There is another remark that has to be made before we proceed with our

subject. We may have to employ the term Christianity frequently; but

a great mistake would be committed if it were assumed that the term

has always the same meaning. There is the Christianity of Christ, the

Christianity of the first century, the Christianity of Hildebrand,

of Luther, and of Calvin. Christianity is different as it appears in

different ages and persons. In the early centuries the Christianity

of Rome differed from that of Greece and of Africa, and it is not to

be assumed that because one Christian writer mentions a practice,

that practice was therefore universal in the Church. So when we quote

a writer, that writer is of good authority for his own opinion or

practice, of tolerably good authority for the doctrine and practice of

the Christianity of his own country and age, but more faintly for the

Christianity of other countries and ages.

At the time when Christianity dawned on the world women had attained,

as we have seen in our chapters on Roman women, great freedom,

power, and influence in the Roman Empire. Tradition was in favour of

restriction, but by a concurrence of circumstances women had been

liberated from the enslaving fetters of the old legal forms, and they

enjoyed freedom of intercourse in society; they walked and drove

in the public thoroughfares with veils that did not conceal their

faces, they dined in the company of men, they studied literature and

philosophy, they took part in political movements, they were allowed

to defend their own law cases if they liked, and they helped their

husbands in the government of provinces and the writing of books. One

would have imagined that Christianity would have favoured the extension

of woman’s freedom. For Christianity itself was one of the most daring

revolutions which the world has ever seen. It defied all past customs,

it aimed at the overthrow of the religions of the world, it overleapt

the barriers of nationality, and it desired to fuse all mankind into

one family and one faith. Necessarily, such a movement was accompanied

by much excitement and agitation; but when enthusiasm sways any

association of men, and they live in a state of ferment, they break in

pieces the bonds of custom--those very bonds which most firmly chain

women down to a slavish position of routine. Accordingly, at the very

first stage women take a prominent part in the spread of Christianity

and all the activities of Christians.[118] But in a short time this

state of matters ceases in the Church, and women are seen only in two

capacities--as martyrs and as deaconesses.

As martyrs they presented a magnificent spectacle of what poor weak

woman can dare and do when under the impulse of an inspiring faith.

There are especially two genuine Ante-Nicene writings which relate

the courage of women under the agonies of trial. The first is the

letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, written in the reign of

Marcus Aurelius, and the second narrates the martyrdom of Perpetua and

Felicitas in the beginning of the third century. In the letter of the

Church of Lyons the most conspicuous woman is a delicate young slave

of the name of Blandina, to whom every possible kind of torture was

applied, until her body was a mass of deformity, but no word could be

wrung out of her in denial of her Lord. “I am a Christian,” she said,

“and there is no evil done amongst us.” The torturers, finding her

resolution immovable, allowed her a short respite. After an interval

of a day or two she was taken to the amphitheatre to be exposed to the

wild beasts. She was hung up fastened to a stake in the midst of these

animals, but they did not touch her, and she was conveyed back to the

noisome and dark dungeons of her prison. Neither wild beast nor prison

altered her determination. The magistrates were very anxious that she

should recant, and day by day they led her to the scenes of torture, in

the hope that she would be frightened by the terrible sufferings which

she saw her companions endure, and on each occasion they urged her to

swear by the gods. Blandina remained steadfast, and on the last day of

the gladiatorial shows she was taken to the amphitheatre. There she

was scourged and roasted on a red-hot iron chair, then enclosed in a

net and tossed by a bull, and finally stabbed, triumphant in the faith

of a glorious resurrection and a blessed union with her Lord.

The martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas was carried out in similar

circumstances. Felicitas was a slave. Vivia Perpetua belonged to the

higher ranks. She had received a good education, and was married at

the time of her apprehension, and had a child at the breast. She was

only twenty-two years of age. Her father was still a heathen, and urged

her by every possible form of argument and appeal to renounce her

faith, but she was firm. She was then cast into a dungeon, and suffered

agonies on account of the darkness and separation from her child. But

her friends were influential enough to procure an alleviation of her

hardships, and she was permitted to have her infant and to receive

visits from her Christian brethren. After some days the prisoners were

taken to the town hall and tried. Perpetua’s father again assailed her

with entreaties to swear by the gods, and so did the Roman procurator.

“Spare,” said the latter, “the grey hairs of your father, spare

the infancy of your boy, offer sacrifice for the well-being of the

emperors.” But Perpetua was unmoved, and to the fatal question “Are

you a Christian?” she replied “I am a Christian,” and was condemned

to the wild beasts. She returned to her dungeon, there to await the

day of the games. On that day the various prisoners were conveyed to

the amphitheatre, and when the turn of the young women came, Felicitas

and Perpetua were placed in nets and exposed to the attacks of a mad

cow. Perpetua was first tossed up in the air and fell on her loins,

but was not injured so much as to be unable to help Felicitas when she

was crushed to the ground, for she gave her hand to her companion and

lifted her up. The savage fury of the populace was appeased for a time,

and a demand was made for other combatants. As the evening drew on, all

the Christians alive were summoned to receive the final sword-thrust;

they kissed each other and then submitted to their fate. Then the

writer of the narrative exclaims, “O most brave and blessed martyrs,

O truly called and chosen unto the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Every honour was heaped after death on the women who thus suffered

for Christ’s sake, and their ashes and other relics were supposed to

exercise a sanctifying and miraculous influence; but during their lives

it was their duty to stay at home and manage the affairs of their

household and not meddle in teaching or any spiritual function.

Let us look now at the organization of the church. Various ideas are

entertained in regard to this subject. The view that I take of it

is that the organization was the outcome of the necessities of the

case directed by the institutions of the age and the place. The idea

that regulated the forms of organization was that each member should

contribute to the Church, in an orderly way, any gift that God had

given him. And, in the first enthusiasm of the Christian movement,

women were allowed to do whatever they were fitted to do. Accordingly,

we meet in the early Church with prophetesses. Special mention is

made of the four daughters of Philip.[119] The women combine with

the men in spreading the Gospel. St. Paul calls several of them his

fellow-labourers, and one he designates a minister or deaconess (as

some have translated it) of the Church in Cenchreæ. But not many

generations elapse when all this comes to an end, and we hear only of

two classes of women in connexion with the administration of Church

affairs. The first is that of widows. The Church supported its own

poor, and took upon itself especially the maintenance of widows and

orphans. For the widows work was found. Some persons were required

to visit sick women, to convey assistance to poor women, and to rear

orphan children. Widows were selected for this service, but not all

widows. Certain qualifications were deemed essential. The widow

must be at least sixty years of age; she must have made up her mind

not to marry again, and she must have experience in the nursing of

children, so as to give suitable advice to mothers in their distress

and difficulties. And, of course, she must have a good character

for sobriety, discretion, and piety. In process of time the widows

no longer are prominent, and, at length, the institution passes

out of sight. A new class arose. This new class received the name

of deaconesses. Some have thought that deaconesses existed in the

apostolic times, and others have supposed that the office was of early

origin but confined to special localities.

It seems to me that the passages on which these opinions have been

based do not substantiate a fixed and definite office, but mere

casual and sporadic services. It is towards the middle of the third

century that in all probability the new order became common in all the

Churches of the East, for then the circumstances were such as to demand

its existence. First of all widowhood had fallen in the spiritual

market and virginity had risen. It was not wrong for the widow to

have married, but the act implied a certain weakness and she thereby

contracted a stain which rendered her less fit for the service of the

Church. Accordingly, even in the time of Tertullian[120], virgins were

elected for the duties and called widows. “I know plainly,” he says,

“that in a certain place a virgin of less than twenty years of age

has been placed in the order of widows.” He himself objects in the

strongest manner to this innovation, and speaks of this virgin as a

monster--a virgin-widow, and unfit for the work, because she had not

had experience in the married life and in the training of children.

But the respect for virginity was at that time growing, and other

circumstances combined to evoke the new order. To the end of the second

century there were no public buildings for Christian worship. The

Christians met in private houses, and the tenants of the houses made

all the arrangements necessary for the meetings. But when churches

began to be built, officials had to look after them, and this duty was

assigned to the deacons. In the advance of ascetic ideas, the women

sat or stood apart from the men, and entered by a separate door. And

at this door stood the deaconess to direct the worshippers to their

places, and to see that all behaved quietly and reverently. This was

the great work of women in the Church, and in the end became nearly

their only work. But they had also to help the deacons in any service

which was deemed more suitable for women. Thus, in baptism, the women

were immersed, but it was not seemly that all the preparations for the

ceremonial should be made by the men, and the dressing and undressing

were committed to the care of the deaconess. At the same rite the

deacon anointed only the forehead of the Christian woman with oil; the

deaconess then anointed her whole body. The deaconess also undertook

the work which the widows had done in carrying messages and ministering

to the temporal wants of poor women. “Thou shalt send a woman a

deaconess, on account of the imaginations of the bad,” is the order

given in the Apostolical Constitutions.[121]

The widows had no spiritual function. They were not to teach. How

jealous the Church was in this matter is seen from the instructions

given to them: “Let the widow,” is the commandment in the

Constitutions, “mind nothing but to pray for those that give and

for the whole Church, and when she is asked anything by any one let

her not easily answer, excepting questions concerning the faith and

righteousness and hope in God.... But of the remaining doctrines let

her not answer anything rashly, lest by saying anything unlearnedly

she should make the word to be blasphemed.” And the occupation of the

widow is summed up in these words, “She is to sit at home, sing, pray,

read, watch and fast, speak to God continually in songs and hymns.” And

if she wishes to go to any one to eat or drink with him, or to receive

anything from any one, she must first ask the deacon’s consent, and

if she acts without first consulting him she is to be punished with

fasting or separated on account of her rashness.[122]

The deaconesses also were prohibited from teaching. They were superior

to the widows in the liberty of movement which they had, and the widows

were enjoined to be obedient to them; but they had no spiritual

function, and while there is no doubt that they were ordained for their

service, as the widows also were, they had no sacred character, and

could perform no priestly office. To take one instance from Tertullian.

In discussing the administration of baptism, he states that the

bishop has the right of conferring it first of all, then presbyters

and deacons, and then, if none of these are at hand, a layman might

administer, but a woman never. Tertullian thus appeals to the Apostle

Paul. “For how credible would it seem that he who has not permitted a

woman even _to learn_ with over-boldness, should give a female the

power of teaching and baptizing. ‘Let them be silent,’ he says, ‘and at

home consult their own husbands.’”[123]

In the West it is likely that the Church never assigned any

ecclesiastical functions to women, as they were deemed in every respect

inferior to men, and it was regarded as dishonourable to a man to

receive any instruction, direction, or ecclesiastical blessing from a

woman. But it is possible that even in some of the orthodox churches

of the East, probably in remote regions, women may have been entrusted

with the duty of teaching. In the ‘Testamentum of our Lord,’ recently

published by Rahmani, and translated into English by Canon Maclean,

“the widows who had front seats” were enjoined to instruct women, to

prove deaconesses, and to exercise a general superintendence over

the conduct of all the women in the Church.[124] They also seem to be

included in the clergy. But this honour shown to women, some scholars

deem to be indicative of heresy. Bishop Wordsworth[125] regards it as a

proof of semi-Montanism. It is not certain that the Testament was ever

used by any part of any Church called orthodox, or that it represents

actual institutions, though it is more probable that it did represent

the Church order of some small division which considered itself to be

among the orthodox.

The entire exclusion of women from every sacred function stands in

striking contrast with both heathen and heretical practice. The

contrast was present to the minds of the early Christians. “But if,”

says the ‘Constitutions,’[126] “we have not permitted them [women] to

teach, how will any one allow them, contrary to nature, to perform

the office of a priest? For this is one of the ignorant practices of

the atheism of the Greeks (Gentiles) to appoint priestesses to the

female deities.” Priestesses had a high and honoured position among the

Greeks. In early times the Argives dated the events of their history

from the priestesses of Hera, and erected statues to them. Equal

honours were paid to priestesses of Hera in other Doric states, and

to those of Athena Polias, Demeter and Core and many more divinities.

These priestesses took part in the celebrations of festivals, and

were treated with every mark of respect.[127] In Rome the wife of the

Pontifex Maximus took the lead in the worship of Bona Dea, and in the

religious rites which specially concerned women. The most honoured

priest attached to a particular god in Rome, the Flamen Dialis, must be

married, and must resign his office when his wife died, for his wife

was also a priestess, and his family were consecrated to the service

of the god. And the vestal virgins received every mark of respect

that could be bestowed on them, and the amplest liberty. The highest

officials made way for them as they passed along the streets, they

banqueted with the College of Pontifices, they viewed the games in the

company of the Empress, and statues were erected in their honour. The

same respect is accorded to women by many of the heretical Christians.

Nearly every founder of a sect has a woman to aid him. Simon Magus

has his Helene, Montanus his Maximilla, Apelles his Philumene, and so

in the case of other sects. One sect[128] belonging to the Montanists

deserves special notice for the energy with which it supported the

claims of women. It bore various names, such as the Quintiliani, the

Pepuziani, the Priscilliani, and the Bread-and-Cheesites because they

celebrated their mysteries with bread and cheese. They gave special

thanks to Eve because she first ate of the tree of knowledge. They

lauded the sister of Moses and the four daughters of Philip, because

they asserted the right of women to prophesy--that is, to speak in

public the message of God. Frequently in their church seven virgins,

clothed in white and bearing torches, stood up and addressed the

people, and spoke so eloquently that tears of repentance ran down the

cheeks of the audience. In this sect women held the place of bishops

and elders and deacons as well as men,[129] and they appealed to St.

Paul for their practice: for he says, “In Christ Jesus there is neither

male nor female.” It is against this sect that Tertullian, or one

assuming his name, launches his thunderbolts. “The very women,” he

says, “of these heretics how wanton they are! For they are bold enough

to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, it may be

even to baptize.”

In describing another sect, Epiphanius states the reasons why

women should have no priestly functions. The sect was that of the

Collyridians. Epiphanius[130] asserts that there are some who make the

Virgin God. “For they relate,” he says, “that some women in Arabia

[ἐκεῖσε, not intelligible][131], from the parts of Thrace have

introduced this new dogma, so as to offer up a cake (κολλυρίδα) to

the name of the Ever-Virgin, and assemble together and attempt--going

beyond all bounds--to perpetuate an unlawful and blasphemous deed to

the name of the Holy Virgin, and to her name to perform sacrifice

through women, which is an action entirely impious and unlawful,

alien to the preaching of the Holy Spirit; so that the whole is an

energy of the devil, and the teaching of an unclean spirit.” He then

mentions[132] that worship was paid in some places to the daughter of

Jephtha and the daughter of Pharaoh, and Thermutis, the daughter of

Amenoph, the Pharaoh, because she reared Moses. In ‘Haer.’ 79, c. i.,

he says that those who exalted Mary above humanity are none else than

women: “for the race of women is prone to slip, and is unstable and low

in their thoughts.” The thought comes from the devil, as formerly the

devil inspired Quintilla, Maximilla, and Priscilla. And he proceeds,

“For some women, adorning a curicum or four cornered seat, and covering

it with a cloth on some special day of the year, place out bread on

some days and offer it to the name of Mary; and all of them partake

of the bread, as we have already explained partially in the letter

which we wrote to Arabia.” He then refutes the heresy, the principal

point attacked being that the heretics made women priestesses. No

woman was at any time a priestess to God: Eve herself was not; none

in the Old Testament, none in the New. No woman was ever made a bishop

or presbyter, and a deaconess is not a priestess, but a servant of

the Church appointed for special purposes. Christ made none of the

women who served Him priestesses--not Salome, not even His mother, nor

Martha, nor Mary, &c.

Such, then, was the position which woman occupied in the Church in

the course of the first three centuries of Christianity. The highest

post to which she rose was to be a doorkeeper and a message-woman, and

even these functions were taken away from her during the Middle Ages.

Was there a reason for this? Perhaps we may find some clue to this

phenomenon in the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church formed of

the nature of woman.

It is one of the curious features of early Christianity that it did

not discuss some of those social problems which would naturally have

suggested themselves. Thus no objection is taken to slavery, though

the Therapeutæ had already denounced it as unlawful and inhuman.

Christianity proclaimed a gospel of love, which had no limit but

that of the human race. And it applied this gospel to all classes.

The Christian slave thus became the brother of all members of the

community, received kindness from all, and was admitted to equal rights

and privileges. But Christianity also enjoined on him submission to

the will of his proprietor urging the belief that man is bound to

be content with the position in which he is, to bear patiently all

the ills of this life in the certain hope of a glorious future. The

marriage laws and customs prevalent throughout the Roman world in

the first ages of Christianity ought to have created difficulty, but

nothing is said of this difficulty. Thus a Christian slave woman was

the property of her master, her children were a source of gain to him,

and he took entire control over this matter, as over the breeding

of cattle. Yet we do not hear of any discussion in regard to this

arrangement, nor of any attempt to rescue the slave woman from the

treatment to which she must have been subjected. Again, the Roman law

recognized marriages only between citizen and citizen; but a very large

number of the early Christians had not the rights of citizenship until

the beginning of the third century, and if they made associations of

the nature of marriage, their children were deemed illegitimate by

the civil law. Probably the Church defied the civil law. It became

a maxim that Christians were not to go to law with each other, and

the Church established laws and a jurisdiction of its own. In the

case of marriage this was peculiarly necessary, as the marriage of a

believer with an unbeliever caused to the former great inconvenience

in carrying out his faith, and, indeed, supplied strong temptations

to apostasy. Such marriages were therefore from the first forbidden,

on pain of expulsion. It is likely, then, that any Christian man and

woman were regarded as duly married, notwithstanding the civil law,

if they had got the consent of the bishop; and secret connexions--that

is, connexions not first professed in the presence of the Church--were

considered akin to vice.

The questions that occupied the Christian mind related rather to the

moral character of marriage. These questions were raised first of all

by the heretical sects, which applied philosophy to the tenets and

practice of the Church. And it is one of the most interesting facts

in early Christian history that the Church, in combating these sects,

succeeded in defeating them, but always carried off a large portion

of their heretical opinions for its own permanent use. The sects may

be divided into two classes. Some[133] affirmed that marriage was

unnecessary, that full liberty had been conceded to them of indulging

the passions, and that, indeed, the way to rise to perfection was by

a practical acquaintance with all forms of action possible to man.

Others[134] held that marriage was immoral, that the flesh was corrupt,

that those who sowed to the flesh must reap corruption, and that in

the kingdom of God on earth, as in heaven, there is neither marrying

nor giving in marriage. It is difficult to trust all that is said

about these heretical sects--for our accounts are derived from the

orthodox alone--and in regard to this matter of marriage the orthodox

invariably accuse the heterodox of licentiousness. But there was no

class of people who ought to have been more careful in their assertions

than the orthodox, as they themselves were accused of the vilest crimes.

It is one of the most striking facts in all history that in the second

century the Christians were universally believed by Pagans to be secret

conspirators combined for immoral purposes, and at their trials it was

sufficient for a man to confess that he was a Christian to be condemned

as a licentious villain. The assertions made in regard to them were

that they met in secret, that slaughtering an infant they poured his

blood into a cup, and that passing this cup round they all drank of

it; that then the lights were extinguished, and the men and women

proceeded to indiscriminate licentiousness. How could such ideas have

arisen? An explanation of this reveals to us marked peculiarities of

the early Church in the treatment of women, and may help us to see how

the later opinions arose. Christianity came at first in the fervour

of an overpowering love--love to God and love to man, irrespective

of his race, position, or belief. But this fervour of love directed

itself with special force to those who accepted the same faith. They

called each other fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers

and sisters. They were in the habit of assembling before dawn or at

night, men and women together, in private houses, to conduct their

worship. The assembly consisted of a strange assortment of characters

and grades. The Apostle Paul,[135] in writing to the Corinthian Church,

says to them: “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor

adulterers, nor effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor cheats, nor

drunkards, nor revilers, nor plunderers, shall inherit the Kingdom of

God: and these things were some of you.” And there were in the assembly

the bond and the free, the rich and the poor, the high and low, but

with a large preponderance of the low. It was natural for a heathen

to suppose that an assembly composed, as he would consider it, of the

dregs of society, and meeting in hours of darkness, had no good object

in view. And the account which they themselves gave of their worship

sounded to a Pagan equally contemptible. The Christians affirmed that

they worshipped a poor carpenter, a son of despised Galilee, the child

of a husbandless mother. Then they spoke of eating a body and drinking

blood. But perhaps colour was given to the accusation most of all by

two institutions which have now passed away, except in the case of one

or two small sects.

In the days of the first fervour the Christian brethren set up a plan

of voluntary socialism, and wished to have all things in common; but

the plan did not work, and they had recourse to a systematic relief of

the poor. One feature of this relief was what were called Love-feasts.

It was not unusual in ancient times for large bodies of men to dine

together, and large dinner-parties were often made up by each man

bringing his contribution to the feast. With some such idea as this

the Christians met, men and women together, the rich bringing the

supplies, and they all dined together. Probably they did this every day

at the earliest period, and some think that these meals constituted

the celebration of what is called the Lord’s Supper. The love-feasts

were unquestionably associated with this institution; but in the course

of time they became less frequent, and generally took place after the

administration of the Eucharist. They continued till the fifth century

at least, and were often held in the churches after churches were

erected. These dinners were not always scenes of perfect propriety,

as St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians shows, and on some

occasions intoxication and riotousness prevailed. These feasts went by

the name of Loves, or Love-feasts, as we now translate the word. We

need not wonder that Pagans should suspect that the Loves were not of

the purest.

Then there was another practice, still more foreign to our Christian

ideas. There is no command in the New Testament to keep the Sunday,

or to stand or sit at singing, or to repeat the Creed or to keep

Good Friday or Christmas, or to do a hundred other things about

which Christians have wrangled with all earnestness; but there is

a commandment five times repeated in the Apostolic Epistles, and

indicative of the strong bond of brotherhood which bound Christian

brothers and sisters to each other, to this effect: “Salute the

brethren with a holy kiss,” or in another form, “Salute the brethren

with a kiss of love.” It is likely that at first this kiss was imparted

at every meeting, but gradually it became limited to the great

sacramental occasions, such as baptism and the Eucharist. At first,

too, and for a considerable time, the Christian brothers and sisters

kissed each other. It is easy to see that such a practice would give

rise to scandalous reports, and there is evidence in the ecclesiastical

writers that the early Christians did not always make it a holy kiss,

as it should have been. Athenagoras[136] quotes a saying which he

attributes to our Lord, and which evidently deals with an abuse of

this practice. It is to this effect: “Whoever kisses a second time,

because he has found pleasure in it, commits a sin.” And Clement[137]

of Alexandria thus speaks of the matter: “Love is not tested by a kiss,

but by kindly feeling. But there are those that do nothing but make the

churches resound with a kiss. For this very thing, the shameless use of

the kiss, which ought to be mystic, occasions foul suspicions and evil

reports.”

These customs prove that considerable freedom prevailed among the

earliest Christians, and doubtless sometimes this freedom was abused.

In the very first epoch some of the Corinthian Christians sided with

a man who committed incest and persisted in it after rebuke, and the

Apostle had to exert himself to the utmost to repress the sympathy

and the sin, but the accusations, speaking generally, were hideously

false and unfounded. They are of some consequence for our purpose, for

they must have acted powerfully on the minds of Christians in inducing

them to avoid everything that might furnish even the semblance of

justification for them.

CHAPTER II.

EXPLANATION OF THE DEGRADATION.

From a very early date two currents can be traced in the Church--one

in the direction of upholding marriage, another in that of despising

and rejecting it. No one with the New Testament as his guide could

venture to assert that marriage was wrong, and the tradition remained

firm in the Church during the Ante-Nicene period that it was unlawful

and heretical to forbid marriage. The Apostolic Fathers[138] offer

exhortations to wives to love their own husbands truly, and to love

all others with no partiality for any one and in all chastity, and to

train up their children in the knowledge and fear of God. As time moves

on, such exhortations become less frequent, but still marriage is held

up as a modified blessing. Tertullian,[139] whose words in an opposite

direction are very strong and numerous, has this passage, “Whence are

we to find language adequate to describe the happiness of that marriage

which the Church cements and the oblation confirms, and the benediction

signs and seals, which angels report and the Father holds as ratified?”

And then he describes the joys of the couple: “Together they pray,

together prostrate themselves, together perform their fasts, mutually

teaching, mutually exhorting, mutually sustaining.” But Tertullian, it

has to be noticed, is not here insisting on the blessings of marriage,

but on the blessedness of a marriage between two believers celebrated

in the face of the Church, in contrast with a marriage between a

believer and an unbeliever not sanctioned by the Church. The duties of

the wife were simple: She had to obey her husband, for he was her head,

her lord and superior; she was to fear him, reverence him, and please

him alone; she had to cultivate silence; she had to spin and take care

of the house, and she ought to stay at home and attend to her children.

The only occasions for her going out were when she went to church, or

with her husband to visit a sick brother.[140]

The other current of thought which I mentioned ran against marriage,

and it was of an ascetic nature. The seeds of it occur in the

‘Republic’ of Plato, and it attached itself to the Pauline conception

of flesh. I can explain it best by a reference to food. We take food

in order to sustain the body. But various kinds of dainties please the

palate, and we may take the food not merely for health, but for the

pleasure that it gives. In the first instance we are acting rightly and

under an irresistible necessity. In the second instance we are sinning,

for we are yielding to a base appetite, the outcome of the flesh. The

flesh, its appetites and passions, are the sources of human corruption,

and gratification of the flesh is a sin. In like manner the sole object

of marriage is that children may be born, and if any other object is

sought, it is a gratification of lust; and, therefore, while marriage

is allowable, man may be nearly as licentious in marriage as out of

it. These inferences are drawn with the utmost precision by Christian

writers of the second and third centuries, and the opinions I have

mentioned will be found expressed in numerous passages. But it is easy

to see that the mind could not halt in this position. Marriage, even

for the sake of children, was a carnal indulgence, and such thinkers

could not help feeling that the arrangement of the Creator was not

altogether satisfactory. They did not venture on saying this. They did

not dare to condemn marriage. But they held that it was much better

not to marry at all, that the man or woman who had never married was a

nobler and more exalted being than the man or woman who had married.

Of course these ideas did not spring into vogue at once, but gradually

forced their way. They were aided by the increasing rigour in the

distinction between clerical and lay. The clerical man must possess a

peculiar sanctity. A man who aspired to a clerical office in the church

must, above all, show control over the lusts and passions of earth,

and so refrain from marriage. The lay brother might be unable to free

himself from the trammels of earth; the cleric could rise to the throne

of heaven only on the wings of virginity. There thus arose a gradation

of merit which had its counterpart in the evolution of the world’s

history. “For the world,” says Methodius,[141] “while still unfilled

with men, was like a child, and it was necessary that it should first

be filled with these, and so grow to manhood. But when hereafter

it was colonized from end to end, the race of man spreading to a

boundless extent, God no longer allowed man to remain in the same ways,

considering how they might now proceed from one point to another and

advance nearer to heaven until, having attained to the very greatest

and most exalted lesson of virginity, they should reach to perfection,

that first they should abandon the intermarriage of brothers and

sisters and marry wives from other families, and then that they no

longer should have many wives, like brute beasts, as though born for

the mere propagation of the species, and then that they should not be

adulterers, and then that they should go on to continence, and from

continence to virginity, when having trained themselves to despise the

flesh, they sail fearlessly into the peaceful haven of immortality.”

Marriage, according to this writer, was not abolished by Christ, but

it was a state of inferiority. “For I think,” he makes a virgin say,

“I have gathered clearly from the Scriptures that after the Word had

brought in virginity, He did not altogether abolish the generation of

children; for though the moon may be greater than the stars, the light

of the other stars is not destroyed by the moonlight.” There thus arose

the gradation of virgins, widows, and wives. Tertullian[142] speaks of

wives as women of the second degree of modesty who have fallen into

wedlock.

The current of thought which I have exhibited displays itself, first

of all, in the condemnation of second marriages. The Apostle Paul

permitted these, and the Church could not forbid them. In the Pastor of

Hermas they are not condemned, but Athenagoras[143] raises his voice

against them. “He who deprives himself,” he says, “of his first wife,

even though she be dead, is a cloaked adulterer.” The argument used

against them was that God made husband and wife one flesh, and one

flesh they remained, even after the death of one of them. If they were

one flesh, how could a second woman be added to them? She could not

become _one_ flesh. Tertullian,[144] diverging from the Catholic

to the Montanistic faith, maintained that a second marriage was equal

to a marriage with two wives at one time, and therefore forbidden.

But whatever their arguments were, at the root of the opinion lay the

ascetic tendency of thought. This is seen in Tertullian[145], who

wrote a treatise addressed to his wife, admonishing her not to marry

again if he died first. In speaking of the resurrection he says to

her: “There will at that day be no resumption of voluptuous disgrace

between us”; and in another treatise he remarks: “Let us ponder over

our consciousness itself to see how different a man feels himself when

he chances to be deprived of his wife. He savours spiritually.”[146]

Tertullian, for his age, is exceptional in the strength of his

denunciations, and the Church so far adhered to the Apostolic

permission as to allow laymen to marry twice.

This antagonism to marriage had a great influence on family life. It

is strange how seldom children are mentioned in the Christian writings

of the second and third centuries. Almost nothing is said of their

training; no efforts are mentioned as being made for their instruction.

The Christians had come to the belief that the world had enough of

children, and was fully stocked, and that every birth was a cause of

sorrow and not of joy. One writer[147] interprets the wail of the

infant as he enters the world thus: “Why, O mother, didst thou bring

me forth to this life, in which prolongation of life is progress to

death? Why hast thou brought me into this troubled world, in which,

on being born, swaddling bands are my first experience? Why hast

thou delivered me to such a life as this, in which a pitiable youth

wastes away before old age, and old age is shunned as under the doom

of death? Dreadful, O mother, is the course of life which has death as

the goal of the runner. Bitter is the road of life we travel, with the

grave as the wayfarer’s inn.” Tertullian[148] says: “Further reasons

for marriage which men allege for themselves arise from anxiety for

posterity, and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. To us this is

idle. For why should we be eager to bear children, whom, when we have

them, we desire to send before us to glory (in respect, I mean, of the

distresses that are now imminent); desirous as we are ourselves to

be taken out of this most wicked world and received into the Lord’s

presence.” He describes children as “burdens which are to us most

of all unsuitable, as being perilous to faith.” And again: “Let the

well-known burdensomeness of children, especially in our case, suffice

to counsel widowhood--children whom men are compelled by laws to have,

because no wise man would ever willingly have desired sons.” And he

exclaims,[149] “A Christian forsooth will seek heirs, disinherited as

he is from the entire world.”

Such ideas had necessarily a very powerful effect on the place and

position of woman and on the conception of her nature. What was that

effect? I will attempt to describe it in a few words. I may define man

to be a male human being, and woman to be a female human being. They

are both human beings, both gifted with reason and conscience, both

responsible for their actions, both entitled to the freedom essential

to this responsibility, and both capable of the noblest thoughts and

deeds. As human beings they are on an equality as to their powers,

the differences in individuals resulting from the surroundings and

circumstances of spiritual growth. But man is a male and woman is a

female, and this distinction exists in Nature for the continuance of

the race. Now what the early Christians did was to strike the male out

of the definition of man, and human being out of the definition of

woman. Man was a human being made for the highest and noblest purposes;

woman was a female made to serve only one. She was on the earth to

inflame the heart of man with every evil passion. She was a fire-ship

continually striving to get alongside the male man-of-war to blow him

up into pieces. This is the way in which Tertullian[150] addresses

women: “Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve? The sentence

of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of

necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer

of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law;

you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough

to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of

your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.” And the

gentle Clement of Alexandria[151] hits her hard when he says: “Nothing

disgraceful is proper for man, who is endowed with reason; much less

for woman, to whom it brings shame even to reflect of what nature she

is.” Gregory Thaumaturgus[152] asserts: “Moreover, among all women I

sought for chastity proper to them, and I found it in none. And verily,

a person may find one man chaste among a thousand, but a woman never.”

The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs[153] makes a similar statement,

and adds: “By means of their adornment they deceive first the minds of

men, and they instil poison by the glance of their eye, and then they

take them captive by their doings,” and therefore “men should guard

their senses against every woman.” “The angel of God showed me,” it

says in another passage, “that for ever do women bear rule over king

and beggar alike; and from the king they take away his glory, and from

the valiant man his strength, and from the beggar even that little

which is the stay of his poverty.”[154]

How, then, were men to treat this frivolous, dress-loving,

lust-inspiring creature? Surely the best plan was to shut her up. Her

clear duty was to stay at home, and not let herself be seen anywhere.

And this duty the Christian writers impress upon her again and again.

She is not to go to banquets, where her looks are sure to create evil

thoughts in the minds of men who are drinking largely of wine. She is

not to go to marriage feasts, where the talk and the songs may border

on licentiousness. Of course, she is not to wander about the streets in

search of sights, nor to frequent the theatre, nor the public baths,

nor the spectacles. Does she want exercise? Clement of Alexandria

prescribes for her:[155] “She is to exercise herself in spinning and

weaving, and superintending the cooking, if necessary.” He adds: “Women

are with their own hand to fetch from the store what we require; and

it is no disgrace for them to apply themselves to the mill. Nor is it

a reproach to a wife--housekeeper and helpmeet--to occupy herself in

cooking, so that it may be palatable to her husband. And if she shake

up the couch, reach drink to her husband when thirsty, set food on

the table as neatly as possible, and so give herself exercise tending

to sound health, the Instructor will approve of a woman like this.”

During the only occasions on which she may quit her own house--namely,

when visiting the sick or going to church--she must be veiled; not a

portion of her face must be seen, and when she is in church she must

remain covered. These are the injunctions which occur repeatedly in the

Christian writers. Voices were raised against this ascetic treatment,

among them that of one Bishop of Rome,[156] but they were drowned in

the current of invectives that were directed against woman’s love

of dress and finery and show. These invectives and discussions on

the dress of women and veiling of virgins are numerous. Tertullian,

Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Commodian, and the Apostolic

Constitutions deal minutely with the subject--all on the idea that

woman is a most inflammatory being. Is a woman beautiful? “Natural

grace,” says Tertullian,[157] “must be obliterated by concealment

and negligence, as being dangerous to the glances of the beholder’s

eyes.” Then she must clothe herself from head to foot. In speaking of

her going to church, Clement of Alexandria says: “Let her be entirely

covered, unless she happen to be at home. For that style of dress is

grave, and protects from being gazed at. And she will never fall who

puts before her face modesty and her shawl; nor will she invite another

to fall into sin by uncovering her face. For this is the wish of the

Word, since it is becoming for her to pray veiled.”[158]

Then she must not adorn herself in any way. “It is not right in

God,” says Commodian,[159] “that a faithful Christian woman should

be adorned.” The purpose of clothing is to defend the body against

excess of cold and intensity of heat, and the simplest materials are

sufficient for this purpose. The Christian woman must therefore bid

farewell to embroidery of gold and Indian silks; she is strictly

forbidden to wear gold ornaments of any kind, and she is to avoid all

dyed clothes, as the dye is unnecessary for health, afflicts greedy

eyes, and, moreover, it is false; for God would have made the sheep

purple if He had wished the woollen clothes to be purple. Strong

condemnation is uttered against any attempt to trick out the person.

“Head-dresses,” says Clement[160] of Alexandria, “and varieties of

head-dresses, and elaborate braidings, and infinite modes of dressing

the hair, and costly mirrors in which they arrange their costume,

are characteristic of women who have lost all shame.” And if the

adornment of the natural body is thus condemned, the endless variety

of artificial contrivances employed by the Roman and Greek ladies is

necessarily considered abominable. In regard to the hair, Cyprian[161]

addresses virgins thus: “Are sincerity and truth preserved when what is

sincere is polluted by adulterous colours, and what is true is changed

into a lie by the deceitful dyes of medicaments? Your Lord says, ‘Thou

canst not make one hair black or white,’ and you, in order to overcome

the word of your Lord, will be more mighty than He, and stain your hair

with a daring endeavour and with profane contempt; with evil presage

of the future, make a beginning to yourself already of flame-coloured

hair.” And he uses equally strong expressions in regard to tinting

the eyes, “You cannot see God, since your eyes are not those which God

made, but those which the devil has spoiled. You have followed him,

you have imitated the red and painted eyes of the serpent. As you are

adorned in the fashion of your enemy, with him also you shall burn

by-and-by.” And he thus sums up the exhortations which he addresses

to the virgins: “Let your countenance remain in you incorrupt, your

neck unadorned, your figure simple; let not wounds be made in your

ears, nor let the precious chain of bracelets and necklaces circle

your arms or your neck; let your feet be free from golden bands,

your hair stained with no dye, your eyes worthy of beholding God.”

Notwithstanding all the exhortations which were showered upon the wives

and virgins, the Christian writings prove that human nature often had

its own way. Both Clement and Cyprian tell dreadful stories of some of

the virgins, and in the treatise of Cyprian from which I have quoted

there are lamentations like this: “For this reason, therefore, the

Church frequently mourns over her virgins; hence she groans at their

scandalous and detestable stories; hence the flower of her virgins is

extinguished, the honour and modesty of continency are injured, and all

its glory and dignity are profaned.” At the same time we ought to do

justice to the self-control and perseverance with which many pursued

their high ideal--for the ideal was a high one, as the purity aimed at

was not corporeal merely, but extended over the whole range of life.

“For it would be ridiculous,” says one of the virgins in Methodius, “to

preserve the lustful members pure but not the tongue, or to preserve

the tongue but neither the eyesight, the ears, nor the hands, or,

lastly, to preserve these pure but not the mind, defiling it with pride

and anger.”[162]

Such, then, was the position of women among the early Christians. We

have said nothing of Christian legislation, for we have been treating

of a period when the legislation was carried on entirely by pagans. But

we ought to mention two facts, or two phases of one fact, which had

a great effect on the destinies of mankind, but especially of woman,

and which have found their way into modern legislation. The Roman

father had absolute power of life and of death over his children in

the primitive times of Rome. Gradually this power slackened, but he

retained to the end of heathendom the right to expose his children,

and pagan sentiment supported him in such conduct. The infants, on

their birth, might be drowned or exposed to the cold air, or starved,

or abandoned to wild beasts. In this way deformed and weakly children

were left to perish. A very large number of the children who were

thus disposed of were girls. Christianity condemned this practice

from the first as murder. It went further. It was a question with

the ancients at what time the human fœtus became a living being,

and many maintained that the soul came to it only when it was born.

Tertullian has discussed this subject fully in his ‘Treatise on the

Soul.’[163] He says: “This view [that the fœtus has no soul] is

entertained by the Stoics, along with Aenesidemus, and occasionally by

Plato himself, when he tells us that the soul, being quite a separate

formation, originating elsewhere and externally to the womb, is inhaled

when the new-born infant first draws breath.” This was the opinion

prevalent among all classes of the Pagan world, and the practice was

universal and avowed of killing the fœtus by drugs. But Christianity

took the other view, that the soul came at the earliest stage, and

maintained that it was equally sinful “to take away a life that is

born, or destroy one that is coming to birth.”[164] Accordingly the

heathen practice was forbidden by the Church. The prohibition made

its appearance at an early period in Christianity, for it occurs in

the Epistle of Barnabas,[165] written about the beginning of the

second century, and we are told that Peter says in the Apocalypse (an

apocryphal writing probably of early date) “that abortive infants shall

share the better fate: that these are committed to a guardian angel, so

that, on receiving knowledge, they may obtain the better abode, having

had the same experiences which they would have had had they been in

the body.”[166] This view of the Christians in regard to infanticide

would tend largely to increase the number of women in the world, as

infant girls were the most frequent victims of the practice.

The ascetic tendency, on the other hand, repressed the growth of

population. It had also a deteriorating effect on posterity. The less

spiritual classes of the people, the laymen, being taught that marriage

might be licentious, and that it implied an inferior state of sanctity,

were rather inclined to neglect matrimony for more loose connexions,

and it was these persons alone that then peopled the world. It was

the survival of the unfittest. The noble men and women on the other

hand, who were dominated by the loftiest aspirations and exhibited the

greatest temperance, self-control, and virtue, left no children. During

this period there is a striking absence of home life in the history of

Christians. No son succeeds his father, no wife comforts the wearied

student, no daughter soothes the sorrow of the aged bishop. Perhaps

this absence of domestic affection, this deficiency in healthy and

vigorous offspring, this homelessness, may account in some degree for

the striking features of the next century, and especially the prevalent

hardness of heart. Then men disputed with the utmost bitterness and

ferocity about minute points of doctrine which are now incomprehensible

almost to every one, and matters of absolute indifference to this

generation, and they pronounced sentence of eternal damnation without

the slightest compunction on all who differed from them. Then treatises

were written to show why every heretic should be put to death in this

life and tortured eternally in the life to come. And there is scarcely

a champion of the faith, orthodox or heterodox, who was not accused of

fearful crimes. If a lesson is to be drawn, it surely is that, as with

individuals there is no place like home, so with a State there is no

institution like home; that a community can be great only where there

are happy, harmonious, and virtuous homes, and that homes cannot be

happy and harmonious and virtuous unless woman is accorded a worthy

place in these homes, with freedom of action, with a consciousness

of responsibility, and with the right, unfettered by circumstance or

prejudice, to develope all that is best and noblest in her to the

utmost perfection.

BOOK IV.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

CHAPTER I.

WOMEN IN THE HOMERIC PERIOD.

(1) THE GENTLENESS OF THE PERIOD.

A remarkable mildness pervades all that Homer says of women. The Greeks

were monogamous, but they were so not by law, but from affection, or

principle. Homer, accordingly, finds no fault with the polygamy which

presents itself in the palace of Priam, King of Troy. “He had fifty

sons, nineteen from the same womb, and the rest were borne to him by

women in his halls.”[167] Some of these women are spoken of as if they

were considered the wives of Priam--Laothoe,[168] for instance, and

the beautiful Castianeira,[169] though Hecabe appears as if she were

the only wife. But, in fact, there was no clear line drawn between

marriage and other associations of men with women in Homeric times.

Achilles calls Briseis his wife (ἄλοχος), though she was acquired by

the spear.[170] And Ulysses promises that he will give wives to his

slaves, Melanthius the goatherd and Eumæus the swineherd.[171] Some

have supposed that the words imply that Ulysses would make them free,

but there is no hint of this in Homer. The ordinary wife, or what in

later times might be called the legal wife, is distinguished by the

epithet κουριδίη; but there is no certainty as to the exact meaning of

this word.

Homeric society knows nothing of a degraded class of women. There are

some instances in which what would be called concubinage occurs, but

only twice in the ‘Iliad’ does the word occur (παλλακίς) which was used

to designate this in later ages, both times in the same passage.[172]

And it occurs once in the ‘Odyssey,’[173] in a passage in which Ulysses

invents a tale about himself to prevent recognition. It is evident that

the word involved no idea of blame or reproach.

Still more evident is this gentleness in the treatment which the

children of these women experienced. When a name is assigned them they

are called nothoi (νόθοι), but the name, whatever its meaning might be,

had, as Eustathius points out,[174] and the facts show, no depreciatory

association. The children whose mothers were not the ordinary wives

were still treated as children of the house. When Helen had no hopes

of a son, Menelaus had a son born to him from a slave,[175] and he

married this son to the daughter of Alector with great festivities.

Medesicaste is described as the daughter of Priam nothen (νόθην). She

was married to Imbros, a great warrior who lived with Priam, and that

king “honoured him equally with his sons.”[176] Pedaios was a nothos

to Antenor, “but the divine Theano reared him with great care, like to

her dear children, to please her husband.”[177] Agamemnon addresses

the Telamonian Teucros thus: “Telamonian Teucros, dear head, ruler of

peoples, strike thus if you are to become a light to the Greeks and to

your father Telamon, who reared you when you were little, and though

you were a nothos (νόθος) took care of you in his own house.”[178]

Medon the nothos (νόθος) of Oileus was a leader among the Greeks, and

brother of Ajax.[179]

The nothoi most frequently mentioned are those of Priam.[180] All

of them occupy high positions as warriors, and one of them is the

charioteer of his brother Hector, a position which only the foremost

men could occupy. In the ‘Iliad’[181] two sons of Priam are killed,

a nothos and a gnesios (son of the acknowledged wife), both in one

chariot, the nothos being the charioteer and the gnesios the fighter.

No mention is made in the ‘Odyssey’ of the nothoi. In the passage

already alluded to, in which Ulysses gives a false account of

himself,[182] that hero says that he was the son of a rich man in

Crete, who had many other sons reared in his house, “gnesioi from a

wife; but me a purchased mother, a pallakis, bore, but he honoured me

equally with those who were directly born.” When he died, the haughty

sons divided the livelihood among themselves, casting lots. “But they

gave me very little, and assigned me a house, and I married a wife from

among very rich people, on account of my excellence.” From this passage

we gather that kindness was shown to children born outside the ordinary

marriage, and provision was made for them.

The gentleness of the treatment of the pallakis (παλλακίς) and the

nothoi (νόθοι) has been frequently portrayed with praise in books on

Homer. One of the last who has discussed the subject, Hruza,[183] says:

“This relatively so favourable condition of the nothos and his mother,

both socially and legally (juristisch), is wonderful enough from the

Roman and modern standpoint; but these customs of the age of Hellenic

chivalry find their image in the institutions of mediæval chivalry, in

whose sphere the birth outside of wedlock does not appear as a stain on

mother or child, as it does in the present day.”[184]

Lasaulx[185] tries to show that the kind treatment of nothoi and

pallakis was Asiatic, but his arguments fail, though it is probable

that where polygamy prevailed such treatment would be more common.

Morillot asserts that “according to the later law contained in the

Talmud, all infants whatsoever, even those of a prostitute or an

outcast, had a right to the succession of their father. The sole

exception to this rule referred to infants born of female slaves or

strangers.” In Egypt, no one was regarded as νόθος, not even the child

of a purchased mother. No civil disadvantages attached to illegitimate

children, and the Egyptian papyri of Roman times recognize no social

distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate.[186]

Κουριδίη ἄλοχος in all probability means the wife who belonged by

birth to the predominant and free race to which the husband also

belonged. She was κουριδίη in opposition to the stranger and slave,

who however, might have belonged to an equally free and predominant

race in their own country,[187] and who might be, as Agamemnon says of

Chryseis,[188] “not inferior to the regular wife in form or stature or

in mind and skill in works.” The word does not signify, as many of the

scholiasts influenced by later customs suggested, the lawfully wedded

wife, as there was no law, but only custom, in Homeric times. In the

same way the word nothos (νόθος) was afterwards taken to mean, and

in later Greek did mean, illegitimate and spurious. But it could not

mean illegitimate in Homeric times, for there was no law in regard to

offspring. And it is doubtful if it could be spurious, for as Hruza has

pointed out in the passage referred to, the Homeric Greeks, like some

later Greeks mentioned hereafter, were probably of opinion that the son

partook of the substance of the father and derived nothing essential

from the mother, her function in birth being conceived to be very

much that of the modern incubator. The sons were therefore always the

genuine sons of their fathers. The word γνήσιος which in later Greek

signified genuine, occurs only once in the ‘Iliad’[189] and once in the

‘Odyssey.’[190] Both passages may be later interpolations and the text

of the passage in the ‘Odyssey’ is uncertain, for the Harleian MS. of

the scholia has “born of wives” instead of “born of a wife.” It also

contains a word which occurs nowhere else in Homer, ἰθαιγενής, “born in

the straight line,” probably meaning born of a mother who belonged to

the predominant race or, as moderns would say, to the good society of

her city or country. The chance of text corruptions in this matter is

seen in a passage in the ‘Iliad’[191] where one transcriber, not being

able to understand the words καβησόθεν ἔνδον, altered them into Ἑκάβης

νόθον υἱόν: “the nothic son of Hecabe”!

(2) THE DARKER SIDE OF THE QUESTION.

Some students of Homer may think that I have drawn too mild a picture

of the life and character of Homeric women. They would base their

criticism on some passages of which I have not taken note. These would

be the following:--

In the ‘Odyssey’ a number of women behave badly. They take the side of

the suitors, and act insolently to Ulysses on his return. Especially

the slave Melantho, to whom Penelope had been particularly kind, is

shameless and forward, and Ulysses applies to her epithets that express

strong contempt. But such cases are exceedingly few, and are well

accounted for by special circumstances.

Then, again, a passage occurs in the twenty-fourth Book of the

‘Iliad,’[192] which has excited much discussion. Thetis the goddess

advises her son to find consolation for his distress in the arms of a

woman, and he follows her advice, and seeks out Briseis. Perhaps it

is the direct way in which the statement is made that has offended

critics (ἀγαθὸν δὲ γυναικί περ ἐν φιλότητι μίσγεσθ’), though it is

to be noticed that here, as throughout Homer, the physical enjoyment

is always blended with the notion of friendship. The passage forms a

feature in the dispute whether the last book of the ‘Iliad’ was written

by the author of most of the other books. Some condemned it because

it was unworthy of Homer. Among these was Aristarchus, the great

Alexandrian critic, who was followed by other Alexandrian critics.

But the passage seems to have the simplicity of early thought and

expression. Koechly appears to me to be right when he says in regard to

it: “It is self-evident that we must not let ourselves be deprived of

verses 130–132, which are characteristic, and required by line 675 and

following, through the prudery of the Alexandrians which occurs also

sometimes in other places, although my honoured friend Faesi appears to

approve of striking them out, more, I think, as a gymnasial director

than as a critic of Homer.”[193] Düntzer says[194] “that there is a

similar sentiment in Goethe’s ‘Hermann and Dorothea,’ and that it is

entirely in harmony with old naïve times, ‘der alten naiven Zeit.’”

The last classes of passages that require to be adduced in this

connexion relate how the women washed the men. They are all like each

other, and so only one need be quoted. In the ‘Odyssey’[195] it is said

that “the beautiful Polycaste, youngest daughter of Nestor, son of

Neleus, washed Telemachus; and after she had washed him and anointed

him with olive oil, and cast upon him a beautiful cloak and tunic,”

&c. A similar act is attributed to Calypso.[196] A servant of Circe

bathes Ulysses “out of a great caldron, pouring the water over head

and shoulders.”[197] The δμωαί, or slaves, bathed Peisistratos and

Telemachus,[198] and the exact words used in this passage are repeated

in 8, 454; 17, 88, and similar words occur in the ‘Odyssey.’[199]

Only once is reference made to the custom in the ‘Iliad,’[200] where

it is said Hebe bathed Ares. Mr. Gladstone says the natural meaning

of the words would seem to be that the women actually poured water

over the men, and actually washed them and anointed them with oil.

But he was shocked by the idea that young maidens should perform such

acts, and some critics, both before and after him, have spoken of the

immodesty of the acts.[201] Mr. Gladstone thought that “it is almost

of itself incredible that habitually, among persons of the highest

rank and character, and without any necessity at all, such things

should take placed,[202] and as it is not credible, so neither, I

think, is it true.” And he gets rid of all difficulties by explaining

the words to mean that the maidens brought the water and oil to the

men and left them to wash and anoint themselves. Mr. Gladstone finds

support for his opinion in the ‘Odyssey,’[203] where Ulysses says:

“Nausicaa washed me in the river and gave me these clothes”; and

Ameis agrees with him. In fact, the words must mean that Nausicaa

supplied him with the means of bathing, for Ulysses plainly refers

to the narrative in the ‘Odyssey,’[204] where Nausicaa orders her

maidservants to give food and drink to the stranger, and to wash him

in the river, where there is shelter from the wind. And then it is

related how the attendant maidens brought Ulysses to a sheltered part

of the river, placed clothes beside him, gave him the moist oil in a

golden flask, and urged him to bathe in the currents of the stream.

But the circumstances of Nausicaa and Ulysses, as described in the

episode, are altogether unique. Ulysses comes entirely unawares on the

princess. She is completely disconcerted at first, and shows unusual

presence of mind in facing the strange adventure. Ulysses himself is

also embarrassed, as he shrinks from appearing nude before a beautiful

princess, disfigured as he was by the brine of the sea and by his long

wrestling with the waves. It could not be expected, therefore, that

Ulysses, in concisely narrating what had taken place, should be precise

in the exact use of words. And, therefore, though λοῦσε (bathed) may

be employed loosely in this passage in summing up what had been told

in detail in the previous book, this is no warrant for attributing the

same meaning to it in ordinary occurrences where no expansion of the

subject is made or explanation furnished. And there is one very strong

case against Mr. Gladstone’s notion. In the ‘Odyssey’[205] Helen

says: “I myself was washing him and anointing him with oil.” Emphasis

here is evidently laid on the ἐγώ. Ulysses had penetrated into the

city of the Trojans as a beggar, and no one recognized him but Helen;

but he eluded every test that she employed to make herself sure. She

therefore washed him herself, and she did this probably because she

knew that she could find absolute proof of his identity if she could

but see the scar above the knee, by which afterwards, on his return

home from Troy, Eurycleia recognized him. In all likelihood, therefore,

the natural interpretation is right, and the remark of Schneidewin

on the subject[206] is true: “Die Entblössung scheint für den Zweck

des Badens so sehr ihre Unstatthaftigkeit zu verlieren wie etwa in

der modernen Gesellschaft die Umfassung einer Dame zum Tanz.” And he

might have added that modern nurses and doctors in our own times have

no hesitation in doing what the Homeric maidens did when there is any

necessity, and no one imagines that there is any impropriety in so

doing. Certainly, whatever was the mode, there is no taint of immodesty

in the action. The Homeric maidens, princess and slave, acted with

perfect and unconscious innocence.

I may notice here, as I am dealing with clothes, another case that

comes later--that of the Spartan girls. The testimony is very decided

that these girls wrestled with each other in a state of nudity.

The testimony itself, indeed, is not contemporaneous, though it is

good, and therefore it is possible that it may be erroneous. It is

possible, also, that the word translated “nude” may not in some of the

authorities imply absence of all clothing. Some scholars have rejected

the statements with scorn.[207] One writer has devoted a monograph

to the subject, and his conclusions are of the moderate type. “Illud

pro certo habendum esse puto non in omnibus exercitationibus virgines

prorsus fuisse nudatas neque ulla vestimenta exceptis fortasse iis,

quae ad pudenda tegenda opus essent, retinuisse. Quod quidem in una

exercitatione luctandi factum esse verisimile est. Quoniam enim

virgines luctantes more virorum, ut ait Theocritus poeta, corpora

oleo unguere solebant, fieri non potuit, quin corpora nudarent atque

etiam tunicam, vestimentum interius, exuerent.”[208] But whatever may

be the conclusions reached on this point, testimony is unanimous that

the Spartan girls were modest, and the very opposite of licentious.

“Their stripping,” says Plutarch, “had nothing disgraceful about it,

for modesty was present and incontinence absent”; and he censures

Herodotus for saying that the woman in putting off her tunic puts

off modesty, “for, on the contrary, the chaste woman puts modesty on

instead.” And this was the opinion of the conservative Greeks of the

time of Aristophanes, for they regarded the addition of clothing to

men and women, and the wrapping the limbs up in Ionic dress as a vile

innovation, tending to luxury and lasciviousness.[209]

Bekker points out[210] that the custom of women washing men prevailed

in the middle ages, and he quotes passages in which women bathe the

men and then clothe them. He also supplies a parallel to the Spartan

girls divesting themselves of their clothes. One passage describes the

baptism of damsels by an archbishop, when it is said that the maidens

were stripped of all their clothing before all the barons, and they

were whiter than the flower of the eglantine.

The question has not yet been finally settled whether shame in regard

to the uncovering of parts of the body is or is not a mere social

convention. It is a point which anthropologists should decide. A

curious contribution to it occurs in a recent book of travels by G. F.

Scott Elliot. “These people,” he says of the Wakavirondo,[211] “are

dressed chiefly in air, and, as one always finds in scantily clothed

native races, are peculiarly moral as compared with the decently

attired Waganda and other races. In Madagascar, West Africa, and the

Cape I have always found the same rule. Chastity varies inversely as

the amount of covering.” Mr. Henry T. Finck discusses the question

fully in his chapter on nudity and bathing, with copious illustrations

from the sentiments and practices of various countries, in his

‘Lotos-Time in Japan.’[212] But whatever the results of such inquiries

may be, they seem to me to bear only slightly on the determination of

the influence which women have exercised in past times.

(3) LOVE-MAKING IN HOMER’S TIME.

There is no trace in Homer of that passionate and bewildering love

of a man for a woman which is the favourite theme of modern novels.

Buchholz, in discussing the feelings of the Homeric Greeks in regard to

sexual passion, thus describes this love: “Von der Ueberschwänglichkeit

der modernen Gefühlsschwärmerei, vermöge deren zwei Individuen

verschiedenen Geschlechts mit himmelhochjauchzendem Entzücken im

Gefühle des ewigen Füreinanderexistirens und Ineinanderaufgehens sich

berauschen und selige Wonne schlürfen, haben die homerischen Menschen

keine Idee.”[213]

There has been much discussion as to when Greek writers began to treat

of this love. There is a full treatment of the subject in Rohde’s

‘Der Griechische Roman’ (p. 14), where he refers to the essay of

Bulwer Lytton on the influence of love and real life, and quotes his

opinion that it is in Euripides that first appears the distinction

between love as a passion and love as a sentiment. Bennecke devotes a

large portion of his chapter on ‘Women in Greek Poetry’ to show that

“there is no trace in literature of what we now understand by the word

‘love’ earlier than the end of the fourth century B.C.” “The

general consensus of opinion,” he says, “has agreed to ascribe this

great change, the greatest change, perhaps, that has ever come over

art, to the influence of two men, Euripides and Menander. My object in

writing now is to endeavour to show, firstly, that this general view

is a mistaken one, arising from an insufficient appreciation of the

true nature of the change; and, secondly, that the real originator of

the new feeling which we encounter in Alexandrian literature--in other

words, the first man who had the courage to say that a woman is worth

loving--was Antimachus of Colophon.”[214] It is evident that Bennecke’s

appreciation of modern love is widely different from that of Buchholz.

CHAPTER II.

WOMEN IN THE GREEK PERIOD.

(1) ON THE CHARACTER OF SAPPHO.

In 1816 Welcker published a pamphlet entitled ‘Sappho von einem

herrschenden Vorurtheil befreyt,’ in which he endeavoured to show that

the principal accusation against the poetess was totally unfounded. It

was republished in his ‘Kleine Schriften.’[215] He carried most of the

scholars of his own day with him. But Col. Mure renewed the accusations

in his ‘History of Greek Literature,’[216] and especially in an article

in the ‘Rheinisches Museum.’[217] Mure was much influenced by what

he had seen of society in the courts of European capitals, where,

according to him, the courtly ladies were stained with every vice.

The German scholar Kock (1862) defended the same opinions as those

of Mure. Welcker replied to both critics, but especially to Kock, in

an article in the ‘Rheinisches Museum’ (1863), which was afterwards

republished in his ‘Kleine Schriften.’[218] Since that time judgment

has generally been given in favour of Sappho, though the subject has

been noticed rather than discussed in most treatises on Sappho and her

works. Among those who have examined the subject carefully, Kublinski

and Brandt deserve special attention. Kublinski subjects to minute

criticism the notices in ancient writers regarding those historians

and critics who were the first to concern themselves with Sappho.

Some of these flourished at a very early date, and were natives of

Mytilene. They all speak of her poetry and her virtue in the highest

terms. The Mytileneans honoured her though she was a woman,[219] and

it was said that she united splendour and grace of diction with all

that was honourable.[220] Brandt in his charming book on Sappho brings

vividly before us the spirit and the life of the poetess. He refuses to

discuss the details of the accusations against her, which he describes

as the “chatter of a later, unpoetic and degenerate period,” “because

through Welcker’s excellent treatise the honour of the poetess has

been vindicated, and we are firmly convinced that the accusations

are untenable.” Then he shows how the writers of the later age were

incapable of appreciating the warmth of her friendships, her passionate

love of beauty, and her delight in all that is fair and lovely in this

lovely world.

The vile insinuations of the later times against Sappho arose from the

misrepresentations which the writers of the new comedy made of her. She

was one of their stock characters. Kock[221] quotes one play called

‘Sappho,’ written by an ancient comic writer, and five by writers of

the new comedy. Unfortunately, the fragments are meagre in the extreme,

and do not furnish us with any idea of the contents of the plays. They

show, however, that the writers paid no regard to chronology, for one

of them represented the poets Archilochus (700 B.C.) and

Hipponax (546 B.C.) as in love with Sappho. In other plays

also, named ‘Leucadia,’ Sappho was the subject, and in one of these

Menander describes the poetess as madly in love with Phaon, and in

consequence, throwing herself from the Leucadian rock. This is no doubt

a pure invention, and it is likely that all the late stories about

Sappho owed their origin to the unbridled and loose imaginations of

the comic poets. Some of these stories are embodied in a Latin letter

from Sappho to Phaon. This letter has been attributed to Ovid, and

appears in the modern editions of the ‘Heroides.’ But its genuineness

has been rejected by many scholars. It does not appear in the best MSS.

of the ‘Heroides.’ It imagines Sappho to be furiously in love with

Phaon, and in her passion she throws away all sense of self-respect

and decency. But it does not support the contentions of Col. Mure and

Kock. The two scholars who have lately defended the ascription of it to

Ovid[222] insist that the verses of the letter which give a colour to

the accusations have been wrongly interpreted, and that on the contrary

they imply that she was entirely innocent.

(2) ASPASIA.

Schmidt believes these statements, and attributes the making of

Pericles and Socrates to Aspasia. Similar opinions are expressed

by Filleul, who will not allow that she was a courtesan. And Lloyd

is equally emphatic on her merits. Only one voice, as far as I

know, has been raised against her, that of Ulrich von Wilamowitz in

his ‘Aristoteles und Athen.’ In a note in vol. ii. p. 99, he uses

extraordinary language in regard to Aspasia, calling her a prostitute,

and strangely describing the ideas about her salon, and about her being

in a kind of way the wife of Pericles, as the invention of German

romantic Philhellenism. He is equally contemptuous towards Phidias,

whom he describes as a low mechanic, and Pericles, who he asserts had

no friends, guests, or concubines after he separated from his wife. In

a later production[223] he employs less coarse language, and tries to

defend the historical position which he assumes. But it seems to me

that a complete answer to his assumption is to be found by anticipation

in Müller, ‘Attisches Bürgerrecht.’[224] Meyer and Bruns have discussed

his opinions on this subject adversely.

(3) PORTRAITS OF SAPPHO AND ASPASIA.

There is, as is usual in matters connected with art, no end of

differences of opinion. The two principal monographs on the portraits

of Sappho are those of Jahn and Comparetti. Comparetti remarks on the

image of Sappho on the Girgenti vase, “Sappho is here anything but

small in stature; she is as tall as Alcæus.” But both writers are

inclined to regard the figures as ideal. Even if they, however, should

be ideal, they represent the notions of the poetess prevalent at the

time of their production. There is much discussion about the coins.

Those of them which have the name stamped on them belong to the period

of the empire. Some have supposed that the head on an early Lesbian

electrum and another on an autonomous bronze of Mytilene are those of

Sappho, but Wroth, who has gone into the subject carefully, agrees with

Furtwängler that the head is probably that of Aphrodite. Furtwängler

thinks that the bust assigned to Aspasia is also really that of a

goddess.[225]

(4) RIGHT OF INTERMARRIAGE--ἐπιγαμία.

The corruptions in the text of Lysias as quoted by Dionysius, are well

seen in the recent edition of Dionysius’s minor works by Usener and

Radermacher.[226] The words also may mean only “We were for granting

the right of intermarriage with the Eubœans.” It is the imperfect that

is used, and the context suggests this meaning of the imperfect.

No mention is made of ἐπιγαμία with the Eubœans elsewhere. One might

have expected notice of it in some decree, but the decrees referring

to the Eubœans are of such a nature that the existence of an epigamic

agreement is rendered doubtful.[227] From the extract from Lysias,

Philippi[228] infers that the ἐπιγαμία was given to the Eubœans

without citizenship. Otto Müller, also on the strength of the same

extract, believes that there was ἐπιγαμία granted by the Athenians to

the Eubœans[229] not only before 404, but before the failure of the

Sicilian expedition, but he does not argue the question.

(5) ATHENIAN CITIZENSHIP.

Doubts have been raised[230] as to whether Pericles was the author of

this law, because a supposed Solonian law decreed that he only should

be a citizen who was the child both of a citizen and of a citizeness,

and it is maintained that Pericles merely insisted on the observance of

the law. But Aristotle[231] says distinctly that it was on the motion

of Pericles that the Athenians resolved that no one should partake of

citizenship unless both his parents were citizens. He further states

that the law was passed on account of the great number of citizens (451

B.C.). In c. 42, in describing the constitution of Athens

as it existed at the time of the composition of the book, Aristotle

says that they partake of the citizenship who are born of parents

both of them citizens. Aristotle nowhere mentions that there was any

suspension or alteration of this law from 451 B.C. to his own

time. Müller thinks that there was an alteration, and no doubt the

aristocratic party would be inclined to abrogate it. But probably they

thought it sufficient to treat the law as obsolete when it suited them,

and then it was renewed in 403 by Aristophon or Nicomenes.[232]

The importance of this law of Pericles in the history of women cannot

well be overestimated. It practically led to the distinction which is

expressed in the Oration against Neæra, attributed to Demosthenes. “For

we,” it says, “have the Companions (Hetairae) for the sake of pleasure,

the concubines for the daily care of the body, and the wives that

genuine children may be born to us, and that we may have a trustworthy

guardian of our household property.”[233] At the time no moral stain

was attached either to Hetairae or to the concubines. Their position

was one that could not but arise out of their destiny and the law of

Pericles. But these two classes were not treated with the same respect

as the women who were citizens. The Romans adopted the same law as that

of Pericles. They did not encourage concubines, and the Companions were

for the most part degraded women or slaves. The Church subsequently

followed the practice of the Romans, the restrictions on marriage,

however, leading to the frequency of concubinage among the clergy. But

what had formerly been regarded as the result of inevitable destiny was

now deemed proof of a depraved disposition.

The law also produced distinctions in the male population. They were

divided into two classes--citizens to whom many privileges were

assigned--and outcasts who had no rights nor privileges. This was a

great change from the Homeric times. The subsequent history of the two

classes of men is curious and suggestive, but this is not the place

to deal with it. Morillot in his treatise on the subject exclaims,

“Strange circumstance! It is nearly always on the person of the infants

that the law strikes those who transgress its ordinances.” This is

true of the Christian era; but at first the law looked solely to the

interests of the citizens who made it, and did not suggest culpability

on the part of those who were not citizens.

(6) DATE OF ‘ECCLESIAZUSÆ.’

The date of the comedy is clearly ascertained within two years. The

date of the ‘Republic’ cannot be so definitely ascertained. Accordingly

there have always been writers who have maintained that Aristophanes

held up to ridicule the communistic ideas of Plato expressed in the

‘Republic.’ In recent times Chiappelli[234] has advocated this opinion,

and Rogers, in his edition of the ‘Ecclesiazusæ,’[235] supports it by

appealing to the exact resemblances in the words used by both. But

Platonic scholars have generally held strongly that the ‘Republic’

is considerably later than the play. The date of the play must be

somewhere between 390 and 393. But Stallbaum, in his ‘Prolegomena to

the Republic,’[236] adduces what seem to me convincing arguments that

that work could not have been published before 385 B.C. Lutoslawski,

in his ‘Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic,’[237] maintains that all

the parts of the ‘Republic’ except the first book were written after

the ‘Phædo,’ which he places between 384 and 383 B.C., and that they

occupied Plato for about six years up to nearly his fiftieth year. He

and others have remarked that the coincidences between Aristophanes

and Plato are slight and that the comedy does not really deal with the

special proposals of the philosopher. The ideas in the comedy are too

general.

The date of the comedy is discussed fully in Kaehler’s ‘De Aristophanis

Ecclesiazuson tempore et choro Quæstiones Epicriticæ.’ Jenæ, 1889,

which gives the literature and history of the discussion. He holds

that there is no connexion between the play and the ‘Republic.’ Prof.

Ritchie[238] says of the ‘Republic,’ “Probably written at various times

between 387 and 368 B.C.”[239]

(7) THE WOMEN OF PLAUTUS.

Perhaps we can best see the representations of the Greek new

comedy[240] in the plays of Plautus, for no complete Greek comedy of

this class has come down to us. Terence no doubt transferred more

literally from these plays, but his selections do not bring us so

closely into contact with the life of the period. It is difficult,

however, in Plautus to know whether his pictures refer to Greek or to

Roman life--for he unquestionably introduced many allusions to the

habits of his Roman audience.

Most of the women that appear in the pages of Plautus belong to the

slave class. Often, when the Greeks took a city, they razed it to

the ground, killed nearly all the men, and carried off the women to

be slaves in lands far away from their own homes. These women had to

submit to the greatest cruelties and indignities. Plautus borrows

his scenes from Greek plays--and accordingly most of his women have

become slaves in this way. There can be no doubt, however, that the

Romans trafficked in female slaves as well as the Greeks--and thus

the picture of the female slaves in the one nation will hold good

for the other. When superior officers made these women captive they

generally kept them in their own houses; but as such slaves brought a

large sum, there were men who made a livelihood by stealing them away.

These sold them to persons whose occupation was again to sell them to

the rich inhabitants of the cities, sometimes lending them only for a

year, and sometimes giving them up for life. The laws regulated the

conveyance, if I may so speak, of these women-slaves, and one of the

plays turns upon a scoundrel of a slave pretending to be an Eastern,

and coming to the slave-dealer’s house with the daughter of another

man, a parasite, and selling her at an enormous loss, but without a

legal form. The parasite goes at once to the slave-dealer and claims

back his illegally sold daughter. These slave-women were employed in

various ways. Sometimes they were kept as household servants, sometimes

as nurses; but most frequently they were used at banquets to dance

before the festive gentlemen, and to sing, play the lyre, and amuse

them with witty sayings. They were often, therefore, highly cultivated,

conjoining the accomplishments of our most expert acrobat with those

of an opera singer and an educated lady. Some of them descend to the

lowest degree of coarseness in Plautus; while a few are exceedingly

sweet, modest, and gentle.

The women of the plays of Plautus are naturally divisible into two

classes: those who were free, and those who were or had been slaves.

It is important to keep in mind that this distinction reached far into

all the social relations. The slave-girl, however nobly descended she

might be, could not marry a free citizen. The free man could only

marry the daughter of a free fellow-citizen. In consequence of this

the choice of a wife was narrowly restricted, and a large class of

women were necessarily thrown out beyond the social pale. The women

who could marry were closely confined. They grew up in the recesses

of the women’s quarter of the house. They had seldom opportunities of

seeing any one but their most intimate relatives. They rarely gazed

upon the general public except when they marched in some religious

procession and took part in religious festivals. Their higher education

was neglected, and for the most part their society was despised. Their

marriages were arranged by the fathers. They had no voice in the matter

themselves, and frequently the main question was as to the dowry which

they could bring to their future husbands. In these circumstances

we could not expect to see marriageable young girls in the Plautine

plays. They did not appear in public or mingle in society. Only one

is to be found acting a part in the plays of Plautus, and that, too,

in extraordinary circumstances. Her father is the parasite in the

‘Persa.’ This wretch is ready to do anything for the sake of a good

dinner, and his daughter is a small matter if placed in competition

with that. So he compels her to play the part of slave-girl. She

objects very strongly. She sees that it is not a proper act for her.

She sees also that it will damage her prospects of marriage. But the

authority of a father was paramount. He commands and she must obey, and

obeys gently and meekly. Mention is made of other marriageable girls.

In the ‘Trinummus,’ the good youth Lysiteles seeks the hand of the

sister of Lesbonicus the spendthrift. His father, Philto, undertakes

to see Lesbonicus on the subject, and an interesting dialogue ensues.

Lesbonicus cannot believe that Philto is in earnest in asking a

portionless daughter, and when at last he is convinced that Philto

is not making a fool of him, he states that he will part with the

only remaining little property he has in order to give some dowry to

his sister. It would be such a disgrace to him, if she were to bring

nothing to the family stock. Another marriageable girl appears in the

‘Aulularia.’ Her father, the miser Euclio, is very glad to get her off

his hands without dowry, and the man who wishes to marry her prefers to

have an undowried wife. His reasons for this preference are notable.

Megadorus, the suitor, is rich. He has lived with his widowed sister

for some time, but she thinks that he ought now to marry. She is not,

however, very favourable in her account of women. “We are,” she says,

“deservedly regarded as very garrulous, and people strongly affirm

that not a single silent woman has been found in any age up to this

day.” She further informs him that there is no chance of his getting

a good wife: he can merely have a selection out of bad: “alia alia

pejor, frater, est.” However, she ends with recommending one whom she

knows and deems suitable in age and circumstances. He does not accept

her proposal, but says that he wishes to marry the daughter of Euclio,

and he is very glad that she is so poor. The dowried wives have become

wildly extravagant and insolent, and if the rich were to do as he

intends, that is, marry undowried wives, there would be more concord in

the state; the women would pride themselves more on their manners than

their dowry, they would have less reason to fear punishment than they

now have, and the husbands would have less expense. In one word, “the

undowried wife is in the power of her husband, the dowried one tortures

and ruins him.” In the course of this discussion Megadorus expatiates

on the extravagances of the women of his day. “They must have purple

and gold given them, maidservants, mules, mule-drivers, attendants,

salutation boys, and carriages.” And then he gives a list of the

various artisans who wait upon the matrons. Here it is in the Latin,

for an exact translation would require a dissertation:[241]--

“Stat fullo phrugio aurifex linarius

Caupones patagiarii indusiarii,

Flammarii violarii cararii,

Propolæ linteones calceolarii,

Sedentarii sutores diabathrarii--

Solearii astant, astant molocinarii,

Petunt fullones, sarcinatores petunt,

Iam hosce absolutos censeas: cedunt petunt

Trecenti: circumstant phulacistæ in atriis,

Textores linbularii, arcularii:

Aut aliqua mala crux semper est quæ aliquid petat.”

The extravagance of the women is rather a favourite subject of attack

with Plautus. Adelphasium, in a beautiful passage in the ‘Pœnulus,’

describes how the whole day is frittered away in bathing, polishing,

painting, and such operations, and in ‘Epidicus’ we have an

enumeration of the vast variety of dresses which they wore. It may be

questioned how far these descriptions were taken from the Greek, and

how far they are applicable to Roman women. Wagner supposes that the

passage in the ‘Aulularia’ refers to Roman women, and bases on it an

argument for the date of the play. It is scarcely possible to imagine

that Plautus would have introduced such passages if they did not tell,

but it would be difficult to fix the date of the commencement of

extravagance among the Roman ladies. All we can affirm with certainty

is that there must have been extravagance in some shape or other,

and it is interesting to note how, at this early stage of it, it had

already begun to frighten men from marriage. Here are the reasonings of

a bachelor, somewhat compressed from ‘Miles Gloriosus’:[242]--

“_Pe._ By Hercules, it is a splendid thing to be a

bachelor. If a good wife were to be got anywhere in the world,

that would alter the case; but where am I to find such an one?

And do you think, am I to bring to my house a woman who will

never say to me, ‘Buy a nice warm coat for yourself, to keep the

cold away this winter,’ but, on the contrary, who will awake

me out of sleep before the cocks crow, and say to me, ‘Now,

dear, give me some money to make a present with to my mother on

the calends of March; or give me some money to buy stuff for

making sweetmeats; give me some money to give to the witch and

the dream interpreter,’ &c.? Then I don’t need children. I have

plenty of relatives. I live as I like--no one to interfere with

me--and when I die I shall leave my possessions to my friends;

they know that, and take good care of me. They come and see

what I am doing and what I wish. Before daybreak they are at

my door, asking how I slept in the night. They sacrifice, and

then send the best part to me. They invite me to breakfast and

dinner, to all their feasts, and they all vie with each other in

sending me gifts. Of course I know why--but what matters that?

They nurse me and bestow gifts on me.”

The wives, then, in Plautus, are not represented in the most amiable

colours. The old men stand in most awful dread of their old girls,

as they called them. Dæmones, for instance, is afraid to look at

Palæstra and Ampelisca, lest his wife fly upon him. Menæchmus gives a

most vivid picture of the prying propensities of his wife. And some

of them have wonderful command of abusive language, and rate their

husbands in no measured terms. They even play most insolent tricks

on them, as in the ‘Casina.’ But bad as some of these wives may have

been with their extravagance and their tongues, they are not accused

of unfaithfulness. The Romans and Greeks agreed with the French in

making the fathers select the wives for their sons, but they differed

from them in having divorce procurable on comparatively easy terms.

And this circumstance makes a wide difference in the plots of their

respective dramas. The plot of such a piece as ‘La petite Mariée’ would

be as utterly repulsive to a Roman audience as to an English. There

is not one instance throughout the twenty plays of Plautus in which

the virtue of a married woman is assailed. We might except, from a

modern and an early Christian point of view,[243] Jove’s amour with

Alcmena, but in the Roman opinion Alcmena and her husband were honoured

by this marked token of a god’s favour. There is one instance in which

the man himself, the braggart soldier, supposes that he has committed

the crime. He is led to believe that a courtezan is really a married

woman and that she is dreadfully in love with him, and he yields to the

deception. He is severely punished for it in the end, and acknowledges

that he has well merited what he has received.

The absence of freedom before marriage is not, however, without its

evil consequences. The young men had generally got attached to some

handsome slaves before they married, and the old men seemed very much

inclined to renew their youthful recollections by pranks of a similar

nature. This is the cause of the most serious quarrels between husband

and wife. In one passage the unfairness of the position of husband

and wife in this respect is set forth, though not by a wife, but by a

slave:--

“By Castor, wives live on hard terms, and much more unfair--poor

wretches that they are--than their husbands. For if the husband

has his courtezan without the knowledge of his wife, and she

comes to know, he gets off scot-free; but if the wife go but to

the outside without the knowledge of her husband, the husband

has a case made for him, and she is divorced. Would that there

were the same law for husband as for wife! For a good wife is

content with one husband, why should not a husband be content

with one wife?”[244]

When the wife thinks that she is badly used, she generally sends

for her father. She expects him either to effect a reconciliation,

or procure the return of her dowry and a divorce. In some cases, as

in that of Menæchmus, the father takes the side of the husband and

counsels submission.

Though there are some bad wives, there are also some very good.

Foremost among these is Alcmena in the ‘Amphitruo.’ She is a true,

loving, faithful wife. She greets her supposed husband on his return

from war with the kindliest welcome. She is never impure even in any

single thought, but is simply chaste throughout, even in scenes which

might have tempted the poet to pander to his rough audience. She is

astonished and amazed at the suspicions of her real husband, but no

consideration will make her confess to a crime which she has not

committed. She always retains the dignity of stainless purity. But if

jealousy is to rule his soul, she is willing to part from him, and asks

her dowry:--

“Valeas: tibi habeas res tuas, reddas meas.

Juben’ mihi comites?

“_Jup._ Sanan’ es?

“_Al._ Si non jubes,

Sinito: Pudicitiam egomet comitem duxero.”

When at length her husband confesses that he was wrong, she is ready

at once to receive him back into her affection, and restore him

all the old love. The resemblance between her character and some

of the circumstances of her life and those of Desdemona has struck

some critics, and is worth examination. Both Molière and Dryden have

imitated the ‘Amphitruo’ of Plautus, but there cannot be a doubt that

the play of the Roman is the purest of the three and that of the

Englishman the most impure, and that the character of Alcmena is not

improved by Molière, if not deteriorated, and is certainly made worse

by the handling of Dryden. There is another wife in Plautus whose

character is very beautiful, so far as we have a glimpse of it. In the

opening scenes of the ‘Stichus,’ there are two married sisters, bearing

the names of Panegyris and Pinacium in the old editions, but those of

Philumena and Pamphila in the Ambrosian palimpsest. Their husbands have

been a considerable time away from them, and their father thinks that

they might now come under his protection, and marry again according to

a liberty allowed by law in the case of absconding husbands. Pamphila

(Pinacium) has strong affection for her husband, and refuses. She thus

urges her sister to continue faithful:--

“It is reasonable, in my opinion, that all wise people should

attend to and do their duty. Wherefore, I, though I am younger

than you, warn you to remember your duty; and if our husbands

should be wicked, and should act otherwise than is right, so

much the more, by Pollux, does it become us to remember to do

our duty with might and main.”[245]

She is resolved also to be firm towards her father, but at the

same time, as she has a true affection for him and respect for his

authority, she will not have recourse to any other means than earnest

entreaty. Unfortunately Pamphila disappears from the play after the

introductory scenes, or if she appeared again, that portion of the play

has been lost.

There is one other free woman who deserves special notice--the

priestess of the Temple of Venus in the ‘Rudens.’ Priestesses, as

Benoist has remarked, had much more liberty of movement than ordinary

matrons, and could appear in public on many occasions on which the

others could not. When Palæstra and Ampelisca flee to her temple for

refuge, she is astonished to find that they have not come in white

garments, and with victims, as visitors to a temple should; but no

sooner does she learn the real state of the case than she remembers

mercy, and not sacrifice, and gives them a hearty welcome. With all the

power she possesses she will defend and help them.

“I don’t think,” says Ampelisca, in regard to her, “that I ever

saw any old woman more deserving the blessing of gods and men.

How tenderly, frankly, honourably, and ungrudgingly did she take

us to herself--trembling, needy, wet, shipwrecked, and fainting

creatures that we were; not otherwise than if we were her own

daughters. How she tucks up her dress and herself warms the

water that we may bathe.”[246]

A truly Christian woman, and not merely, as Benoist makes her, “Fere

Christiana et Christianis sensibus animata.”

The second class of women were practically outcasts from society, and

they knew it, and acted accordingly. Some might take to spinning and

other feminine occupations; but a large number were either definitely

set apart by the slave-dealers for the pleasure of men, or applied

themselves to the trade as the easiest means of livelihood. Very

frequently they strove to attain their liberty, and through their

influence with their lovers they often succeeded. But they could not

marry, and therefore continued to live the life in which they had been

trained, or dealt in slave-girls. The whole mode of life of such women

could not but brutalize them. And some of the characters which Plautus

gives us exhibit the lowest coarseness and utter and irredeemable

selfishness. They looked upon men as their victims. Men are the sheep

that they have to fleece. The courtezan woman who would dream of being

faithful to one man is a fool. She must have money. As soon as a man

is ruined he must be turned out of doors; and the next rich idiot

that comes must be fleeced in a similar manner. Such sentiments are

common to the whole class; but there are shades of differences in the

characters. Some are absolutely mercenary. They have no heart, and know

and allow that they have none. They are fond of coarse language. They

are strongly addicted to wine; and they have almost no interest in

anybody. Others, on the contrary, are fond of one man above another,

so long as he has money. They are cultivated and witty. They know

how to dress well, and have studied all the arts that can attract.

They can give nice little dinner-parties; they take an interest in

their serving-maids; they have kindly feelings towards those who have

brought them up. But there is still, in Plautus’s portraiture of them,

a radical hardness of heart. They are selfish to the backbone, fond of

dress, and inclined to wine, and will probably end like the others in

becoming free, drunken, and traffickers in young slave-girls.[247]

There is one curious and notable series of exceptions to this

degradation. The Greeks viewed these outcasts from society with a very

friendly eye. They recognized the fact that it was their destiny that

had put them into the difficult circumstances with which they had to

struggle. And when these women happened to have great powers of mind,

or were particularly pleasing, the Greeks chose them as companions

for life, and if they could not make them their wives, they treated

them as such, and were very kind to them. Thus Pericles lived with

Aspasia, and Sophocles with the mother of the father of his favourite

grandson. But in Plautus there is not one instance of such a connexion.

There are, however, three or four beautiful characters among the

slave-girls--Selenium, Planesium, Adelphasium, and Palæstra. They are

modest and kindly. They wish to live with one man. Like the Mirah of

‘Daniel Deronda,’ they move about in bad society, and are exposed to

every temptation, but by a miraculous providence they remain pure.

M. Benoist, probably touched by compassion, thinks that Palæstra is

the most lovely of these characters. We are inclined to give the palm

to Adelphasium in the ‘Pœnulus,’--though perhaps she is somewhat

prim--because we can judge her better, since the play affords more

scope for the development of her character. All these girls are found

in the end to be freeborn. They have been exposed or stolen in early

childhood. Marks of identification go with them in their wanderings.

And at last the happy father recognizes his long-lost child, and the

lover is delighted with the thought that he can marry.

These, then, were the girls with whom the young Greeks and the young

Romans had to fall in love, and fall in love they did. But this love

was rarely anything else than a mad, headstrong, and even bestial

passion. Rarely could the Romans have come in contact with such women

that they could realize the fine remark of Steele, “To have loved her

was a liberal education.” And indeed the Romans seem to have looked

on love as one of those fits which come upon a man once or twice in

his life, and which, like too much wine, made him stagger and reel

for a time, and then left him in his older years a more sedate and

indifferent person. Some such love intrigue occurs in almost every

play of Plautus. There are three plays in which no female character

appears--the ‘Captivi,’ the ‘Pseudolus,’ and the ‘Trinummus’; but

even into two of these love is introduced. In the second the whole

play is concerned with the acquisition of a courtezan girl, and in

the ‘Trinummus’ Lesbonicus has lost his property through love, and

Lysiteles has one or two long speeches on the ruin that attends the

lover.

Several writers have adduced many passages from Plautus to show that he

did not think it a wrong thing for a young, or even for an old man, on

a rare occasion, to have intrigues with these courtezans.[248] The fact

cannot be denied. But it is also true that Plautus uniformly represents

the residences of these women as the jaws of ruin. The ‘Truculentus’ is

throughout a powerful representation of the utter selfishness of the

class. The young man Diniarchus wastes his means on them, is ruined,

and receives no pity from them. And the upright pedagogue, Lydus, in

the ‘Bacchides,’ describes the house of the courtezans in language

which might have suggested to Dante his inscription over the portals

of hell. “Unbar and throw open quickly this gate of hell (Orcus), I

beseech you, for I deem it no other, for no one comes here but he whom

all hopes have abandoned of being virtuous.”[249]

We may take a glance at the mode in which love-making went on in those

days. Gaston Boissier thinks that Plautus is peculiarly happy in

his portrayal of a lover’s feelings. He appeals to a passage in the

‘Curculio’ where Phædromus, a young man, thus addresses the door of his

sweetheart’s house:[250]--

“Pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens,

Vos amo, vos volo, vos peto atque opsecro,

Gerite amanti mihi morem amœnissumi;

Fite caussa mea ludii barbari,

Sussulite, opsecro, et mittite istinc foras,

Quæ mihi misero amanti exbibit sanguinem,

Hoc vide ut dormiunt pessuli pessumi

Nec mea gratia conmovent se ocius.”

Or the language of Diniarchus when Phronesium appears:[251]--

“Ver vide

Ut tota floret, ut olet, ut nitide nitet.”

He affirms that such passages justify the opinion of Ælius Stilo that

if the muses wished to speak Latin, they would have used the language

of Plautus.

I shall quote two of the passages in which Plautus exhibits

love-making. The one is from the ‘Asinaria’ (664), and gives the

epithets which women used towards men.

A slave, Leonidas, has contrived to get possession of a sum of money

which a slave-girl requires, in order that she may be permitted to have

interviews with his young master. The slave is conscious of his power

over the girl, and wishes to tease her by keeping the money from her

for some time. So she says to him:--

“Give me the money, my dear little eye, my rose, my soul, my

delight: do not, I entreat you, separate us lovers.

“_Leon._ Come now, just call me your little sparrow, your

chick, your quail, your lambkin, your little kid, or your little

calf. Just seize me by the dear little ears, and put dear little

lips to dear little lips.”

And so the slave goes on bantering her. The last expression I may

explain by the way. It refers to a curious mode of kissing practised

by Greeks and Romans. When a person wished to give a good hearty kiss

to one very dearly beloved, he seized her by the ears and performed

the operation with more comfort and heartiness. Another slave, partner

with Leonidas, afterwards asks her to call him by some other sweet

names. The girl addresses him, “My Libanus, my golden little eye, the

gift and glory of love, if you please, I’ll do what you wish: only do

give me the money.” “Just then,” he says, “call me your duckling, your

dove, your puppy, your swallow, your jackdaw, your little sparrow, your

little boy.” Such were the endearing epithets which the young women

addressed to the young men. Now for those addressed to the young women

by the young men. In the scene I am to adduce, a young man has asked

his slave to try to gain for him the affections of a slave-girl of

whom he is enamoured. The slave sets to work at once. The young man

Agorastocles asks Milphio the slave,[252]

“Why is this girl angry with me?

“_Mil._ Why is this girl angry with you? Why should I care

about that? That is your look-out.

“_Ag._ By Hercules, you may drown yourself if you don’t

make her as tranquil as the sea used to be when the halcyon led

forth its young ones on it.

“_Mil._ What am I to do?

“_Ag._ Entreat her, butter her, stroke her.

“_Mil._ I will do it carefully. Only take you care that you

don’t afterwards heckle with your fists the man here who now

acts as your ambassador.

“_Ag._ I won’t.”

The girl here says, addressing Agorastocles:--

“Let us go now. Are you still hesitating? You make big promises;

but nothing ever comes of them. You have sworn to free me, not

once, but a hundred times: alas, I am still a slave.”

The bashful lover utters the sad ejaculation:--

“It’s all up with me--eho!”

And then, bethinking him of his ambassador and spokesman, he says to

Milphio:--

“What are you about, Milphio?”

Milphio begins the attack thus:--

“My delight, my darling, my life, my pleasure, my little eye, my

little lip, my health, my kiss, my honey, my heart, my sweet new

milk, my nice little soft cheese.”

Agorastocles can’t stand this, and he can’t help speaking to himself:--

“Am I to endure these things being said in my presence? I am

tortured, if I don’t order him off to the hangman.”

Milphio goes on:--

“Do not, I beseech you, be angry with my master. If I don’t--now

I see you are angry--I am sure he will make you free.

“_The Girl._ Why won’t you let me go? What do you mean?

“_Mil._ If my master has formerly played false with you,

ever after this he will be true to you.

“_The Girl._ Get away with you.

“_Mil._ I’ll go; but only on one condition: just let me

entreat you, let me seize you by the ears, let me give you a

kiss. By Hercules, I shall make him lament, if I don’t make

you merciful. And I fear he will thrash me soundly, that will

he, unless I win you to him. I know the bad habits of the

cross-tempered fellow. Wherefore, my delight, I do beg you, be

prevailed on.”

Agorastocles turns to Milphio in a rage:--

“I am not worth a farthing if I don’t kick that rascal’s eyes

and teeth out. Hem! there is a pleasure for you [gives him a

blow]! there’s honey! there’s a heart for you! there’s a little

lip for you! there’s health for you! there is a kiss!

“_Mil._ Oh, master; you are committing sacrilege in beating

your ambassador.

“_Ag._ There’s some more for you then [lays into him]. I’ll

give you also your little eye, and your little lip, and your

tongue to the bargain.

“_Mil._ What in the world are you going to do?

“_Ag._ Did I not order you to entreat her?

“_Mil._ How then should I do it?

“_Ag._ Why, you scoundrel, you should have said, ‘The

delight of this man, I entreat you, his honey, his heart, his

little lip, his tongue, his kiss, his sweet new milk, his

pleasant health, his merriness, his sweet little cheese,’ you

whip-dog; ‘his heart, his desire, his kiss,’ you whip-dog. All

that you said were yours you should have called mine.”

Milphio acts at once on his instructions, and addresses the

slave-girl:--

“By Hercules, I beseech you, his pleasure and my hatred, his

most dearly beloved friend, my enemy and ill-wisher--his eye, my

blear eye, his honey, my vinegar. Don’t be angry with him; or if

that can’t be----”

The girl stops him and says:--

“Take a rope and hang yourself with your master and

fellow-slaves.

“_Mil._ It is no go. I’ll have to live on gruel, and now

bear a back streaked like an oyster, with marks of the lash, all

on account of your love.”

And so poor Milphio gives love-making up as a bad job.

CHAPTER III.

WOMEN IN THE ROMAN PERIOD.

(1) WOMEN IN ASIA MINOR.

The information about these women comes out in the inscriptions which

have been collected in the various towns and provinces of Asia Minor.

M. P. Paris has brought together the facts that can be obtained from

these inscriptions in his thesis “Quatenus feminæ res publicas in Asia

Minore, Romanis imperantibus, attigerint, Parisiis, 1891.” M. Paris

is inclined to think that the magistracies during the Imperial times

had no important duties assigned to them except those of religion,

and that therefore women could well perform them. If there were civil

duties, he thinks that they were not asked to discharge these. He is

guided much in this opinion by his sense of what it becomes a woman

to do, but in the end of his thesis he has to acknowledge that women

did take part in political and civil matters, though these were not

becoming to them. He allows that at least one woman did discharge all

the duties of a magistrate. The inscription recording the fact is

as follows: “The senate and people honoured Aurelia Harmasta, also

called Tertia, the daughter of Medon and chaste wife of Artemas, of

the highest birth, who acted as priestess of Hera the Queen, and as

demiourgos, and as chief priest, and did all that was usual in such

occasions. Aur. Arteimianus Dileitrianus Arteimas, her husband, erected

the statue.”[253] The demiourgos was one of the chief magistrates.

M. Paris draws special attention to these inscriptions which he himself

and M. Radet discovered at Sillyium, in which a woman of the name of

Menodora is praised. The first inscription begins: “The senate and

people honoured her as a priestess of all the gods and a hierophantis

for life and a decaprote, also as demiourgos and gymnasiarch.” Then the

inscription details the extraordinary gifts which she bestowed on her

native city, including a large sum for the maintenance of children. The

other two inscriptions are of a similar nature.

M. Paris can find no other explanation of the activity of woman in

Asia than in the altered and decaying state of affairs in that country

during the Roman Empire. But it is remarkable that the matriarchate

existed in Lycia longer than in most places.[254]

(2) THE SPEECH OF AUGUSTUS ON MARRIAGE.

The opinions expressed in the speech of Augustus were to be found in a

series of works on marriage, which appeared from the time of Zeno to

that of Libanius. They all agreed that it was the duty of every citizen

to marry, and they assigned nearly the same reasons as those adduced

by Augustus. A slight exception is made by Theophrastus, who came to

the conclusion that the philosopher ought not to marry, on account of

the entanglements and distractions which marriage generally brought

along with it. As most of the philosophers who wrote on the subject of

marriage were Stoics, Praechter supposes that at the earliest period

of Stoicism marriage became a topic of regular discussion, and so the

commonplaces of the school were handed down from one to the other.

Bock, on the other hand, thinks that the initiative is due to Aristotle.

Clemens Alexandrinus made use of the Stoic materials, and especially

of the works of Musonius, but he differed from the Stoics in thinking

that men were not bound to marry: marriage was lawful and beneficial,

but not obligatory. He agreed with Zeno,[255] Musonius, Plutarch, and

other writers in the opinion that women ought to receive the same kind

of education as men, due regard being paid to the peculiar physical

constitution of women.[256]

Praechter gives a list of the various writers who have discussed

marriage.[257]

(3) MEDICAL WOMEN.

Women from an early date tried to cure diseases, and in Homer special

mention is made of Hecamede who mixed potions. Frequent notice is taken

in post-Homeric times of midwives and their art, and doubtless some

women applied themselves to a complete study of medicine, practised the

art whenever they had opportunity, and contributed to the advancement

of medical science. Mélanie Lipinska has written an interesting account

of these women. A story in the work bearing the name of Hyginus (Hygini

Fabulæ),[258] written probably in the reign of Augustus, with later

interpolations, proves that in the time of its production it was

believed that women had practised in Greece. The fable states that

Chiron the Centaur first founded the art of the surgeon from herbs,

Apollo first introduced the cure of the eyes, and Asclepius discovered

clinical medicine. The ancients, it goes on to say, had no midwives,

in consequence of which women, through modesty, perished, for the

Athenians had decreed that no slave or woman should learn the art of

medicine. A girl of the name of Agnodice longed to learn this art, and

cutting off her hair, and putting on the dress of a man, she went to a

person named Hierophilus, and learned from him the art. After making

this acquisition she happened to hear a woman crying out in the pangs

of labour, and she went up to her. The woman refused her proffered aid,

because she thought that Agnodice was a man--but Agnodice at once gave

clear proof of her sex, and was allowed to cure her. Somehow the women

of Athens came to know of this, and Agnodice was constantly called

in. The doctors were furious at her success, for of course the women

refused them admission, and they accused her before the Areopagus of

corrupting her patients; Agnodice would have been condemned, had she

not taken off her male garments before the judges and proved her sex.

But the doctors were only the more infuriated. Whereupon the chief

women of Athens went to the court and said, “You are not husbands

but enemies, for you condemn her who has saved our lives.” Then the

Athenians amended their law, making it legal for freeborn women to

learn the art of medicine.

(4) WOMEN IN EGYPT.

In a complete survey of the influence of women in ancient times notice

would have to be taken of a remarkable set of women who appeared in

Macedonia, Epirus, and especially in Egypt from about 333 B.C.

to the beginning of the Christian era. These women took a prominent

part in public affairs. Some of them led armies and fought personally

on the battle-field. They entered into alliances, carried on endless

intrigues, and wielded much power. But they were all members of royal

families, wives or daughters of kings, and often styled queens. Justin

says in regard to one reign that the government was carried on in the

name of the son, but it was the mother that exercised the sway. In

Egypt there was a continuous effort on the part of the women of the

royal family to mingle in public affairs. And finally they succeeded

in obtaining the mastery. The most famous of them, Cleopatra the

VIIth, though governing nominally along with her brother, was the

supreme ruler, and possessing all the rights of an absolute ruler, as

Strack says, held in her hand for many years the Sceptre of Egypt, and

directed the rudder of the Ship of State according to her own good

pleasure.

But the public influence of these women was not shared by those who did

not belong to the royal families. And the history of their lives is

gathered from imperfect notices and from historians who have no claim

to implicit confidence.

Helbig was among the first to draw attention to this subject. Rohde

enlarged his notices with critical insight; the details are to be

found scattered in Droysen, Mahaffy, and Strack. An excellent account

of the position of women in Ptolemaic Egypt is given by Miss Rachel

Evelyn White in her article in the ‘Journal of Hellenic Studies.’[259]

Mahaffy supplies a fair idea of the nature and difficulty of the

subject in his remarks on Cleopatra:[260] “We shall have more to say

of the younger Cleopatra, this queen’s sister, who spent her life in

Egypt. When modern people wonder at the daring of the last of the

series, who has been embalmed in the prose of Plutarch and the verse

of Shakespeare, they seldom know or reflect that she was but the last

of a long series of princesses, probably beautiful and accomplished,

certainly daring and unscrupulous, living every day of their lives

in the passions of love, hate, jealousy, ambition, wielding the

dominion over men or dying in the attempt. But, alas! except in the

dull and lifeless effigies on coins, we have no portraits of these

terrible persons, no anecdotes of their tamer moments, no means of

distinguishing one Cleopatra from the rest, amid the catalogue of

parricides, incests, exiles, bereavements!”

The papyri recently discovered throw much new light on the position

of women in Egypt, but some difficult questions will not be settled

until further discoveries of papyri are made. Especially perplexing is

it to settle what is purely Egyptian and what changes were introduced

by Greek and Roman usages. Some points, however, are quite clear. It

is certain, for instance, that it was usual for brother and sister

to marry, and the arrangement was deemed particularly suitable when

inheritance of property was concerned. The marriage of the sister to

the brother smoothed the way to satisfactory settlements. It is also on

all hands allowed that the rights of women are protected and the wife

holds an advantageous position in the marriage contracts which have

come down to us. “A predominance,” says Ruggiero, “of the man over the

woman, a suggestion of such an idea in its earliest stage, any hint, in

fine, of marital authority is entirely wanting.”[261]

There were two kinds of marriages, the ἄγραφος γάμος and the ἔγγραφος

γάμος, the marriage without a full written contract and the marriage

with a full written contract. The first seems like a Scotch marriage,

where the parties agree to marry and to live with each other, but do

not make complete stipulations as to property and children. With regard

to this form the information is deficient and the opinions of scholars

are divided in regard to some details of it.

The ἔγγραφος γάμος implied a fully drawn-out contract of marriage.

Express mention is made of the dowry and the means of supporting the

wife and the conditions of a dissolution of the marriage in regard to

property and often in regard to children. The early Egyptians do not

seem to have made wills, and they embodied the substance of what would

have been their wills in their marriage contracts.

Marriage was a matter of purely civil contract. Each party entered

on the marriage without any constraint, and each party could cancel

the contract and thereby the marriage. In the strict sense of the

word there could be no divorce. No legal judgment was required for

cancelling the marriage contracts. It is a remarkable circumstance

that in all the documents cancelling the marriage contracts which have

come down to us no mention is made of the reason which led to the

annulling of the contract. Only once it is suggested that “some evil

daimon” may be at the bottom of it.[262] The arrangements in cancelling

marriage contracts are strongly in favour of the wife. Nietzold, after

describing in detail the conditions laid down in such documents, says:

“According to all these arrangements the wife takes a very favourable

position. She has by the separation absolutely nothing to lose, even

when she is the guilty party.”

The reader may form a good idea of what was involved in a regular

marriage from a marriage contract which, with Dr. Grenfell’s

permission, I subjoin. It is a contract (92 B.C.) belonging to

the period of the Ptolemies, when Greek influence was strong, but at

the same time it well represents generally the contents of all Egyptian

contracts. It appears in the ‘Tebtunis Papyri,’ Part 1., p. 452.

“The 22nd year, Mecheir 11. Philiscus son of Apollonius, a Persian

of the Epigone, acknowledges to Apollonia, also called Kellauthis,

daughter of Heraclides, Persian, with her guardian, her brother

Apollonius, that he has received from her in copper money 2 talents

4,000 drachmae, the amount of the dowry for Apollonia agreed upon with

him.... The keeper of the contract is Dionysius.”

“In the 22nd year of the reign of Ptolemy, also called Alexander, the

god Philometor, in the priesthood of the priest of Alexander, and the

rest as written in Alexandria, the 11th of the month Xandicus, which

is the 11th of Mecheir, at Kerkeosiris in the division of Polemon of

the Arsinoite nome. Philiscus, son of Apollonius, Persian, of the

Epigone, acknowledges to Apollonia, also called Kellauthis, daughter of

Heraclides, Persian, with her guardian, her brother Apollonius, that

he has received from her in copper money 2 talents 4,000 drachmae,

the dowry for Apollonia agreed upon with him. Apollonia shall remain

with Philiscus, obeying him as a wife should her husband, owning their

property in common with him. Philiscus shall supply to Apollonia all

necessaries and clothing, and whatever is proper for a wedded wife,

whether he is at home or abroad, so far as their property shall admit.

It shall not be lawful for Philiscus to bring in any other wife but

Apollonia, nor to keep a concubine or lover, nor to beget children by

another woman in Apollonia’s lifetime, nor to live in another house

over which Apollonia is not mistress, nor to eject, or insult, or

ill-treat her, nor to alienate any of their property to Apollonia’s

disadvantage. If he is shown to be doing any of these things, or does

not supply her with necessaries and clothing, and the rest, as has

been said, Philiscus shall forfeit forthwith to Apollonia the dowry

of 2 talents 4,000 drachmae of copper. In the same way it shall not

be lawful for Apollonia to spend the night or day away from the house

of Philiscus without Philiscus’ consent, or to have intercourse with

another man, or to ruin the common household, or to bring shame upon

Philiscus in anything that causes a husband shame. If Apollonia wishes

of her own will to separate from Philiscus, Philiscus shall repay her

the bare dowry within ten days from the day it is demanded back. If

he does not repay it as has been stated, he shall forthwith forfeit

the dowry he has received increased by one half. The witnesses are

Dionysius son of Patron, Dionysius son of Hermaiscus, Theon son of

Ptolemaeus, Didymus son of Ptolemaeus, Dionysius son of Dionysius,

Heracleus son of Diodes, all six Macedonians of the Epigone; the keeper

of the contract is Dionysius. (Signed) I, Philiscus, son of Apollonius,

Persian of the Epigone, acknowledge the receipt of the dowry, the 2

talents 4,000 drachmae of copper, as above written, and I will act

with regard to the dowry as ... I, Dionysius, son of Hermaiscus, the

aforesaid, wrote for him as he was illiterate. I, Dionysius, have

received the contract, being valid. Registered the 22nd year, Mecheir

11.”

CHAPTER IV.

WOMEN IN THE ANTE-NICENE PERIOD.

(1) INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON WOMEN.

One of the most recent utterances on this point occurs in Bishop

Wordsworth’s book ‘The Ministry of Grace.’ He says,[263] “Of all

the revolutions introduced by Christianity into the social life of

mankind the new position given to women has been, perhaps, the most

remarkable and the most fruitful in results.” Zscharnack, who has

written by far the most thorough book on the subject, speaks with much

more caution.[264] “In the first place,” he says, “it cannot be proved

that to Christianity alone is due the honour of the emancipation of

women and the realization of the true conception of marriage; rather

had Greece as well as the social relations in Rome prepared the way in

this matter, as in the question of the emancipation of slaves, to no

inconsiderable degree. And second, it ought not to be overlooked that

this socalled (Christian) appreciation of marriage did not at all

succeed in putting aside the ancient immediately and everywhere.”

(2) CALLISTUS.

The bishop referred to is Callistus, who was bishop of Rome from 218

to 223. Hippolytus, in his ‘Refutation of all Heresies,’ denounces him

as an unmitigated scoundrel. Among other accusations he reproaches him

with his opinions and conduct in regard to marriages.[265] “This man,”

he says, “issued a decree that, if a bishop was guilty of any sin, if

even a sin unto death, he ought not to be deposed. In his time bishops,

priests, and deacons, who had been twice married and thrice married,

began to be appointed to their orders. If, also, any one who is among

the clergy should marry, he decreed that such an one should continue

among the clergy as a person who had not sinned.”

Further on, he continues: “And the hearers of Callistus being delighted

with his decrees (doctrines), continue deluding themselves and many

besides, crowds of whom flock together in his place of teaching.

Therefore their numbers increase, they boasting of their multitude,

on account of the pleasures which were not permitted by Christ, whom

despising they do not put restraint on any sin, alleging that they

pardon those who are pleased with his (Callistus’s) opinions. For he

even permitted women _of high rank_, if they were unmarried and

_burned with passion through their time of life, and if they were not

disposed to lose their own rank through a legal marriage, to have_

one man whom they might choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free,

and to deem him in place of a husband, though she had not been married

to him legally. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to

drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round so as to

expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have

a child either by a slave or by a mean fellow, on account of their

family connexions and their excessive wealth. Behold into how great

impiety that lawless person has proceeded, teaching adultery and murder

at the same time, and withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to

all shame, attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church.”