Our knowledge of the ancient Egyptians is extremely limited, being derived from the Greek writers, whose accounts are often contradictory. Their testimony, however, is sufficiently precise respecting the prevalence of domestic servitude. The Egyptians were a people remarkable for jealousy, which was carried to such an extreme, that after the death of their wives, they even entertained apprehensions respecting the embalmers. [[51]] Having decreed it to be indecent in women to go abroad without shoes, they deprived them of the means of wearing them, by threatening with death any one who should make shoes for a woman. They were forbidden music, probably with a view of preventing their possessing so dangerous an attraction as that of an elegant accomplishment.
With regard to the Celtic nations, it is true, that the Romans were surprised at the degree of estimation in which these barbarous tribes held their women, and the privileges which they conceded to them; and it must be admitted that certain stern virtues characterized those who were addicted to military achievements, resulting partly from their incessant occupation as warriors, and partly from some indefinite but splendid ideas of fame and glory. Seduction and adultery were vices of rare occurrence; the bridegroom bestowed a dowery upon the bride, consisting of flocks, a horse ready bridled and saddled, a shield, a lance, and a sword; [[52]] and they were often stimulated by their presence and excitement in their warlike expeditions. But though generally contented with one wife, the nobles were allowed a plurality, either for pleasure or show; the labours of the field, as well as domestic toil, devolved on the women; which, though practised in very ancient times, even by females of the most exalted rank, evidently originated in the general impression of their inferiority in the scale of existence. Their great Odin, or Odinus, excluded from his paradise all who did not by some violent death follow their deceased husbands; and in time they were so degraded, that by an old Saxon law, he that hurt or killed a woman was to pay only half the fine exacted for injuring or killing a man. But the argument in favour of Christianity, as assigning women their proper place in society, is corroborated by observing the extremes of oppression and adulation, to which the Scandinavian nations alternately veered. While polygamy and infanticide prevailed, the practice of raising into heroines, prophetesses, and goddesses, some of their women, was no less indicative of a very imperfect sense of the true character of the female sex. [[53]] The public and domestic life of the Greeks exhibit unquestionable evidences of barbarity in the treatment of women. Homer, and all their subsequent writers, show that they were subjected to those restrictions, which infallibly indicate their being regarded only as the property of men, to be disposed of according to their will. Hence they were bought and sold, made to perform the most menial offices, and exposed to all the miseries and degradation of concubinage. The daughters, even of persons of distinction, were married without any consultation of their wishes, to men whom, frequently, they had never seen, and at the early age of fourteen or fifteen; previous to which period, the Athenian females were kept in a state of as great seclusion as possible. Their study was dress; and slaves, their mothers excepted, were their only companions. The duties of a good wife were, in the opinion of the wisest of the Greeks, comprised in going abroad to expose herself as little as possible to strangers, taking care of what her husband acquired, superintending the younger children, and maintaining a perpetual vigilance over the adult daughters. After marriage, some time elapsed before they ventured to speak to their husbands, or the latter entered into conversation with them. At no time were wives intrusted with any knowledge of their husbands' affairs, much less was their opinion or advice solicited; and they were totally excluded from mixed society. One of the most excellent of the Athenians admitted, there were few friends with whom, he conversed so seldom as with his wife. [[54]]
Solon, in his laws, is silent with regard to the education of girls, though he gave very precise regulations for that of boys. That legislator imagined that women were not sufficiently secluded, and therefore directed that they should not go abroad in the daytime, except it were in full dress; or at night, but with torches and in a chariot. He prohibited their taking eatables out of the houses of their husbands of more value than an obolus, or carrying a basket more than a cubit in length. [[55]] The Athenians had previously possessed the power of selling their children and sisters; and even Solon allowed fathers, brothers, and guardians, this right, if their daughters, sisters, and wards, had lost their innocence. From various enactments, it appears that adultery was extremely common, and female modesty could not be preserved even by legislative restraint. Most of the Greeks, and even their philosophers, concurred with the Eastern nations in general in associating with courtesans; who were, indeed, honoured with the highest distinctions. The Corinthians ascribed their deliverance, and that of the rest of Greece, from the power of Xerxes, to the intercession of the priestess of Venus, and the protection of the goddess. At all the festivals of Venus, the people applied to the courtesans as the most efficacious intercessors; and Solon deemed it advantageous to Athens, to introduce the worship of that goddess, and to constitute them her priestesses. In the age of Pericles, and still more afterward, prostitution, thus yoked with superstition, and sanctioned by its solemnities, produced the most baneful effects upon public morals. From idolatrous temples, the great reservoirs of pollution, a thousand streams poured into every condition of life, and rolling over the whole of this cultivated region, deposited the black sediment of impurity upon the once polished surface of society, despoiling its beauty, discolouring its character, and ruining its glory.
The Athenians did not hesitate to take their wives and daughters to visit the notorious Aspasia in the house of Pericles, though she was the teacher of intrigue, and the destroyer of morals. The most celebrated men lived in celibacy, only to secure the better opportunities of practising vice, which however did not conceal her hideous deformity in the shades, but stalked forth at noonday, emblazoned by the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and enriched by treasuries of opulence.
In many respects the Spartans differed from the other Greeks in their treatment of the female sex. The women were as shamefully exposed as those of the other states were secluded; being introduced to all the exercises of the public gymnasium at an early age, no less than the other sex, and taught the most shameless practices. The laws of Lycurgus were in many instances utterly subversive of morality, and too outrageous for citation. The depravity of the sex was extreme even at an early period, and Xenophon, Plutarch, and Aristotle, impute to this cause the ultimate subversion of the Spartan state.
The Romans differed materially from the Greeks and the oriental nations in one point with regard to their treatment of women; namely, in never keeping them in a state of seclusion from the society of men: but the husbands were very incommunicative: and it seems at least to have been an understood, if not a written law, that they should avoid all inquisitiveness, and speak only in the presence of their husbands. In the second Punic war, the Oppian law prohibited the women, from riding in carriages and wearing certain articles of dress; which was, however, afterward repealed. The ancient laws considered children as slaves, and women as children who ought to remain in a state of perpetual tutelage. According to the laws of Romulus and Numa, a husband's authority over his wife was equal to that of a father over his children, excepting only that he could not sell her. The wife was stated to be in servitude, though she had in name the rights of a Roman citizen. From the moment of her marriage she was looked upon as the daughter of her husband and heir of his property, if he had no children; otherwise she was considered as his sister, and shared an equal portion with the children. Wives had no right to make wills, nor durst they prefer complaints against their husbands; and the power of the latter over them was as unrestricted as that which they possessed over their children: in fact, the husband could even put his wife to death, not only for gross immoralities, but for excess in wine. [[56]]
Considerable changes took place in the laws after the period of the destruction of Carthage, some of which allowed greater privileges to females; but as divorces became more frequent, crimes multiplied. In the latter periods of the republic women had the principal share in public plots and private assassinations, and practised the worst of sins with the most barefaced audacity.
The morals of women are indicative of the state of society in general, and of the estimation in which they are held in particular. If the other sex treat them as slaves, they will become servile and contemptible, a certain degree of self-respect being essential to the preservation of real dignity of character. The way to render human beings of any class despicable is to undervalue them; for disesteem will superinduce degeneracy. If this be the case, then the state of women in any age or country is a criterion of public opinion, since the vices of their lives indicate their condition; upon which principle, Greece and Rome exhibit wretched specimens of female degradation.
But there is one circumstance in the history of the Romans which must not be wholly overlooked. Their conduct was marked by capriciousness. Though the usual treatment of their women resembled that of other Pagan nations in barbarity, like some of them, too, they frequently rendered them extraordinary honours. On some occasions they even transferred to their principal slaves the right of chastising their wives; and yet, on others they paid them distinguished deference: as in the case of vestals, and the privileges conceded to them after the negotiation between the Romans and Sabines. Various individual exceptions to a barbarous usage might be adduced; sufficient, however, only to evince the general debasement of the female sex, and the total absence of all fixed principles of moral action in unchristianized man.
II. Next to the nations of antiquity, the state of women in SAVAGE, SUPERSTITIOUS, AND MAHOMETAN COUNTRIES, comes under review.