At one time it was widely held that in early states of society, before the establishment of the patriarchal stage which places women under the protection of men, a matriarchal stage prevailed in which women possessed supreme power.[[273]] Bachofen, half a century ago, was the great champion of this view. He found a typical example of a matriarchal state among the ancient Lycians of Asia Minor with whom, Herodotus stated, the child takes the name of the mother, and follows her status, not that of the father.[[274]] Such peoples, Bachofen believed, were gynæcocratic; power was in the hands of women. It can no longer be said that this opinion, in the form held by Bachofen, meets with any considerable support. As to the widespread prevalence of descent through the mother, there is no doubt whatever that it has prevailed very widely. But such descent through the mother, it has become recognized, by no means necessarily involves the power of the mother, and mother-descent may even be combined with a patriarchal system.[[275]] There has even been a tendency to run to the opposite extreme from Bachofen and to deny that mother-descent conferred any special claim for consideration on women. That, however, seems scarcely in accordance with the evidence and even in the absence of evidence could scarcely be regarded as probable. It would seem that we may fairly take as a type of the matriarchal family that based on the ambil anak marriage of Sumatra, in which the husband lives in the wife's family, paying nothing and occupying a subordinate position. The example of the Lycians is here in point, for although, as reported by Herodotus, there is nothing to show that there was anything of the nature of a gynæcocracy in Lycia, we know that women in all these regions of Asia Minor enjoyed high consideration and influence, traces of which may be detected in the early literature and history of Christianity. A decisive and better known example of the favorable influence of mother-descent on the status of woman is afforded by the beena marriage of early Arabia. Under such a system the wife is not only preserved from the subjection involved by purchase, which always casts upon her some shadow of the inferiority belonging to property, but she herself is the owner of the tent and the household property, and enjoys the dignity always involved by the possession of property and the ability to free herself from her husband.[[276]]
It is also impossible to avoid connecting the primitive tendency to mother-descent, and the emphasis it involved on maternal rather than paternal generative energy, with the tendency to place the goddess rather than the god in the forefront of primitive pantheons, a tendency which cannot possibly fail to reflect honor on the sex to which the supreme deity belongs, and which may be connected with the large part which primitive women often play in the functions of religion. Thus, according to traditions common to all the central tribes of Australia, the woman formerly took a much greater share in the performance of sacred ceremonies which are now regarded as coming almost exclusively within the masculine province, and in at least one tribe which seems to retain ancient practices the women still actually take part in these ceremonies.[[277]] It seems to have been much the same in Europe. We observe, too, both in the Celtic pantheon and among Mediterranean peoples, that while all the ancient divinities have receded into the dim background yet the goddesses loom larger than the gods.[[278]] In Ireland, where ancient custom and tradition have always been very tenaciously preserved, women retained a very high position, and much freedom both before and after marriage. "Every woman," it was said, "is to go the way she willeth freely," and after marriage she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of divorce than was afforded either by the Christian Church or the English common law.[[279]] There is less difficulty in recognizing that mother-descent was peculiarly favorable to the high status of women when we realize that even under very unfavorable conditions women have been able to exert great pressure on the men and to resist successfully the attempts to tyrannize over them.[[280]]
If we consider the status of woman in the great empires of antiquity we find on the whole that in their early stage, the stage of growth, as well as in their final stage, the stage of fruition, women tend to occupy a favorable position, while in their middle stage, usually the stage of predominating military organization on a patriarchal basis, women occupy a less favorable position. This cyclic movement seems to be almost a natural law of the development of great social groups. It was apparently well marked in the very stable and orderly growth of Babylonia. In the earliest times a Babylonian woman had complete independence and equal rights with her brothers and her husband; later (as shown by the code of Hamurabi) a woman's rights, though not her duties, were more circumscribed; in the still later Neo-Babylonian periods, she again acquired equal rights with her husband.[[281]]
In Egypt the position of women stood highest at the end, but it seems to have been high throughout the whole of the long course of Egyptian history, and continuously improving, while the fact that little regard was paid to prenuptial chastity and that marriage contracts placed no stress on virginity indicate the absence of the conception of women as property. More than three thousand five hundred years ago men and women were recognized as equal in Egypt. The high position of the Egyptian woman is significantly indicated by the fact that her child was never illegitimate; illegitimacy was not recognized even in the case of a slave woman's child.[[282]] "It is the glory of Egyptian morality," says Amélineau, "to have been the first to express the Dignity of Woman."[[283]] The idea of marital authority was altogether unknown in Egypt. There can be no doubt that the high status of woman in two civilizations so stable, so vital, so long-lived, and so influential on human culture as Babylonia and Egypt, is a fact of much significance.
Among the Jews there seems to have been no intermediate stage of subordination of women, but instead a gradual progress throughout from complete subjection of the woman as wife to ever greater freedom. At first the husband could repudiate his wife at will without cause. (This was not an extension of patriarchal authority, but a purely marital authority.) The restrictions on this authority gradually increased, and begin to be observable already in the Book of Deuteronomy. The Mishnah went further and forbade divorce whenever the wife's condition inspired pity (as in insanity, captivity, etc.). By A.D. 1025, divorce was no longer possible except for legitimate reasons or by the wife's consent. At the same time, the wife also began to acquire the right of divorce in the form of compelling the husband to repudiate her on penalty of punishment in case of refusal. On divorce the wife became an independent woman in her own right, and was permitted to carry off the dowry which her husband gave her on marriage. Thus, notwithstanding Jewish respect for the letter of the law, the flexible jurisprudence of the Rabbis, in harmony with the growth of culture, accorded an ever-growing measure of sexual justice and equality to women (D. W. Amram, The Jewish Law of Divorce).
Among the Arabs the tendency of progress has also been favorable to women in many respects, especially as regards inheritance. Before Mahommed, in accordance with the system prevailing at Medina, women had little or no right of inheritance. The legislation of the Koran modified this rule, without entirely abolishing it, and placed women in a much better position. This is attributed largely to the fact that Mahommed belonged not to Medina, but to Mecca, where traces of matriarchal custom still survived (W. Marçais, Des Parents et des Alliés Successibles en Droit Musulman).
It may be pointed out—for it is not always realized—that even that stage of civilization—when it occurs—which involves the subordination and subjection of woman and her rights really has its origin in the need for the protection of women, and is sometimes even a sign of the acquirement of new privileges by women. They are, as it were, locked up, not in order to deprive them of their rights, but in order to guard those rights. In the later more stable phase of civilization, when women are no longer exposed to the same dangers, this motive is forgotten and the guardianship of woman and her rights seems, and indeed has really become, a hardship rather than an advantage.
Of the status of women at Rome in the earliest periods we know little or nothing; the patriarchal system was already firmly established when Roman history begins to become clear and it involved unusually strict subordination of the woman to her father first and then to her husband. But nothing is more certain than that the status of women in Rome rose with the rise of civilization, exactly in the same way as in Babylonia and in Egypt. In the case of Rome, however, the growing refinement of civilization, and the expansion of the Empire, were associated with the magnificent development of the system of Roman law, which in its final forms consecrated the position of women. In the last days of the Republic women already began to attain the same legal level as men, and later the great Antonine jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law, reached the conception of the equality of the sexes as a principle of the code of equity. The patriarchal subordination of women fell into complete discredit, and this continued until, in the days of Justinian, under the influence of Christianity, the position of women began to suffer.[[284]] In the best days the older forms of Roman marriage gave place to a form (apparently old but not hitherto considered reputable) which amounted in law to a temporary deposit of the woman by her family. She was independent of her husband (more especially as she came to him with her own dowry) and only nominally dependent on her family. Marriage was a private contract, accompanied by a religious ceremony if desired, and being a contract it could be dissolved, for any reason, in the presence of competent witnesses and with due legal forms, after the advice of the family council had been taken. Consent was the essence of this marriage and no shame, therefore, attached to its dissolution. Nor had it any evil effect either on the happiness or the morals of Roman women.[[285]] Such a system is obviously more in harmony with modern civilized feeling than any system that has ever been set up in Christendom.
In Rome, also, it is clear that this system was not a mere legal invention but the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling in favor of the equality of men and women, often even in the field of sexual morality. Plautus, who makes the old slave Syra ask why there is not the same law in this respect for the husband as for the wife,[[286]] had preceded the legist Ulpian who wrote: "It seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity of his wife while he himself shows no example of it."[[287]] Such demands lie deeper than social legislation, but the fact that these questions presented themselves to typical Roman men indicates the general attitude towards women. In the final stage of Roman society the bond of the patriarchal system so far as women were concerned dwindled to a mere thread binding them to their fathers and leaving them quite free face to face with their husbands. "The Roman matron of the Empire," says Hobhouse, "was more fully her own mistress than the married woman of any earlier civilization, with the possible exception of a certain period of Egyptian history, and, it must be added, than the wife of any later civilization down to our own generation."[[288]]
On the strength of the statements of two satirical writers, Juvenal and Tacitus, it has been supposed by many that Roman women of the late period were given up to license. It is, however, idle to seek in satirists any balanced picture of a great civilization. Hobhouse (loc. cit., p. 216) concludes that on the whole, Roman women worthily retained the position of their husbands' companions, counsellors and friends which they had held when an austere system placed them legally in his power. Most authorities seem now to be of this opinion, though at an earlier period Friedländer expressed himself more dubiously. Thus Dill, in his judicious Roman Society (p. 163), states that the Roman woman's position, both in law and in fact, rose during the Empire; without being less virtuous or respected, she became far more accomplished and attractive; with fewer restraints she had greater charm and influence, even in public affairs, and was more and more the equal of her husband. "In the last age of the Western Empire there is no deterioration in the position and influence of women." Principal Donaldson, also, in his valuable historical sketch, Woman, considers (p. 113) that there was no degradation of morals in the Roman Empire; "the licentiousness of Pagan Rome is nothing to the licentiousness of Christian Africa, Rome, and Gaul, if we can put any reliance on the description of Salvian." Salvian's description of Christendom is probably exaggerated and one-sided, but exactly the same may be said in an even greater degree of the descriptions of ancient Rome left by clever Pagan satirists and ascetic Christian preachers.