The Historical Child / Paidology; The Science of the Child

by Oscar Chrisman

Girls and Women.

In Sparta the state was everything. Strong and vigorous men were needed to protect the state and so must be provided for military life, and the mothers who were to bear them must be strong and courageous. The girls and women were allowed much greater freedom than in other parts of Greece. The girls received vigorous training, such as was given to the boys, having contests among themselves and even sometimes with the boys. In some of these contests the girls had to divest themselves of their apparel and appear thus before the public. This coming in contact with the males, the great freedom allowed to them, and the vigorous training did not spoil the purity of the girls, for adultery was scarcely known in Sparta. Nor did the training impair their physical appearance, as the Spartan women were noted for their beauty of person, although on account of the vigorous physical training this beauty was somewhat of a masculine type.

Women in Athens were treated quite differently to what they were in Sparta. There was seemingly a contempt by the men for the women and especially so among the leaders and rulers. "The most enlightened of the Greeks limited the duties of a good wife, housewife, and mother, to the following points: 1. That she should be faithful to her husband. 2. That she should go abroad and expose herself to the view of strangers as little as possible. 3. That she should take care of what the husband acquired, and spend it with frugality; and, 4. That she should pay maternal attention to the younger children of both sexes, and keep an incessantly watchful eye upon her grown-up daughters."[155]

In Athens the women were closely watched and carefully guarded. They were usually placed in the back part of the house and in the highest rooms, and for the most part the women and girls passed their time in the apartments allotted to them. There was no intercourse between young men and young women. Women were considered men's inferiors and they were thought little better than the slaves and they had but little more influence with the men. Woman was looked upon as an entirely lower being intellectually than man, and so not a fit companion for him in public life. When men outside the household were present in the home, the women were expected to seclude themselves. When a dinner was being given the company consisted entirely of men and the wife kept herself and her children in the women's quarters. The young women rarely went from home. Even if it was necessary for them to appear in public religious ceremonies, they did not take part in common with the other sex but acted apart from them.

Thus the training of the Athenian girl and that of the Spartan girl were quite in contrast and while the Athenian girl grew up to be a pale, slender lady, but little versed in the ways of the world, the Spartan girl grew up to be a vigorous, robust, healthy woman, ready even to take part in public debate if necessary. Yet there was at least one class of women in Athens not secluded, for "in the London market of Billingsgate it is the fishwomen who have been notorious for abusive language; at Athens it was the bread-women."[156]

A discussion of the women of Greece could not be complete without including the much discussed but little understood class known as the Hetairai, the stranger-women of Athens. Whether they were simply courtesans or whether they were women seeking freedom from the restraints and seclusion of the wife or whether they were both courtesans and seeking freedom and education, they certainly exercised a remarkable influence in Greece.

There were two classes of women at Athens, the first class being the wives and mothers, the citizen-women of Athens, and the other class being the stranger-women. Athens did not exclude strangers and indeed it was an attractive place to foreigners. "The city itself was full of attractions for the stranger, with its innumerable works of art, its brilliant dramatic exhibitions, its splendid religious processions, its gay festivals, its schools of philosophy, and its keen political life."[157] Although they did not exclude strangers from the city, yet they did exclude them from governing citizenship. Nor was a citizen, male or female, allowed to marry a stranger and severe penalties were inflicted on those who broke this law. Since the stranger-women could not marry Athenian men, they had to gain their companionship by other means. The citizen-women, the native women of Athens, were not allowed the company of men nor were they given high accomplishments. "The names of these wives are not to be found in history. But the influence of the Companions came more and more into play. Almost every famous man, after this date, has one Companion with whom he discusses the pursuits and soothes the evils of his life. Plato had Archeanassa, Aristotle Herpyllis, Epicurus Leontium, Isocrates Metaneira, Menander Glycera, and others in like manner. And some of them attained the highest positions.... Some were renowned for their musical ability, and a few could paint. They cultivated all the graces of life; they dressed with exquisite taste; they took their food, as a comic poet remarks, with refinement, and not like the citizen women, who crammed their cheeks, and tore away at the meat. And they were witty. They also occupied the attention of historians."[158] "Thus arose a most unnatural division of functions among the women of those days. The citizen-women had to be mothers and housewives—nothing more; the stranger-women had to discharge the duties of companions, but remain outside the pale of the privileged and marriageable class."[159]

The two most noted of the hetairai were Aspasia and Phryne. "Phryne, the most beautiful woman that ever lived, attracted the eyes of all Greece; Apelles painted her, and Praxiteles made her the model for the Cnidian Aphrodite, the most lovely representation of woman that ever came from sculptor's chisel."[160] "Aspasia, the beautiful, accomplished, and highly gifted woman, a native of Miletus, first the mistress and subsequently the wife of Pericles, exercised an influence and a power in Greece very greatly superior to any ever exercised there by any other woman. She was endowed with a mind more beautiful than her beautiful form. Her genius drew around her all those who had a taste for the beautiful, or a desire to cultivate their minds. At her house, eloquence, politics and philosophy were daily discussed, and ladies of the highest rank resorted thither to acquire some of the accomplishments by which she was distinguished. Large concessions must certainly be made to the mind that could be a fit companion for Pericles, and could teach rhetoric to Socrates."[161]