Woman and Socialism

by August Bebel

The position of Greek women of those days is powerfully expressed in Medea’s lamentation:

“Of all creatures that have soul and life

We women are indeed the very poorest.

By our dowery we’re obliged to purchase

A husband—and what then is far worse still,

Henceforward our body is his own.

Great is the danger; will his nature be

Evil or good? Divorce is to the woman

A deep disgrace. Yet she may not say nay

Unto the man who was betrothed to her.

And when she comes to lands with unknown customs,

She has to learn—for no one teaches her—

To understand the nature of her husband.

And when we have succeeded in all this,

And our loved one gladly with us dwells,

Then our lot is fair. But otherwise

I’d rather far be dead.—Not so the man.

If in his home he is not satisfied,

He finds outside the home what pleases him,

With friends and with companions of his age;

But we must always seek to please but one.

They say that we in peace and safety dwell,

While they must go forth to the battlefield.

Mistaken thought! I rather thrice would fight,

Than only once give birth unto a child!”

Very different was the man’s lot. While the man compelled the woman to abstain absolutely from relations with other men, for the purpose of insuring the legitimacy of his heirs, he was not inclined to abstain from relations with other women. Courtesanship developed. Women noted for their beauty and intellect, usually foreigners, preferred a free life in the most intimate association with men to the slavery of marriage. Nor was their life deemed a loathsome one. The name and the fame of these courtesans who associated with the foremost men of Greece and took part in their intellectual discussions and in their banquets, have come down to us through history, while the names of the legitimate wives are lost and forgotten. One of these was Aspasia, the friend of the famous Pericles, who later made her his wife. Phryne had intimate relations with Hyperides, and served Praxiteles, one of the foremost sculptors of Greece, as a model for his statue of Venus. Danae was the mistress of Epicure, Archæanassa was Plato’s. Lais of Corynth, Gnethanea and others were equally famous courtesans. Every one of the famous Greeks had intercourse with these courtesans. It was part and parcel of their life. The great orator Demosthenes in his oration against Neaera thus characterized the sexual relations of Athenian men: “We marry women to have legitimate children and to have faithful guardians of our homes, we maintain concubines for our daily service and comfort, and courtesans for the enjoyment of love.” The wife was only destined to bear offspring and, like a faithful dog, to guard her master’s house. But the master himself lived to suit his pleasure. In many cases it is so still.

To satisfy the demand for mercenary women, especially among the younger men, prostitution developed, an institution that had not been known during the dominance of the matriarchate. Prostitution differs from free sexual intercourse by the fact that the woman yields her body in return for material gain, be it to one man or to a number of men. Prostitution exists wherever a woman makes the selling of her charms a trade. Solon, who formulated the new laws for Athens and is famed as the founder of these laws, introduced the public brothel, the “deikterion.” He decreed that the price should be the same to all visitors. According to Philemon this was one obolus, about 6 cents in American money. The “deikterion” was a place of absolute safety, like the temples in Greece and Rome and the Christian churches in the middle ages. It was under the immediate protection of the public authorities. Until about 150 B. C. the temple in Jerusalem was the general rallying-point of the prostitutes.

For the boon bestowed upon Athenian men by his founding of the “deikterion,” one of Solon’s contemporaries thus sings his praise: “Solon, be praised! For thou didst purchase public women for the welfare of the city, to preserve the morals of the city that is full of strong, young men, who, without thy wise institution, would indulge in the annoying pursuit of the better class women.” We will see that in our own day exactly the same arguments are being advanced to justify the existence of prostitution and its maintenance as an institution sanctioned by the state. Thus the state laws approved of deeds committed by men as being their natural right, while the same deeds were branded as criminal and despicable when committed by women. It is a well-known fact that even to-day there are a great many men who prefer the company of a pretty offendress to the company of their wife and who, nevertheless, enjoy the reputation of being “pillars of society” and guardians of those sacred institutions, the family and the home. To be sure, the Greek women frequently seem to have taken vengeance upon their husbands for their oppression. If prostitution is the complement of monogamic marriage on the one hand, adultery of wives and cuckoldom of husbands are its complements on the other. Among the Greek dramatists, Euripides seems to have been the most pronounced woman-hater, since in his dramas he preferably holds up the women to ridicule and scorn. What accusations he hurls at them can best be seen from a passage in “The Thesmophoria” by Aristophanes,[13] where a Greek woman assails him in the following manner:

With what calumny doth he (Euripides) not vilify us women?

When e’er hath silent been the slanderer’s tongue?

Where there’s an audience, tragedy and chorus,

We are described as man-mad traitoresses,

Fond of the cup, deceitful, talkative.

We’re wholly bad, to men a tribulation.

Therefore, when from the play our husbands come,[14]

They look distrustfully at us and search about

If somewhere not a lover is concealed,

And henceforth we no longer are permitted

To do what harmlessly we did before.

Such wicked things he tells the men about us,

That when a woman only makes a garland,

They think she is in love; or when at home

She works about and dropping something, breaks it,

The husband promptly asks: “For whom this broken glass?

Quite evidently for the guest from Corinth.”

It is not surprising that the eloquent Greek woman thus serves the defamer of her sex. But Euripides could hardly have made such accusations nor would they have found belief among the men, had it not been well known that they were justified. Judging by the final sentences of the above quoted harangue it seems that the custom, well known in Germany and other countries, whereby the master of the house honors his guest by placing his own wife or daughter at the guest’s disposal, did not prevail in Greece. Of this custom, that was still observed in Holland in the fifteenth century, Murner says: “It is the custom in the Netherlands that whosoever hath a dear guest, unto him he giveth his wife in good faith.”[15]

The increasing class struggle in the Greek states and the deplorable conditions that existed in many of these small communities led Plato to an investigation of the best constitution of the state and its institutions. In his “State,” that he conceives as an ideal one, he demands that among the highest class of citizens, the guardians, women should hold a position of absolute equality. Like the men, they should take part in military exercises and should perform all civic duties, only should the lighter tasks be alloted to them on account of the weakness of their sex. He holds that the natural abilities are the same with both sexes, that woman is only weaker than man. He further demands that the women should belong to all the men in common as should also the children, so that no father might know his child nor a child its father.[16]