The home in ancient times, especially the country house, was a manufactory on a small scale, like many American homes of a century ago. Most of the clothing for the family was made there, and consequently the mistress of the house must understand wool-working in every stage and the making of linen cloth, and must also be able to teach and direct the slave women. Wool was often bought in the raw state or even in the fleece, which necessitated cleansing it, certainly a disagreeable task. The Syracusan lady in the Fifteenth Idyll of Theokritos scolds because her husband has bought five dirty fleeces of poor quality—“work upon work” for her. For making the roves a pottery shield, called epinetron or onos, was placed on the knee and the fibers rubbed over it. An interesting example, decorated with drawings of women at work (see head-band, p. 32), has the upper surface covered with a scale pattern which furnished the slightly roughened surface necessary for making the roves (Case 2, top shelf, fig. 38). The covering, however, was sometimes dispensed with; a finely decorated toilet-box in Case A in the Fourth Room has on one side a drawing of a woman carding over her bare knee (fig. 39). This box also shows the next stage in the making of cloth, the spinning, for which distaff and spindle were used (see tail-piece, p. 39). A small weight, the spindle-whorl, usually of terracotta, was attached to the thread below the spindle to increase the twisting motion. An example is in Case 5. This primitive method of spinning is still in use among the Greek country-folk, witness a photograph taken in 1922 (fig. 41).

The loom used in Greece and Italy was upright, consisting of two posts with a cross-bar. The threads of the warp, alternately long and short, were held by terracotta weights tied to the lower ends. A loom-weight from Crete is marked with the owner’s name, Kaleneika, wife or daughter of Teriphos (Case 5).

Cloth was woven in the size desired for a particular garment, so that no cutting was necessary and consequently there were no edges to hem. Sewing was therefore restricted to seams, of which few were required, but a great deal of time and skill could be devoted to embroidered ornament upon fine garments. The earlier fashion, seen on black-figured vases, was to cover the cloth with patterns, but later only borders were used, or bands of figures. On an oinochoë of the fifth century, in Case C in the Fifth Room, are two ladies perfuming clothes. The garments and head-dresses they are wearing and the clothes they are folding are worked with beautiful borders in the wave pattern and ornaments in the form of conventionalized flowers (fig. 40). Besides providing fine apparel for themselves and their families, women also expended their skill on garments which they offered to the goddesses: the treasuries of Athena and of Artemis at Athens contained chests full of many-colored robes offered by worshippers (fig. 37). Naturally in the course of time various industries sprang up which contributed manufactured products to the household, but spinning and weaving continued to be domestic occupations, at least to provide clothing for the slaves. Some conservative families in Rome prided themselves upon wearing garments made at home; the Emperor Augustus is said to have worn, except on special occasions, the handiwork of the ladies of his family as an example of simplicity in a period of general extravagance.

The preparation of food likewise required the housewife’s direction, though the master of the house, or in large establishments a trusted steward, attended to the marketing. Two small terracottas from Cyprus on the bottom of Case 3 illustrate the making of bread by very primitive methods. In the first (fig. 43), the woman at the left is winnowing grain with a sieve, which she holds, and a winnowing-fan shaped like a shovel, which lies by her side. The other woman (whose head is unfortunately missing) is grinding the corn on a saddle-quern; she draws the upper millstone back and forth over the lower, which is provided with side boards to prevent the meal from falling off—a hard day’s work, one would say. The other terracotta represents a primitive method of baking bread. A clay oven like a huge bowl was built up by hand in a convenient place. The usual fuel, dried grasses, was placed in and around it and after the oven became heated and the fire had died down, the housewife set the flat loaves around the inside to bake (fig. 42).

Another task often represented on vases is the drawing and carrying of water. In many places the public well-houses were the principal source of supply, as the piping of water into dwellings was unusual in Greece until Roman times. A hydria in Case 2 shows a group of women carrying away their jars on their heads from a public well-house (fig. 44).

In Athens, and probably more or less throughout the Greek world, a woman’s life was rather monotonous. Ladies did not go out unattended, and indeed were not expected to go out at all without good reason. A wife did not receive her husband’s guests or take part in his social life; but women were included in family gatherings such as weddings and dinners after the birth of children, they made visits to women relatives and friends, and shared in the frequent religious festivals, which at Athens included the theatre. In the earlier vase paintings there are comparatively few figures of women, and such as appear are usually goddesses or accessory persons in mythical scenes; but with the gradual change to subjects taken from every-day life in the later sixth and the early fifth century, we begin to see women about their usual occupations, or in groups talking with each other or with men. Much of the later Athenian pottery is decorated with charming scenes from the life of women, showing them with their children, at their toilet, busy with embroidery, or playing with pets. The younger ones seem to have enjoyed some games which we have relegated to childhood, such as spinning tops (see fig. 53). On the marriage-vases we see the bride being dressed by her friends and servants, or receiving presents on the day after the wedding, the traditional occasion for the presentation of gifts. Two of these vases are in Case B in the Fifth Room (fig. 45), and a perfume vase in Case Q is decorated with a similar scene. The usual presents seem to have been bands and ribbons for the hair, perfumes, jewelry, and pets, especially birds.