In Athens the position of women stands out in sharp contrast. Athens was the largest of the city-states of Greece, and, for its stability, it was ruled that no stranger might enter into the rights of its citizens. Restrictions of the most stringent nature and punishments the most terrible were employed to keep the citizenship pure. As is usual, the restrictions fell most heavily upon women. It would seem that the sexual virtue of the Athenian women was not trusted—it was natural to women to love. Doubtless there were many traces of the earlier sexual freedom under mother-right. Women must be kept in guard to ensure that no spurious offspring should be brought into the State. This explains the Athenian marriage code with its unusually strict subordination of the woman to her father first, and then to her husband. It explains also the unequal law of divorce. In early times the father might sell his daughters and barter his sisters. This was abolished by Solon, except in the case of unchastity. There could, however, be no legitimate marriage without the assignment of the bride by her guardian.[273] The father was even able to bequeath his unmarried daughters by will.[274] The part assigned by the Athenian law to the wife in relation to her husband was very similar to that of the married women under ancient Jewish law.
Women were secluded from all civic life and from all intellectual culture. There were no regular schools for girls in Athens, and no care was taken by the State, as in Sparta, for the young girls' physical well-being. The one quality required from them was chastity, and to ensure this women were kept even from the light of the sun, confined in special apartments in the upper part of the house. One husband, indeed, Ischomachus, recommends his wife to take active bodily exercise as an aid to her beauty; but she is to do this "not in the fresh air, for that would not be suitable for an Athenian matron, but in baking bread and looking after her linen."[275] So strictly was the seclusion of the wife adhered to that she was never permitted to show herself when her husband received guests. It was even regarded as evidence of the non-existence of a regular marriage if the wife had been in the habit of attending the feasts[276] given by the man whom she claimed as husband.
The deterioration of the Athenian citizen-women followed as the inevitable result. It is also impossible to avoid connecting the swift decline of the fine civilisation of Athens with this cause. Had the political power of her citizens been based on healthier social and domestic relationships, it might not have fallen down so rapidly into ruin. No civilisation can maintain itself that neglects the development of the mothers that give it birth.
As we should expect we find little evidence of affection between the Athenian husband and wife. The entire separation between their work and interests would necessarily preclude ideal love. Probably Sophocles presents the ordinary Greek view accurately, when he causes one of his characters to regret the loss of a brother or sister much more than that of a wife. "If a wife dies you can get another, but if a brother or sister dies, and the mother is dead, you can never get another. The one loss is easily reparable, the other is irreparable."[277] We could have no truer indication than this as to the degradation into which woman had fallen in the sexual relationship.
That once, indeed, it had been far otherwise with the Athenian women the ancient legends witness. Athens was the city of Pallas Athene, the goddess of strength and power, which in itself testifies to a time when women were held in honour. The Temple of the Goddess, high on the Acropolis, stood as a relic of matriarchal worship. Year by year the secluded women of Athens wove a robe for Athene. Yet, so complete had become their subjection and their withdrawal from the duties of citizens, that when in the Theatre of Dyonysus men actors personated the great traditional women of the Greek Heroic Age, no woman was permitted to be present.[278] What wonder, then, that the Athenian women rebelled against the wastage of their womanhood. That they did rebel we may be certain on the strength of the satirical statements of Aristophanes, and even more from the pathos of the words put here and there into the mouths of women by Euripides—
"Of all things upon earth that breathe and grow
A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day
To buy us some man's love, and lo, they bring
A Master of our flesh. There comes the sting
Of the whole shame."[279]
The debased position of the Athenian citizen woman becomes abundantly clear when we find that ideal love and free relationship between the sexes were possible only with the hetairæ. Limitation of space forbids my giving any adequate details of these stranger-women, who were the beloved companions of the Athenian men. Prohibited from legal marriage by law, these women were in all other respects free; their relations with men, either temporary or permanent, were openly entered into and treated with respect. For the Greeks the hetaira was in no sense a prostitute. The name meant friend and companion. The women to whom the name was applied held an honourable and independent position, one, indeed, of much truer honour than that of the wife.
These facts may well give us pause. It was not the women who were the legal wives, safeguarded to ensure their chastity, restricted to their physical function of procreation, but the hetairæ, says Donaldson, "who exhibited what was best and noblest in woman's nature." Xenophon's ideal wife was a good housekeeper—like her of the Proverbs. Thucydides in the famous funeral oration which he puts in the mouth of Pericles, exhorts the wives of the slain warriors, whose memory is being commemorated, "to shape their lives in accordance with their natures," and then adds with unconscious irony, "Great is the glory of that woman who is least talked of by men, either in the way of praise or blame." Such were the barren honours granted to the legal wife. The hetairæ were the only educated women in Athens. It was only the free-companion who was a fit helpmate for Pericles, or capable of sustaining a conversation with Socrates. We know that Socrates visited Theodota[280] and the brilliant Diotima of Mantinea, of whom he speaks "as his teacher in love."[281] Thargalia, a Milesian stranger, gained a position of high political importance.[282] When Alcibiades had to flee for his life, it was a "companion" who went with him, and being present at his end performed the funeral rites over him.[283] Praxiteles carved a statue of Phryne in gold, and the work stood in a place of honour in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Apelles painted a portrait of Lais, and, for his skill as an artist, Alexander rewarded him with the gift of his favourite concubine; Pindar wrote odes to the hetairæ; Leontium, one of the order, sat at the feet of Epicurus to imbibe his philosophy.[284]
Among all these free women Aspasia of Miletus[285] stands forward as the most brilliant—the most remarkable. There is no doubt as to the intellectual distinction of the beloved companion of Pericles.[286] Her house became the resort of all the great men of Athens. Socrates, Phidias and Anaxagoras were all frequent visitors, and probably also Sophocles and Euripides. Plato, Xenophon and Æschines have all testified to the cultivated mind and influence of Aspasia. Æschines, in his dialogue entitled "Aspasia," puts into the mouth of that distinguished woman an incisive criticism of the mode of life traditional for her sex.[287]
The high status of the hetairæ is proved conclusively from the fact that the men who visited Aspasia brought their wives with them to her assemblies, that they might learn from her.[288] This breaking through the accepted conventions is the more significant if we consider the circumstances. Here, indeed, is your contrast—the free companion expounding the dignity of womanhood to the imprisoned mothers! Aspasia points out to the citizen women that it is not sufficient for a wife to be merely a mother and a good housekeeper; she urges them to cultivate their minds so that they may be equal in mental dignity with the men who love them. Aspasia may thus be regarded, as Havelock Ellis suggests, as "a pioneer in the assertion of woman's rights." "She showed that spirit of revolt and aspiration" which tends to mark "the intellectual and artistic activity of those who are unclassed or dubiously classed in the social hierarchy."