complex than that. Historians cite Pausanias, described in the World History Encyclopedia as an ancient Greek geographer, traveler and author of the book "Description of Greece," as a primary source for what is known about those laws. In one section of the book, Pausanias wrote:

As you go from Scillus along the road to Olympia, before you cross the Alpheius, there is a mountain with high, precipitous cliffs. It is called Mount Typaeum. It is a law of Elis to cast down it any women who are caught present at the Olympic games, or even on the other side of the Alpheius, on the days prohibited to women. However, they say that no woman has been caught, except Callipateira only; some, however, give the lady the name of Pherenice and not Callipateira.

From the first segment of text, it appears that Pausanias was stating that women in general were not allowed to be in attendance (apparently the origin of the "popular belief" that no women at all were permitted at the games). That is, until he described a specific story of a widow who broke this law:

She, being a widow, disguised herself exactly like a gymnastic trainer, and brought her son to compete at Olympia. Peisirodus, for so her son was called, was victorious, and Callipateira, as she was jumping over the enclosure in which they keep the trainers shut up, bared her person. So her sex was discovered, but they let her go unpunished out of respect for her father, her brothers and her son, all of whom had been victorious at Olympia. But a law was passed that for the future trainers should strip before entering the arena.

Because Callipateira was a widow, she broke the law by attending the Olympic Games, but was spared due to her father and brother's status as victors. However, it's unclear whether Pausanias meant she was breaking the law because she was a woman, or because she was a widow, specifically. Some clarification is provided in a later description of the Games from the same text (emphasis ours):

Seated on this altar a woman looks on at the Olympic games, the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, which office the Eleans bestow from time to time on different women. Maidens are not debarred from looking on at the games. At the end of the stadium, where is the starting-place for the runners, there is, the Eleans say, the tomb of Endymion.

An important factor to keep in mind when analyzing these passages is the various ways womanhood was defined in ancient Greece. A 2022 National Geographic article explained that the terminology matched what were perceived as the phases in a woman's life:

Life for most women of means centered generally around three stages: kore (young maiden), nymphe (a bride until the birth of her first child), and gyne (woman). Adult life typically began in the early to mid-teens, when she would marry and formally move from her father's household to her husband's.

"Maidens" were unmarried young girls and women, whereas "women" were those who had married and moved from their fathers' households to their husbands'. The distinction between maidens and women in Pausanias' text indicates that unmarried women were allowed to attend, but married women were not.

Britannica explains that the inconsistencies in Pausanias may have stemmed from a different cause, namely a manuscript copying error:

The 2nd-century-ce traveler Pausanias wrote that women were banned from Olympia during the actual Games under penalty of death. Yet he also remarked that the law and penalty had never been invoked. His account later incongruously stated that unmarried women were allowed as Olympic spectators. Many historians believe that this inconsistency resulted from an error a later scribe introduced while copying this passage of Pausanias's text. Nonetheless, the notion that all or only married women were banned from the Games endured in popular writing on the topic, though the evidence regarding women as spectators remains unclear.

Whatever the reason for the inconsistencies, the text, as written, states that "maidens" were allowed to watch the games, while it was strictly forbidden for "women" to attend. So, although it is often claimed that all women were barred from attending the ancient Olympics, according to the best evidence we have, only married women were banned. For this reason we rate the claim "Mixture."

Sources:

Ancient Olympic Games | Greece, History, Events, Running, & Facts | Britannica. 28 June 2024, https://www.britannica.com/sports/ancient-Olympic-Games .

PAUSANIAS, DESCRIPTION OF GREECE 5.1-15 - Theoi Classical Texts Library. https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias5A.html#7 . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.

PAUSANIAS, DESCRIPTION OF GREECE 6.19-26 - Theoi Classical Texts Library. https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias6B.html . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.

"Revealing the Hidden Lives of Ancient Greek Women." History, 2 Aug. 2024, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/revealing-the-hidden-lives-of-ancient-greek-women .

Ancient Olympic Athletes - Leonidas, Melankomas, Milon. https://olympics.com/ioc/ancient-olympic-games/the-athlete . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.

"Why Weren't Women at the Olympic Games?" ThoughtCo, https://www.thoughtco.com/women-at-the-olympic-games-120123 . Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.