MEN AND WOMEN
In all modern times Homer has been admired for his noble, tender, and
chivalrous sense of what is due to women; for his pictures of the
perfect mother, Thetis; the perfect wife, Andromache; the perfect
maiden, frank, stainless, and kind, Nausicaa; for the woman of immortal
charm, Helen; while, when he does touch on the less lovable humours
of women,--on the nagging shrew, the light o' love, the rather bitter
virgin,--he selects his examples from the divine society of the Gods.
It is an instance of the high and noble taste of the poet and his
audience, that he dwells most on the best and most charming of the
women in old traditions, and is manifestly reluctant to tell of any
evil deed, or any cruel sorrow of a lady. Yet legend was full of women
fierce and revengeful as Brynhild; such women as Medea, who slew her
own children; Ino, who hated her step-children; Althaea, who, to avenge
her brothers, burned the brand that was the life-token of her son,
Meleager of the golden hair. There was hateful Eriphyle, bribed by the
gift that drew her lord to his doom; there was hapless Epicaste, wedded
to her son, the slayer of his father; there were unhappy Chloris, and
unhappy Tyro, mother of Pelias and Neleus by Poseidon, and victim of a
feminine revenge. But this part of the tale is Ionian or Athenian, not
Homeric. In Homer a woman is not dishonoured, but more highly esteemed,
because she has been loved by a god. In Attic traditions she is
cruelly punished by her own kinsfolk.
The wicked and ill-fated ladies who remind us of heroines in ancient
German epos, are scarcely mentioned, or not at all in the _Iliad_
(where they could only appear in digressions), and the poet merely
touches on their fortunes when Odysseus meets them in Hades. From the
guilt and the misery of the "far-renowned brides of ancient song,"
Homer averts his eyes. Even to Clytemnestra, though her sin cannot be
hidden, he allows the _bon naturel_ which Mary Stuart justly claimed
for herself. We are reminded of the tenderness of Chaucer for the fault
of Cressida, "Ne me list this sely womman chyde."
Homer himself never blames Helen, he regards her with the affection
and pity of Hector and Priam: it is the Trojan women and Penelope, her
cousin, who speak frankly of Helen and the ruin which she wrought. In
the _Iliad_ she does not, "where'er she came, bring calamity"; she is
penitent, she longs for home, and her lord, and her one child, the
little maid Hermione. She scorns the cowardice of her lover, and, in
the third Book of the _Iliad_, the poet plainly declares that she is.
the unwilling victim of Aphrodite. In the _Odyssey,_ wherever she
appears, she brings beauty, grace, charm, and quiet, and her appointed
home is in the temperate meadows of the Elysian land.
Homer does not dwell on the passion of love; he could not do so in
an epic of war, and in an epic of a man seeking to win, on the sea,
"the return of his company." But each epic turns on and is _motive_ by
love; the _Iliad_ springs from the lawless love of Paris and Helen; the
_Odyssey_ from the wedded love of Odysseus and Penelope. The Wrath of
Achilles, too, arises on account of his lost love. In the instance of
Paris, love has turned to the most tragic end: the passion of Helen is
changed into bitter contempt and inconsolable regret.
The loves of youth and maiden, the whispered _oaristys_ "from rock and
oak," are seldom the theme of Greek poetry; in the Epics they would be
as out of place as in the _Chanson de Roland_. The loves of Troilus and
Cressida were, to Chaucer, the central interest of the Trojan leaguer;
no such place could they hold in Homer: he has an infinitely larger and
nobler topic. Yet he who listens may hear "The awakened loves around
him murmuring," in the lines that, through the din of battle, just
mention some old amour of gods with mortal maidens, of mortal men with
fairies of the woods and hills.
Considering the warlike nature of the _Iliad_, the parts played by
women, by Helen, Andromache, Hecuba, and the touches that bring forward
the wifely tenderness of Theano, are almost surprising; while the whole
poem is dominated by the maternal love of Thetis, that magical figure
of sorrow, foreboding, and affection, without which the character of
Achilles would be jejune, and bereft of occasions to display its _fond_
of tenderness and melancholy. Of course we are told that all these
women are "late," and formed no part of the original lay of the Wrath:
that is to be expected of critical sagacity.
The magnificent passages on Helen, Andromache, and Hecuba; the humorous
descriptions of Hera; Athene, her divine father's darling, and of
Aphrodite; the unnatural hatred of Althaea; the caprice of Anteia; the
pathos of the dirges of Briseis for Patroclus, of Helen for Hector; the
remorseless jealousy of the mother of Phoenix, when his father loves
a mistress among her maids, all supply "the female interest" in the
_Iliad_.
There is not so much "female interest" as in the _Volsunga Saga_, but
women occupy the same position, are regarded with the same deference;
they are free, on earth and in Olympus, they give their counsel and
even carry their point, as in the Icelandic sagas. In the _Odyssey_,
Arete and Nausicaa appear exactly in the fashion of Wealtheow,
Hrothgar's Queen, and her daughter in _Beowulf_,[1] they grace the
company and still the quarrels of men.
The whole view of women is what we may call "northern"; it is the
view of the sagas, of the English and the Teutonic epics; and is
remote from the spirit of the partly orientalised poets of Ionia.
But for the bequest of ancient heroic tradition the poets of Athens
could not have created their noble heroines. Attic life, Ionian life,
could not produce such women; and Aeschylus and Sophocles fall back
on memories of heroines who are not Ionian and are not Attic, in the
great majority of cases. Christian Europe at various times, in the age
of the chivalrous romances, and in comedy generally, fell far below
the old northern and Achaean view of the women's part. To chivalry,
adultery was a duty, to our European comedy it was a jest: marriage
was a _bourgeois_ business. But even to historic Greece the sanctity
of the marriage-tie was a serious matter: adulterous intrigues are not
the theme of Greek poets and comedians, as they have been ever since
our Middle Ages. Lancelot, and still more Tristram, would have been
stigmatised as Paris is by Hector; and Guinevere and Iseult would have
heard more reproaches from their own sex, than Penelope and the Trojan
women bestow on Helen. The Gods are a sinful and adulterous generation,
in the mythical view; but in the religious view they warn Aegisthus
against his sin and its consequence.[2]
Turning to the legal position of women, we do not know much about
the civil penalty or fine for adultery (μοιχάγρια), but Menelaus,
the soul of honour, is eager to avenge himself in the duel. The fine
for adultery may have been the equivalent of the bride-price paid by
the bridegroom. Hephaestus, in the song of Demodocus, demands the
return of the bride-price which he gave for the faithless Aphrodite,
the ἔεδνα.[3] The bride-price, often mentioned, is a well-known
institution, obsolete in historic Greece but familiar to the poet. In
very rare cases in Homer, a man may receive a bride without paying
a price for doing some great public service: in some circumstances
the father will even give a dowry with the bride.[4] In the most
notable passage where dowry (μείλία) is mentioned by the poet, he
plainly shows his knowledge that the giving of dowry is an exception
to the general rule; for he mentions the rule--the wooer pays the
bride-price ἔεδνα, but in his sore need of Achilles, Agamemnon offers
his daughter "without price" (ἀνάεδνον), and _plus_ such gifts as no
man ever endowed his daughter with.[5] This is no proof that the poet
of Book ix. lived in a later age than that of the bride-price. He
merely recognises what, in an age of bride-price, must have been the
fact, that in unusual circumstances, when the alliance of a man was of
crucial importance to the father, he would buy instead of selling his
daughter's marriage. People were never such pedants as not to infringe
a custom, not sacred but a secular bargain, when strong need came on
them.
In another instance the husband was King Priam, whose alliance was
worth buying by the aged father of the bride. "Circumstances alter
cases," as critics often forget, and such rare divergences from the
usual rule are not proofs of late interpolation. The Icelanders gave
dowries with their daughters, but when Njal was especially eager for a
bride for his foster son, he offered to reverse the process and give
ἔεδνα, bride-price.[6] In the case of the marriage of Penelope (a very
peculiar instance, as there was no proof that she was a widow, and as
it is not easy to see who "had her marriage"), we hear of bride-price
"such as is meet to go with a dear daughter." This return of the price,
or of part of it, was familiar to the Laws of Hammurabi and of the
Germans of Tacitus.[7] We may, with the separatist critics, suppose
that the passages about returning the bride-price of Penelope when
she goes to her second husband,[8] belong to a later period than the
body of the Epics; or, more probably, that a variety of customs may
coexist (that they may we have proved), and, in any case, Penelope's
people were anxious to get her off their hands in one way or another,
her situation being irksome and anomalous. Rare must be the examples
of interpolated details, when a case so anomalous as that of Penelope
is seized on as proof of the presence of later social practices. The
passages about Penelope are peculiar. In _Od_. ii. 53, Telemachus says
that the wooers have no mind to go to the father of Penelope, who
αὐτὸς ἐεδνώσαιτο θύγατρα. If we take this to mean "will endow her,"
the writer does not know the meaning of ἔεδνα; but I conceive him to
say, "will fix the bride-price," or make the terms.[9] Compare _Iliad_,
xiii. 384, ἐπεὶ οὔ τοι ἐεδνωταὶ κακοί εἰμεν, "we will not make hard
marriage terms," that is, will not demand a heavy bride-price.
In _Od_. i. 278, ii. 196, Telemachus is bidden to take his mother to
her father, "they will give the marriage feast and ἀρτυνέουσιν ἔεδνα,
many such as should follow with a dear daughter." Mr. Murray says that
the writer of these lines "mistook the meaning of estim because he had
forgotten the custom" (_R. G. E._ p. 152). But even Aeschylus knew that
ἔεδνα were gifts from the bridegroom (_Prometheus_, 559, quoted by Mr.
Murray); and if the author of the passages in _Odyssey_, i. ii., did
not know, he cannot have read the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. This is so
improbable, for even the author of the very "late" song of Ares and
Aphrodite (_Od_. viii. 318) knew all about the legal nature of ἔεδνα,
that we can hardly suppose the writer of the passages in _Od._ i. ii.
to have fancied that ἔεδνα meant "dowry."
One thing is certain, that the prehistoric usage of bride-price almost
uniformly prevails in the poems, with a trace of such variations in
custom as actually occur, when circumstances or affection demand it, in
every stage of human society. The bridal customs are not pedantically
stereotyped in Homer, but variations in accordance with circumstances
do not prove lateness or earliness, any more than such female names
as Alphesiboea, Phereboea, Polyboea, and others, indicating that a
daughter, on her marriage, will bring many kine into her family,
"express the excuse which the parents made to themselves for venturing
to rear the useless female child."[10]
Not even in Australian black society are girls more apt than male
babies to be killed as _bouches inutiles_, they are far too valuable
to their brothers or maternal uncles, being exchanged for other men's
sisters or nieces as brides. The cattle-owning barbaric societies of
Africa are not addicted to female infanticide, much less could Homeric
society be with its wealth and its tenderness of heart. In Greek
non-Homeric legend how often do we hear of a baby-girl being exposed?
It is the boys who suffer, in the hope of defeating some prophecy.
Homeric society is infinitely remote from that in which girls were too
expensive and useless to keep.[11]
Homer is the last author in whom we can hopefully look for survivals of
savagery, or of cruel and filthy superstitions. In the Epics there is
not a harlot, common as they are in the ancient Hebrew books. It is not
to be supposed that the ancient profession was unknown, but all such
things are ignored in deference to a taste more pure than that of early
Ionian society and of historic Greece from first to last. The tone of
taste and morals is, in short, Achaean, like the poet himself;[12]
Shakespeare, in _Troilus and Cressida_, makes Patroclus mimic Nestor; he
"coughs and spits,
And with a palsy fumbling in his gorget,
Shakes in and out the rivet,"
in "a night-alarm." Shakespeare has read of the night-alarm in _Iliad_,
Book x., but not there did he find, nowhere in Homer could he find "the
faint defects of age" made matter of merriment. In Homer nobody coughs!
The Homeric idea of the family is symbolised in the wedding bed which
Odysseus fashioned with his own hands, making it fast to the trunk of
a living tree that it might never be moved.[13] and adorning it with
inlay of gold, silver and ivory. According to many critics, of whom
Wolf is the earliest, the final books of the _Odyssey_ are later than
the rest, and the idea of a separate chamber for husband and wife
is late. Other critics, when they find mentions of such a separate
chamber (δάλαμος) in other parts of the Epic, explain them as late
interpolations. They appear once again to forget that in no civilised
society is there absolute uniformity of detail in all the arrangements
of domestic life. An interesting example may be found in Scott's
description of the hall and house of Cedric the Saxon,--the hall
floored with "earth mixed with lime, trodden into a hard substance,
such as is often employed in flooring our modern barns," the rafters
"encrusted with a black varnish of soot" (the _melathron_), the walls
"hung with implements of war," "the low irregular building," are like
the house of Odysseus. There were "buildings after building."[14]
Contrasted with these arrangements were the castles of the Normans,
"tall, turreted, and castellated buildings."
"In the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ the houses are normally one-room halls.
The master and mistress live in the _megaron_ in the daytime and sleep
there at night ... grown-up sons and daughters have separate 'halls' or
_thalamoi_ built for them close by."[15]
On this showing, Odysseus had chosen to adopt a different arrangement,
it does not quite follow that the account of his house is late;
it would be hard to prove that _thalamos_ (chamber) and _megaron_
(hall) are identical, we hear of no outside _thalamos_, like that of
Telemachus, occupied by a girl, and the whole topic demands very minute
criticism. But the question of Aegean and Achaean architecture is at
present the subject of controversy among architectural specialists.
The happiness of wedded life has never been more nobly praised than
by Homer in the famous speech of Odysseus to Alcinous. Adultery is
laughed at only among the gods. Moreover, we never hear of lightness
of behaviour in girls, except when a God is the wooer, and that is
reckoned an honour, the woman is sought for in marriage by mortals.
In Ionian tradition, as has been said, on the other hand, the girls
beloved by gods are severely punished, like Tyro.
Fidelity is not expected from men when absent at a long siege, or lost
in unknown lands, like Odysseus, who does not scruple to tell Penelope
about Circe and Calypso. At home the fidelity of husbands depends on
the characters of the pair. Laertes is fond of a fair handmaid, but
dreads the wrath of his wife, as the father of Phoenix, in a similar
case, found that _he_ had good reason to do. The bastards of whom we
hear are probably sons of the captives of the spear, brought home as
Agamemnon unadvisedly brought Cassandra. Theano, wife of Antenor,
"nurtured his bastard, like her own children, to do her husband
pleasure."[16] Teucer also, a bastard, was brought up by his father
in his own house.[17] There was one law for the men, another for the
women, and Dr. Johnson approved of this moral system in England.
The domestic relations are very pleasingly portrayed in the _Iliad_.
Homer, to be sure, knows that family life is not always monotonously
peaceful and affectionate. In the long speech of Phoenix (Book ix.)
we see a son, Meleager, who has a feud with his maternal uncles and
is under his mother's curse. This family feud, in which the wife and
mother takes sides with her own kin against her husband or sons, is a
common motive in the oldest Teutonic Epics, and even in the historic
traditions of the Camerons.
But it is among the Olympians that Homer finds his blustering, teasing
yet placable husband and father, Zeus; his shrewish wife, Hera; his
rather spiteful daughter, Athene; and his lady of pleasure, Aphrodite,
whose intrigues are a jest. The affection of Zeus for his daughter,
none the less, is happily displayed, while among men the fraternal
affection of Agamemnon for Menelaus is his most agreeable trait.
Parents and children, except in the woeful adventure of Phoenix, are
always on the best of terms, as in the households of Odysseus, Nestor,
and Alcinous; and the petulance of Priam towards his sons, after the
death of Hector, is excused by his age and intolerable sufferings.
"With his staff he chased forth the men, and they went before the old
man in his haste."[18]
In short, though wives were bought with the bride-price, it seems
probable that the affectionate Homeric fathers allowed more latitude of
choice to their daughters than has, in many periods, been permitted by
ourselves in England, and no literature in the world displays a happier
domestic life, a life more gentle, true, and loving than the old Epics
of the mail-clad Achaeans.[19]
[1] _Beowulf_, 611-628, 1162-1174, 1215-1231.
[2] _Odyssey_, i. 36-43.
[3] _Odyssey_, viii. 317-320.
[4] _Iliad_, xxii. 51, ix. 146-158.
[5] _Iliad_, ix. 146 _et seqq_.
[6] _Story of Burnt Njal_, vol. ii p. 81.
[7] Germania, R. G. E. p. 151, note 1, citing Ham. 160, 163, 164.
[8] _Odyssey_, i. 278, ii. 195-197.
[9] See Pierron, "qu'il s'entendra avec le prétendant." Merry and
Riddell translate, "will accept gifts of wooing for his daughter."
Leaf: "get the bride-price for his daughter."
[10] _R. G. E._ p. 151.
[11] No society is less affluent than that of the Australian tribes.
But this does not provoke preferential female infanticide. See Spencer
and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 51, 52, 264;
_Northern Tribes_, p. 608; Howitt, _Native Tribes of South East
Australia_, pp. 749, 750.
[12] See Appendix, "The supposed Expurgation of Homer."
[13] Odyssey, xxiii. 183-204.
[14] _Odyssey_, xvii. 266.
[15] _R. G. E._ p. 153.
[16] _Iliad_, v. 69-71.
[17] viii. 281-284.
[18] xxiv. 247.
[19] Mr. Murray refers me, for female infanticide among Greeks, to a
letter in _Pap. Oxyz_., 744: "Keep a male. Cast out a female child."
These may have been the manners of late Egyptianised Greeks, but I am
not dealing with them. See p. 40 _supra_ under note 2.