in the same light as a slave seeking to escape from his owner, and all
the resources of the law are put at the disposal of the husband and
the master. There was a constant tendency to think of women and slaves
together; and the institution of slavery was certainly one of the most
powerful agents in the degradation of women at Athens. A slave-girl was,
in the eye of the law, a thing—not a human being, and she was free from
all restraints of moral sanction. She was the property of her owner,
and her only duty was to obey him in all things: virtue, chastity,
modesty, were for her things impossible of attainment; and over the whole
business was cast the protection and encouragement of the law. There
came into existence a class of women condemned to physical and moral
degradation—a class whose very existence was an insult to womankind; so
that Aristophanes, at least, has the wit to see that the establishment of
a female government would have as one of its first results the forcible
abolition of all such recognised and legal forms of vice.
Women and slaves then were linked together; and it must be remembered,
as Professor Murray says, that people do not become slaves by a legal
process; they become slaves when they are brought into contact with
superiors who have the power and the will to use them as tools. There
are three principal tests of slavery, ancient or modern, and in ancient
life they will often apply equally well to women. Firstly, slaves are
a degraded and immoral class. This was continually insisted upon; and
doubtless one result was to produce, in a certain degree, the vices
falsely imputed to nature.
Secondly, their work is despised, as unworthy of free men. The harder
work was left in the hands of slaves or women, who did not receive any
pay, and the super-abundant leisure of the male citizen was devoted to
the political life.
Thirdly, the condition of dependence, once fully established, soon
produces a feeling of despair. The willingness to die, which is so
noticeable in Euripides’ heroines, is one of the sure signs of slavery.
Slaves are lacking in spirit; some, indeed, are so completely lacking
that they are happy in servitude: the impetus to revolt must come from
without, especially when the servile state has existed for many centuries.
Slavery may be defined as the economic exploitation of the weaker;
and, though it does not exist in our time and land, it offers such a
convenient basis for civilisation that various devices are used even now
to take its place. There is the theory, for example, that some kinds of
work are _higher_ than others, and therefore should be paid on a higher
scale. Or again, that the same work, if performed by different persons,
requires different remuneration.
Many estimates of women’s inferiority have ultimately an economic basis.
The more lucrative trades and professions are those for which it is
considered that women are temperamentally unfit.
It is a noticeable fact that all these general conceptions of women’s
weakness have always been closely connected with their legal status. In
Athens, where women could not hold property, and an heiress was taken
over by the nearest male relative as a necessary encumbrance on the
estate, the estimate of woman’s character was very low. In Alexandria
and at Rome, where women by various devices outwitted the law and became
possessed of some degree of economic independence, their moral position
also changed for the better. In England feminism begins with the Married
Women’s Property Act.
But as long as slavery, social or economic, is not recognised by the
law, it cannot be the curse that it was to ancient life. In Athens it
was a legal institution, owing its validity to much the same mode of
thought as made the wife also her husband’s chattel. It is the business
of lawyers to defend the law, and, if the law is bad, their moral sense
is necessarily warped in the process; so that it is not surprising if
the private speeches of the Attic orators, although they exhibit the
natural subtlety of the Athenians in a striking light, by no means
give an equally strong impression of moral rectitude. All the orators
are the same in this respect. Demosthenes in matters of State was a
high-minded patriot; as a lawyer he is, like the rest of his colleagues,
a professional liar, and does not scruple to falsify and misrepresent
the truth. Lysias so forgets the man in the advocate that he seems to
reserve his highest powers for his worst cases, and obviously delights
in such a client as the shameless old cripple for whom he writes his
most ingenious speech. Isæus has no regard for veracity, and it has been
found by painful experience that his unsupported statements, even on
simple questions of fact, are, to put it mildly, extremely unreliable. As
for Hyperides, he is careless of shame so long as he wins his case; and
his gesture, as he bids his fair client display her charms, is like the
calculated boldness of the slave-dealer offering his girls to the highest
bidder.
But if the orators give us an impression of cunning subtlety which far
transcends the bounds that we even now allow to lawyers, their clients
are in no better case. By the middle of the fourth century Athens was in
full decadence. Her men had lost all the vigour and courage that brought
their country safe through the dangers of the Persian Wars: her women,
perhaps, were even worse than the men—_corruptio optimi pessima_—and had
sunk into a state of utter degradation.
Impotent old men and designing young women are the chief figures in most
of Isæus’ speeches; and, as his editor says, to have any confidence in
the veracity or virtue of his clients argues a truly Arcadian simplicity.
There is the case of Euctemon, for example—the old man who divorces his
wife and leaves his children, to live with his slave-woman, Alce. This
unfortunate, whose youth has been degraded for her master’s profit, has
her revenge when the old man grows senile. She induces him to remove her
from the den of infamy which has been one of the sources of his wealth,
to live with her in the drinking-shop over which she is put in charge,
and finally to recognise one of her bastards as his own son. The family,
threatened by a second marriage, reluctantly consent to help in an
adoption which ran counter to the first principles of Attic law; and it
is not until the old man’s death, when his property falls into dispute,
that his ‘misfortunes’ with the woman (so the advocate euphemistically
describes them) come to light. The facts of the case are utterly sordid;
but every detail is enveloped by Isæus in a cloud of sophistical
arguments which show both a complete absence of moral sense in the
advocate and so great a faculty of deception that modern writers have
inferred—it need not be said with how little reason—that polygamy was
not illegal at Athens, that concubinage was recognised by law, and that
bastards had the rights of legitimate children. All three statements are
untrue; but they may fairly be deduced from the ever-shifting arguments
that the lawyer uses. In another of his cases it is an old man at death’s
door who marries a young girl, and the usual imputations upon the bride’s
motives form one of his strongest arguments. In a third, the estate of
Pyrrhus, a woman of notoriously bad life is foisted by her brother upon
one of her old lovers, and the claim is then made that she is his legal
wife.
But to go through the details of Isæus’ cases would be merely tedious.
In all of them we see that moral degradation and absence of social
rectitude which was the natural result of the inferiority of women in
the eyes of the Attic law. Women, like children, cannot legally enter
into a contract, even if it is only to purchase a bushel of corn; the
son of a brother has a stronger claim to an intestate property than the
son of a daughter, for the law says, ‘males must prevail’; a daughter
cannot inherit in her own person; she is only an intermediary by whom the
estate is transmitted through marriage to a male of the same blood as her
father. A woman’s disabilities are painfully plain in Isæus: as for her
legal rights, it is hard to discover from his speeches how far they have
any actual existence. The orator, at least, when his male clients seem
to have the law against them, does not hesitate to appeal to the natural
sympathies of the male jurymen; and in the tenth oration we see how
shamefully an heiress, in spite of the law’s formal protection, could be
despoiled by her guardian and her brother.
It is generally assumed that this male superiority before the law had a
religious sanction, the necessity of keeping up the family worship, which
could only be done by a man. If we were speaking of a primitive society
the argument would have some force, but the Athenians of the fourth
century were at the end rather than the beginning of their national life:
religion was dead, and the foundations of morality undermined; only the
law remained unaltered, that women were the inferior sex. How far women
contributed themselves to their degradation may be studied in all the
orators’ speeches, but two cases are especially significant: Antiphon’s
murder speech ‘Against the stepmother,’ and Lysias’ ‘Defence for the
murder of Eratosthenes.’
The first is grimly horrible in its sordid realism; as Antiphon says,
it is the story of Clytemnestra repeated, but divested now of all its
tragic romance. Two women are the chief characters: one a free-born
Athenian, the wife of the murdered man; the other a slave, the mistress
of the man’s friend, one Philoneos. The facts are these: Philoneos gets
tired of his mistress’ devotion, and determines to rid himself of her
by the simple process of selling her into a life of utter degradation.
He reveals his intention to his friend, and the two men decide to have
one last carouse, the girl waiting upon them, before she goes to her
ruin. But the man’s wife, who has found her husband as false to her as
Philoneos is to his lover, intervenes. She makes the acquaintance of the
slave-girl, who is still passionately devoted to her worthless master,
and persuades her to regain his affection by a love-potion which she
will provide. The girl agrees, and when the two men meet at dinner she
pours the potion (which, unknown to her, is a deadly poison) into their
cups, giving the larger share to her own false lord. Philoneos falls dead
immediately; the other man collapses, and dies some days afterwards. The
slave-girl is taken and broken on the wheel; the wife is in this speech
accused by her stepson of her share in the crime.
Antiphon’s pleadings throw a lurid light on the relations between men and
women in a slave State; the speech of Lysias in defence of Eratosthenes’
murder is an even more invaluable document. The orator’s client is
accused of murder, and relies for his defence on the plea that his victim
was taken in adultery, and therefore lawfully put to death. The law, at
Athens a written, not an unwritten code, is definitely on the accused
man’s side; but it is curious that this is the only surviving speech
in which it is pleaded as an excuse. It seems, indeed, that even the
Athenians hesitated to use the ferocious power that the law gave them;
and we may imagine, if we will, that this was a test case, brought,
perhaps, by one of the Socratic circle, to try the validity of the law in
the face of the new feminist doctrines. In any event, the Ionian Lysias,
whose honeyed pen was at the service of the highest bidder, was a person
thoroughly distasteful to Plato and his friends, and it is probable that
in this speech he had the satisfaction both of defending the established
order of social morality, and also of striking a shrewd blow at his
personal enemies. The speech, which is a model of art, begins with some
compliments to the jury, and then Lysias, very ingeniously, makes his
client tell the simple story of his life.
When I decided to marry, gentlemen, and brought a wife into
my house, I made this my rule of behaviour. I did not annoy
her with excessive vigilance, but on the other hand, I did not
leave her too much her own mistress to do whatever she pleased.
I kept as close a guard over her as was possible and took all
reasonable care.
(This to conciliate the jury and to show that the damage done was not due
to any lack of precautions on the owner’s side.)
After a time a child was born and then I began to feel
confidence, and handed over to her the charge of all my goods,
thinking that this was the surest bond of union between us.
At first, gentlemen, she was the best of women, a clever
housewife and a thrifty, exact in all her management. Then
my mother died, and her death has been the cause of all my
troubles. My wife went to her funeral; that fellow saw her
walking in the funeral procession, and after a time succeeded
in corrupting her.
(The jury are meant to draw the inference that women should never leave
the house: one appearance in public may mean ruin.)
He watched my wife’s maid who goes to do the marketing, made a
proposal to her, and soon effected his purpose of seduction. I
must tell you, gentlemen, that my humble home is built in two
storeys, the upper part similar in style to the ground floor,
one containing the women’s apartments, the other the men’s
rooms. Now when our baby was born, the mother began by nursing
it herself, and to avoid any risk of her coming down stairs at
bath-time, I took up my quarters in the upper rooms, and the
women came down to the ground floor. Moreover, we soon got into
the way of my wife leaving me to go and sleep with the baby
downstairs, so that she might give him the breast and prevent
him crying.
(It is, of course, essential that the master’s rest at night should not
be disturbed, and the jury will agree that this was a legitimate reason
for a wife’s absence from her proper place.)
This went on for a long time and I never suspected anything.
Such an arrant simpleton was I that I thought _my_ wife the
most virtuous woman in Athens. Well, gentlemen, time passed
away, and one day I came back home unexpectedly from the
country. After dinner the baby began to cry and make itself
unpleasant: the maid was hurting it on purpose to cause a
disturbance, as I heard afterwards, for the fellow was in the
house. I told my wife to go and give it the breast to stop it
crying, but at first she would not go: she pretended that she
was so delighted to see me after my long absence. Finally,
when I began to get angry and bade her be off, ‘Oh, yes,’ she
said, ‘you want to stay here and make love to the parlourmaid;
I caught you pulling her about the other day when you were
drunk.’ At that I smiled, and she got up and went away, pulling
the door to in pretended jest, and taking away the key. I did
not think anything of it, nor had I any suspicions: indeed,
I soon fell asleep, for I had just come from the country and
was glad to get rest. It was getting on for daybreak when
she returned and opened the door. I asked her then why the
doors had been banging in the night, and she pretended that
the child’s lamp had blown out, and she had gone next door
to get a light. I said nothing and believed her tale. I did,
however, notice that her face was covered with powder—although
her brother had not been dead a month—but still I said nothing
about her conduct. I went out and left the house in silence.
(White cheeks were highly esteemed at Athens, and when a lady wished
to be especially attractive, she procured them artificially. In this
case the husband is distracted by a double feeling: gratification at
his wife’s apparent desire to please him, and disgust at her obvious
disrespect for a male relative.)
Some time elapsed after these events, gentlemen, and I had no
inkling of my misfortune, when one day an old person came up
to me. She was sent, as I heard afterwards, by another woman
that fellow had seduced and then abandoned, who, in her rage
and indignation had spied on him until she found out the reason
of his desertion. Well, the old lady came to me near my house,
where she was watching, and ‘Euphiletus,’ said she, ‘don’t
think that I have come in any spirit of officious interference:
the man who is wronging you and your wife, as it happens, is an
enemy of mine. If you take the maid who goes to market and does
your errands, and torture her, you will find out everything.
The man is Eratosthenes, of Oea: he is responsible for this; he
has seduced your wife and many other women besides: that is his
trade.
So the warning comes, and then events move quickly. The husband takes
the servant, and by a mixture of promises and threats compels her not
only to confess, but to betray her mistress. When next the lover comes
to the house—it is alleged by the prosecution that he is beguiled there
by the husband, and although this is denied, it is regarded as a quite
legitimate plot—the maid informs her master; witnesses are hastily
summoned; the door, left unfastened by the girl, is pushed open and the
guilty pair are discovered together. Eratosthenes is struck down, his
arms are pinioned, and then in the name of the law and in cold blood he
is killed. The scene is like the last act of _Scheherazade_ without its
barbaric magnificence. Of the woman nothing is said, and the speaker
concludes by reminding his judges that his cause is theirs, and that
the only way to prevent illicit love is to take summary vengeance on the
lover.
The point of view, it will be noticed, as regards the marriage
relationship, is very different from that expressed by Plato or
Aristotle. Plato regards marriage as a temporary connection dictated by
mutual interest and dissolvable at will. Aristotle says (_Politics_, 7,
16):
As to adultery, let it be held disgraceful for any man or woman
to be unfaithful when they are man and wife. If during the time
of bearing children anything of the sort occur, let the guilty
person be punished with a loss of privileges in proportion to
the offence.
The philosophers see that marital fidelity is important chiefly in
relation to children and the State, and they attach the same stigma
to either of the parties who break the contract. Lysias, as a lawyer,
suiting his arguments to a male audience, takes much lower ground. The
husband smiles at his own infidelities, but claims the right to commit
murder when his wife retaliates.
The _Eratosthenes_ is, perhaps, the most vivid picture we have of
home-life in Athens, but the general impression given by all the orators
is much the same. Women are either cowed into hopeless submission or
else they are shamelessly profligate. The occasional exceptions, such
as we find in Lysias’ speech ‘Against Diogiton,’ where a widow defends
her children’s interests with skill and vigour, show that the fault
was due to the marriage system rather than to woman’s nature. Most of
the women, however, are incapable of energy: their prison life has
deprived them of the power and will to act. In Lysias’ speech ‘Against
Simon,’ for example, the speaker, a bachelor living in an abominable
relationship, has his sister and nieces as inmates of his house, and he
says: ‘These ladies’ life has been so decent and orderly that they are
ashamed even for the men of their own household to set eyes upon them.’
In Demosthenes’ speech ‘Against Conon,’ his unfortunate client, again a
bachelor, has his mother keeping house for him. When, after his encounter
with the ‘Fighting Cocks’ Club’ he is carried home, his cloak stolen, his
lip split, and both eyes closed, the ladies of his establishment, his
mother and his female attendants, begin to weep and wail over his sad
condition—but they do nothing else. His male acquaintances carry him off
to the public bath, there fetch a doctor, and finally remove him to the
house of a friend. Even as ministering angels the Athenian women seem to
have been ineffective. Only in the case of the imprisonment or the death
of their male relatives do they come actively forward, and the business
of mourning and funeral lamentation was by convention left almost
entirely in their hands.
Most of the Athenian women then, as we see them in the writings of the
orators, are mere passive animals; a few, and by no means the least
successful, are open in their profligacy. Such an one is the mother of
Æschines, as we have her described by Demosthenes in the speech ‘On the
Crown’; such also the abominable pair, mother and daughter, who are the
chief characters in the speech ‘Against Neæra,’ which is attributed
to Demosthenes. Here the mother, Neæra, a woman of notoriously bad
character, succeeds in marrying an Athenian citizen, and her daughter
Phanô, a person as vicious as herself, by one of those strange turns
of fortune only possible in a real democracy, becomes the wife of the
King-Archon, the head of the State religion, as we might say, wife of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Such another, finally, is the fair Antigona
in Hyperides’ speech ‘Against Athenogenas,’ a lady who combined the
professions of broker and courtesan, and was equally successful in both.
Of women who were both virtuous and capable the orators tell us
singularly little, and the probable reason is that such women in Athens
had almost ceased to exist. Demosthenes and his contemporaries represent
the last stage, when their country was already on the brink of political
extinction, and the men of Athens had no ideals or examples of womanly
virtue to encourage them in their vain struggle against the great
military power of the North. The lack of good women was a fatal disaster,
but it was a disaster which the Athenians had brought upon themselves,
and it led them straight to ruin.
XIII.—ARISTOTLE
As the political life of Athens ends with Demosthenes, so the creative
force of the Greek genius ceases with Aristotle. There are some brilliant
and many charming writers after his time, but they rely for all the
originality of their thought on their great predecessors. Aristotle is
the last of the creators: ‘_tout le reste, c’est littérature_.’
Hence his unique importance in the history of human thought: not merely
is he, perhaps, the greatest mind that Greece produced, but he has the
advantage of coming last in the long line of thinkers on whom nearly all
our intellectual life even now depends. In every department of civilised
existence the influence of Aristotle must still be taken into account,
and his judgment of women’s position in society—a view sincerely held
and on the whole most temperately expressed—has had far more effect on
the world than have the idealist theories of Plato. His statement of
the moral disabilities of women is to be found best in the _Ethics_; of
their social disabilities in the treatise _On Generation_. The following
quotations are from the English translations of those works by Welldon,
Jowett, and Platt.
To begin with the moral situation in the _Ethics_. Aristotle several
times repeats the statement, common enough in ancient literature, though
it seems now open to serious objection, that women are less temperate and
continent in their desires than men. He does not blame them, but rather
regards them with pity, ‘for a woman is naturally in such matters weaker
than a man: a man’s love is passionate and open; women feel desire and
are cunning.’[1] A line from _The Beguiling of Zeus_ is quoted to support
this view by the authority of Homer, and the philosopher himself agrees
with the common Greek view that for a woman to wish to keep her husband
to herself was a proof that she was both unreasonable and lascivious.
So, in discussing certain morbid habits, such as the practice of biting
one’s nails or eating cinders, Aristotle has the significant remark: ‘Now
whenever nature is the cause of these habits nobody would call people
who give way to them incontinent, any more than we should call women
incontinent from being not males but females.’[2] It is, perhaps, this
belief in the natural incapacity of women for virtue that is the cause
of the depreciatory remarks concerning the essential excellence of an
Athenian woman, ‘bashful modesty.’