theory, and prove how, in spite of legislation and convention, love is
lord of all, and that among the Athenians happy married life was not
unknown.
Nor was the strong-minded woman altogether lacking in Athens, for there
was Elpinice, sister of Cimon, who, taking the Spartan women as her
model, went about alone, and did many other things which shocked the
staid Athenian matrons. Unpleasant remarks were made about her--as in
the case of every woman who defies convention: among them, that she was
over intimate with Polygnotus the painter, who portrayed her as Laodice
in his fresco of the Trojan women in the Stoa Poikile. But the essence
of this scandal may have been merely that she served the painter as a
model, at a time when few women would have dared to visit an artist's
studio. To her brother Cimon she proved a devoted sister. Once, when he
was on trial for his life, she pleaded with Pericles so earnestly that
acquittal was the result; and later she arranged with this great rival
the negotiations that led to Cimon's return from banishment. So lovable
was she that Callias, one of the richest men in Athens, fell violently
in love with her, and offered to pay the fine to which her father was
condemned, if he could obtain the daughter in marriage; and with
Elpinice's own consent, Cimon betrothed her to Callias.
We have reserved a brief consideration of the best known of all Athenian
women, one who defies all out notions regarding the prevailing
conventions--Xanthippe, wife of the philosopher Socrates. From all
accounts, it seems likely that she was an aristocratic lady, in reduced
circumstances, who had married Socrates when advanced in life, she
herself being beyond the years at which women usually marry, yet a score
of years younger than her husband. Socrates once said he married her for
the excitement of conquest, just as one would enjoy the breaking of a
high-spirited horse; but, at any rate, the philosopher was worsted, and
Xanthippe ruled the household. Xanthippe has acquired the reputation of
being the typical scold of antiquity. Doubtless this reputation is not
without foundation, yet she should have our sympathy, for the strangest
and most difficult of husbands fell to her lot. Her naturally infirm
temper must have been tried beyond endurance by the calm unconcern of
her husband toward the domestic problem of "making both ends meet."
Ugly, careless of dress, keeping bad company, given to trances, utterly
neglectful of his family--can one be surprised that the wife of such a
man should lose all patience with him, and through repeated failures to
improve him should by degrees become an arch termagant? Yet the stories
of Xanthippe's temper rest on uncertain authority, and her reputation
may be due largely to the fact that it was necessary for the
story mongers to provide a foil for the always serene and placid
philosopher. Plato, the most reliable authority, tells us nothing
disparaging of Xanthippe, and the violent grief he attributes to her at
the last parting suggests a high degree of affection for her phlegmatic
spouse. Socrates preferred philosophical discussions with his friends to
the society of his wife in his last hours of life, but he committed her
and her children tenderly to their care. Thus parted the ill-assorted
pair, each of whom has attained world-wide celebrity--the one as the
world's philosopher, the other as the proverbial shrew.
In the early days of the Athenian democracy, women were powerful
influences in civic matters, as is instanced in the case of Cylon and
his conspirators, all of whom were ruthlessly slain except those who
fell at the feet of the archons' wives, who in pity saved them.
Herodotus tells a story which shows the intense interest of the
Athenian women in public affairs in early times. There was always great
rivalry between Athens and the neighboring island of AEgina. At one time,
the Athenians demanded of the AEginetans the fulfilment of certain
conditions regarding the statues of Attic olive wood which the latter
had stolen from the Epidaurians. "The people of AEgina refused; and the
members of an expedition sent against them, attempting to drag away the
sacred statues with ropes, were seized with madness and destroyed, one
after another, so that only one man returned alive to Athens. This man,
recounting the disasters, was surrounded by the women whose husbands had
been killed, and each one pierced him with the bodkin that fastened her
garment; so that he died under their hands. The conduct of these women
filled the Athenians with horror, and, as a punishment, they obliged all
the women of Athens to give up the Dorian dress which they wore, and
instead to clothe themselves with the Ionian tunic, which had no need of
any pin to fasten it."
Under the tyrants, the women of aristocratic families throughout Hellas
possessed an influence which was lost under the levelling process of
democracy. Pisistratus, after his first banishment, furthered the
reestablishment of his tyranny by wedding the daughter of Megacles, and
thus winning for himself the influence of the powerful Alcmaeonidae. He
worshipped Athena as his patron goddess, and, to give proper religious
sanction to his return, arranged a singular ceremony, which Herodotus
regards as "the most ridiculous that was ever imagined," but which
introduces to us the most beautiful Athenian maiden of the times:
"In the Paeanian tribe, there was a woman named Phya, four cubits tall,
and in other respects handsome. Having dressed this woman in a complete
suit of armor, and placed her in a chariot, and instructed her how to
assume a becoming demeanor, the followers of Pisistratus drove her to
the city, having sent heralds before to proclaim: 'O Athenians, welcome
back Pisistratus, whom Athena herself, honoring above all men, now
conducts back to her own citadel!' Thus the report was spread about that
the goddess Athena was bringing back Pisistratus; and the people,
believing it to be true, paid worship to the woman, and allowed
Pisistratus to return." The return was most happily effected, and, soon
after, the usurper celebrated the marriage of this "counterfeit
presentment" of the goddess to one of his sons.
Woman was to continue to play a fateful part in the history of the
usurped power of Pisistratus. The tyrant ill-treated his young wife, and
this threw her father, Megacles, again into the party of the opposition.
Pisistratus was once more driven from Athens, and this time from Attica
as well. But he returned a third time, and established his power so
firmly that at his death he bequeathed it to his sons unimpaired.
Hippias and Hipparchus ruled wisely at first, and carried on the many
public works in which Pisistratus had engaged; but their downfall
finally came through an insult to a highborn Athenian maiden, and the
story as told by Thucydides shows how highly a sister's honor was
cherished at Athens.
Harmodius, an aristocratic young Athenian, had rejected the friendship
of Hipparchus, preferring that of Aristogiton, a citizen of modest
station. The tyrant basely avenged himself. After summoning a sister of
Harmodius to come to take part in a certain procession as bearer of one
of the sacred vessels, Hippias and Hipparchus publicly rejected the
maiden when she presented herself in her festal dress, asserting that
they had not invited her to participate, as she was unworthy of the
honor.
Harmodius was very indignant at this insult, and with his friend, who
was equally incensed, formed a plot which led to the death of
Hipparchus, though Harmodius was also killed in the prosecution of the
plan. Aristogiton was put to the torture; and tradition relates that
Leaena, his mistress, was also tortured, and fearing lest in her agony
she might betray any of the conspirators bit off her tongue. After the
expulsion of the Pisistratidae, the Athenians honored her memory by a
bronze statue of a lioness without a tongue, which was set up on the
Acropolis. The Athenians by this act showed their delight in a play on
names, as _Leaena_ is the Greek word for "lioness."
The Athenian woman has never had the reputation for patriotism that
characterized her Spartan sister, yet at times she showed an almost
superhuman devotion to the State. After the sack of Athens by Mardonius
and his troops in the Persian War, a senator, Lycidas, advised his
fellow countrymen to accept the terms which were offered them by the
Persian general. The Athenians in scorn stoned to death the man who
could suggest such a cowardly deed. And the women, hearing what their
husbands had done, passed the word on to one another, and, gathering
together, they went of their own accord to the house of Lycidas and
inflicted the same punishment on his wife and children--a cruel act, but
one showing their love of country and their hatred of treason.
These women, who could be so ruthless when patriotism was involved, knew
how to be genuine comforters when their own loved ones were in trouble.
The orator Andocides and his companions were tried and imprisoned for
impiety in violating the Eleusinian mysteries. "When," says Isocrates,
"we had all been bound in the same chamber, and it was night, and the
prison had been closed, there came to one his mother, to another his
sister, to another his wife and children, and there was woe and
lamentation as they wept over their misfortunes."
In so brilliant a race, it was impossible that some women should not
rise above the surface and, by extraordinary virtue and by intellectual
and spiritual endowments of a high order, win the lasting regard of
men.
IX
ASPASIA
The period in Greek history when the intellectual and artistic life of
Hellas reached its zenith is known as the Golden Age of Pericles. The
lofty ideals of this greatest of Greek statesmen incited him to make
Athens the seat of a mighty empire that should spread the noblest and
most elevating influences throughout all Hellas. He called to his
assistance all the great men of his native city, and made also the fine
arts serve as handmaidens of Athens and contribute to her power and
splendor. Every condition was present for the realization of an
intellectual and artistic epoch such as the world had never witnessed.
At the disposal of Pericles was an inexhaustible treasury--the
accumulation of the tribute of subject allies. The quarries of
Pentelicon offered in great abundance the material necessary for the
erection of public buildings which might express in sensuous form the
noblest ideals of the Greek race. There were in Athens statesmen,
philosophers, artists, dramatists, historians, men preeminent in all
departments of the higher life. Foremost among these was Pericles's
friend and counsellor, Phidias, a "king in the domain of art, as
Pericles was in political life."
"What an age it was, truly, when, as the companions of Pericles, there
were assembled in one city Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus and
Thucydides, Meton and Hippocrates, Aristophanes and Phidias, Socrates
and Anaxagoras, Appollodorus and Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Parrhasius;--in
a city which had but lately lost AEschylus, and was soon to possess
Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle; a city which, moreover, to make the
illustrious dead its own, erected statues to their memory!"
"What should we expect the pupils of such masters to be? What they
were,--the masters of Greece. Thucydides says that Athens was at this
time the instructress of Greece, as she was the source of its supplies.
Behold this fine democracy going from the theatre of Sophocles to the
Parthenon of Phidias, or to the Bema where Pericles speaks to them in
the language of the gods; listening to Herodotus, who recounts the great
collision between Europe and Asia; Hippocrates of Cos, and the Athenian
Meton, of whom one founded the science of medicine, and the other,
mathematical astronomy; Anaxagoras, who eliminates the idea of God as
distinct from matter; Socrates, who establishes the principles of
morals! What lessons were these! Art, history, poetry, philosophy--all
take a sublime flight. There is no place for second-rate talent here.
The art that Athens honors most is the greatest of all
arts--architecture; her poetry is the drama--the highest expression of
poetic genius, for it unites all forms in itself, as architecture calls
all the other arts to its service. At this fortunate moment all is
great, the power of Athens as well as the genius of the eminent men who
guide the city and do it honor."
Such, in brief, is the picture of Athens in her greatest days, as drawn
by an eminent historian. The splendor and supremacy of the city in this
epoch were largely due to the constructive genius of one man--Pericles;
and if we study his private life to the end that we may discover the
formative influences which contributed to his greatness, we find that
the chief source of his inspiration was a woman--the Milesian Aspasia,
the most brilliant and cultured woman of classic times.
Aspasia ranks as one of the most remarkable women of all antiquity; and
her ascendency as one of the foremost of her sex is due to the fact that
she is the only woman whose name appears in the brilliant galaxy of the
Periclean age and that the greatest leaders in that coterie of great men
were glad to acknowledge their indebtedness to her for Instruction and
inspiration. She is the only woman prominent in the life of Athens of
whom much is known to us, and she has won for herself a place altogether
unique in the history of Greek womanhood.
She was the daughter of one Axiochus, and was born and reared in
Miletus, the most pleasure-loving and artistic of the cities of Asia
Minor. The story of her childhood and youth is a closed book, but we
know that she was carefully trained in rhetoric, music, and the fine
arts, and became the possessor of every feminine accomplishment. Her
preceptress is said to have been the celebrated Thargelia, also of
Miletus, who exerted her power for the Great King during the Persian War
and finally married one of the kings in Thessaly. How Aspasia was drawn
to Athens is not known, but the most probable theory is that she settled
there as a young and brilliant teacher of rhetoric, following the
precedent established by Anaxagoras in philosophy and by Protagoras and
other men in rhetoric, who found in Athens the most profitable field for
the exercise of their talents. Here Aspasia gathered about her all the
learned and accomplished men of Athens. She was no mere creature of
pleasure, who ministered to luxury and lust; but by her beauty and
culture she sought to draw to her the first men of the town, that she
might learn of them as they of her. "Nor was it long before it was
recognized that she enchained the souls of men by no mere arts of
deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and
richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a
harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures
of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded
by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon
with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on
politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians, even
such men as Socrates, sought her out in order to listen to her
conversation."
There could be nothing more natural than that when Pericles and Aspasia
met the soul of each should discover in the other its affinity, Pericles
was married to an Athenian kinswoman, but they did not find conjugal
life altogether congenial, and by mutual agreement their marriage ties
were dissolved and Pericles found for his wife another husband. He then
took Aspasia to his home and called her his wife. They could not wed,
for she was a foreigner, and their union in consequence lacked civil
sanction; yet it was a real marriage in all but in name, based on the
truest and tenderest affection, and dissolved only by death.
So remarkable was Pericles's devotion to Aspasia, that Plutarch records,
as an indication of its sincerity, that the great Athenian kissed
Aspasia upon going out in the morning and upon his return home--clearly
an unusual occurrence in Athenian homes, or it would not have seemed
worthy of mention. The possession of so rare a woman was doubtless in
many respects invaluable to the great statesman. Plutarch states that
the latter was first attracted to the Milesian by her wisdom and
political sagacity. Socrates, who confessed also his own indebtedness
to Aspasia, states that she was Pericles's teacher in the art of
rhetoric, and could even write his speeches. Pericles was a reserved
man, who devoted himself strictly to his official cares and refrained
from social intercourse with those about him. Hence he found in Aspasia
not only the delight of his leisure moments and a sympathizing friend
and counsellor hi his perplexities, but also the link that connected him
with the daily life about him. She knew how to be at ease in every kind
of society; how to keep informed of everything that took place in the
city that Pericles should know; how to keep in touch with the great
movements throughout Hellas and to make them contribute to the glory of
Athens: and in all these, and in many other respects, she proved of use
to him in his political life.
It is probable that Aspasia was still in her twenties when Pericles
first met her, while he himself was much older. She must have possessed
a fascinating personality which at once captivated the great statesman;
but, aside from her intellectual gifts, it is difficult in this day to
analyze her charm. There is no positive evidence that she was beautiful,
according to Greek standards, though this is the natural inference.
Ancient writers call her the good, the wise, the eloquent; they speak of
her "honey-colored" or golden hair, of her "silvery voice," of her
"small, high-arched foot," but no writer of the time has expressly said
that she was beautiful. In the museums of Europe, there are various
busts on which her name is inscribed, but they impress us rather by the
expression of earnest and deep thought, by the delicacy and distinction
of the features, than by mere beauty. Her charm lay, no doubt, rather in
her wisdom, her vivacity, her sweetness of utterance, than in perfection
of form and feature. Aspasia made the home of Pericles the first salon
that history has made known to us; and what woman ever gathered about
her a more brilliant coterie of friends? With Phidias and his group of
eminent artists, she talked of the embellishment of the Acropolis with
beautiful temples and statues; with Anaxagoras and Socrates, she
discussed the problems of philosophy and the narrow conservatism of the
Athenians; with Sophocles and Euripides, she conversed concerning the
works of the dramatists and the ideal women presented in their plays.
Herodotus, perhaps, was the inimitable story teller of this learned
circle, and the melancholy Thucydides dwelt on the dark tragedy
underlying human events; no doubt the satirical Aristophanes sometimes
attended, for the Platonic dialogues show us the social side of his
nature, and, while in his plays he scorns the philosophical set, he
found among them intellectual companionship; and the young and gay
Alcibiades was doubtless frequently present, talking with the hostess of
the latest events in the high life of the city, of betrothals and
marriages, of scandals and escapades.
One of the sons of Pericles scoffed at this circle of intellectual
lights, and made fun of their metaphysical speculations and learned
talk; but this merely indicates that such a salon was an innovation in
Athens, and, therefore, led to harsh criticism and unseemly gossip on
the part of those who could not appreciate its privileges. Music,
poetry, and wit relieved the serious discussion of politics, philosophy,
and literature. The salon of Aspasia must have been altogether decorous,
for many men broke the traditions of their fathers and brought their
wives to converse about wifely duties with the famous hetaera. She seems
to have thought earnestly and deeply on the duties and destiny of woman,
to have realized how contracted were the lives of Athenian women, and to
have wished to better their condition, AEschines, in one of his
dialogues, gives us in her conversation with Xenophon and his wife
Philesia a glimpse of her method.
"Tell me, Philesia," said Aspasia, "whether if your neighbor had a piece
of gold of more value than your own, you would not choose it before your
own?" "Yes," answered Philesia. "If she had a gown, or any of the female
ornaments, better than yours, would not you choose them rather than your
own?" "Yes," answered she. "But," said Aspasia, "if she had a husband of
more merit than your own, would not you choose the former?" Upon this,
Philesia blushed. Aspasia then addressed herself to Xenophon. "If your
neighbor, Xenophon, had a horse better than your own, would you not
choose him preferably to your own?" "Yes," answered he. "If he had an
estate or a farm of more value than your own, which would you choose?"
"The former," answered he; "that is, that which is of more value." "But
if his wife were better than your own, would not you choose your
neighbor's?" Xenophon was silent upon this question. Aspasia therefore
proceeded thus: "Since both of you, then, have refused to answer me in
that point only which I wanted you to satisfy me in, I will tell you
myself what you both think: you, Philesia, would have the best of
husbands, and you, Xenophon, the best of wives. And, therefore, if you
do not endeavor that there be not a better husband and wife in the world
than yourselves, you will always be wishing for that which you shall
think best: you, Xenophon, will wish you might be married to the best of
wives, and Philesia, that she might have the best of husbands."
Thus this brilliant and withal domestic woman would counsel women to be
the best of wives, and men the most considerate of husbands, that each
might find in the joys of home and in conjugal harmony their greatest
felicity. Doubtless many a wife went away from her with higher
conceptions of wifely duty than custom had taught her, and sought to
make her home a more congenial retreat for her husband. Many, however,
looked askance at these gatherings of men and women and could see
nothing but evil in their violations of custom. Husbands, too, saw in
these novel proceedings dangerous tendencies; for if their wives became
emancipated, there would be a limit to their own pleasant indulgences.
It was Aspasia who preeminently labored to this end. The status of woman
at Athens was far from ideal, and the need tor reform was great; and if
we endeavor to discover who was chiefly responsible for the agitation
which had for its purpose the emancipation of woman from the thraldom in
which she was held, we find that it was the wise and far-seeing Aspasia.