“Virtue is capable of being taught, and when once acquired cannot be lost. What is good is honourable, and what is bad is disgraceful.” On examination it is found that one of the most eminent members of this school is Hipparchia. That she is not a mere listener, imbibing the ideas of others, is shown in the fact that she lectured publicly and argued strongly before the philosophers of Athens. The founder of the Cynic school of philosophy is said to have been Antisthenes, the son of a Thracian mother. One of the sayings of this philosopher is, that “virtue is the same in a man as in a woman.”[233]
That the question of the position of women was a theme for discussion in the age under consideration is shown in a “sophism” proposed by Hipparchia to Theodorus. Once when she went to sup with Lysimachus, she said to Theodorus: “What Theodorus could not be called wrong for doing, that same thing Hipparchia ought not to be called wrong for doing.”[234]
When we take into consideration the fact that Hipparchia was intimately associated with Crates, a man for whom she entertained the tenderest affection, and when we remember that they were both engaged in teaching a philosophy which “recognized virtue as the supreme end of life,” the conversation at the house of Lysimachus between Hipparchia and Theodorus, as set forth by Diogenes Laërtius will be seen to admit of a different interpretation than that which commonly prevails.
Of the Epicureans it has been observed that they were a sort of Pythagorean brotherhood, consisting of both men and women.
The scandalous tongue of antiquity was never more virulent than it was in the case of Epicurus, but, as far as we can judge, the life of the Garden joined to urbanity and refinement a simplicity which would have done no discredit to a Stoic; indeed, the Stoic Seneca continually refers to Epicurus not less as a model for conduct, than as a master of sententious wisdom.
Among the most distinguished members of this school were Themistia, to whom Cicero refers in his speech against Pisa as a “sort of female Solon,” and Leontium, who ventured to attack Theophrastus in an essay characterized, as we are assured, by much elegance of style.[235]
No school of philosophy arose in Athens with which there was not closely connected the name of one or another of the illustrious women of the time. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, was the pupil of Crates, the companion of Hipparchia.
Aspasia was the “clever preceptress of Socrates,”[236] the sage who sat for the portrait of the Stoic philosophy. According to the Stoic philosophy, the supreme end of life is virtue, i. e., “a life conformed to nature.” The degree of self-restraint taught by Socrates is shown in the following lines:
Is it not the duty of every man to consider that temperance is the foundation of every virtue, and to establish the observance of it in his mind before all things? For who, without it, can either learn anything good, or sufficiently practice it? Who, that is a slave to pleasure, is not in an ill condition both as to his body and his mind? It appears to me, by Juno, that a free man ought to pray that he may never meet with a slave of such a character, and that he who is a slave to pleasure should pray to the gods that he may find well-disposed masters; for by such means only can a man of that sort be saved.[237]
When the ablest statesmen and the first philosophers of Greece united in sounding the praises of Alcibiades, the genius of Aspasia commanded equal recognition. Not only did Socrates and Pericles receive instruction and inspiration from this gifted woman, but we are assured that she lectured publicly and that her “acquaintances took their wives with them to hear her discourse.”[238] Indeed “Pericles threw all Greece into confusion on account of Aspasia, not the young one, but that one who associated with the wise Socrates.”[239]