Hail, Nature’s utmost boast! unrivalled Greece!
My fairest reign! where every power benign
Conspired to blow the flower of human kind,
And lavished all that genius can inspire.
--JAMES THOMSON.
COST OF LIVING AND WAGES
[Illustration: PERICLES]
[Sidenote: [460-410 B.C.]]
Everywhere in the ancient world, but in a higher or less degree in
different countries, the necessaries of life upon the whole were cheaper
than they are at the present day. But with regard to particular articles,
examples enough of the contrary are found. The main causes of this
comparative cheapness were the less amount of money in circulation,
the uncommon fruitfulness of the southern countries which the Greeks
inhabited, or with which they traded; countries which at that time were
cultivated with an extraordinary degree of care, but are at present
neglected; and the impossibility of exportation to the distant regions
which had no intercourse, or but little, with the countries lying on
the Mediterranean Sea. The last is especially the reason of the great
cheapness of wine. The large quantities of the same which were produced
in all southern regions, were not distributed over so considerable an
extent of the earth as at present. Nevertheless in considering the prices
of commodities in ancient times the difference of times and places
must be well weighed. In Rome and Athens wine was not, in the most
flourishing condition of the state, as cheap as it was in Upper Italy
and in Lusitania. In Upper Italy, the Sicilian medimnus of wheat, which
was equal to the Attic medimnus, and considerably less than the Prussian
bushel (or than 1½ English bushels), was worth, even in the times of
Polybius, according to the account of that historian, only four oboli.
This price seems to rest upon an inaccurate comparison of the Roman with
the Greek coin, and particularly upon the supposition that the modius,
one-sixth of the medimnus, was worth two asses, the medimnus, therefore,
worth twelve asses; which, estimating the denarius to be equivalent to
the drachma, would be equal to 4½ oboli. To this last amount four ancient
oboli of the standard of Solon (11.4 cents) may certainly be estimated as
equivalent. The medimnus of barley was worth the half of this price, the
metretes of wine (about ten English gallons), was worth as much as the
medimnus of barley.
In the time of Solon, indeed, an ox was worth only five drachmæ, a sheep
one drachma, and the medimnus of grain the same. But gradually the prices
increased five fold; of several articles seven, ten and twenty fold.
After the examples of modern times this will not appear strange. The
amount of ready money was not only increased, but by the increase of
population, and of intercourse, its circulation was accelerated: so that
already in the age of Socrates, Athens was considered an expensive place
of residence.
The cheapness of commodities, in ancient times, has generally been
exaggerated by some, who supposed the assumption, that prices were on
an average ten times lower than in the eighteenth century, to come the
nearest to the truth. The prices of grain, according to which the prices
of many other articles must be regulated, show the contrary. It is
difficult to designate average prices, however; since so few, and those
only very casual accounts, are extant. Letronne designates the value of
the medimnus of grain at two and a half drachmæ as the average price in
Greece, in particular at the city of Athens, about the year 400 B.C.; and
in accordance with this, he assumes the value of grain, compared with
that of silver, to have been in the relation of 1 to 3146; the same at
Rome, fifty years before the Christian era, to have been in the relation
of 1 to 2681, in France, before the year 1520 in the relation of 1 to
4320, and in the nineteenth century in the relation of 1 to 1050. This
estimation, according to which the present prices of grain are three
times as high as they were during the period of the most flourishing
condition of Greece, appears the most probable.
The most temperate man needed daily, at least, an obolus for his food,
one-fourth of an obolus for a chœnix of grain, according to the price of
barley in the time of Socrates; together, annually, reckoning the year
at 360 days, 75 drachmæ; for clothes and shoes at least 15 drachmæ. A
family, therefore, of four adult persons must have needed at least 360
drachmæ (£12 or $60) for these necessaries of life. The sum requisite,
however, in the time of Demosthenes, must have been 22½ drachmæ higher
for each person; for 4 persons, therefore, 90 drachmæ (£3 or $15) higher.
To this must be added the cost of a habitation, the value of which,
estimated at least at 3 minæ, would involve, according to the common rate
of interest (12 per cent.), an annual expense of 36 drachmæ (£1 or $5).
So that the poorest family of 4 adult free persons, if they did not wish
to live upon bread and water, needed upon an average about £17 or $85
annually.
Socrates did not have, as was falsely reported, two wives at the same
time, but one after the other; Myrto, who was poor when he married her,
and who probably had no dowry, and Xanthippe. He also had three children.
Of these, Lamprocles was already adult at the death of his father, but
Sophroniscus and Menexenus were minors. He prosecuted no manual art
after he had sacrificed the employment of his youth to the never-resting
effort to acquire wisdom. His teaching procured him no income. According
to Xenophon he lived upon his property, which, if it should have found a
good purchaser (ὡνητὴς), the house included, might easily have brought,
altogether, five minæ; and he needed only a small addition from his
friends. From this it has been inferred, that living was extraordinarily
cheap at Athens. It is evident, however, that Socrates with his family
could not live upon the interest of so small an amount of property. For,
however poor the house may have been, its value can scarcely be estimated
at less than three minæ. So that, without taking the furniture into
consideration, the remainder of his property from which interest could
be derived, could have amounted to but two minæ, and the income from it,
according to the common rate of interest, to only twenty-four drachmæ.
With this sum he could not have procured even the amount of barley which
was requisite for himself and his wife, to say nothing of the other
necessaries of life, and of the support of his children.
The history of the ancient sages is so entangled and garnished with
traditions, and the circumstances of their lives are so differently
represented even by contemporary writers, that we can seldom find firm
ground on which to stand. Thus, according to the defence of Socrates
composed by Plato, the former is represented to have affirmed that he
could pay for his liberation only about a mina of silver; and Eubulides
says the same. According to others, he estimated the amount which he
should pay at twenty-five drachmæ, and in the defence ascribed to
Xenophon he is represented as neither having himself estimated any
amount, nor having allowed his friends to do so. Thus the well-informed
Demetrius of Phalerum affirmed, in opposition to Xenophon, that Socrates
had, beside his house, seventy minæ at interest in the possession of
Crito. And Libanius informs us that he had lost eighty minæ, which he
had inherited from his father, by the insolvency of a friend, in whose
hands he had placed it, and who certainly cannot have been, as Schneider
supposed, the wealthy Crito.
But assuming that Xenophon’s account is perfectly correct, we must
suppose that the mother of the young boys supported herself and both
the children, either by labour or from her dowry, and that Lamprocles
supported himself, and that the famed economy of Socrates probably
consisted, among other things, in this also, that he kept them at work.
And then, again, suppose that he always lived upon his twenty-four
drachmæ, with a small additional sum from his friends, yet no one
could live as he did. It is true, that he is said to have frequently
offered sacrifices at home, and upon the public altars. But they were
doubtless only baked dough, shaped into the forms of animals, after the
manner of the poor; properly bread, therefore, a great part of which
was at the same time eaten, and to which his family also contributed.
He lived in the strictest sense upon bread and water, except when
invited to entertainments at the tables of others, and could therefore
be particularly glad, as he is said to have been, on account of the
cheapness of barley, when four chœnices sold for an obolus. He wore
no undergarment; even his outside garment was poor, and the same one
was worn both summer and winter. He generally went barefooted, and his
dress-sandals, which he occasionally wore, may have lasted him his
life-time. His walk for pleasure and exercise before his house served
him instead of a relish for his meal. In short, no slave was so poorly
maintained as was Socrates. The drachma [about 8½d. or 17 cents] which
he gave Prodicus was certainly the largest sum ever spent by him at one
time. And it may boldly be affirmed, without wishing to disparage his
exalted genius, that, in respect to his indigence, and a certain cynicism
in his character, the representation of Aristophanes was not much
exaggerated, but in the essential particulars was delineated from the
life.
If in the time of Socrates four persons lived upon £17 or $85 a year,
they must have been satisfied with but a scanty allowance. He who wished
to live respectably, needed even then, and still more in the time of
Demosthenes, a sum considerably larger. According to the speech against
Phænippus, there were left to the complainant and his brother by their
father, forty-five minæ to each, on which, it is said, one could not
easily live, namely, upon the interest of it, which amounted, according
to the common rate of interest, to 540 drachmæ (£19 or $95).
Mantitheus in Demosthenes asserts that he could have been maintained
and educated upon the interest of his mother’s dowry, which amounted to
a talent; consequently, according to the usual rate of interest, upon
720 drachmæ (£25 or $125), annually. For the maintenance of the young
Demosthenes himself, his sister still younger, and his mother, seven
minæ (£24 or $120) were annually paid, without reckoning anything for
their habitation, since they dwelt in their own house. The cost of the
education of Demosthenes was not included in this sum. For that the
guardians remained in debt. Lysias refers, in one of his speeches, to
the knavish account of the guardian of the children of Diodotus. He had,
for example, charged for clothing, shoes, and hair-cutting over a talent
for a period of less than eight years, and for sacrifices and festivals
more than four thousand drachmæ, and he ultimately would pay a balance of
only two minæ of silver, and thirty Cyzicene staters, whereby his wards
had become impoverished. Lysias remarks, that if he had charged more than
any one in the city had ever done before for two boys, and their sister,
a pedagogue, and a female servant, his account could not have amounted
to more than a thousand drachmæ (£35 or $175) annually. This would be
not much less than three drachmæ daily, and must certainly appear to
have been too much in the time of that orator for three children and two
attendants.
In the time of Solon one must certainly have been able to travel quite a
distance with an obolus, since that lawgiver forbid that a woman should
take with her upon a march, or a journey, a larger quantity of meat
and drink than could be purchased for that sum, and a basket of larger
dimensions than an ell in length. On the contrary, when the citizens of
Trœzen, according to Plutarch, resolved to give to each of the old men,
women, and children who fled from Athens upon the approach of Xerxes,
two oboli daily, it appears to be a large sum for the purpose. In the
most flourishing period of the state, however, even a single person
could maintain himself but indifferently on two or three oboli a day.
Notwithstanding all this, the cheapness and facility of living still
remained very great. In accordance with the noble reverence of the
Greeks for the dead, the death of a man, his interment, and monument,
often occasioned more expense than many years of his life, since private
persons appropriated three, ten, fifty, and even 120 minæ, to that
purpose.
The value of the property of the Athenian people, excluding the property
of the state, and the mines, was according to a probable computation,
at thirty thousand to forty thousand talents. Of these if only twenty
thousand talents be considered productive property, every one of the
twenty thousand citizens would have had, if the property had been
equally divided, the interest of a talent, or, according to the common
rate of interest, 720 drachmæ as an annual income. On this, with the
addition of the profit from their labour, they might all have lived in
a respectable manner. They would in that case have realised what the
ancient sages and statesmen considered the highest prosperity of a state.
But a considerable number of the citizens were poor. Others possessed a
large amount of property, on which they could fare luxuriously on account
of the cheapness of living, and the high rate of interest, and yet at
the same time could increase their means, because property augmented
exceedingly fast.
This inequality corrupted the state, and the manners of the people. Its
most natural consequence was the submissiveness of the poor towards the
rich, although they believed that their rights were equal. The rich
followed the practice, afterwards so notorious and decried at Rome, of
suing for the favour of the people, sometimes in a nobler, sometimes in a
baser manner.
In proportion to the cheapness of the necessaries of life, the wages of
labour must have been less in ancient times than at present. And all
the multitude of those who sought labour as the means of subsistence
must have diminished its price, since competition everywhere produces
this result. In this number, beside the _thetes_ and aliens under the
protection of the state, a great part of the slaves are to be included;
so that the families of slaves belonging to the rich, lessened the profit
of the poorer class of citizens. The Phocians, by whom the keeping
of slaves is said to have been in the earlier periods of their state
prohibited, not unjustly reproached Mnason, who possessed a thousand
slaves and more, for depriving an equal number of poor citizens of the
means of subsistence. After the Peloponnesian War even citizens who
had been accustomed to a higher standing were compelled to support
themselves, whatever it might have cost them to submit to it, as day
labourers, or in some other way, by the labour of their hands. For they
had lost their landed property in foreign states, and on account of the
want of money, and the decrease of the population, rents had depreciated,
and loans were not to be had.
[Illustration: DRESS OF A GREEK LABOURER
(After Hope)]
Nevertheless, we do not find that daily wages were excessively low.
Lucian represents the daily wages of an agricultural labourer or
gardener, on a remote estate lying near the frontiers of Attica, to have
been, in the time of Timon, four oboli (5¾d. or 11.4 cents). The wages
of a porter are the same in Aristophanes, and of a common labourer, who
carried dirt, they were three oboli. When Ptolemy sent to the Rhodians
one hundred house builders, together with 350 labourers, in order to
restore the buildings destroyed by an earthquake, he gave them fourteen
talents annually for their food, three oboli a day for each man. We
know not, however, by what standard the money was estimated. This was,
if they were slaves, for other aliment beside grain; if they were free
men, it was only a part of their wages, since a man needs something
else besides his food. In 408 B.C., a sawyer (πρίστης) who sawed for a
public building, received a drachma a day. A carpenter, who worked on the
same building, received five oboli a day. We find that in the time of
Pericles, as it seems, a drachma, as daily wages, was given to each of a
number of persons working by the day. It is not at all probable that they
were artisans, but only common labourers.
Persons in higher stations, or those who laboured with the pen, were,
according to genuine democratic principles, not better paid. The
architect of the temple of Minerva Polias received no more than a stone
sawyer, or common labourer engaged upon the building, namely, a drachma
(8½d. or 17 cents) daily. The undersecretary (ὑπογραμματεὺς) of the
superintendents of the public buildings received daily five oboli (7¼d.
or 14.25 cents). For particular services, in which a certain deference
is manifested by the labourer to the person served, a high price was
paid in Athens, as is the case in all large cities. When Bacchus in the
_Frogs_ of Aristophanes wishes to have his bundle carried by a porter,
the latter demands two drachmæ. When the god offers the ghost nine oboli,
he replies that before he will do so, he must become alive again. If this
conversation in the realm of departed spirits is not a scene from real
life, it has no point. A living porter at Athens was probably just as
shameless in his demands, and if less were offered, he might have said:
“I must die before I do it.”
The fare for a voyage by sea, particularly for long voyages, was
extraordinarily low. For sailing from Ægina to the Piræus, more than
sixteen miles, two oboli (3d. or 6 cents) were paid in the time of Plato.
For sailing from Egypt, or Pontus, to the Piræus, a man, with his family
and baggage, paid in the same period at the most two drachmæ (1s. 5d.
or 35 cents). This is a proof that commerce was very lucrative, so that
it was not found necessary to take a high fare from passengers. In the
time of Lucian four oboli were given for being conveyed from Athens
to Ægina. The freight of timber seems to have been higher, according
to Demosthenes, who mentions that for transporting a ship-load from
Macedonia to Athens, 1,750 drachmæ were paid. The enormous vessel for
conveying grain named _Isis_, which in the time of the emperors brought
so much grain from Egypt to Italy, that, according to report, the cargo
was sufficient to last the whole of Attica a year, earned in freight at
least twelve talents annually. The freight of a talent in weight from
Ceos, which lay directly opposite Sunium, to Athens, was an obolus.
The price of a bath, although it is not barely a compensation for labour
was two oboli. A delicate little gentleman is represented by Philemon
to have paid four persons each six chalci, as appears from a passage of
Pollux, for plucking out the hair of his body with pitch, that he might
have a feminine skin. Moreover, the rich had their own, and the Athenian
people public baths.
The pay of the soldiers was different in different periods, and according
to circumstances. It fluctuated between two oboli, and, including the
money given for subsistence, two drachmæ for a hoplite and his servant.
The cavalry received from twice to fourfold the pay of the infantry;
officers, commonly twice, generals four fold the same. For, as in respect
to labour performed for daily wages, the higher station had not a
relatively higher estimation in the same degree, as at the present day.
The money given for subsistence was commonly equal in amount to the pay.
For from two to three oboli a day the soldier could maintain himself
quite well, especially since in many places living was much cheaper than
in Athens. His pay was partly as surplus, partly for clothes and weapons,
and if booty were added, he might become rich. This explains the saying
of the comedian Theopompus, that a man could support a wife on two oboli
of pay daily; with four oboli a day his fortune was made. The pay alone
of the soldier is here meant, without the money given him for subsistence.
The pay of the judges, and of those who attended the assemblies of the
people (ἐκκλησιασταί) amounted at least to three oboli a day, and like
the theoricon served only as an additional supply for the subsistence of
the citizens. The heliast in Aristophanes shows clearly how difficult it
was, with that sum, to procure bread, food, and wood for three persons.
He does not include clothing and habitation, because he sustained the
expenses for them out of his own property. The pay of senators and of
ambassadors was higher. Persons engaged in the liberal arts and sciences,
and prostitutes, were paid the highest prices.
The ancient states maintained public, salaried physicians; for example,
Hippocrates is said to have been public physician at Athens. These,
again, had servants, particularly slaves, who attended to their masters’
business among the poorer class, and among the slaves. The celebrated
physician Democedes, of Croton, received, about 540 B.C. notwithstanding
there was little money in circulation at that time, the high salary of a
talent of silver (£211:10 or $1026, since Attic money seems to be meant).
When called to Athens he received one hundred minæ (£350 or $1750), until
Polycrates of Samos gave him two talents. In like manner, no doubt,
practitioners in many other arts were paid by the state; as, for example,
architects at Rhodes and Cyzicus, and certainly in every place of
importance. For it cannot be supposed that all architects, particularly
those invited from foreign countries, would have exercised their art, as
several did at Athens, for daily wages.
The compensation of musicians, and of theatrical performers, was very
high. Amœbeus, a singer of ancient Athens, received every time he sang in
public, an Attic talent. That the players on the flute demanded a high
price for their services, is well known. In a Corcyræan inscription,
a late one indeed, but executed before the dominion of the Romans was
established in that island, fifty Corinthian minæ were designated as
the compensation, beside their expensive maintenance, for the services
of three players on the flute, three tragedians, and three comedians
at the celebration of a festival. The compensation of distinguished
theatrical performers was not less, although, beside the period of
their engagement at Athens, they earned large sums in travelling,
and performing at the various cities and places on their route. For
example, Polus or Aristodemus is said to have earned a talent in two
days, or even in one day, or for performing in a single drama. All these
artists received, in addition, prizes of victory. Also common itinerant
theatrical performers, jugglers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, enjoyed a
competency; although the sum paid by the individual spectator was small,
a few chalci, or oboli, but sometimes even a drachma. The custom of
paying fees for apprenticeship to the trades and arts, and also to the
medical profession, was established even in the time of Socrates. For a
part of the instruction in music, and for athletic exercises, it was the
duty of the tribes in Athens to provide. Each tribe had its own teachers,
whose lessons the youth of the whole tribe attended. In the other schools
each individual paid for his instruction; we know not how much. The
legislation of Charondas, in which the salaries of the teachers are said
to have been permanently established, would have made an exception,
if the laws from which Diodorus derived his information, had not been
fictitious.
The teachers of wisdom and eloquence, or sophists, were not paid by the
state until later times. But in earlier periods, they required large
sums from their scholars. In this they imitated the mercenary lyric
poets, whose inspiration frequently slumbered until incited by gold.
Protagoras of Abdera is said to have been the first who taught for money.
He required from each scholar, for a complete course of instruction,
an hundred minæ (£350 or $1750). Gorgias asked the same price, and yet
his property at his death amounted to only one thousand staters. Zeno
of Elea, in other respects unlike the sophists, required the same
amount. Since the price for teaching wisdom was so high, it was natural
that there should be chaffering about it, and that an agreement upon
reasonable terms should be sought. Hippias earned, while yet a young
man, in connection with Protagoras, in a short time, 150 minæ. Even
from a small city he earned more than twenty minæ, not by long courses
of lessons, as it seems, but by a shorter method of proceeding. But
gradually the increased number of teachers reduced the price. Evenus
of Paros, as early as the time of Socrates, required, to the general
derision, only ten minæ (£35 or $175); while for the same sum Isocrates
taught the whole art of oratory. And this appears to have been in the age
of Lycurgus, the usual honorary of a teacher of eloquence. At length the
Socratic philosophers found it convenient to teach for a compensation.
Aristippus was the first who did so. Moreover, payment was also sometimes
required from each auditor for single discourses, as, for example, by
Prodicus, one, two, four, to fifty drachmæ. Antiphon was the first who
wrote speeches and orations for money. He required high prices for
them.[b]
SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, AND BOOKS
It is remarkable that the frequent notices which occur of schoolmasters
and their schools, supply so little clear information as to the habits
or social position of this important part of the community; nor does it
appear whether they were a distinct class, or merely a lower grade of
sophists or rhetors. They seem, however, to have belonged to the upper
rank of citizens in some states, and to have been received in the best
circles. Such as they were, the lessons they taught were limited to the
Greek tongue. Instruction in foreign languages was never esteemed in
Greece either a necessary or an important branch of general education.
This is a peculiarity which forms also a signal defect of Greek culture
as compared with that of modern times.
In Athens, and probably in other Greek republics, every citizen was
under at least a moral obligation to provide his sons with a competent
knowledge of letters. The discipline of the schools was also under state
control. Yet the government nowhere seems to have provided or maintained
them, or to have appointed or paid the schoolmasters, whose livelihood
depended on the fees of their pupils. The amount of those fees has not
been recorded. But more distinct notices have been transmitted of the
charges made by literary professors of the higher class. The fees said
to have been paid for a course of instruction to some of the earlier and
more distinguished sophists and philosophers are so extravagant as to be
scarcely credible, even when attested, as they are in some instances, by
the best contemporaneous authority. Protagoras is taunted by Plato as
the first professor of the higher branches of learning who taught for
hire. If this imputation be well founded, his older contemporaries, Zeno
and Gorgias, must have been speedily led to follow his example: for Zeno
is said by Plato himself to have been paid 100 minæ, or upwards of £400
[$2000], by each disciple, for a course of lectures; and Gorgias also to
have been richly remunerated by his pupils. The fees of both Protagoras
and Gorgias are rated by other authorities at the same amount as those of
Zeno. This sum, taking into account the high value of the precious metals
in ancient times, would be equal to about £2000, or $10,000. But prices
were afterwards greatly reduced, as the number of professors increased,
and the former blind veneration for their magic powers of communicating
knowledge, or for the value of the knowledge communicated, declined.
Isocrates, the younger contemporary of Protagoras, and probably the
better master of the two, was satisfied with ten minæ [£40 or $200] for
the course; which sum seems afterwards to have remained the ordinary rate
of payment.
No distinct notice occurs of the existence, during the Attic period,
either at Athens or elsewhere, of a public library, in the familiar sense
of a miscellaneous collection of books for the use of the citizens;
although, as in the time of Pisistratus, standard editions of the popular
works recited at public solemnities, and more especially of the dramas
of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, were preserved at Athens under
the charge of the city clerk. Private libraries had, however, already
become sufficiently voluminous or curious to merit being specially
recorded. Such were those of Euripides, the poet, and of Plato, part of
whose collection was purchased at Tarentum, in Italy, from the heirs of
its former proprietor, Philolaus, and another part at Syracuse; those of
Euthydemus mentioned by Xenophon, of Aristotle, of Nicocrates of Cyprus,
and of the Athenian archon, Euclides. The varied character of the works
stored in the library of a literary professor, towards the close of this
period, is illustrated by a scene in a comedy of Alexis, the humour of
which turns on the gluttony of Hercules, a hero habitually burlesqued for
that failing in Greek satirical literature. The youthful demigod, when
directed by his master, the poet Linus, to select the book he preferred
from his preceptor’s collection,--described as containing the poems of
Homer, Orpheus, Hesiod, Chœrilus, Epicharmus, the tragedians, and the
popular prose classics,--makes choice of a cookery book.
That books of all kinds, then commonly in use, abounded during the
greater part of the Attic period appears, not only from the general
familiarity which the educated ranks possessed with the text of the
national classics, but still more from the absence of any allusion to a
scarcity of copies as interposing a serious obstacle to the attainment of
such knowledge. The book trade, as a distinct branch of commerce, seems
indeed to have been still limited, as in truth it was, comparatively, in
every age prior to the invention of printing; and remained, probably in a
great measure, in the hands of professional copyists.
Booksellers, however, and a book mart at Athens, are mentioned by authors
flourishing during the Peloponnesian War; and occasional notices occur of
book scribes or copyists, and of bookbinding. A trade in books or paper
is also mentioned by Xenophon as having been carried on about the same
date, between Greece and the coasts of the Euxine Sea. A considerable
time, however, seems to have been required to bring the works, even of
the most popular authors, into general circulation; and the disciples of
distinguished philosophers, Hermodorus for example, a scholar of Plato,
appear to have made profit by being the first to transport copies of
their masters’ lectures into distant localities.[c]
THE POSITION OF A WIFE IN ATHENS
It was generally the father who chose a wife for his son, looking less
to her person than to her family and dowry. This is one of the respects
in which the historic position of women differed from the heroic. No
longer does the man with splendid gifts win a wife from many suitors; the
father must dower his daughter appropriately in order to place her with
a husband, and so the daughter often appeared as a burden to the family;
so, also, the foundations of petticoat government in marriage were often
laid, since the man was only the usufructuary, not the owner of the
dowry. How much equality of fortune was considered, and how much a poor
family, unable to offer a dowry itself, shrank from the proposals of a
rich man, one may gather from the _Trinummus_ of Plautus, in which the
whole action turns upon this point. Lesbonicus, who is unable to dower
his sister, says to the suitor in the play: “I will not have you think
how you can help my poverty; think, rather, that I, though poor, am not
dishonourable, so people shall not say that I have let you have my own
sister for a mistress, without any dowry like this, rather than for a
wife.”
Very often young men were obliged by their fathers to marry, that they
might at last be reclaimed from a disorderly life, and thereby, also,
discharging their duty to the state. This is what happens, for instance,
to the libertine Lesbonicus in the same play by Plautus. Resignedly he
receives the news that he is betrothed: “I will have her, this one or
that one, any one you like”; whereon the father-in-law comments, “A
hundred wives would not be punishment enough for his sins!” The ancients
themselves felt the unkindness that lay in this treatment of girls. The
feeling is most strongly expressed in a fragment of Sophocles, where
young maidens complain:
“But when, light of heart, we reach the time of maidenhood, we are cast
from the house and sold, far from the home-gods and mother and father;
and yet, when the wedding is over, we must sing praises and believe that
it is right as it is.”
We cannot wonder if in the early days of marriage the atmosphere was
often cold, the heavens clouded. For this reason Plato wished that before
marriage there should be a nearer acquaintance between the interested
persons, so that no one should be deceived; and he proposed the arranging
of special games, in which young men and maidens should perform dances.
The statement, however, that no free-born Athenian ever married from
love and passionate inclination is a gross exaggeration, the outcome of
a one-sided and prejudiced view. In many comedies the plot turns on a
young man’s passion for a maiden who in the end is discovered to be a
citizen, and generally the lost daughter of a rich man. And every one
must remember the glorified love of the prince’s son Hæmon for the heroic
Antigone. It is incredible that in these instances the author presented
situations that never occurred in the actual world. But other indications
are to be found. If we look up the life of Cimon, for instance, in
Plutarch, we shall find the following passages:
[Illustration: GREEK WOMAN
(From a vase)]
“But when Callias came, a rich Athenian who had fallen in love with
Elpinice, and begged that he might pay her father’s fine for him, she
consented, and her brother Cimon gave her to Callias for a wife. So much
is certain that Cimon loved his wife Isodice too passionately and made
himself too unhappy over her death, if one may judge by the elegies
composed for his consolation.”
Only we must not think that such a passion was “romantic” in the modern
sense; its birth was more natural and sensual, and it did not rise to
a transcendent deification of the beloved. Sometimes it may well have
happened that love put in an appearance after marriage, as in _The
Mother-in-law_ of Terence, where Pamphilus, attracted by the noble
qualities of the wife he once despised, gradually becomes untrue to
his mistress. The peculiarly prosaic and cool relations that existed
between man and wife, along with the leading motive for marriage, is most
clearly expressed in a document of the highest interest to the historian
of morals, the speech against the courtesan Neæra, which is attributed
to Demosthenes. “Mistresses,” he says, “are kept for pleasure, and
housekeepers for daily attendance and personal service; but a man marries
a woman that he may beget legitimate children, of the same station on
both sides, and have a faithful guardian in the house.”
Companionable intercourse between man and wife was necessarily hindered
by the sharp division between their occupations, and reduced itself, no
doubt, to very few hours in the day. “Because,” Ischomachus says, “it is
better for a woman to stay in than to be away from home, whereas it is
ignominious for a man to stay at home and not concern himself with what
is going on in the world.” So, in the same piece of Xenophon, Socrates
says to Aristobulus: “Is there any one to whom you talk less than to
your wife?” And the disciple answers, “No one, or at least very few.” We
learn, however, from comedies and other sources, that in reality things
did not wear so sorry an aspect, and that feminine curiosity and jealousy
led to all sorts of questions and talks. On the other hand, there was no
question of any intercourse with other men; in fact a wife withdrew if
her husband, by chance, brought a guest home with him. If the husband
were not at home it would have been reckoned a gross incivility for
another man to enter the house. Indeed, Demosthenes mentions a case where
a friend, who had been summoned by a servant for help, did not venture
into the house because the master was away. So what Cornelius Nepos says
about the Greek woman is true: “She does not appear at dinner except
among relatives; she stays in the inner part of the house where no one is
admitted but her nearest kinsmen.”
Euripides, indeed, went so far as to forbid the visits of women among
themselves, for he writes in the _Andromache_: “Never, never--for I do
not say it only for this one occasion--ought intelligent men, who are
married, to allow other women to visit their wives, for they are the
teachers of wickedness. One corrupts the marriage because she gains
something by it, another wants a companion in sinning.” But things were
not so bad on the whole in this respect either. In the _Regiment of
Women_, by Aristophanes, a neighbour says to Blephyrus, who misses his
wife when he gets up in the morning, “What can it be? Do you think one
of her friends has asked her to breakfast, perhaps?” And the husband
answers, “I think that must be it. After all, she is not so bad as that
comes to, so far as I know.”
Phidias symbolised the solitariness of the home-keeping wife by the
tortoise, on whose back he set the statue of Aphrodite Urania in Elis.
But the acutest note of women’s relations to the outer world is in the
_Thesmophoriazusæ_ of Aristophanes, where the women speak themselves: “If
we are an evil, why do you marry us, and allow us neither to go out, nor
to be caught looking from the windows, and insist on guarding the evil
with so much care? And if a woman goes out and you find her before the
door, you get into a rage, whereas you ought to be pleased and bring a
thank offering, if you were really rid of the evil and did not find her
sitting there any more when you came home. Then when we take a peep out
of the window every man wants to look at the evil, and when one blushes
and draws in one’s head, they all want all the more to see the evil peep
out.” Even on occasions when fear and necessity would break through
conventional restrictions, we find the women going no farther than the
door of the house; and the orator Lycurgus actually complains because
after the battle of Chæronea, the women inquired after the fate of their
own men-folk from their doorways.
Walking in the street was made a very difficult matter even for married
women. Even Solon left directions on this subject; and among other
things he said that no woman, when she went out, must have more than
three pieces of clothing, nor more than one obolus’ worth of food and
drink with her, nor must she carry any basket of more than two feet.
Also she must not travel by night, except in a carriage, and then have a
light carried before her. In the times of the Diadochi, indeed, special
superintendents were appointed in Athens to check the immorality and
extravagance of women, such as were already established in other cities,
Syracuse, for example. Since the husband generally did the marketing
himself, and walks had not yet, it would seem, become fashionable,
although they were recommended by a woman disciple of Pythagoras,
Phintys, there were hardly any other motives left for going out except
the attendance at religious functions and the play.[d]
[Illustration: PRIESTESS OF CERES]
[Illustration: RUINS ON ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS]