WOMAN;
HER POSITION AND INFLUENCE IN ANCIENT
GREECE AND ROME, AND AMONG
THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
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OF FAITH
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WOMAN;
_HER POSITION AND INFLUENCE IN ANCIENT
GREECE AND ROME, AND AMONG
THE EARLY CHRISTIANS_
BY
JAMES DONALDSON, M.A. LL.D.
_Principal of the University of St. Andrews_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA
1907
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE.
The first three books of this work and a part of the fourth are a
reprint of the following five articles from the _Contemporary
Review_, and of a portion of the sixth, with the kind consent of the
Editor.
1. The Position and Influence of Women in Ancient
Greece.--_Contemporary Review_, July, 1878.
2. The Position and Influence of Women in Ancient
Athens.--_Contemporary Review_, March, 1879.
3. The Position of Women in Ancient Rome.--_Contemporary
Review_, May, 1888.
4. The Position of Women in Ancient Rome.--_Contemporary
Review_, October, 1888.
5. The Position of Women among the Early
Christians.--_Contemporary Review_, September, 1889.
6. The Characters of Plautus.--_Contemporary Review_,
November, 1877.
All the articles have been carefully revised and various additions
have been inserted in them. The fourth book contains discussions of
some important questions bearing on the subject of the work, which are
printed for the first time.
I am indebted to Mr. John Randall for the preparation of the Index.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN
IN ANCIENT GREECE.
CHAP. PAGE
I. PRELIMINARY 1
II. HOMERIC WOMEN 11
III. THE SPARTAN WOMEN 24
IV. SAPPHO 42
V. ATHENIAN WOMEN 49
BOOK II.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN
IN ANCIENT ROME.
I. THE GOOD SIDE 77
II. THE OTHER SIDE 87
III. RELIGION 93
IV. LEGISLATION AND MARRIAGE LAWS 99
V. THE EFFECTS OF MARRIAGE AND OTHER ARRANGEMENTS 112
BOOK III.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN
IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY.
I. HIGH POSITION OF WOMEN AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEGRADATION 148
II. EXPLANATION OF THE DEGRADATION 175
BOOK IV.
SUPPLEMENTARY.
I. WOMEN OF THE HOMERIC PERIOD.
(1) The Gentleness of the Period 192
(2) The Darker Side of the Question 198
(3) Love-Making in Homer’s Time 205
II. WOMEN IN THE GREEK PERIOD.
(1) On the Character of Sappho 207
(2) Aspasia 210
(3) Portraits of Sappho and Aspasia 211
(4) Right of Intermarriage--ἐπιγαμία 211
(5) Athenian Citizenship 212
(6) Date of ‘Ecclesiazusæ’ 215
(7) The Women of Plautus 216
III. WOMEN IN THE ROMAN PERIOD.
(1) Women in Asia Minor 237
(2) The Speech of Augustus on Marriage 238
(3) Medical Women 240
(4) Women in Egypt 241
IV. WOMEN IN THE ANTE-NICENE PERIOD.
(1) Influence of Christianity on Women 248
(2) Callistus 249
BIBLIOGRAPHY 255
INDEX 269
BOOK I.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE
OF WOMEN
IN ANCIENT GREECE.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
Everything that has life has a course within certain limits
predetermined for it, through which it passes until it finally
disappears. The seed of the oak gathers materials from earth and sky
until it fashions itself into the majestic tree. It will not become a
rose or an elm. So it is with the higher animals and man. The lines
of their progress through life are distinctly marked off. But within
the limits special to each class, there are different degrees of
perfection. All the individuals seem to strive after an ideal which
none attains, to which some come very close, and to which all more
or less approximate. Man has also his ideal, but in addition to the
instinctive power of soul which strives after the ideal, he has the
faculty of being conscious of the ideal and of consciously striving
after it. What is true of man, is true of woman. What is the ideal of
woman? What could we call the complete development and full blossoming
of woman’s life? I have no intention of answering this question, much
agitated in the present day. I do not think that I could answer it
satisfactorily, but it is requisite for the historian of woman in
any age to put it to himself and his readers. A true conception of
woman’s ideal life can be reached only by the long experience of many
ages. The very first and most essential element in the harmonious
development of woman’s nature, as it is of man’s, is freedom, but this
is the very last thing which she acquires. Impediments have arisen on
every hand to hinder her from bringing her powers into full activity.
Ignorance, prejudice, absurd modes of thought prevalent in particular
ages, conventional restraints of an arbitrary nature, laws that have
sought to attain special aims without regard to general culture and
well-being--these and like causes have prevented us from seeing what
woman might become if she were left unfettered by all influences but
those that are benign and congenial. It is the part of the historian to
take note of these obstacles, and to see what, notwithstanding these,
woman can do and aims at doing.
The first condition, therefore, of a successful study of woman’s
history is to come unbiassed to the task. We must for the time keep
in abeyance our prevalent opinions. There is peculiar need for this
in this subject, because, should we have false opinions, they are
sure to be held with a tenacity which is great in proportion to their
falsehood; and should we have true, we are likely to give them an
exaggerated importance and power; for all opinions on women are apt to
be intense. We have therefore to suspend our ordinary modes of thought,
and enter into conceptions and feelings and a manner of life widely
different from our own. Some of these differences I must explain before
I enter on my history.
And first of all the Greeks looked at the relations between the sexes
from a point of view utterly strange to us. Amongst us there exists a
clear and definite doctrine which lays down rigidly what is right and
what is wrong. The Greeks had no such doctrine. They had to interrogate
nature and their own hearts for the mode of action to be pursued. They
did not feel or think that one definite course of conduct was right,
and the others wrong; but they had to judge in each case whether
the action was becoming, whether it was in harmony with the nobler
side of human nature, whether it was beautiful or useful. Utility,
appropriateness, and the sense of the beautiful were the only guides
which the Greeks could find to regulate them in the relations of the
sexes to each other.
We have to add to this that their mode of conceiving nature was quite
different from ours. To them everything was natural, or, if you like,
supernatural. If wine gladdened or maddened the heart of man, the
influence was equally that of a god. The Greek might be perplexed why
a god should madden him, but he never doubted the fact. And so it was
with love. The influence which the one sex exercises on the other is
something strangely mysterious. Two persons of different sexes meet.
If we look at them, we see nothing very remarkable in either. And
if we continue our look for an hour or two, we might notice nothing
remarkable going on. Yet a very extraordinary change has taken place.
The hearts of both have begun to vibrate wildly. The commonplace
man has had wings furnished to his mind, and he sees heaven opening
before his eyes, and an infinite tenderness suffuses his soul. The
girl, who could not utter a word in her own behalf before, has had
her lips unsealed, and wit and brightness and poetry sparkle in every
sentence which she addresses to her companion. She too flings from her
the ordinary routine of daily life, and sees before her a paradise
of purest bliss and unending joy. Whence comes all this inspiration?
Whence this temporary elevation of the mental powers? Whence this
unsealing of mortal eyes, till they see the beatific vision? “From a
divine power,” said the Greeks. And this divine power seemed to them
the most irresistible of all. It swayed the gods themselves. If the
gods themselves could not but yield to the magic power, how could it be
expected that a mortal could resist? The religion of the Greeks could
not with such a mode of conception strongly aid them in self-restraint.
It could merely inculcate forbearance and compassion. And this we
find to be the case. In a speech which Sophocles puts into the mouth
of Dejanira, she expresses her conviction that a wife has no right to
expect a husband to be always faithful to her, or to blame the woman
with whom he falls in love. “Thou wilt not,” she says, “tell thy tale
to an evil woman, nor to one who knows not the nature of man, that he
does not naturally rejoice always in the same. For whosoever resists
Love in a close hand-to-hand combat, like a boxer, is not wise. For he
sways even the gods as he wishes, and me myself also; and how should
he not sway another woman who is such as I am? So that if I find fault
with my husband caught with this disease, or with this woman the cause
along with him of nothing that is disgraceful, or to me an evil, I
am unquestionably mad.”[1] Such religious forbearance is not found
in poetry only. It is inculcated on wives as a strict part of their
duty by a female Pythagorean philosopher, Periktione, who wrote on the
harmony of woman.[2] “For a wife,” she says, “ought to bear all the
circumstances of her husband, whether he be unfortunate, or err in
ignorance, or in disease, or in drunkenness, or have intercourse with
other women, for this error is permitted to husbands, but no longer to
wives, for punishment awaits them.” No doubt this indulgence conceded
by Periktione is due partly to the idea, which does not belong to
the earliest period of Greek life, that the wrong-doing of the wife
introduced impurity into the breed of the citizen while the wrong-doing
of the husband had generally no such effect. But there existed also
the feeling expressed more generally in regard to human nature both
of men and women by Dejanira. The sentiment disappears only before a
philosophy such as that of Plato and Aristotle, which rose far above
the common conceptions of the Divine Being. Both of these philosophers
prescribe punishments for those who violate marriage, though their
rules are not absolute but depend on circumstances. Plato says:[3] “And
as to women, if any man has to do with any but those who come into his
house duly married by sacred rites, whether they be bought or acquired
in any other way, and he offends publicly in the face of all mankind,
we shall be right in enacting that he be deprived of civic honours
and privileges, and he be deemed to be, as he truly is, a stranger.”
Aristotle[4] leaves a larger margin for the husband, but suggests that
in certain circumstances of transgression the offending husband should
be punished with loss of his rights as a citizen in proportion to the
offence.
Throughout our estimate of women, it is also of great importance to
remember the passionate love of beauty which animated the Greeks. A
modern mind can form almost no idea of the strength and universality of
this passion. The Greeks loved everything that was beautiful, but it
was in the human body that they saw the noblest form of earthly beauty.
They did not confine their admiration to the face. It was the perfect
and harmonious development of every part that struck them with awe. It
would occupy too much space to give a full account of this love of the
beautiful, or to bring home the intensity of the Greek feeling. One
instance will suffice. The orator Hyperides was defending the Hetaira
Phryne before a court of justice. His arguments, he thought, fell on
the ears of the judges without any effect. He began to regard his case
as hopeless, when a happy idea struck him, and tearing open the garment
of his client, he revealed to the judges a bosom perfectly marvellous
in form. The judges at once acquitted her, and I have no doubt that the
whole Greek sentiment agreed with their decision. But we should make
an entire mistake if we were to suppose that the judges were actuated
by any prurient motive. One of the writers who relate the circumstance
gives the reason of the decision. The judges beheld in such an
exquisite form not an ordinary mortal, but a priestess and prophetess
of the divine Aphrodite. They were inspired with awe,[5] and would
have deemed it sacrilege to mar or destroy such a perfect masterpiece
of creative power. And though no doubt there were low-minded Greeks,
as there are low-minded men everywhere, yet it may be affirmed with
truth that the Greeks did not consider beauty to be a mere devil’s
lure for the continuance of the race, as Schopenhauer represents it,
but they saw in it the outshining of divine radiance, and the fleshly
vehicle was but the means to lead on the soul to what is eternally and
imperishably beautiful.
These are only some of the points in which the Greeks differed widely
from us, and we must realize the difference before we can read the
history aright. But this history has to face other difficulties. The
influence of woman is often exercised most powerfully in such a quiet
and unobtrusive manner that no historian can take note of it. Who, for
instance, could narrate the action of beauty and of beautiful ways upon
thousands of hearts? The influence is silent, but not the less potent.
We have this additional difficulty in Greece, that almost all we know
of women is derived from men. Now, men rarely write dispassionately
of women. They either are in love with them, or hate them, or pretend
to hate them. They have had sweet or bitter experience of them. And
when they do write about them, they write according to that experience.
But not only is the history of Greek women written by men, but it was
written for men. This fact must be specially remembered when we have
to deal with the utterances of the comic poets, for women did not act
in the plays, nor is it probable that they were even present at the
comedies during the best days of Athens. But men taking the parts of
women are sure to act them with all the exaggeration and licence which
are natural to such representations. No great stress must, therefore,
be laid on the wild abuse of women which can be culled in large
abundance from Greek writers. One early satirical poet[6] (Simonides of
Amorgos) divides women into ten classes, of which only one is good. And
he proceeds with his invective very much as if woman did not exist.
“Listen, O people,” says Susarion, who may be called the
inventor of comedy. “Susarion says this: Women are an evil,
but nevertheless, O countrymen, it is not possible to have a
househould without evil, for to marry is an evil and not to
marry is an evil.”[7] (Stob. 69, 2).
A satiric poet (Hipponax)[8] gives it as his opinion that “a man has
only two very pleasant days with his wife--one when he marries her,
the other when he buries her.” A comic poet (Philemon) says pithily,
“Woman is an immortal necessary evil.”[9] Euripides says:--
“Terrible is the force of the waves of the sea, terrible the
rush of river and the blasts of hot fire, terrible is poverty,
and terrible are a thousand other things; but none is such a
terrible evil as woman. No painter could adequately represent
her: no language can describe her; but if she is the creation of
any of the gods, let him know that he is a very great creator of
evils and a foe to mortals.” (Stob. 73, 1.)
Quotations like these could be made in hundreds, but they really tell
us little. They could be matched by a large number of sayings from
the same authors in which woman is praised to the skies. Euripides
was specially blamed as a hater of women. The remark was made in the
presence of Sophocles. “Yes,” said he, “in his tragedies.” And even in
his tragedies he has painted women of exquisite tenderness of heart,
and capable of the grandest self-sacrifice and of the purest love.