Selected from J. P. Mahaffy’s “Old Greek Life.”
III.—GREEK PRIVATE LIFE.
While the citizen prized above all things his liberty and his rights as a member of the state—a feeling which produced in many cases a citizen democracy—this principle was unknown within the household, in which he was a despot, ruling absolutely the inferior members, who had no legal grades except as distinguished into free and slaves. The laws were very cautious about interfering with his rights, and he was permitted to exercise much injustice and cruelty without being punished. If in such a case he was murdered by his dependants, the whole household of slaves was put to death, unless the culprit was detected. Nor could a household exist (except perhaps in Sparta) without the master. If he died, his widow became again the ward of her father or eldest brother, or son; and so strongly was this sometimes felt that men on their deathbeds betrothed their wives to friends who were likely to treat them and their orphan children with kindness. Of course clever women and servants often practically had their own way, and ruled their lord or master; but the theory of the Greek home was nevertheless always that of an absolute monarchy, if not a despotism.
There were two distinct styles of female dress prevalent. The first was the Dorian, which was noted for its simplicity. Unmarried girls at Sparta often wore but a single light garment, chiton,[1] fastened with clasps down the sides—a dress much criticized by their neighbors. Over this was the Doric peplos,[1] fastened on the shoulders with clasps, and leaving the arms bare. The Ionians wore a long linen chiton with sleeves, which reached down to the ground, and over it a large flowing wrapper, himation,[2] fastened with a girdle, worn high or low according to fashion. As a general rule, unmarried women confined their hairdressing to mere artistic arrangement of the hair itself, while married women wore bands, fillets, nets, and coronets. Dyeing the hair was not uncommon, and the fashionable color was auburn, or reddish fair hair. Women’s shoes were very carefully made, and they carried fans and parasols, as may be seen in the terra-cotta figures so common in our museums. Both sexes wore rings, but in addition the women wore earrings, armlets, and ankle-rings, generally of gold. These were the ornaments against which lawgivers made enactments, and which were forbidden or discouraged in days of trouble or poverty. The ornaments of one rich lady are spoken of as worth 50 minæ (about $975), a very large sum in those days. The ordinary color of women’s dress was white, but saffron cloaks, and even flowered patterns, are mentioned.
In Homeric days we find the old barbarous custom still surviving of buying a girl from her father for a wife, and this was commonly done, unless the father himself offered her as a compliment. The father, however, usually gave her an outfit from the price he received for her. In case of a separation this outfit came back to the father, but he was also obliged to restore the price he had received for his daughter. She does not appear to have had any legal rights whatever. In later days the custom of paying money was reversed, and the husband received with his wife a dowry, which was regarded as common property with his own, so long as she lived with him. In case of separation or divorce, this dowry had to be repaid to her father, and at Athens 18 per cent. was charged upon it in case of delay in repayment. In many states, to marry a second wife during the life of the first was against the practice, and probably the law, of the Greeks, but concubinage was tolerated and even recognized by them, though a married woman had at Athens a right to bring an action for general ill-treatment against her husband, in which she was obliged to appear and give evidence in person. The dowry seems to have been partly intended as a useful obstacle to divorce, which required its repayment, but we find that heiresses made themselves troublesome by their airs of importance, and this is referred to in Greek literature, in which men are frequently advised not to marry above them in wealth or connections. As all citizens were considered equal in birth, and as marriages with aliens were illegal and void, we do not hear of advice to young men not to marry beneath them. To marry a poor citizen girl was always considered a good deed, and is commended as such.
When a child was born in the house, it was usual in Attica, and probably elsewhere also, to hang a wreath of olive in case of a boy, a fillet of wool in case of a girl, over the door. This served as an announcement to friends and neighbors. Greek law permitted the parents absolutely to dispose of it as their property, and there was no provision against exposing it, which was often done in the case of girls, in order to avoid expense. These exposed children if found and brought up, became the slaves of the finder. But on the other hand, the laws showed special favor to the parents of large families. If a child was not exposed, there followed on the fifth day a solemn purification of all the people in the house, and on the seventh a sacrifice, when the relations assembled and the child was named generally after parents and grandparents, sometimes by reason of special wants or fancies—in fact, on the same principles which we follow in christening our children. There is no evidence until the later Macedonian times that birthday feasts were held yearly: and Epicurus’ direction that his should be kept after his death was thought very peculiar. Children of rich people were often nursed by hired nurses—an employment to which respectable Athenian citizens were reduced in the hard times at the end of the Peloponnesian war. But a Lacedæmonian nurse was specially valued, and often bought at a great price among prisoners, as they were famed for bringing up the child without swaddling-clothes, and making him hardy and courageous. The Greeks used cradles for children as we do, and gave them honey as we do sugar, and the nurses represented on the vases are distinguished by a peculiar kerchief on the head, as they often are in our day by a cap or national costume.
As might be expected, the inventive genius of the Greeks showed itself in the constructing of all manner of toys, and children devised for themselves perhaps all the games now known and many more beside. Aristotle says you must provide them with toys, or they will break things in the house, and the older philosopher Archytas[3] was celebrated for inventing the child’s rattle. Plato also complains of the perpetual roaring of younger, and the mischievousness of older children. We may infer from these things that the Greek boys were fully as troublesome as our own. They had balls, hoops, swings, hobbyhorses, and dice, with dolls for the girls, and various animals of wood and earthenware, like the contents of our Noah’s arks. They played hide and seek, blind man’s buff, French and English, hunt the slipper, the Italian morra,[4] and many other games which the scholiasts and Germans have in vain endeavored to explain. But for grown people, we do not find many games, properly speaking, played for the game’s sake, like our cricket. There was very simple ball playing, and, of course, gambling with dice.
As for the girls of the house, they were brought up to see and hear as little as possible. They only went out upon a few state occasions, and knew how to work wool and weave, as well as to cook. We may fairly infer that the great majority of them could not read or write. The boys, on the contrary, were subjected to the most careful education, and on no point did the Greek lawgivers and philosophers spend more care than in the proper training, both physical and mental, of their citizens. The discipline was severe, and they were constantly watched and repressed, nor were they allowed to frequent the crowded market-place. Corporal punishment was commonly applied to them, and the quality most esteemed in boys was a blushing shyness and modesty, hardly equaled by the girls of our time. Nevertheless, Plato speaks of the younger boys as the most sharpwitted, insubordinate, and unmanageable of animals.
It does not seem that the office of schoolmaster was thought very honorable, except of course in Sparta, where he was a sort of minister of education. It was, as with us, a matter of private speculation, but controlled by police regulations that the school should open and close with sunrise and sunset and that no grown men should be allowed to go in and loiter there. The infant-school teachers, who merely taught children their letters, were of a low class in society, sometimes even teaching in the open air, like the old hedge schoolmasters in Ireland. The more advanced teaching of reading and writing was done by the grammar teacher, whose house was called, like that of philosophers and rhetoricians, a school,[5] a place of leisure. For the physical and the æsthetic side we have still to mention the trainer and the teacher of music, the former of whom taught in the palæstra[6] the exercises and sports afterward carried on by the full-grown citizens in the gymnasia, which were a feature in all Greek towns. The teachers of riper youth stood in social position above the mere teachers of letters, but beneath the professors of rhetoric and philosophy (sophists). These latter performed the functions of college tutors at our universities, and completed the literary side of Greek education. The fees paid to the various teachers were in proportion to their social importance. Some of the sophists made great fortunes, and exacted very high fees; the mere schoolmasters are spoken of as receiving a miserable pittance.