Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry / A fragment printed for the use of scholars

by E. F. M. Benecke

When once the romantic element is cut clear from all extraneous entanglements, so that it is possible to recognise what it really is, it becomes, I think, immediately evident that neither Euripides nor Menander can have much to do with its origin. The leading motive of romance is the idea that pure love for a woman may justifiably form the chief interest in a man’s life. But this idea, as I hope to be able to show clearly, does not appear in literature until after the time of Euripides, while it is already to be found fully developed before the time of Menander. This being so, it seems impossible to regard either of these writers as the originators of it.

In the course of the following pages, I shall therefore endeavour to show, by a detailed examination of such parts of the contemporary literature as bear upon the subject, that low as was the social position of woman in most parts of Greece during the so-called classical period, the place which she occupied in the minds of men and in their art was even lower, and that her subsequent social emancipation did not by any means immediately lead to her being regarded with any more real respect. In the course of this argument, I purpose to dwell especially on the influence of Euripides, and hope to succeed in making it clear that though he, as judged by his works, was strongly in favour of giving women larger liberties, and firmly convinced that their capacities both for good and evil were far greater than the more old-fashioned among his contemporaries supposed, there is yet nowhere in his plays any real love-element as between man and woman, nor is it anywhere suggested that love for a woman may be a determining factor in a man’s life.

Secondly, I purpose by a similar process to show that that place which in later Greek art and in modern times is occupied by the love of man for woman, was occupied among the earlier Greeks by the love of man for man—a fact which, though it may at first sight appear foreign to the immediate subject of our enquiry, is yet of such extreme importance for a true understanding of the history of the origin of the romantic feeling, that a consideration of it can on no account be omitted from any work professing in any way to deal with that question. For it cannot be too strongly emphasised that those who wish to study the development of love, as we now know it, must commence their studies with an examination of this essentially primitive emotion. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that love, as it now exists, has been evolved, not from the sexual instinct, but from the companionship of the battle-field, that the first real lovers the world ever knew were comrades in arms. The Iliad of Homer is a love story, its heroes Achilles and Patroclus; the Ajax of Sophocles is a love story, its heroes Ajax and Teucer. To ignore such facts as these is wilfully to misunderstand the meaning of Greek poetry and the meaning of Greece in the history of the world.

Having thus cleared the ground, I hope finally to show that it was Antimachus who first taught that that love which was possible between man and man was possible also between man and woman.

Antimachus stands at the junction of the two great tendencies of his time. The influence of Sparta and of Euripides was gradually re-emancipating women, and showing that their powers and their passions were at least equal to those of men; the steady growth and development of that relation between man and man which found its highest exponent in Plato had made it clear, even to the blindest, that love was possible as distinct from lust. It was left to Antimachus to unite the two streams of thought in one, and to show that woman, with her newly-awakened capabilities, was a worthy object of pure and chivalrous devotion.

The works of Antimachus are lost, and none of the few fragments which survive are of any importance. All discussion with reference to them must therefore be based on suppositions and an examination of relative probabilities. The risks of error in entering on such doubtful ground are manifestly infinite, and conclusions can be reached only through the accumulation of a mass of evidence, the separate particles of which are often in themselves of very little weight; the veil of darkness covering all such Greek literature as does not bear the hall-mark of Athens is so thick that it is perhaps no longer possible for the real truth about it ever to be known. Ceterum, fiat justitia. It is a bold claim, I know, that I am making for Antimachus; it is a claim which, if established, would give him right to rank among the greatest poets of the world: it would give him right to rank as the founder of modern literature. How great a poet he really was we do not know. Perhaps my estimation of his importance is altogether exaggerated. His contemporaries, we know, preferred Choerilus; perhaps they were right; for myself, Malo cum Platone errare.

It is generally agreed that in prehistoric times the position of women among the Greeks was a much higher one than was the case subsequently. There seems every reason to believe that the social conditions of the Lesbians and the Dorians and the other nations which did not come under the influence of the history-writing Ionians, were but the survivals of what was originally a more or less general state. It is of considerable assistance for a proper comprehension of the earliest literature, if one remembers that at the time of its production the enslavement of women had only comparatively recently taken place.

The reason of the influence of primitive woman over primitive man is probably not very far to seek. In early times women were regarded with superstitious reverence[3]—one need only watch a woman making lace, say, to be able nowadays still to quite appreciate the feeling—and with natural woman’s wit for a time kept up the illusion, the hard head of man taking some time to come to maturity. But when man did at last wake to the fact that he was physically, and therefore, for practical purposes, generally superior, an inevitable reaction set in, and the history of early Greece shows women as occupying on the whole a very low position—a position, too, which became lower still with advancing civilisation.[4]

That the original state of women was not one of slavery is clearly shown by the early epics. The Iliad and the Odyssey are pictures of an earlier state of society than that of the poet who describes them. A man living in a society in which women were despised, had to deal with legends belonging to an earlier social condition, in which women played a prominent part. Traces of this anomaly are easy to find in both poems. The Trojan war was the work of a woman, but how very little that woman appears in the Iliad! A woman has been managing the affairs of Odysseus for twenty years in an exemplary fashion; but the hero of the Odyssey on his return prefers to associate with the swineherd. It is by this contradiction between the actual experiences of the poet and the social conditions which he was called upon to depict, that the many inconsistencies in the treatment of the Epic woman must be explained.