It is in the Alexandrian period of Greek literature and art that,
according to Helbig (194), "we first meet traits that suggest the
adoration of women (_Frauencultus_) and gallantry." This opinion is
widely prevalent, a special instance being that ecstatic exclamation
of Professor Ebers: "Can we assume even the gallantry of love to have
been unknown in a country where the hair of a queen, Berenice, was
transferred as a constellation to the skies?" In reality this act was
inspired by selfish adulation and had not the remotest connection with
love.
The story in brief is as follows: Shortly after his marriage to
Berenice, Ptolemy went on an expedition into Syria. To insure his safe
return to Egypt Berenice vowed to consecrate her beautiful hair to
Venus. On his return she fulfilled her vow in the temple; but on the
following day her hair could not be found. To console the king and the
queen, and to _conciliate the royal favor_, the astronomer Conon
declared that the locks of Berenice had been removed by divine
interposition and transferred to the skies in the form of a
constellation.[315]
A still more amusing instance of Alexandrian "gallantry" is to be
found in the case of the queen Stratonice, whose court-poets were
called upon to compete with each other in singing of the beauty of her
locks. The fact that she was bald, did not, as a matter of course,
make the slightest difference in this kind of homage.
Unlike his colleagues, Rohde was not misled into accepting such
_adulation of queens_ as evidence of _adoration of women in general_.
In several pages of admirable erudition (63-69), which I commend to
all students of the subject, he exposes the hollowness and
artificiality of this so-called Alexandrian chivalry. Fashion ordained
that poems should be addressed to women of exalted rank:
"As the queens were, like the kings, enrolled among the
gods, the court-poets, of course, were not allowed to
neglect the praise of the queens, and they were called upon
to celebrate the royal weddings;[316] nay, in the
extravagance of their gallant homage they rose to a level of
bad taste the pinnacle of which was reached by Callimachus
in his elegy--so well-known through the imitation of
Catullus--on the hair of queen Berenice placed among the
constellations by the courtesy of the astronomer Conon."
He then proceeds to explain that we must be careful
not to infer from such a courtly custom that other women enjoyed the
freedom and influence of the queen or shared their compliments.
"In actual life a certain chivalrous attitude toward women
existed at most toward hetairai, in which case, as a matter
of course, it was adulterated with a very unpleasant
ingredient of frivolous sentimentality.... Of an essential
change in the position of respectable girls and women there
is no indication."
Though there were a number of learned viragoes, there is "absolutely
no evidence" that women in general received the compliment and benefit
of an education. The poems of Philetas and Callimachus, like those of
Propertius and Ovid, so far as they referred to women, appealed only
to the wanton hetairai. As late as our first century Plutarch felt
called upon to write a treatise, oti kai gunaikas paideuteon--"that
women too should be educated." Cornelius Nepos still speaks of the
gynaikonitis as the place where women spend their time.
"In particular, the emancipation of virgins from the
seclusion of their jealous confinement would have implied a
revolution in all social arrangements of the Greeks of which
we have no intimation anywhere,"
including Alexandria (69). In another chapter, Rohde comments
(354-356) with documentary proof, on the "extraordinary tenacity,"
with which the Greeks down to the latest periods of their literature,
clung to their custom of regarding and treating women as inferiors and
servants--a custom which precluded the possibility of true chivalry
and adoration. That sympathy also--and consequently true, altruistic
affection--continued to be wanting in their emotional life is
indicated by the fact, also pointed out by Rohde, that "the most
palpable mark of a higher respect," an education, was withheld from
the women to the end of the Hellenic period.[317]