Of versatile gifts and endless shades of temperament, teacher, thinker, artist in words and life, critic, musician, friend of women and inspirer of men, but before all things a harmony uniting the grace and sensibility of her sex with a masculine strength of intellect, this gracious Ionian stands with Sappho on the pinnacle of Hellenic culture, each in her own field the highest feminine representative of an esthetic race. Her mission was not an ethical one, and she cannot be so judged; but against the censure of the enemies and rivals of Pericles, as well as of her own, we have abundant evidence that, in her virtues, as in her talents, she surpassed the standards of her class and time. It was not of a light-minded woman that Pericles said when dying: “Athens intrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me.”
IV
It is not unlikely that Aspasia had much to do with modifying the low views held regarding her sex, and with promoting the discussions of the philosophers who came after her. Socrates had her example before him when he said that the talent of women was not at all inferior to that of men, though they lacked bodily vigor and strength. Plato accorded them the same talents as men, though less in degree; indeed, he went so far as to advise a common training, as in Sparta, on the ground that gifts are diffused equally between the sexes. Aristotle is less generous to women. He accords them weaker reasoning powers, and insists upon their silent and passive obedience; but he preaches to men justice, appreciation, and the sanctity of marriage. On the whole, from our point of view, he paints a more agreeable society than Plato, in spite of the greater equality taught by the latter. The satirists were not slow to take up the matter, and Aristophanes drew a doleful picture of women donning male attire and going to the agora to reform the State, while their husbands were left to look after things at home. They start out with the idea of making everybody happy. There are to be no rich, no poor, no thefts, no slanders, no miseries. Praxagora pleads her cause with all the force and energy of the modern woman who seeks political rights, but she is less poised and goes further. The State is to be intrusted to women. They are successful managers at home and have shown their superior gifts of administration. In any case, they could not do worse than men have done. They end, however, by voting unlimited communism and outdoing the demagogues. This “woman’s congress” was not an unqualified success; indeed, it was a disgraceful failure, as it was intended to be: but it cast into like ridicule the philosophers and the “strong-minded” women, among whom Aspasia was doubtless included, as she had convictions, though the conversations in her salon probably marked the limit of their public expression. Who the others were we do not know, but it is clear that there was an undercurrent of “divine discontent” among the women of two thousand years ago. History repeats itself, and the “woman question” is not a new one, though we have made immense strides in the rational consideration of it.
It is sufficiently clear that the harmonious development of the Hellenic women was in proportion to their liberty of action, and the most fault was found with them where they had the least freedom. If the spirited women of Sparta had been born in conservative Athens the world might never have known that they were capable of so much strength and heroism. The sparks hidden in their cramped souls would have gone out for lack of air. If the secluded Athenian woman had been born in Sparta, who can say that she might not have been as clever as Gorgo, as brave as Cratesiclea, and as independent as Lampito? It is possible that the genius of Sappho would have been smothered in the social atmosphere of either place. There is ample evidence that the intellects of Greek women expanded fast enough when the conventional pressure was even partly removed. Nor is it true that they retrograded in morals as they advanced in intelligence. Never did the Attic poets point their shafts of satire so sharply as against the follies of the ignorant women who were limited mainly to their apartments, far from the possible corruption of knowledge or the visible temptation to sin. The tone of morality was purer even among the free Spartan women, who had more education but less surveillance.
There is nothing more vitally significant in the lives of Athenian wives than the extent to which they saw themselves set aside and neglected for foreigners of more brilliant accomplishments, because they could not or would not break the bonds of fashionable tradition, which decreed for them silence and seclusion. In primitive conditions where no one is educated, the virtues may suffice for companionship; but at a certain stage of civilization, when men read and think, the woman who does not is sure to be practically excluded from his society, though she may still be his housekeeper or the toy of an idle hour. Athens in the height of her glory presented the strange anomaly of a respectable illiterate class from which the mothers of future citizens must be taken, and an educated class without civil rights who could not marry Athenians. If the latter had any domestic ties at all, they were forced into morganatic relations. This did not of necessity imply laxity of character; indeed, it was not always condemned by Athenian moralists. But no class could long maintain any high standard of virtue under such conditions. They opened the way for endless license. The gay and dissolute women from the East flocked to the Hellenic cities, and in the reckless corruption that followed, wise men trace a potent cause of Athenian decline.
REVOLT OF THE ROMAN WOMEN
· The Woman Question an Old One ·
· Character and Virtues of Early Roman Women ·
· Instances of Heroism ·
· Their Disabilities ·
· Primitive Roman Morals ·
· Servitude of Wives · Husband Poisoning ·
· The Oppian Law · The Revolt ·
· Crabbed Cato · Change in Laws ·
· Second Revolt · Hortensia ·
· The Marriage Question ·
· Intellectual Movement · Cornelia ·