[dragonwriter]

> A course in classics is going to have overwhelmingly male authors, likely exclusively so.

Not of necessity; there are plenty of known women writers of the period (it's hard to imagine a broad survey excluding Sappho, but she's far from the only example.)

> The reality of the ancient Mediterranean was that patriarchy was extensive.

Perhaps, but also much less so than in the exclusively male, until very recently, academic society which did so much to shape the lens through which we see the classics.