Aristotle (On the Generation of Animals I, 728) “Women are a defective human being. Women are infertile men, because a woman cannot produce seed; she can only be the field in which something grows. Her inability to produce seed determines her imperfection.”
Aristotle (Politica, 1254 b 10-14) “For all animals it is better to be ruled, because that preserves their life. In the same way, the relationship between man and woman is laid down by nature, so that the man is the one who rules and the woman the one who is ruled.”
Aristotle (Physica 1.) “A person who is by nature a slave belongs to another person and thinks only in order to be understood by that person. Other living beings cannot think; they can only feel. Yet there is little difference between the use of a slave and of an animal: they all satisfy physical needs.”
Plato (Timaeus 90e) “Only men are created directly by the gods and are given souls. Those who live a righteous life return to the stars; those who live unrighteously may be reborn as women in the next generation. The only thing women can hope for is to become men.”
Plato (The Republic, Republic) “The highest group of people — the guardians, or experts, who are the lawgivers, in whom reason and wisdom function as virtue — could also include women. This is the level at which there exist no family forms or sexual relationships.”
Roman civil law
Building on the conclusions of Greek philosophy about woman as an imperfect human being, Roman legislation — the Civil Code — was constructed, and the entire Roman Empire lived by it both in Jesus’ time and long afterward. It stipulated that women were Roman citizens, but, along with children and slaves, they were the property of the head of the family (pater familia) – the man. They had no authority over their own children, they had no surname of their own; like slaves, criminals, and those deemed unfit for Rome, women had no right to testify as witnesses, nor any legal right to represent themselves in public. The head of the family had the right to physically discipline his property, women included, and even to kill them.
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