Aphrodite's Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece

Greek women routinely wore the veil. That is the unexpected finding of this meticulous study, one with interesting implications for the origins of Western civilization. “The Greeks”, popularly (and rightly) credited with the invention of civic openness, are revealed as also part of a more Eastern tradition of seclusion. Llewellyn-Jones' work proceeds from literary and, notably, from iconographic evidence. In sculpture and vase painting it demonstrates the presence of the veil, often covering the head, but also more unobtrusively folded back onto the shoulders. This discreet fashion not only gave a privileged view of the face to the ancient art consumer, but also, incidentally, allowed the veil to escape the notice of traditional modern scholarship.
From Greek literary sources, Llewellyn-Jones shows that full veiling of head and face was commonplace. He analyses the elaborate Greek vocabulary for veiling and explores what the veil was meant to achieve. He shows that the veil was a conscious extension of the house, and was often referred to as “tegidion”, literally “a little roof”. Veiling was thus an ingenious compromise; it allowed women to circulate in public while maintaining the ideal of a house-bound existence. Alert to the different styles of veils used, the author uses Greek and more modern evidence (mostly from the Arab world) to show how women could exploit-and subvert-the veil as a means of eloquent, sometimes emotional, communication.