My fellow Athenians, since Athens has undergone a period of transition many things in our city which we regarded as tradition have been challanged. For example we have believed that every man was equal and that every man should be given the right to vote. We have believed that the sum of a man's character had nothing to do with his purse and everything to do with the content of his charcater. Many of our ideas are up in arms as we find ourselves redirecting our great city. We are like a ship that has been through a storm. However, while the ship still sails we find ourselves without a captin and badly in need of leadership. Many a polished rhetorician has spoken in the Assembly in defense of many things. There has been many a fool hardy ideas circulating particularly in a diaglouge of a man nambed Plato called the Republic.
The Republic itself wishes to entertain many an interesting idea about how to form an ideal society including ideas about educating women and treating them as equal citizens. In this work Plato says that women are the same as men except that they are physically weaker. The only difference between the two sexes is that one begets an the other bears children. How exactly is this possible? Plato goes on to say that women should be allocated the same work and the same education that men have except in lighter loads since they are the weaker sex. He further advocates that women should have the same training as men in warfare and exercise, and further should exercise in the Greek custom which is of course naked.
I think fellow Athenians that we can affirm according to custom and our common belief that all men are equal. Regardless of money we all come from and return to the same place which is our mother earth. What we cannot agree on though is that woman is equal to man. All we have to do is to look back on the first woman, Pandora whose name means all gifts and yet she cursed the world with diseases and maladies which only made the human condition more difficult to bear. She opened her box and from that point all has been trouble. She was a joke by the gods, she was given a gift by each one and was given what Hesiod refers to as a thieving and empty nature, much like a female dog. With the great Hesiod arguing these points how is it possible for us to consider educating a woman like a man?
Plato mentions that women should exercise with men, naked in the gymnasium. If a woman has a nature which is deceptive her only thought will be in seducing the men. She will not cloak herself in virtue, she will be a beacon of vulgarity. When a woman gets older she becomes quite an unseemly sight and would not agree with our ideals of beauty to be seen in such a state. All this lack of shame in women would promote their already vulgar nature. A woman is much like a bear cub, she must be controlled and tamed by a husband to know virtue and shame and the proper role of woman.
Women are frail creatures, frail in form, frail in spirit, frail in morality, and therefore frail in reason and chracter. They are unworthy of education. They are also prone to excessive emotion from their female monthly curses. How would it be possible to fight a war with menstruating soldiers? Clearly Plato has been drinking too much wine and going to too many festivals. I for one Athenians, believe that women will never be equal to men, or my name is not Thrasybulus, and I am not a general of Athens.