Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

"These are Erinna's songs, how sweet, though slight!
For she was but a girl of nineteen years.
Yet stronger far than what most men can write;
Had death delayed, whose fame had equaled hers?"

Never before nor since did such a wave of feminine genius pass over the fragrant valleys and vine-clad plains of Greece. Never in any other place or time shone so brilliant a galaxy of women of talent and imagination; never was there a more perfect flowering of female intelligence of the highest order. According to tradition, there appeared in the favored land of Hellas, when the entire population of the country was not equal to that of a fair-sized modern city, within the brief space of a century, no fewer than seventy-six women poets. When we remember that the Renaissance produced only about sixty female poets, though in a more extended territory and with a much larger population, and that none of them could approach the incomparable Sappho, or even many of her pupils, in the perfection of their work, we can realize the splendor of the achievements of the female intellect in the Hellenic world during the golden age of feminine poetic art.[5]

One would think that this phenomenal outburst of mental vigor, and especially the marvelous achievements of Sappho, Corinna and those of their pupils and followers, would have compelled the world for all subsequent time to recognize the innate power of the female mind, and perceive the wisdom—not to say justice—of according to women the same advantages for the development of their inborn gifts as were afforded to men. They had proved that, under favorable conditions, there was essentially no difference between the male and the female intellect, and that genius knows no sex. And this they demonstrated not only in poetry, but also in philosophy and in other branches of human knowledge as well.

Among those who had especially distinguished themselves were Hipparchia, the wife of the philosopher Crates; Themista, the wife of Leon and a correspondent of Epicurus, who was pronounced "a sort of female Solon"; Perictione, a disciple of Pythagoras, who distinguished herself by her writings on Wisdom and The Harmony of Woman, and Leontium, a disciple and companion of Epicurus, who wrote a work against Theophrastus, which was pronounced by Cicero a model of style.

And was not the school of Pythagoras at Crotona continued after his death by his daughter and his wife, Theano? And did not this fact alone manifest woman's capacity for abstract thought, as effectively as the Lesbian school had demonstrated her talent for consummate verse?[6]

But it was all to no purpose. The comparative freedom and advantages which Sappho, Corinna and their friends had enjoyed was soon—for some reason scarcely comprehensible by us—taken from all the women of Greece except the peculiar class known in history as hetæræ—companions. These we should now rank among the demimonde, but the Greek point of view was different from ours. The hetæræ were the friends and companions of the men who spent most of their time in public resorts, and they accompanied them to the gymnasium, to banquets, the games, to the theater and other similar assemblies from which the wives and daughters of the Athenians, during the golden age of Greece, were rigorously excluded. For so great was the seclusion in which the wives of the Greeks then lived that they never attended public spectacles and never left the house, unless accompanied by a female slave. They were not permitted to see men except in the presence of their husbands, nor could they have a seat even at their own tables, if their husbands happened to have male guests.

It was by reason of this strict seclusion and the enforced ignorance to which they were subjected that we hear very little of the virtuous women of this period of Greek history. We have records of a few instances of filial and conjugal affection, but, outside of this, the names of the wives and daughters of even the most distinguished citizens have long since passed into oblivion. Only the hetæræ attracted public notice, and only among them, during the period to which reference is now made, do we find any women who achieved distinction by their intellectual attainments, or by the influence which they exerted over those with whom they were associated.

But strange as it may appear, these extra-matrimonial connections, far from incurring the censure which they would now provoke, received the cordial recognition of both legislators and moralists, and even those who were considered the most virtuous among men openly entered into these relations without exposing themselves to the slightest stigma or reproach. Many of the hetæræ, contrary to what is sometimes thought, were "of highly moral character, temperate, thoughtful and earnest, and were either unattached or attached to one man, and to all intents and purposes married. Even if they had two or three attachments but behaved in other respects with temperance and sobriety, such was the Greek feeling in regard to their peculiar position that they did not bring down upon themselves any censure from even the sternest of the Greek moralists."[7]

The most famous men of Greece, married as well as unmarried, had their "companions," many of whom were as distinguished for their accomplishments as for their wit and beauty. Thus Epicurus had Leontium, Menander Glycera, Isocrates Metaneira, Aristotle Herpyllis, and Plato Archlanassa, while Aristippus, the philosopher, Diogenes, the cynic, and Demosthenes, the great orator, each had a companion bearing the name of Lais.[8] More than this. So strongly had many of the hetæræ impressed themselves on the esthetic sense of the beauty-loving Greeks that not a few of them had statues erected in their honor, especially in Athens and Corinth, and thus shared in the honor that hitherto had been reserved exclusively for the goddess of beauty and love, fair Aphrodite.