WOMEN IN EARLY HISTORIC TIMES
As it is claimed that the history of the natural growth of society is
represented by the extant tribes in the varying stages of advancement
from savagery to civilization, and as upon our first acquaintance with
the Greeks we find them just emerging from barbarism and preparing to
enter upon a civilized career, we may naturally expect to find in their
various traditions, customs, forms of marriage, etc., some hint of that
influence which, but little more than one ethnical period before, had
been exercised by women, and some clue to the processes involved in the
change from female to male supremacy.
From the facts which are gradually coming to light concerning society
in the early historic period, it is observed that the extant mythoses
and traditions of the ancients contain a mixture of history, mythology,
and astrology. Until a comparatively recent time no attempt has been
made to separate the former from the latter two.
Herodotus opens his account of the Greeks with a story of the capture
of women. The Phœnicians, the great maritime people of that time,
had sent ships loaded with merchandise to Argos. When nearly all was
disposed of there came down to the beach several women among whom was
Io, child of Ianchus the king. As the women were standing by the stern
of the ship attending to their purchases, the foreign sailors rushed
upon them and attempted to carry them off. The most of them made their
escape, but a number were taken away and Io amongst them.[169]
[169] Rawlinson, book i., 1.
Doubtless beneath this myth is concealed a religious doctrine which
had an historical basis. The original version of the legend was that
Io who was carried to Egypt by a god became the mother of a race of
hero-kings; but when the true significance of the early physiological,
religious myth was forgotten, this one of Io, too, after having become
mutilated and distorted to suit a more degenerate time, was accepted in
a purely literal sense and made to do duty as actual history. Following
this narrative in the history of Herodotus is the story of Europa who
was carried away by the Greeks.
In the next generation was enacted the seizure of Helen by Paris,
son of Priam, a deed which, whether committed for revenge or lust,
is supposed to have constituted the sole cause of the Trojan War—a
struggle which continued for nine years. Helen had previously, and
while but a child, according to Plutarch, been carried off by Theseus,
founder of Athens, and borne away to Egypt. Indeed it would seem from
the accounts of this hero that his exploits were instigated for the
most part by a desire to possess himself of women. Even later in the
history of the Greeks we find that Pausanius, King of Sparta, upon
the defeat of the barbarians, received as his share of the booty, ten
specimens of the following articles: “women, horses, talents, and
camels.” The familiar story of the seizure of the Sabine women by the
Romans is regarded as a probable myth or as a doubtful fact; yet, when
we remember that not far distant in the past, capture constituted the
only form of marriage, the acts of violence committed on women are
invested with a fresh interest, for by them we are enabled to trace the
identity of the processes of development between historic nations and
the tribes occupying a lower position in the scale of advancement.
Although Homer traces genealogies through fathers, the fact will
doubtless be observed that two generations generally suffice to carry
men back to an unknown or divine progenitor. Indeed many of the Greeks
of Homer’s time sprang directly from gods. Tlepolemus was of the stock
of Hercules. Priam and his sons were descendants of Zeus, and many of
the noblest Greeks derived their origin from Mars. Helen also was the
descendant of Zeus.
A tradition from Varro in reference to the decline of woman’s power in
Athens is as follows:
In the age of Cecrops two wonders sprang from the earth at the same
time, one of which was the olive tree, the other water. The king in
terror dispatched a messenger to Delphi to ascertain what he was to
do in the matter. The oracle in response answered that the olive tree
signified Minerva (Athene), and the water Neptune (Poseidon); and
that it was optional with the Burgesses after which of the two they
would name their town. Cecrops convened an assembly of the Burgesses,
both men and women, for it was customary then for the women to take
part in the public counsels. The men voted for Poseidon, the women
for Athene, and as there were more women than men by one, Athene
conquered. Thereupon Poseidon became enraged, and immediately the sea
flowed over all the land of Athens. To appease the god the Burgesses
were compelled to impose a three-fold punishment upon their wives:
They were to lose their votes; the children were to receive no more
the mother’s name; and they themselves were no longer to be called
Athenians after the goddess.
We are assured that prior to the struggle between Athene and Poseidon
for the mastery in Athens, children in Attica and Lycia were named
after their mothers, and that the people as a body were called after
the goddess. Formerly the women were actual Burgesses but after the
decision that the office of father in the processes of reproduction
is superior to that of the mother the women lost their position as
Burgesses and became only the wives of Burghers. It is the vote of
Athene herself which decides that the child is the production of the
father. The ancient Attic traditions are full of references to female
supremacy. Indeed, Herr Bachofen is certain that he has found proof of
female descent and supremacy not only among the early Greek tribes but
in every branch of the Indo-Germanic family.
The Grecian tribes were named after women, as were also the ancient
cities of Greece. The founders of these cities and the eponymous
leaders of the various peoples were women who had been “carried off by
gods.” Sarpedon and Minos who quarrelled over the government of Lycia
were the sons of Europa[170] who had been carried off from Tyre on the
Phœnician coast. Thebe, the eponymous leader of the Thebans, and Egina,
the founder of Egina, were sisters. Therefore when the oracle commanded
the Thebans to seek succour from their nearest of kin, they applied to
the Eginetans, thereby proving that at that time relationships were
still traced through women.
[170] Herodotus, book i., 173.
The Greek tradition of the Scythian nation is as follows: As Hercules
was passing through the country he came to a district called the
Woodland. While he slept, the mares which he had loosed from his
chariot wandered away, and while in quest of them he came to a cave in
which dwelt a being with the head of a woman and the body of a serpent,
probably a goddess representing the two creative principles throughout
nature. Upon being asked by Hercules if she had seen his mares, she
replied, “yes,” but that unless he would remain with her she would not
yield them to him, whereupon he consented to do her bidding. Later, as
she questioned him as to his wishes concerning the three sons which she
had borne him, she said: “Wouldst thou wish that I should settle them
here in this land whereof I am mistress, or shall I send them to thee?”
Hercules placed in her hand a bow with instruction that the son which
when grown to manhood should bend it in a certain way should remain as
king of the land. Scythes, the youngest son of the goddess, was the
successful competitor. From this time gods, not goddesses, are in the
possession of the country.[171] Europe, Asia, and Lybia (Africa) are
named after women, and in nearly all the earliest traditions, a woman,
either divine or human, appears as the eponymous leader of the people.
[171] Herodotus, book v., 80.
The tradition respecting the daughters of Danaūs fleeing from their
native land to avoid the hateful caresses of the sons of Egyptus,
doubtless refers to a time when relationships were beginning to be
traced through males, and when under the _ba’al_ form of marriage they
were beginning to claim the right to control the women of their own
group.
Egyptus and Danaūs were brothers, the former of whom had fifty sons,
the latter fifty daughters. Upon the sons of Egyptus demanding that
their cousins unite with them in marriage, the women immediately fled
by sea to Argos and placed themselves under the protection of Pelasgus.
Although hotly pursued by their tormentors, they reached Argos in
safety; the following is their supplication as set forth by Æschylus:
On this moist shore, drive them into the deep,
With all their flying streamers and quick oars,
There let them meet the whirlwind’s boisterous rage,
Thund’rings and lightnings, and the furious blasts
That harrow up the wild tempestuous waves,
And perish in the storm, ere they ascend
Our kindred bed, and seize against our will
What nature and the laws of blood deny.[172]
[172] _The Supplicants._
After having reached Argos and after having besought Pelasgus to
espouse their cause, he says:
If by your country’s laws Egyptus’ sons,
As next of blood, assert a right in you,
Who should oppose them? It behooves thee then
By your own laws to prove such claim unjust.
To which they make answer:
Ah! never may I be perforce a thrall
To man. By heaven-directed flight I break
The wayward plan of these detested nuptials.
Arm justice on thy side, and with her aid,
Judge with what sanctity the gods demand.
The reply of Pelasgus is as follows:
No easy province: Make not me your judge,
Great though my power, it is not mine to act,
I told thee so, without my people’s voice
Assenting.
It is plain that these lines refer to a time when woman was not “a
thrall to man.” It relates also to a time when the _basileus_ or chief
could not act without the consent of his people.
That in the earliest traditions and accounts of the Greeks, women
occupy a much more exalted position than they do four or five centuries
later, is a fact which can be explained only by the truths which have
been set forth in the foregoing pages; namely, the capture of women
for wives, at first singly and finally in groups. We have seen that
during the period designated as the Latter Status of barbarism, wars
were frequently undertaken upon no other pretext than that of securing
women for wives. Cities were attacked and destroyed, the men murdered,
and the women carried away captives. Property both landed and personal
was seized and held by the conquerors, and as these captured women
were strangers, aliens, and dependents in the countries to which they
were taken, they became simply sexual slaves, or wives, and in process
of time sank to the position in which we find them under Solon, the
lawgiver of Athens.
The difference in the sentiments entertained toward women during
Homer’s time and those which had come to prevail among the Greeks in
the sixth century, B.C., may be observed in the following lines from
Æschylus, and also in a quotation from _The Iliad_, which follows.
At the siege of Thebes, when the women, fearing captivity more than
death, appeared before the sacred images to pray for protection,
Etiocles the chief, trembling with fear, and himself praying loudly to
Jove, to Earth, and “all the guardian gods,” being displeased with the
attitude of the female supplicants, and doubtless eager to exercise his
authority over women thus displays his contempt for them:
It is not to be borne, ye wayward race;
Is this your best, is this the aid you lend
The State, the fortitude with which you steel
The souls of the besieged, thus falling down
Before these images to wail, and shriek
With lamentations loud? Wisdom abhors you.
Nor in misfortune, nor in dear success,
Be woman my associate. If her power
Bears sway, her insolence exceeds all bounds,
But if she fears, woe to that house and city.
And now, by holding counsel with weak fear,
You magnify the foe, and turn our men
To flight: thus are we ruined by ourselves.
This ever will arise from suffering women
To intermix with men. But mark me well,
Whoe’er henceforth dares disobey my orders,
Be it man or woman, old or young,
Vengeance shall burst upon him, the decree
Stands irreversible, and he shall die.
War is no female province, but the scene
For men: hence home; nor spread your mischiefs here,
Hear you, or not? Or speak I to the deaf?[173]
[173] _The Seven Chiefs against Thebes._
From this scene pictured by Æschylus five centuries and a quarter B.C.,
let us return to the siege of Troy, three centuries earlier, and listen
to Homer. During the thickest of the fight Helenus, approaching Eneas
and Hector, his brother, thus addresses the latter:
But, Hector, thou depart
To Troy and seek the mother of us both
And bid her call the honoured Trojan dames,
that at the fane of Pallas they may supplicate for mercy in behalf of
the wives and little ones of the defenders of Troy. Whereupon the noble
Hector calls aloud:
O valiant sons of Troy, and ye allies
Summoned from far! Be men, my friends; call back
Your wonted valour, while I go to Troy
To ask the aged men, our counselors,
And all our wives, to come before the gods
And pray and offer sacrifice.[174]
[174] _The Iliad_, book vi., Bryant’s translation.
After referring to the generally conceded fact that in Europe the
spread of civilization has been commensurate with the influence
exercised by women, Mr. Buckle expresses himself as being unable
to account for the seeming inconsistencies which are presented by a
comparison of the position occupied in Greece by the women of Homer’s
time, and that as pictured by the laws, usages, and social customs in
the age of Plato and his contemporaries.
Although the Greeks during the ages which intervened between Homer
and Plato had made many notable improvements in the arts of life, and
in various branches of speculative and practical knowledge, women had
evidently lost ground, “their influence being less than it was in the
earlier and more barbarous period depicted by Homer.”[175]
[175] _The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge._
The fact will doubtless be borne in mind that at the time Mr. Buckle
penned these words comparatively little concerning the construction or
organization of primitive society was known. That one ethnical period
and a half prior to the earliest age of the historic Greeks, woman’s
influence was supreme in the family and in the gens, that descent was
reckoned in the female line, and that all rights of succession were
traced through mothers, are facts with which this writer was evidently
unacquainted; hence, we are not surprised that in contemplating a
social phenomenon like that presented by the diminution of woman’s
influence during the ages between Homer and Plato, he should have been
at a loss to account for it, and that he should have declared that
the “causes of these inconsistencies would form a curious subject for
investigation.”
Mr. Lecky, also, in referring to the same subject, says:
A broad line must, however, be drawn between the legendary or poetical
period, as reflected in Homer and perpetuated in the tragedians, and
the later historical period. It is one of the most remarkable, and to
some writers one of the most perplexing, facts in the moral history of
Greece, that in the former and ruder period women had undoubtedly the
highest place, and their type exhibited the highest perfection.[176]
[176] _European Morals_, vol. ii., p. 295.
Of marriage in the legendary period of Greek history, Mr. Grote says:
We find the wife occupying a station of great dignity and influence,
though it was the practice for the husband to purchase her by valuable
presents to her parents.... She even seems to live less secluded
and to enjoy a wider sphere of action than was allotted to her in
historical Greece.... A large portion of the romantic interest which
Grecian legend inspires is derived from the women.[177]
[177] _History of Greece_, vol. ii., p. 83.
From the facts which have been brought to light in relation to the
position occupied by women in the age in which Homer wrote, it may be
observed that much of the seeming inconsistency noticed by Mr. Buckle,
Mr. Lecky, Mr. Grote, and others, between the picture of Greek life
as it appeared at this time, and that noticed six or seven centuries
later in the age of Plato, may be easily explained. The triumph of
the male over the female in human society as exemplified amongst the
earliest Greeks, was of such a recent date that the influence of women
was not wholly extinct, and the deference due them had not entirely
given place to that lofty contempt and biting scorn which characterized
the treatment of women by Greek men at a later stage of their career.
Although later in the history of this people, mothers were not regarded
as related to their own children, and although in the age of Homer
relationships had begun to be reckoned through fathers, in many places
this writer reveals to us the fact that the bond between mother and
child was stronger than that between father and child, or that the tie
between sisters and brothers of the same mother was closer than that
between the children of the same father. In Apollo’s address before
the assembled gods, in which he advocates the ransoming of the body of
Hector by Priam and his sons, Homer puts the following words into the
mouth of the oracle:
A man may lose his best-loved friend, a son,
Or his own mother’s son, a brother dear.[178]
[178] _The Iliad_, book xxiv., Derby’s translation.
Numerous illustrations might be drawn from _The Iliad_ as proof of the
fact that the tie between mother and child was still regarded as more
binding than that between father and child. Homer doubtless represents
an age in which the manner of reckoning descent was in dispute, certain
tribes acknowledging only the tie between children born of the same
mother, others only the bond between those of the same father, while
still others acknowledge both, though with a preference for either one
or the other. In the _Eumenides_ of Æschylus the idea of male descent
is put forth as a new doctrine. Orestes, who has murdered his mother,
Clytemnestra, asks: “Do you call me related to my mother?” Although
reproaches and imprecations are heaped upon him for his inhumanity, it
is found that the new doctrine in which the father is represented as
the only real parent, has many adherents—that the gods have concurred
in it, Athene herself having succumbed to the new faith.
No one, I think, who is acquainted with the recently developed facts
relative to human growth, can carefully read _The Iliad_ without
observing the similarity existing between the position occupied by
the women of Greece in Homer’s time, and that of the women among the
tribes and races in a somewhat lower stage of development. On board
the “roomy ships” of the Greeks, the prizes parcelled out to the
chiefs were women. We observe that even the daughters of influential
and wealthy priests, like the oracle of Apollo, might be “carried
off”—an act for which there was absolutely no redress except perhaps
an appeal to the gods. Briseis also was a captured prize assigned to
Achilles by the Greek warriors. Notwithstanding the fact that wives
were still captured, we frequently find women possessed of both wealth
and influence. Helen, although the wife of Meneluas, had vast treasure
which she was able to take away with her when she was carried off by
Paris—treasure over which neither of her husbands seems to have had any
control. Laothoë, the aged wife of Priam, had gold and brass of her own
with which to ransom her sons,[179] and Andromache, the wife of Hector,
who came to Ilium from “among the woody slopes of Placos,” brought with
her not only wealth but sufficient influence to secure for her the
respect of the king’s household.[180]
[179] _The Iliad_, book xxii.
[180] _Ibid._, book vi.
We have seen that in an earlier age, at a time when women were free,
wives had to be captured from foreign tribes; but later, after the
_ba’al_ form of marriage had become established, wives were for the
most part selected from the ranks of native-born women, while foreign
women were usually utilized as concubines. It is true that in the
Homeric age, foreign women sometimes became the wedded wives of their
captors, but unless they possessed great wealth, or unless they were
the daughters of kings, they were unable to command that degree of
consideration due to those who were native-born. The practice, during
the early history of the Greeks, of securing foreign women for
concubines is doubtless the source whence sprang the custom among the
Athenians of later times, of importing all classes of “kept women” from
other countries, Athenian women only being reserved for wives.
During the latter stage of barbarism a marked change in the government
and in the fundamental principles regulating human conduct had taken
place. A review of the facts connected with the history of Greek
society during the ages between Homer and Solon shows that coeval with
the decline of the cardinal principles of the gens, namely, justice,
equality, and fraternity, there had been also a corresponding change
in the relations of the sexes; that during the time in which egoism
or selfishness had gained the ascendancy over the early altruistic
principles developed in human society, woman’s influence had steadily
declined.[181]
[181] A similar change had taken place in the god-idea. Jove was no
longer the “terrible virgin” who “breathes out on crime, misery, and
death,” but, on the contrary, had come to represent a male god who had
given birth to Minerva.