Female Literacy Quotes
An “asp” was the term Greeks and Romans used for a poisonous snake. Menander was a very popular playwright 300 years before the birth of Christ. His phrase was not a new idea at the time but, common wisdom” among Greeks—including many women who were controlled by the social values of the day that were very sexist. However, when Menander wrote it, it received mass distribution in that plays were the major form of mass media and entertainment at the time. So this conventional wisdom was common as Rome became the superpower and whose culture dominated including the Greek plays. Note that this attitude did not reflect the point of view that women were not important enough to educate to write. To the contrary, the implication is that women were too potentially dangerous to allow them to learn to write. Upper class women however were expected to read, but men were not only taught to write but to do so persuasively.
He gave a litany of ills that have occurred when women had been educated. He did not provide any of the counter examples.
