Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

The lesser women had small consideration. We find the captives, even of royal descent, tossed about among their masters with no regard to their wishes, or rights—if they had any, which seems doubtful. The gentle Briseïs, a high priest’s daughter, and as potent a factor in the final disasters of the Greeks as the divine Helen herself, was the merest puppet in the hands of the so-called heroes who quarreled over her, and Chryseïs was only saved from the same fate by the kind interference of Apollo. The bitterest drop in the cup of Hector was the thought of his wife led away weeping by some “mail-clad Achaian,” with no one to hear her cries or save her from the hopeless fate of weaving and carrying water at the bidding of another. The women of the people fared little better, if as well. Ulysses had no hesitation in putting to death a dozen of his wife’s maids whose conduct did not please him, and he threatened his devoted nurse Euryclea with a like fate, if she revealed the secret of his identity, which she had been the first to divine.

III

It is difficult to comprehend the attitude of the dramatists of the golden age toward women. They have left many fine and powerful types; they have created heroines of singular moral grandeur and a superb quality of courage that led them to face death or the bitterest fate as serenely as if they were composing themselves to pleasant dreams; but there was no insult or injustice too great to be heaped upon their sex.

There is not anything, nor will be ever,
Than woman worse, let what will fall on man,

says Sophocles. Æschylus, who is, on the whole, the most kindly disposed, makes Eteocles call the Theban maidens a “brood intolerable,” “loathed of the wise,” and emphasizes his opinion in these flattering lines:

Ne’er be it mine, in ill estate or good,
To dwell together with the race of women.

Euripides strikes the bitterest note of all, and sums up his verdict with crushing force:

Dire is the violence of ocean waves,
And dire the blast of rivers and hot fires,
And dire is want and dire are countless things,
But nothing is so dire and dread as woman.
No painting could express her dreadfulness,
No words describe it. If a god made woman
And fashioned her, he was for men the artist
Of woes unnumbered, and their deadly foe.

And this in spite of such characters as Alcestis and Iphigenia, who, from a man’s point of view, certainly deserved an apotheosis! It is said that Euripides was unfortunate in his wives, which may account, in part, for his cynical temper. One might suspect that the author of such a diatribe gave ample cause for disaffection, and that he had no more than his deserts. But he seems to have avenged himself, as smaller men have done, by railing at the whole sex. It is easy enough to understand the portrayal of a Phædra or a Medea in dark colors, and one can forgive the mad ravings of despair. But so many needless words of general contempt signify more than a dramatic purpose. To-day they would not be possible in a civilized country. The drama reflects the dominant sentiments of the time, if not always those of the author, and the frequency of such ungracious, not to say virulent, attacks proves the complaisance of a Greek audience and the absence of all consideration for women. Even Aristophanes takes Euripides to task for being a woman-hater, and turns upon him the sharpest points of his satire; but he has himself added the last touch of abuse, which only misses its aim for modern ears by its incredible coarseness. He gives to women all of the lowest vices, without a redeeming virtue. Their presence at the comedy was quite out of the question.

One is tempted to multiply these quotations, as they put in so vivid a light the injustice suffered by women when the expression of such sentiments was habitual. The saddest feature of it is that men abused them for the ignorance and frivolity which they had themselves practically compelled. The dramatists lived and wrote in an age when men had reached a higher plane of knowledge from which orthodox women were rigidly excluded. The natural consequence of this exclusion was a total lack of companionship, which sent the Attic woman into a species of slavery, while her husband found his society in a class that was better educated and more interesting, but less respectable. This state of things was reflected in Athenian literature, especially in the comedies, and it doubtless led to the general disdain of women so freely expressed in the tragedies. To reconcile such an attitude with the strong character of many of the women portrayed is not easy, unless we take them as object-lessons to their sex in the honor and glory of self-sacrifice.