The final incident of the unequal struggle which shows the desperate determination and courage of these Greek women, who suckled these klephts of the mountains and kept alive that spirit of liberty which finally won independence from Turkish misrule, has been thus described:
"Some sixty of these Suliote women, with their children, were assembled on a ledge of rock overhanging a sheer precipice, and, having witnessed the gradual extermination of their defenders, they resolved to die by their own act rather than fall into the hands of the grisly tyrant of Janina. The position which they occupied suggested an easy form of death, and the manner in which they sought it was tragically weird and grim. First, each mother took her child, embraced it, and, turning her head away from the pitiful scene, pushed it over the edge of the abyss. Then these sixty women linked their hands together, and, singing the familiar daring song of Suli above the rattle of the musketry, danced the old surtos measure round and round the ledge of rock, having each her back to the void as the winding chain approached the brink. And every time the chain wound round, one dancer, the last in the line, unlinked her hand, took one step back, and fell down into annihilation. One by one, without haste, without pause, singing the dancing song, they followed each other down that leap of death, until the last sprung over alone, consecrating the mountain with their blood an altar of liberty, from which, ere long, a flame arose that fired those ancient ranges from sea to sea."
Such was the spirit of Greek womanhood in the trying year of the Greek War of Independence; and it was this spirit which enabled the Greeks to struggle on, without resources and allies, amid discouragements and misrepresentations, till finally the nations of Europe came to their rescue and established the modern Greek kingdom on a sure basis.
Athens was finally chosen as the seat of the new Greek government; and in 1837 the Bavarian king Otho and his lovely bride, the princess Amalia, entered Athens in triumph, and the kingdom of Hellas was fairly launched. Within the memory of living men the dynasty of Otho fell, and a scion of the royal house of Denmark, King George, with his Russian consort, Queen Olga, now holds sway in Athens.
The modern Greek woman of the higher classes has become so thoroughly cosmopolitan in her culture that she has lost in large measure her distinctive traits. Her sympathy is rather with Parisian life than with English, though her deportment is marked by a sobriety of manner partaking rather of Greek repose than of French effusion. Many faces seen in Greek lands exhibit, in profile especially, the Greek type of beauty.
The women of the lower classes, no doubt, preserve many of the characteristics of the race in all ages, in spite of the intermingling with foreign peoples and the results of centuries of Turkish oppression, which time alone can eradicate. Domestic fidelity, maternal affection, devotion to religious observances, the cheerful discharge of the duties and responsibilities of wedded life, are nowhere more beautifully illustrated than among the Greek women of to-day.
It is the Christian religion which makes the life of Greek women under King George superior to that of their sisters under the dominion of the Sultan, and we may hope that in the fulness of time the Greek women of Europe and Asia outside of the Hellenic kingdom may enjoy, untrammelled by Turkish authority, the rights and privileges of that religion which has elevated the sex, and that the Greek woman of the future may combine the personal graces of her sister in antiquity with the cultivation of the soul and the enlargement of spirit which comes to women with the inculcation of Christianity.
CONTENTS
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[I] [II] [III] [IV] [V] [VI] [VII] [VIII] [IX] [X] [XI] [XII] [XIII] [XIV] [XV] |
[INTRODUCTION] [PREFACE] [PART FIRST] WOMEN OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVE WOMEN OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE THE ERA OF PERSECUTION SAINT HELENA AND THE TIME OF CONSTANTINE POST-NICENE MOTHERS THE NUNS OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH WOMEN WHO WITNESSED THE FALL OF ROME WOMEN OF THE FRANKISH CHURCH [PART SECOND] THE EMPRESS EUDOXIA THE RIVAL EMPRESSES--PULCHERIA AND EUDOCIA THE EMPRESS THEODORA OTHER SELF-ASSERTING AUGUSTÆ--VERINA, ARIADNE. SOPHIA, MARTINA. IRENE BYZANTINE EMPRESSES--THEODORA II. THEOPHANO. ZOE. THEODORA III. THE PRINCESSES OF THE COMNENI WOMANHOOD OF THE BYZANTINE DECADENCE |