one of the earliest lyric composers, describes in a poem the meeting of
Odysseus and Nausicaa, and Sophocles wrote a drama entitled _Nausicaa_,
or _The Washers_; and there is a tradition that, contrary to his usual
custom, the poet himself "appeared as an actor, winning much applause by
his beauty and grace in the dancing and rhythmic ball play, in the
character of Nausicaa herself." Lucian names her among the heroines of
mythical times who, through their goodness of heart, humanity,
gentleness of demeanor, and compassion toward the needy, deserve to rank
as patterns of womanly virtue.
With such brilliant pictures of domestic life--the queens Penelope,
Helen, and Arete, exerting a womanly influence in the palaces, the
goddess-lovers Circe and Calypso on their enchanted islands, the slave
Euryclea tenderly caring for mistress and young master, and the maiden
Nausicaa, engaged in occupation and in pastime with her girl
friends--the Odyssey is a mirror reflecting the character of the Heroic
Age of Greece.
V
THE LYRIC AGE
From the fascinating visions of the heroic past as they are presented in
the Homeric poems, we must now prepare to descend to the actualities of
life as they disclose themselves at the dawn of Greek history. Hesiod,
the epic poet of Boeotia, constitutes the bridge, as regards social
conditions, between the Heroic Age and the early historical periods of
the various peoples and cities of Greece. He describes the actual
conditions about him, and gives us glimpses of the life of the Greek
people which prepare us for the great changes that have taken place
through the overturning of monarchies, the spread of commerce and
colonization, and the awakening of the common people to a sense of their
rights and their power. Hence we may expect to find in his poetry much
light on the status of woman in remote times.
Hesiod is usually ascribed to the second half of the ninth century
before the Christian Era. He lived at Ascra, near Mount Helicon, in
Boeotia, the original home of the AEolians. Amid agricultural
surroundings the poet grew up. Defrauded by his brother Perses of part
of his inheritance, he experienced hardships that quickened his sympathy
for the plain people and led him to reflection on life and its problems.
He was commissioned by the Muses, who appeared to him on Mount Helicon,
to _utter true things to men_--a phrase which strikes the keynote to his
poetry, for he dealt in realities and sought to alleviate the social
conditions of his times. His principal works are the _Works and Days_
and the _Theogony_; there was also a Hesiodic _Catalogue of Women_,
attested by many allusions in classical writers, but, unfortunately for
our purpose, altogether lost to us. Very probably in this work, Hesiod
or his school told of the aristocratic women of Greek mythology, from
whose union with gods had sprung heroes. Lacking this, Hesiod is to us
"the poet of the Helots," and we gain from him only knowledge of the
common people of Boeotia and their manner of life.
Hesiod's estimate of women is vastly inferior to that of Homer. Homer,
who sang for aristocratic ladies at the court of kings, has introduced
us into a society where women presided over their houses with grace and
dignity, and softened and refined the rough, warlike manners of men.
Hesiod, the poet of the plain people, is impressed with the hopelessness
of the conditions about him. The people are oppressed by the nobles; it
is impossible for them to obtain justice; the world seems all wrong. And
in seeking the causes of existing evils, the poet traces them back to
the one great evil which the gods have inflicted upon men; and that
is--woman.
This indictment first finds expression in his version, of the myth of
Pandora, the Mother Eve of Greek legend.
Hesiod tells us in this poem that in old days the human race had the use
of fire, and in gratitude to the gods offered burnt sacrifice. But
Prometheus had defrauded the gods of their just share of the sacrifices
and had compelled Zeus to be content with merely the bones and fat; and,
in return for this deception, Zeus devised grievous troubles for mortals
by depriving them of fire. Prometheus then stole fire from heaven.
Zeus, angered at being outwitted by the crafty Prometheus, determined to
inflict on men a bane from which they would not quickly recover. He
straightway commanded Hephaestus to mix earth and water, to endow the
plastic form with human voice and powers, and to liken it to a heavenly
goddess--virginal, winning, and fair. Athena was commanded to teach her
the domestic virtues; Aphrodite, to endow her with beauty, eager desire,
and passion that wastes the bodies of mortals; and Hermes, to bestow on
her a shameless mind and a treacherous nature. All obeyed the command of
Zeus, and in this manner was fashioned the first woman. Then Athena
added a girdle and ornaments; the Graces and Persuasion hung their
golden chains over her body, and the Hours wove for her garlands of
spring flowers. The name given this fascinating creature was Pandora,
because each of the gods had bestowed on her gifts to make her a fatal
bane unto mortals.
Hermes then led her down to earth to present her to Epimetheus, whom his
brother Prometheus had bidden never to receive any presents from
Olympian Zeus. Epimetheus, however, was captivated by Pandora's beauty
and received her, and only after the evil befell did he remember his
brother's command. Until the advent of woman, men, it is said, had lived
secure from trouble, free from wearisome labor, and safe from painful
diseases that bring death to mankind. But now Pandora with her hands
lifted the lid from the great jar with which the gods had dowered her,
the great jar wherein these evils had been securely imprisoned, and let
them loose upon the earth. With the sorrows, hope had been confined; but
when they were loosed, hope flew not forth, for too soon Pandora closed
the lid of the vessel. Hence, laments Hesiod, hopeless is the lot of
humanity, while innumerable ills pass hither and thither among hopeless
men. Such is the mythus of the fall of man, as imagined by the early
Greeks. Man was punished for rebelling against the will of heaven. Woman
is the instrument of his chastisement, thrust upon him by the angry
deity. She possesses every charm, every allurement, but her very
fascination is a chief cause of ill to man. He in his folly receives
her, and thence befall him all the ills of life. The whole argument of
Hesiod in this passage indicates that he regarded woman as "a necessary
deduction from the happiness of life," as "the rift in the lute that
spoils its music." Contrasted with the Hebrew story, the Greek
represents woman as closing the door of hope to man; while the Hebrew
version sees in her seed the hope of the salvation that is to overcome
the evils of the fall. Even stronger is Hesiod's invective against the
female sex in the _Theogony_, where he repeats the story of Pandora, and
concludes with the following reflections:
"From her the sex of tender woman springs;
Pernicious is the race; the woman tribe
Dwells upon earth, a mighty bane to men;
No mates for wasting want but luxury;
And as within the close-roofed hive, the drones,
Helpers of sloth, are pampered by the bees;
These all the day, till sinks the ruddy sun,
Haste on the wing, 'their murmuring labors ply,'
And still cement the white and waxen comb;
Those lurk within the covered hive, and reap
With glutted maw the fruits of others' toil;
Such evil did the Thunderer send to man
In woman's form, and so he gave the sex,
Ill helpmates of intolerable toils.
Yet more of ill instead of good he gave:
The man who shunning wedlock thinks to shun
The vexing cares that haunt the woman-state,
And lonely waxes old, shall feel the want
Of one to foster his declining years;
Though not his life be needy, yet his death
Shall scatter his possessions to strange heirs,
And aliens from his blood. Or if his lot
Be marriage and his spouse of modest fame
Congenial to his heart, e'en then shall ill
Forever struggle with the partial good,
And cling to his condition. But the man
Who gains the woman of injurious kind
Lives bearing in his secret soul and heart
Inevitable sorrow: ills so deep
As all the balms of medicine cannot cure."
This passage contains in brief Hesiod's general ideas concerning woman.
Pandora brought infinite ills to mortals, for from her sprang the tribe
of woman, "a mighty bane to men." If a man marry, he will be sorry; and
if he refrain from marriage, he will regret it. A wretched old age
awaits the bachelor; and his possessions, at his death, are dissipated
by indifferent kindred. Even if he marry, and get a good wife, sorrows
and blessings are mingled in his lot; while if his wife be bad, ills so
deep are his "as all the balms of medicine cannot cure." So woman is a
being whose presence is a necessary evil; without her, man's destiny is
not complete, but he must endure the ills she brings for the sake of the
possible blessing that may come by sharing one's lot with her. A man,
says the bard of Ascra, cannot be too cautious in choosing his helpmate,
as the following sage counsel indicates:
"Take to thy house a woman for thy bride
When in the ripeness of thy manhood's pride;
Thrice ten thy sum of years, the nuptial prime;
Nor fall far short nor far exceed the time.
Four years the ripening virgin shall consume,
And wed the fifth of her expanding bloom.
A virgin choose: and mould her manners chaste;
Chief be some neighboring maid by thee embraced;
Look circumspect and long; lest thou be found
The merry mock of all the dwellers round.
No better lot has Providence assigned
Than a fair woman with a virtuous mind;
Nor can a worse befall than when thy fate
Allots a worthless, feast-contriving mate.
She with no torch of mere material flame
Shall burn to tinder thy care-wasted frame;
Shall send a fire thy vigorous bones within
And age unripe in bloom of years begin."
The vein of contempt for woman which runs through the verses of Hesiod
finds many echoes in later writers, which indicates that in this
transition period, especially in Ionian Greece, evil influences were at
work, causing men to rebel against the shackles of wedded life and to
fail to realize the happiness they desired in the home and in the
family. It seems strange that Hesiod, in describing farm duties, should
not tell us more of the important function of the housewife. Yet in one
passage he merely emphasizes the importance of starting with "a house,
a wife, and an ox to plow," and in other passages speaks disparagingly
of woman and her work. So that even in lines where he might well have
commended her virtues the words of praise are left unsaid.
The two centuries of Greek history following Hesiod are chiefly known to
us through the lyric poets, as epic poetry declined and the writing of
history had not yet begun. Lyric poetry is an index to the hearts of the
people: for in lyric poetry are expressed the thoughts and feelings of
reflective man. Woman is the great mainspring of existence; she it is
who is the general cause of man's thoughts, emotions, passions, joys,
and sorrows. Hence, as lyric poetry is the poetry of the heart, we find
recorded in the verses of Grecian lyrists man's attitude toward woman in
this period of "storm and stress" in the development of Greek
nationality.
Archilochus is the father of iambic poetry, and he made it the medium of
expression of personal passion and satire. With all the ardor of his
nature, he loved Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, of the island of Paros,
where the poet had made his home. Certain fragments of his poems, still
extant, indicate the intensity of the flame with which he was consumed.
Archilochus has left us an exquisite picture of his loved one, clad in
all the beauty and grace a poetic lover could portray, with a rose and a
myrtle branch in her hand, and her tresses falling caressingly over her
shoulders. He sighed "were it to touch but her hand," and she seems at
first to have returned his affection. The lovers were betrothed, but
suddenly the father objected, and the match was broken off. Love
immediately turned into hate, and passion changed into rage. Thereupon,
as Horace says:
_"Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo,"_
Archilochus used the iambic metre as his weapon of attack. As his love
had been ardent, so, when betrayed, his rage was uncontrollable. Every
possible taunt was cast at those who had deceived him. "Each verse he
wrote was polished and pointed like an arrow head. Each line was steeped
in the poison of hideous charges against his sweetheart, her sister, and
her father. The set of poems which he produced, and, as it would appear,
recited publicly at the festival of Demeter, was so charged with wit and
fire that the country rang with them. The daughters of Lycambes,
tradition avers, went straightway and hanged themselves--unable to
endure the flight of fiery serpents that had fallen upon them; for, to
quote the words of Browning, Archilochus had the art of writing verse
that 'bit into the live man's flesh like parchment,' that sent him
wandering, branded and forever shamed, about his native fields and
streets."
Archilochus's verses indicate that, in the eighth century before our
era, there was in Greece a certain freedom of intercourse between the
sexes, and that love was, at times at least, the basis for betrothal; it
also shows the absolute control of the father over the hand of his
daughter. The poet's story is also the earliest we have of love
betrayed, and the name of Neobule is inextricably intertwined with the
rise of satiric verse.
A different note is struck by Archilochus's contemporary, Semonides of
Amorgus, who takes up and continues the tradition of Hesiod in speaking
of woman in tones of contempt and disparagement. He composed a
celebrated satire on woman, in which her various temperaments are
ascribed to a kinship with different domestic animals,--the hog, the
fox, the dog, the ass, the mare, the ape,--or are compared to mud, sea
water, and the bee.
Semonides first deals with the class of women of the hog variety: "God
made the mind of woman in the beginning of different qualities; for one
he fashioned like a bristly hog, in whose house everything tumbles about
in disorder, bespattered with mud, and rolls upon the ground; she,
dirty, with unwashed clothes, sits and grows fat on a dungheap."
The woman like mud is thus satirized: "This woman is ignorant of
everything, both good and bad; her only accomplishment is eating: cold
though the winters be, she is too stupid to draw near the fire."
Here is the poet's picture of the woman who resembles the sea: "She has
two minds; when she laughs and is glad, the stranger seeing her at home
will give her praise--there is nothing better than this on the earth,
no, nor fairer; but another day she is unbearable, not to be looked at
or approached, for she is raging mad. To friend and foe she is alike
implacable and odious. Thus, as the sea is often calm and innocent, a
great delight to sailors in summertime, and oftentimes again is
frantic, tearing along with roaring billows, so is this woman in her
temper."
The woman who resembles a mare offers other disagreeable qualities: She
is "delicate and long-haired, unfit for drudgery or toil; she would not
touch the mill, or lift the sieve, or clean the house out! She bathes
twice or thrice a day, and anoints herself with myrrh; then she wears
her hair combed out long and wavy, dressed with flowers. It follows that
this woman is a rare sight to one's guests; but to her husband she is a
curse, unless he be a tyrant who prides himself on such expensive
luxuries."
The ape-like wife is perhaps the worst of the lot: "This one, above all,
has Zeus given as the greatest evil to men. Her face is most hateful.
Such a woman goes through the city a laughing-stock to all the men.
Short of neck, with narrow hips, withered of limb, she moves about with
difficulty. O wretched man, who weds such a woman! She knows every
cunning art, just like an ape, nor is ridicule a concern to her. To no
one would she do a kindness, but every day she schemes to this end,--how
she may work some one the greatest injury."
But at last we reach the bee: "The man who gets her is lucky; to her
alone belongs no censure; one's household goods thrive and increase
under her management; loving, with a loving spouse, she grows old, the
mother of a fair and famous race. She is preeminent among all women, and
a heavenly grace attends her. She cares not to sit among the women when
they indulge in lascivious chatter. Such wives are the best and wisest
mates Zeus grants to men."
Only one woman in ten has been found in some measure desirable, and the
poet concludes with a lengthy and comprehensive dunciad of the female
sex, the gist of which is as follows: "Zeus made this supreme
evil--woman: even though she seem to be a blessing, when a man has
wedded one she becomes a plague."
How much truth is there in Semonides's views on the women of his time?
The poet agrees with Hesiod in regarding woman as a necessary evil. Nine
women out of ten he finds altogether bad, and the tenth is prized only
for her domestic virtues. Industrious, quiet, economical, the mother of
children, she is merely the good housewife, which seems to have been the
primitive ideal of the perfect woman. The poem treats of women of the
middle class, and is important in showing the freedom of movement, and
appearance in public, of the married woman. She is not shut up in the
harem; but in the use of her tongue, and in her capacity as a busybody,
there seems to be no restraint upon her. Semonides's range of vision was
narrow, and he probably knew not much beyond his own little island, but
we may credit him with expressing the prevalent views of the honest
burghers of Amorgus.
Phocylides of Miletus, a successor of Semonides by rather more than a
century, composed in the same strain an epigrammatic satire on woman. It
is manifestly an imitation of the tirade of Semonides.
"The tribe of women," says he, "is of these four kinds,--that of a dog,
that of a bee, that of a burly sow, and that of a long-maned mare. This
last is manageable, quick, fond of gadding about, fine of figure; the
sow kind is neither good nor bad; that of the dog is difficult and
snarling; but the bee-like woman is a good housekeeper, and knows how to
work. This desirable marriage, pray to obtain, dear friend."
The bitterest of all the observations against woman by the iambic
writers, however, is that of Hipponax, a brilliant satirist of the sixth
century before Christ, He says:
"Two happy days a woman brings a man: the first, when he marries her;
the second, when he bears her to the grave."
Theognis is another of the poets of Greece who took a gloomy view of
life, and was not happy in his matrimonial ties. He laments that
marriages in his native town of Megara are made for money, and avers
that such marriages are the bane of the city. Says Theognis:
"Rams and asses, Cyrnus, and horses, we choose of good breed, and wish
them to have good pedigrees; but a noble man does not hesitate to wed a
baseborn girl if she bring him much money; nor does a noble woman refuse
to be the wife of a base but wealthy man, but she chooses the rich
instead of the noble. For they honor money; and the noble weds the
baseborn, and the base the highborn; wealth has mixed the race. So, do
not wonder, Polypaides, that the race of the citizens deteriorates, for
the bad is mixed with the good."
To sum up this cursory survey of the iambic poets, we find that in their
period woman is still regarded as the determining factor of man's weal
or woe, but that there exists in the sex every variety of woman which
lack of education and, especially, lack of appreciation can produce.
Woman is prized by man only for her domestic virtues; and any endeavor
she may make to step beyond the narrow circle of the home is resented by
the lords of creation. Man looks down on her as his inferior, and gives
her no share in his larger life. Among the aristocratic the bane of
wealth has entered, and marriages of convenience are the prevailing
custom.
When we pass from the iambic to the elegiac poets, we begin to note the
causes why wedded life, especially among the Ionian Greeks, does not
present the beautiful pictures of domestic bliss and conjugal
comradeship so attractive in heroic times. The martial elegists show
how woman could still inspire man to deeds of valor, but the erotic
poets give us glimpses of the root of the evil that was undermining the
very foundations of domestic life. The Greek woman did not develop under
enlarged conditions with the same rapidity as the Greek man; the wife
was expected to be merely the mother of her husband's children and the
keeper of his house; for companionship and pleasure he looked elsewhere.
The free woman, or the hetaera, has entered upon the stage. Poets were
inspired by love, but romantic love between husband and wife is being
replaced by the love of the beautiful and highly educated "companion,"
or the natural place of the highborn woman is being invaded by the baser
passion for "those fair and stately youths, with their virgin looks and
maiden modesty "--two classes that were to play so large a role in
society in the greatest days of Greece, and who were to bring about its
downfall.
In the fragments of Alcman are many allusions to his passion for his
sweetheart Megalostrata; and many of the elegies of Mimnermus are said
to have been addressed to a flute player, Nanno, who, according to one
account, did not return his passion. The following, translated by
Symonds, shows the intensity of his love:
"What's life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
When to the gold-haired goddess cold am I,
When love and love's soft gifts no more delight me,
Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die!
Ah! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth;
On man and maids they beautifully smile:
But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth,
Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile.
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
Scarce serve the very sunshine to behold--
Unloved of youths, of every maid the scorn--
So hard a lot gods lay upon the old."
Even from Solon the Sage, maker of constitutions, we possess some
amorous verses, of so questionable a character that it would hardly be
fitting to present them in this volume. They are ascribed to his early
youth. They afforded much comfort to the libertines of antiquity, who
were glad to be able to cite so respectable an exemplar; but the good
people were scandalized by these couplets.
Ibycus resembles Sappho in the intensity of his passion and in his
conception of Eros as a concrete existence. "Love once again looking
upon me from his cloud-black brows, with languishing glances drives me
by enchantments of all kinds to the endless nets of Cypris. Verily, I
tremble at his onset as a chariot horse, which hath won prizes, in old
age goes grudgingly to try his speed in the swift race of cars."
Anacreon, to English readers the best known of the erotic poets of
Greece, had as his mistress the golden-haired Eurypyle. He was very
susceptible to the influence of love, and, owing to the grace and
sweetness and ease of expression in his verses, has won an enduring
fame. Many of his verses and numerous imitations of his poems are
extant, and in these love is the constant theme.
Stesichorus was the composer of love poems with a plot, which were
highly popular among the ladies of ancient days. As forerunners of the
Greek Romance they possess unique literary importance, and as love
stories of an early day they throw much light on the status and ideals
of woman. Aristoxenus had preserved an outline of the plot of the
_Calyce:_ "The maiden Calyce having fallen madly in love with a youth,
prays to Apollo that she may become his lawful wife; and when he
continues to be indifferent to her, she commits suicide." Ancient
critics favorably comment on the purity and modesty of the maiden, and
the story indicates that marriages were not always a matter of
arrangement, that love at times determined one's choice, and that to the
ancient highborn maiden death was preferable to dishonor. Another of
these romantic poems, called _Rhadina_, tells also a tale of unhappy
love, how a Samian brother and sister were put to death by a cruel
tyrant because the sister resisted his advances.