Domestic virtues / public actions. The Attalid queens and the transformations of Hellenistic femininity

Abstract

Historiography has remarked the image of the Attalid queens of Pergamon as models of traditional Greek femininity, widely publicized and used by dynastic propaganda, and considered their roles as primarily passive. Nevertheless, Apollonis and Stratonice not only exhibited their domestic virtues in the public sphere, but also showed public agency and influence, so they must be categorized in the general Hellenistic phenomenon of transformations in the ways of being women in the public sphere. In this sense, they could have been references for the new models of femininity that the changing times required, and ones that were perfectly acceptable by a patriarchal system in a constant process of adaptation.