Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle

by F. A. Wright

Sophocles is almost the last representative of the earlier and happier period of the Athenian Empire, their golden age as it seemed later, when to the complacent imagination of the male citizen all things seemed to be working together in the direction of progress and freedom. Progress indeed there was, and for men freedom of thought, for the intellectual atmosphere of Athens in the middle of the fifth century B.C., with its combination of clear knowledge and bracing speculation, has never been surpassed. But as a society, Athens already contained within herself the seeds of decay and destruction. The wealth of her intellectual achievement barely concealed the poverty of her social morality, and it was only by dint of firmly closing their eyes to the degradation of their women and the misery of their slaves that the Athenians maintained for a time the fond illusion that everything was for the best in the best of all possible cities.

Then came the shock of the Peloponnesian War and the inherent weaknesses of a free State which refuses political freedom to more than half its population were cruelly revealed. For nearly thirty years, with some few breathing spaces, the struggle went on, while Athens tried to force a culture intellectually superior but morally inferior to that of many other of the Greek peoples upon a reluctant world: and in the end she failed and fell.

After the fifth century the political importance of Athens disappears; her intellectual pre-eminence is saved for her by a small group of men who under the hard teaching of war discerned the flaws of her social system and set themselves resolutely to the task of criticism and reform. The nobility of war, the nobility of birth, the nobility of sex: these are some of the prejudged questions that the Socratic Circle ventured to dispute, and their contentions, as we have them recorded in the literature of the late fifth and the early fourth centuries, form perhaps the most valuable legacy that the Greek mind has left us. But, like so much of Greek thought, their ideas require interpretation for a modern reader. Some of the greatest of the Circle, Socrates and Antisthenes, for example, we only know in the writings of other men, and we have to disentangle the master’s ideas from those of his disciples. Plato and Xenophon were drawn away by metaphysics and soldiering, and social problems form only a part of their interests. Euripides and Aristophanes were compelled to conform to the conventions of Attic tragedy and comedy, and we must always discount the influence of the stage; Euripides is often less and Aristophanes more serious than suits our ideas of a tragic and a comic writer. Lastly, for all the group except Xenophon, irony was the favourite weapon of attack, an irony so deftly veiled that it made the bitterest criticism possible, and still often passes undetected.

But even so the critics were not popular and their reforms were not accepted: Socrates was put to death; Plato found a shelter in political obscurity; Euripides, like Æschylus, passed much of his life away from Athens; Xenophon took up his home in the Peloponnese: in their lives they fought against a stubborn majority, and when they were dead the social organisation of Athenian life remained apparently unchanged. But their teaching lived on after them, and on feminist questions it derives almost an additional value from the general hostility of their fellow-countrymen.

In their criticism of the problems that we call feminism Euripides and Socrates were the initiative forces, and a close study of the former’s plays is indispensable for any one who wishes to understand the position of women in Athenian life. But the plays of Euripides throw also a certain light on the position of Socrates himself. Socrates and Euripides we know were close friends: ‘which of the two gathered the sticks and which made the faggot,’ so runs the ancient saying, ‘no man can tell,’ and in many points of family relationship they had the same experience. Euripides’ mother, Cleito ‘the greengrocer,’ Socrates’ wife, Xanthippë ‘the scold,’ are two of the rare women in Athenian history of whom we know even the names. Both men were lovers of women in the nobler sense, and the later misogynists revenged themselves by enlarging upon their marital infelicities. In the case of Euripides there is no real evidence to support these scandals, and even if Xanthippë was a woman of strong temper, both men were well enough satisfied with the married state to take another wife in addition to their first helpmate, when a special law, rendered necessary by the waste of male lives in the great war, gave formal sanction to such a step. Both alike agreed in condemning the misogyny of their day and knew that a man who habitually thinks ill of women has probably no very good reason to think well of himself. Both applied to women as well as to men the great doctrines of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Euripides saw in woman the equal and not the slave of man, Socrates regarded her as his natural friend and not his natural enemy. In Xenophon’s Socratic books, the Memorabilia, the Œconomicus, and the Symposium, we get the best record of the master’s view of the women, for Socrates was himself too cautious ever to commit himself to the written word, and perhaps the most characteristic of the episodes is the visit to the fair hetaira, the one faithful of all the lovers of Alcibiades, described in the Memorabilia.

There lived in Athens a fair lady called Theodotë, whose habit it was to give her society to any one who could woo and win her. One of the company made mention of her to Socrates, remarking that the lady’s beauty quite surpassed description. ‘Painters,’ said he, ‘go to her house to paint her portrait, and she displays to them all her perfection!’ ‘Well,’ said Socrates, ‘manifestly, we too must go and see her. It is impossible from mere hearsay to realise something which surpasses description.’ Thereupon his informant: ‘Quick, then, and follow me.’

So off they went at once to Theodotë, and found her at home, posing to a painter. When the painter had finished, ‘Friends,’ said Socrates, ‘ought we to be more grateful to Theodotë for displaying to us her beauty, or she to us for having come to see her? I suppose if this display is going to be more advantageous to her, she ought to be grateful to us. But if it is we who are going to make a profit from the sight, then we ought to be grateful to her.’ ‘Very fairly put,’ said one, and Socrates resumed, ‘The lady is profiting this moment by the praise she receives from us, and when we spread the tale abroad she will gain a further advantage. But, as for ourselves we are beginning to have a desire to touch what we have just now seen: when we are going away we shall feel the smart, and after we have gone we shall still long for her. So we may reasonably say that it is we who are the servitors, and that she accepts our service.’ Thereupon Theodotë: ‘Well, if that is so, it would be only proper for me to thank you for coming to see me.’ Afterwards Socrates noticed that the lady herself was expensively arrayed, and that her mother’s dress (for her mother was in the room) and general appearance was by no means humble. There were a number of comely maidens also in attendance, showing little signs of neglect in their attire, and in all respects the household was luxuriously arranged.

‘Tell me, Theodotë,’ said he, ‘have you any land of your own?’

‘I have not,’ she replied.