THE HOMERIC WOMEN.
In treating of Greek women I can only select prominent periods. And the
first that comes before us is the Homeric.[10] And here we require all
the power of transporting ourselves into different times that we can
command; for the phenomena are singular and unique. If we look at the
external position of women, we must place the Homeric age exceedingly
low in civilization. Women have almost no rights; they are entirely
under the power of man, and they live in continual uncertainty as to
what their destiny may be. The woman may be a princess, brought up in
a wealthy and happy home; but she knows that strangers may come and
carry her off, and that she may therefore at some time be a slave in
another man’s house. This uncertainty seems to have produced a strong
impression on their character. They are above all women meek. If the
terrible destiny comes upon them, they submit to it with all but
unrepining gentleness, and their gentle ways soon overcome the heart
of their warrior tyrants, and they make them their companions and
friends. But low though this position be, it has to be noted that it is
the inevitable result of the character of the times. Might was right.
The strong arm alone could assert a right. The warrior had to defend
even what belonged to him against any new comer. He himself sacked the
cities of others. His own city, too, might be sacked, and if his wife’s
fate was to be carried off and to become the mistress of his conqueror,
his own was to perish mercilessly by the cold edge of the sword.
Man and woman alike held their lives in their hands. Women were not
warriors, and therefore they had to depend entirely on the protection
of men, and were consequently subject to them.
Such was their external position. But when we look to the actual
facts of the case, nowhere in the whole range of literature are women
subjected to a sway so gentle, so respectful, so gracious. Indeed,
it can scarcely be called a sway at all. The physical force which,
no doubt, exists is entirely in the background. In the front we see
nothing but affection, regard, and even deference. The men appear never
to have found fault with the women. It was natural for a woman to love,
and she might do what they would deem an eccentric or disproportionate
action in consequence of this influence; but it was either a man or a
god that was to blame. She was for the time mad. Even in the case of
Helen, who brought so many disasters on Greeks and Trojans, the men
find no fault. She reproaches herself bitterly, but the men think that
it was Paris who was to blame, for he carried her off forcibly. How
could she help it? And how could she prevent Paris falling in love with
her? It was the business of woman to make any man happy whom destiny
brought into her company, to diffuse light and joy through the hearts
of men. Helen was surpassingly beautiful, knew all womanly works to
perfection, was temperate and chaste, according to their ideas,[11]
and had a mind of high culture. All these were gifts of the gods, and
could not but attract. The Trojans themselves were not surprised that
Paris should have fallen under the spell of her charms; for a being so
beautiful was a worthy object of contest between Greeks and Trojans.
But she did nothing to excite Paris. She would have been happier with
Menelaus. And when Paris was slain and Troy captured, Helen gladly
returned to her former husband, and again occupied her early queenly
position with dignity and grace, as if nothing had happened.
The only woman in regard to whom harsh words are used is Clytemnestra;
but even in her case the man is much more censured than the woman, and
if she had merely yielded to Ægisthus, under the strong temptations,
or rather overpowering force, to which she was exposed, not much would
have been said. Agamemnon would have wreaked his vengeance on the male
culprit, and restored his wife to her former place. But at last she
became the willing consort of Ægisthus, and his willing accomplice in
the dreadful crime of murder. Yet even for this it is on Ægisthus that
the poet lays the burden of the blame. For this mild judgment of women
there were several causes. First, the Homeric Greeks were strongly
impressed by the irresistible power of the gods and of fate, and the
weakness of mortals; they thus found an easy excuse for any aberrations
of men, but especially of helpless women; and their strong sense of the
shortness of life and the dreariness of death led them to try to make
the best of their allotted span.
Then their ideas of love and marriage tended to foster gentleness.
In the Homeric poems there is no love-making; the idea of flirtation
is absolutely and entirely unknown. They no doubt spoke sweet words
to each other, but they kept what they said to themselves. And a man
who wished to marry a girl proved the reality of his desire generally
by offering the father a handsome gift for her, but sometimes by
undertaking a heavy task, or engaging in a dangerous contest. And when
she left her father’s home, she bent all her ways to please the man who
had sought after her, and she succeeded. In the Homeric poems the man
loves the woman, and the woman soon comes to love her husband, if she
has not done so before marriage. The Homeric Greeks are, even at this
early stage, out-and-out monogamists.[12] Monogamy is in the very heart
of the Greek heroes. No one of them wishes for more than one woman.
There is a curious instance of the power of heroic affection in
Achilles. A captive widow has become his partner before the walls
of Troy. She is very fond of him, and he becomes very fond of her.
But there is no proper marriage between them, and Achilles could not
worthily celebrate his marriage in a camp far from his friends and
home. Yet such is his love for her, and her alone, that she is to him
a real wife.[13] And when Patroklos dies, Briseis, in her lament over
him, states that he promised that he would make her the wedded wife
of Achilles, and take her to Phthia, the native land of the hero, and
celebrate the marriage feast among the Myrmidons.[14] Probably Achilles
had often given her the same promise, though he knew that his father
might assign him a wife, and there might thus be difficulties in the
way, and Patroklos had offered to help him in carrying out his design.
If there was such true love to a captive, we may expect this still more
to be the case with wives of the same race and rank. And so it is.
Beautiful, indeed, is the picture of married life which Homer draws.
“There is nothing,” he says,[15] “better and nobler that when husband
and wife, being of one mind, rule a household.” And such households he
portrays in the halls of Alcinous and Arete, and in the Trojan home
of Hector and Andromache[16], but still more marked and beautiful is
the constant love of Penelope and Ulysses.[17] Indeed, Homer always
represents the married relation as happy and harmonious. In the
households of earth there is peace. It is in the halls of Olympus that
we find wife quarrelling with husband. But the love of these women to
their husbands is the love of mortals to mortals. They do not swear
eternal devotion to each other. They have no dream of loving only one,
and that one for ever, in this life and the next. They do not look much
beyond the present; and, therefore, if a husband or wife were to die,
it would be incumbent on the survivor to look out for a successor. Even
when a husband is long absent from his wife, it is not expected that
he can endure the troubles of life without the company and comfort
of one woman’s society. Thus Agamemnon takes to himself the captive
Chryseis, and comes to love her better than his wife. Thus Achilles
becomes so attached to Briseis as to weep bitterly when she is taken
from him; but when she is taken from him, he consoles himself with the
beautiful-cheeked Diomede. And Ulysses, though he loves his Penelope
best, and longs for her, does not refuse the embraces of the goddesses
with whom he is compelled to stay in the course of his wanderings.
Homer’s insight into human nature is apparent in the circumstance that
it is only in the heart of a true woman that he places resistance to
the ordinary modes of thought. The peculiarity of Penelope’s affection
is that it will not submit to prevalent ideas; she loves and admires
her Ulysses, and she will love no other. Contrary to all custom, she
puts off the suitors year after year. The time has arrived when every
one expects her to marry again. She has seen her son Telemachus grow to
manhood. She has now no excuse. But she still refuses, waiting against
hope for the return of him who, in her heart, she believes will return
no more.[18]
After what I have stated I need scarcely say that the influence of
woman was very great in the Homeric period. The two poems turn upon
affection for women. The Trojan war had its origin in the resolution
of the Greeks to recover Helen, and the central point in the Iliad
is the wrath of Achilles because Agamemnon has taken away from him
his captive Briseis. Ulysses and Penelope, as every one knows, are
the subject of the ‘Odyssey.’ The husband consulted his wife in all
important concerns, though it was her special work to look after the
affairs of the house. Arete is a powerful peacemaker in the kingdom of
her husband Alcinous, and it is to her that Nausicaa advises Ulysses to
go if he wishes to obtain his return. All the people worship her as a
god when she walks through the streets. Penelope and Clytemnestra are
left practically in charge of the realms of their husbands during their
absence at Troy, each with a wise man as counsellor and protector. And
the very beautiful Chloris acted as queen in Pylos.[19] Fear also for
the contempt of the women was one motive to bravery.[20] And Laertes,
though he honoured Eurycleia as he honoured his dead wife, behaved in
a seemly manner to her,[21] because he shunned the anger of his wife.
Altogether the influence of Homeric women must be reckoned great and
their condition happy.
For this result two special causes may be adduced--the freedom
which the women enjoyed, and their healthiness, possibly also their
scarceness.
The freedom was very great. They might go where they liked, and they
might do what they liked. There was indeed one danger which threatened
them continually. If they wandered far from the usual haunts of their
fellow-citizens, strangers might fall upon them and carry them off into
slavery. Such incidents were not uncommon. But apart from this danger,
they might roam unrestricted. They were not confined to any particular
chamber. They had their own rooms, just as the men had theirs; but they
issued forth from these, and sat down in the common chamber, when there
was anything worth seeing or hearing. Especially they gathered round
the bard who related the deeds of famous heroes or the histories of
famous women. They also frequented the wide dancing place which every
town possessed, and with their brothers and friends, joined in the
dance. Homer pictures the young men and the maidens pressing the vines
together. They mingled together at marriage feasts and at religious
festivals. They took part with the men in sacrificing,[22] or they went
without the men to the temples and presented their offerings.[23] In
fact, there was free and easy intercourse between the sexes. They thus
came to know each other well, and as the daughters were greatly beloved
by their fathers, we cannot doubt that their parents would consult
them as to the men whom they might wish for husbands. Even after
marriage they continued to have the same liberty. Helen appears on the
battlements of Troy, watching the conflict, accompanied only by female
attendants. And Arete, as we have seen, mixed freely with all classes
of Phæacians.
Along with this freedom, and partly in consequence of it, there
appears to have been an exceedingly fine development of the body.
The education of both boys and girls consisted in listening to their
elders, in attending the chants of the bards, and in dancing at the
public dancing place of the town. There was no great strain on their
intellectual powers. There was no forcing. And they were continually
in the open air. All the men learnt the art of war and of agriculture,
and all the women to do household work. The women made all the clothes
which their relatives wore, and were skilled in the art of embroidery.
But they not merely made the clothes, but regularly washed them, and
saw that their friends were always nicely and beautifully clad. These
occupations did not fall to the lot of menials merely. The highest lady
in the land had her share of them, and none was better at plying the
loom and the distaff than the beautiful Helen.
We have in the sixth book of the ‘Odyssey’ a charming picture of a
young princess, Nausicaa. Nowhere are portrayed more exquisitely the
thoughts and feelings and ways of a young girl who is true to her own
best nature, who is reserved when reserve is proper, and speaks when
a true impulse moves her, who is guileless, graceful, leal-hearted,
and tender. Happily I have not here to exhibit her character, for to
do anything but quote the exact words of Homer would be inevitably
to mar its beauty; but I have to adduce some of those traits which
show how the Homeric girls grew. Nausicaa is approaching the time
when she ought to be married, and in preparation for this event would
like to have all her clothes clean and in nice condition. She goes
to her father, and tells him that she wishes to wash his clothes and
the clothes of her brothers, that he may be well clad in the senate,
and they may go neat to the dance. The father at once perceives what
desire the daughter cherishes in her heart, and permission is granted,
the mules are yoked to the car, the clothes are collected, and the
princess mounts the seat, whip in hand, and drives off with a number of
maid attendants. They reach the river where are the washing trenches.
The clothes are handed out of the car, the mules are sent to feed on
the grass, and princess and maids wash away at the clothes, treading
them with their feet in the trenches. They then lay out the clothes to
dry. While the clothes are drying, they first picnic by the side of
the river, and then, to amuse themselves, engage in a game at ball,
accompanied with singing. This is a day with Homeric girls. They can do
everything that is necessary--drive, wash, spin, and sew. No domestic
work comes amiss to one and all. And they are much in the open air.
They thus all find active employment. Time never hangs heavy on their
hands. And the strength and freshness of body produce a sweetness of
temper and a soundness of mind which act like a charm on all the men
who have to do with them. It seems to me that this explains to some
extent the phenomena of the Homeric poems. There is no vicious woman
in the ‘Iliad’ or ‘Odyssey.’ Some of them have committed glaring
violations of the ordinary rules of life, but they are merely temporary
aberrations or fits of madness. And there is no prostitution. This
healthiness explains also another feature of the Homeric women which
deserves notice. There was an extraordinary number of very beautiful
women.
The district of Thessaly, from which the whole of Greece ultimately
derived its own name of Hellas, is characterized by the epithet
the land of the beautiful women; and several other places are so
characterized. But their type of beauty was not the type prevalent in
modern times. Health was the first condition of beauty. The beautiful
woman was well proportioned in every feature and limb. It was the
grace and harmony of every part that constituted beauty. Hence, height
was regarded as an essential requisite. Helen is taller than all her
companions. The commanding stature impressed the Greeks as being a near
approach to the august forms of the goddesses. As one might expect,
the beauty of the women is not confined to the young girl between the
ages of seventeen and twenty. A Homeric woman remained beautiful for a
generation or two. Helen was, in the eye of the Greek, as beautiful at
forty or fifty as she was at twenty, and probably as attractive, if
not more so. The Homeric Greek admired the full-developed woman as much
as the growing girl.
Such, then, were these Homeric Greek women. The Greek race was the
finest race that ever existed in respect of physical development and
intellectual power. Do we not see, in the account that Homer gives of
the women, something like an explanation of the phenomenon? A race of
healthy, finely formed women is the natural antecedent to a race of men
possessed of a high physical and intellectual organization.