Or his own mother’s son, a brother dear.[178]
Numerous illustrations might be drawn from The Iliad as proof of the fact that the tie between mother and child was still regarded as more binding than that between father and child. Homer doubtless represents an age in which the manner of reckoning descent was in dispute, certain tribes acknowledging only the tie between children born of the same mother, others only the bond between those of the same father, while still others acknowledge both, though with a preference for either one or the other. In the Eumenides of Æschylus the idea of male descent is put forth as a new doctrine. Orestes, who has murdered his mother, Clytemnestra, asks: “Do you call me related to my mother?” Although reproaches and imprecations are heaped upon him for his inhumanity, it is found that the new doctrine in which the father is represented as the only real parent, has many adherents—that the gods have concurred in it, Athene herself having succumbed to the new faith.
No one, I think, who is acquainted with the recently developed facts relative to human growth, can carefully read The Iliad without observing the similarity existing between the position occupied by the women of Greece in Homer’s time, and that of the women among the tribes and races in a somewhat lower stage of development. On board the “roomy ships” of the Greeks, the prizes parcelled out to the chiefs were women. We observe that even the daughters of influential and wealthy priests, like the oracle of Apollo, might be “carried off”—an act for which there was absolutely no redress except perhaps an appeal to the gods. Briseis also was a captured prize assigned to Achilles by the Greek warriors. Notwithstanding the fact that wives were still captured, we frequently find women possessed of both wealth and influence. Helen, although the wife of Meneluas, had vast treasure which she was able to take away with her when she was carried off by Paris—treasure over which neither of her husbands seems to have had any control. Laothoë, the aged wife of Priam, had gold and brass of her own with which to ransom her sons,[179] and Andromache, the wife of Hector, who came to Ilium from “among the woody slopes of Placos,” brought with her not only wealth but sufficient influence to secure for her the respect of the king’s household.[180]
We have seen that in an earlier age, at a time when women were free, wives had to be captured from foreign tribes; but later, after the ba’al form of marriage had become established, wives were for the most part selected from the ranks of native-born women, while foreign women were usually utilized as concubines. It is true that in the Homeric age, foreign women sometimes became the wedded wives of their captors, but unless they possessed great wealth, or unless they were the daughters of kings, they were unable to command that degree of consideration due to those who were native-born. The practice, during the early history of the Greeks, of securing foreign women for concubines is doubtless the source whence sprang the custom among the Athenians of later times, of importing all classes of “kept women” from other countries, Athenian women only being reserved for wives.
During the latter stage of barbarism a marked change in the government and in the fundamental principles regulating human conduct had taken place. A review of the facts connected with the history of Greek society during the ages between Homer and Solon shows that coeval with the decline of the cardinal principles of the gens, namely, justice, equality, and fraternity, there had been also a corresponding change in the relations of the sexes; that during the time in which egoism or selfishness had gained the ascendancy over the early altruistic principles developed in human society, woman’s influence had steadily declined.[181]
[CHAPTER III]
ANCIENT SPARTA
Although in the writings commonly ascribed to Homer is to be observed a fairly correct picture of many phases of Greek life, the earliest authentic historical accounts which we have of this people are perhaps those of Aristotle and Plutarch. In the accounts given of the Lacedæmonians by the last named of these writers, the fact is shown that male influence among the Spartans of the time of Lycurgus had not reached that state of intense and overshadowing domination in which we find the Athenians of the Solonic period submerged.
The early Dorians were ever ready to uphold the ancient customs as opposed to innovations. In the management of public affairs they trusted to the ties of relationship rather than to political organization based on property. The policy of the Athenians, on the contrary, as enunciated by Pericles, was that “it is not the country and the people, but movable and personal property, in the proper sense of the word, which make states great and powerful.” The one policy was essentially Doric, the other Ionic.[182]
The exact time at which Lycurgus occupied the position of lawgiver to the Spartans is not known, but it is claimed by Xenophon that he lived shortly after the age of Homer. If the accounts of the Lacedæmonians which have come down to us in connection with the name of this legislator belong to that early age, if scarcely one ethnical period had elapsed since woman’s influence was supreme in the home and in the group, we would naturally expect to find in their customs, usages, and regulations for the management of society, certain traces of a former state of female independence, and a hint, at least, of those principles of liberty and equality in the establishment of the commonwealth which were the result of female influence; especially would this be true as we are informed that the Spartans were a conservative people, clinging to the prejudices of more ancient times. A glance at Spartan institutions at the time indicated, furnishes ample proof of the fact that the Lacedæmonians were still to a considerable extent living under conditions which had been established under the archaic rule of the gens.