It is even probable that the movement to raise the status of the Athenian women, which seems to have taken place in the fourth century B.C., was led by Aspasia, and perhaps other members of the hetairæ. Ivo Bruns, whom Havelock Ellis quotes, believes that "the most certain information we possess concerning Aspasia bears a strong resemblance to the picture which Euripides and Aristophanes present to us of the leaders of the woman's movement."[289]
It was this movement of awakening which throws light on the justice which Plato accords to women. He may well have had Aspasia in his thoughts. Contact with her cultivated mind may have brought him to see that "the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes," and therefore "all the pursuits of man are the pursuits of woman also, and in all of these woman is only a weaker man." Plato did not believe that women were equally gifted with men, only that all their powers were in their nature the same, and demanded a similar expression. He insists much more on woman's duties and responsibilities than on her rights; more on what the State loses by her restriction within the home than on any loss entailed thereby to herself. Such a fine understanding of the need of the State for women as the real ground for woman's emancipation, is the fruitful seed in this often quoted passage. May it not have arisen in Plato's mind from the contrast he saw between Aspasia and the free companions of men and the restricted and ignorant wives? A vivid picture would surely come to him of the force lost by this wastage of the mothers of Athens; a force which should have been utilised for the well-being of the State.
Sexual penalties for women are always found under a strict patriarchal régime. The white flower of chastity, when enforced upon one sex by the other sex, has its roots in the degradation of marriage. Men find a way of escape; women, bound in the coils, stay and waste. There is no escaping from the truth—wherever women are in subjection it is there that the idols of purity and chastity are set up for worship.
The fact that Greek poets and philosophers speak so often of an ideal relationship between the wife and the husband proves how greatly the failure of the accepted marriage was understood and depreciated by the noblest of the Athenians. The bonds of the patriarchal system must always tend to break down as civilisation advances, and men come to think and to understand the real needs and dependence of the sexes upon each other. Aristotle says that marriage besides the propagation of the human race, has another aim, namely, "community of the entire life." He describes marriage as "a species of friendship," one, moreover, which "is most in accordance with Nature, as husband and wife mutually supply what is lacking in the other." Here is the ideal marriage, the relationship between one woman and the one man that to-day we are striving to attain. To gain it the wife must become the free companion of her husband.
It is Euripides who voices the sorrows of women. He also foreshadows their coming triumph.
"Back streams the waves of the ever running river,
Life, life is changed and the laws of it o'ertrod.
* * * * * * *
And woman, yea, woman shall be terrible in story;
The tales too meseemeth shall be other than of yore;
For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and a glory,
And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more."[290]
IV.—In Rome
"The character of a people is only an eternal becoming.... They are born and are modified under the influence of innumerable causes."—Jean Finot.
Of the position of women in Rome in the pre-historic period we know almost nothing. We can accept that there was once a period of mother-rule.[291] Very little evidence, however, is forthcoming; still, what does exist points clearly to the view that woman's actions in the earliest times were entirely unfettered. Probably we may accept as near to reality the picture Virgil gives to us of Camilla fighting and dying on the field of battle.
In the ancient necropolis of Belmonte, dating from the iron age, Professor d'Allosso has recently discovered two very rich tombs of women warriors with war chariots over their remains. "The importance of this discovery is exceptional, as it shows that the existence of the Amazon heroines, leaders of armies, sung by the ancient poets, is not a poetic fiction, but an historic reality." Professor d'Allosso states that several details given by Virgil coincide with the details of these tombs.[292]