There is another side, however, upon which it is more pleasing to
dwell. By some curious paradox, the Hellenic poets, who delighted in
saying such disagreeable things, have given us many of the finest types
of womanhood, though these women lived only in the imagination of great
men, or so near the border-land of shadows as to be half mythical.
It may be said to the credit of Homer that he never joined in the
popular chorus of abuse. His women are not permitted to forget their
subjection, but the high-born ones at least are treated with gentle
courtesy, and he indulges in no superfluous flings at their inferiority
or general worthlessness. Many of them hold places of honor and power.
These women of a primitive age, who stand at the portals of the young
world luminous and smiling, or draped in the stately dignity of antique
goddesses, still retain the distinction of classic ideals. They look
out from the misty dawn of things with veiled faces, but we know that
love shone from their soft eyes, and words of wisdom fell from their
rosy lips.
The vulgar of my sex I most exceed
In real power, when most humane my deed,
says the gentle Penelope, as, tear-dimmed and constant, she weaves and
unweaves the many-colored threads, and waits for her royal lord, who
basks in the smiles of Calypso over the sea, and forgets her until he
tires of the fascinating siren and begins to long for his home. If
there was a trace of artfulness in the innocent device of the faithful
wife, it was all the weapon she had to save her honor.
There is no lovelier picture of radiant girlhood than the graceful
Nausicaä, as she takes the silken reins in her white hands, and drives
across the plains in the first flush of the morning to help her maids
“wash their fair garments in the limpid streams.” When the snowy robes
are laid in the sun to dry, they play a game of ball, this daughter of
kings leading all the rest. We hear the echo of her silvery laughter,
and see the flash of her shining veil as her light feet fly over the
greensward. But the dignity of the princess asserts itself with the
forethought and sympathy of the woman in the discreet words with which
she greets the destitute stranger, and modestly directs him to her
royal mother. Her swift eye notes his air of distinction, his courteous
address, and she naïvely wishes in her heart that the gods would send
her such a husband. It is to Arête that she bids him go, to the beloved
queen who shares the throne of Alcinous with “honors never before given
to a woman.” Simple is this gentle lady and gracious, whether she sits
in her stately palace working rare designs in crimson and purple wools,
or gives wise counsel to her husband, or goes abroad among the people,
who adore her as a goddess,
To heal divisions, to relieve the oppressed,
In virtue rich, in blessing others, blessed.
A more touching though less radiant figure is Andromache, who shows
no trace of weakness as she folds her child to her bosom, after the
tender farewell of her brave husband, and goes home, sad and prophetic,
to “ply her melancholy loom,” and brood over the hopelessness of her
coming fate.
These are the great Homeric types, women of simple and noble outlines,
untouched by the fires of passion, wise, loyal, efficient, and brave,
but rich in sympathy and all sweet affections. The central figures of
the fireside, with needle and distaff in hand, they were not without a
fine intelligence which, after the fashion of primitive times, found
its field in the every-day problems of life. The mysteries of knowledge
and speculation had not opened to them.
There is no fairer thing
Than when the lord and lady with one soul
One home possess.
This was the poet’s domestic ideal, and the ages have not brought a
better one, though they have brought us many things to make it more
beautiful.
But what shall we say of Helen, the alluring child of fancy and
romance, who stands as an eternal type of the beauty that led captive
the Hellenic world? Even this fair-haired daughter of the gods, who
set nations at variance, and did so many things not to be commended,
gathers a subtle charm from the domestic setting which the poet’s art
has given her. She sits serenely in the midst of the woes she has
brought, teaching her maidens to work after strange patterns, and
weaving her own tragic story in the golden web. It does not occur to
her that she is very wicked; indeed, she thinks regretfully that, after
all, she is worthy of a braver man. The tears that fall do not dim her
brightness. Gray-haired men go to their death under the spell of her
divine loveliness, but forget to chide. She is the helpless victim of
Aphrodite, who is indulgently charged with all her frailties. Twice
ten years have gone since she sailed away from Sparta, but when her
forgiving husband takes her home she has lost none of that mystic
beauty which is “never stale and never old.” She takes her place as
naturally as if she had not left it, plays again the pleasant rôle of
hostess, and looks with care after the comfort of her guests. When
Telemachus goes to see her, and recalls the uncertain fate of the
wandering heroes, she gives him the “star-bright” veil her own hands
have wrought to help dry the tears she has caused to flow. But she is
troubled by no superfluous grief. What the gods send she tranquilly
accepts.
When the poets began to analyze, the glamour of this witching goddess
was lost, and she became a sinning, soul-destroying woman, a human
Circe that lured men to ruin. But the Greeks did not like to see their
idols slandered or broken, so in later times they gave her a shadowy
existence on the banks of the Nile, where we catch a last glimpse of
her, sitting unruffled among the palms, in all the splendor of her
radiant beauty, twining wreaths of lotus-flowers for her golden hair,
and learning rare secrets of Eastern looms, while men fought and died
across the sea for a phantom. It is not upon these fanciful pictures,
however, that we like to dwell. The Helen who lives and breathes
for us is the Helen of Homer, fair and sweet, more sinned against
than sinning, pitying the sorrows she cannot cure, but saved by her
matchless charm from the chilling frost of mortal censure.
These women of Homer were mostly wives and daughters of kings. Whether
it was because he had been greeted with gentle words and caressing
smiles by the fair patricians to whom he recited his verses that he
painted them in such glowing colors, or because the women of the heroic
age really had the unstudied grace and simple dignity that spring from
conscious freedom, we cannot know. But it is certain that the measure
of honor and liberty which they enjoyed was a privilege of caste rather
than of sex, though it gave them a virile quality, and added a fresh
luster of spontaneity to their domestic virtues.
The lesser women had small consideration. We find the captives, even of
royal descent, tossed about among their masters with no regard to their
wishes, or rights--if they had any, which seems doubtful. The gentle
Briseïs, a high priest’s daughter, and as potent a factor in the final
disasters of the Greeks as the divine Helen herself, was the merest
puppet in the hands of the so-called heroes who quarreled over her, and
Chryseïs was only saved from the same fate by the kind interference of
Apollo. The bitterest drop in the cup of Hector was the thought of his
wife led away weeping by some “mail-clad Achaian,” with no one to hear
her cries or save her from the hopeless fate of weaving and carrying
water at the bidding of another. The women of the people fared little
better, if as well. Ulysses had no hesitation in putting to death a
dozen of his wife’s maids whose conduct did not please him, and he
threatened his devoted nurse Euryclea with a like fate, if she revealed
the secret of his identity, which she had been the first to divine.