The Nurturing Male: Bravery and Bedside Manners in Isocrates' Aegineticus (19.24–9)

Scenes from Euripidean tragedy can lead us to imagine that sick-nursing was women's work in ancient Greece. In the Hippolytus , a matronly Nurse attends the fretfully ill Phaedra; in the Orestes , Electra cares for her brother. Several prose sources, moreover, seem to corroborate this view of gender roles. We learn in Xenophon's Oeconomicus (7. 37) that the mistress of the household was expected to nurse sick slaves. Demosthenes, in a letter (3. 30), mentions two courtesans who are caring for the consumptive Pytheas. And the speaker in Against Neaira notes explicitly ‘how much a woman is worth during illnesses, when she is there for a man who is suffering’ (Dem. 59. 56).