BOOK III.
WOMEN.
CHAPTER I.
WOMEN IN THE HEROIC AGES.
There is no question connected with Grecian manners more difficult than that which concerns the character and condition of women.[[1050]] On so many points did they differ in this matter from us, that, unless we can conceive ourselves to be in the wrong, the condemnation of the whole Hellenic theory of female rights and interests and influence must, as a matter of course, ensue. I do not say that, after all, this is not the conclusion we should come to. Reason may possibly be on our side; but certainly it appears to me, that too little pains has hitherto been taken to arrive at the truth; and as it is a consideration by no means unimportant, I have bestowed on it more than ordinary attention in the hope of letting in additional light, however little, on this obscure and unheeded department of antiquities.
In form the Greek woman was so perfect as to be still taken as the type of her sex. Her beauty, from whatever cause, bordered closely upon the ideal, or rather was that which, because now only found in works of art, we denominate the ideal. But our conceptions of form never transcend what is found in Nature. She bounds our ideas by a circle over which we cannot step. The sculptors of Greece represented nothing but what they saw,[[1051]] and even when the cunning of their hand was most felicitous, even when loveliness and grace and all the poetry of womanhood appeared to breathe from their marbles, the inferiority of their imitations to the creations of God, in properties belonging to form, in mere contour, in the grouping and developement of features, must have sufficed to impress even upon Pheidias, that high priest of art, the conviction of how childish it were to dream of rising above nature. The beauty of Greece was, indeed, a creature of earth, but suggested aspirations beyond it. Every feature in the countenance uttered impassioned language, was rife with tenderness, instinct with love. The pulses of the heart, warm and rapid, seemed to possess ready interpreters in the eye. But, radiant over all, the imagination shed its poetic splendour, communicating a dignity, an elevation, a manifestation of soul, which lent to passion all the moral purity and enduring force that belong to love, when love is least tainted with unspiritual and ignoble selfishness.
I despair, however, of representing by words what neither Pheidias nor Polycletos could represent in marble or ivory. The women of Greece were neither large nor tall. The whole figure, graceful but not slender, left the imagination nothing to desire. It was satisfied with what was before it. Limbs exquisitely moulded,[[1052]] round, smooth, tapering, a torso undulating upwards in the richest curves to the neck, a bosom somewhat inclined to fulness, but in configuration perfect, features in which the utmost delicacy was blended with whatever is noblest and most dignified in expression. Both blue eyes and black[[1053]] were found in Greece, but the latter most commonly. Even Aphrodite, spite of her auburn hair, comes before us in the Iliad with large black eyes, beaming with humid fire. No goddess but the Attic virgin has the cold blue eye of the North, becoming her maidenly character, reserved, firm, affectionate, with a dash of shrewishness. The nose was straight and admirably proportioned, without anything of that breadth which in the works of inferior sculptors creates an idea of Amazonian fierceness. Beauty itself had shaped the mouth and chin, and basked and sported in them. In these, above all, the Grecian woman excelled the barbarians. Other features they might have resembling hers, but seldom that Attic mouth, that dimpled, oval, richly-rounded chin, which imprinted the crowning characteristic of womanhood upon her face, and stamped her mistress of man and of the world.
A creature thus fashioned and gifted with an intellect which, if less robust and comprehensive, is equally active with that of man and still more flexible, could scarcely be degraded into a domestic drudge and slave, and in Greece was not.[[1054]] Already, in the heroic ages, women occupied a commanding position in society, somewhat less honourable than is their due, but, in many respects, higher and more to be envied than was appropriated to them in the ignorant and corrupt times of chivalry which the Homeric period has been thought greatly to resemble. In those days, though fashion required more reserve in the female character than is consistent with the spirit of modern manners, persons of different sexes could meet and converse together without scandal. Gentlewomen of the highest rank went abroad under their own guidance. On the arrival of a foreign ship upon the shore we find an Argive princess descending without any male protector to cheapen articles of dress and trinkets, which however, as the event proved, was not without danger, for both she herself and a number of her maids were carried away captives by the perfidious strangers.[[1055]]
Homer abounds with proofs both of the liberty women enjoyed and the high estimation in which they were held. They were quite as much as is consistent with prudence and delicacy the companions of men.[[1056]] And in more than one particular, as in the bathing[[1057]] and perfuming of distinguished male guests, the manners of those times allowed of or rather enjoined familiarities greater than the customs of any civilised modern nations permit. Ladies lived at large with their husbands and families in the more frequented parts of the house, dined and drank wine with them, rode or walked out in their company, or, attended by a female servant, and were, in fact, in the modern sense of the word, mistresses of the house and everything it contained.
When the husband happened to be absent it was not, indeed, considered delicate, if the mansion was filled with youthful and petulant guests, for the wife to be seen much among them,[[1058]] though it still appears to have been incumbent upon married ladies to exercise the rites of hospitality, which sometimes, as in the case of Helen, opened the way to intrigue and elopement. A similar event, veiled in mythological obscurity, shipwrecked the virtue of Alcmena.[[1059]] Clytemnæstra, too, and Ægialeia the wife of Diomede, fell before the temptations afforded by the absence of their lords,[[1060]] while Penelope surrounded with youthful suitors, assailed by reports of her husband’s death, alternately soothed and menaced, remained true to her vows and became to all ages the pattern of conjugal fidelity.
The examples are many of the facility of their intercourse with strangers. Sthenobœa wife of Prœtos, king of Argos, must have enjoyed numerous occasions of being alone with Bellerophon before she could, like the wife of Potiphar, have tried his honour and forfeited her own.[[1061]] Helen after her return to Sparta, banquets and associates freely with strangers at the table of her husband, where, by her conversation and remarks, we discover how quick and penetrating the understanding of women was in those ages supposed to be. Nothing could be further from the mind of those heroic warriors than the idea of regarding woman merely as an object of desire, or as a household drudge.[[1062]] If she receives praise for her beauty, or industrious habits, still more is she celebrated for her mental endowments, for her wisdom, for her maternal love. Where in fiction or in life shall we find a lady more gentle, more graceful, more accomplished, more gifted with every charm of womanhood than Helen, who, nevertheless, falls a prey to seduction! Where more feminine tenderness, or truer love than in Andromache? Where more matronly sweetness and dignity than in the Phæacian Arete; more unblameable vivacity, blithe unreserve, greater sensibility, united with the noblest maiden modesty, self command and proud consciousness of virtue, than in that loveliest of poetical creations her daughter Nausicaa.
Homer himself felt all the charm of this exquisite creation and lingered over it with the fondness of a parent. She is the very flower of the heroic age. In the rapid glimpse afforded us of her life, we discover what the condition and occupations of a noble virgin were in those primitive times, a felicitous mixture of splendour and simplicity, approaching nature in the rough energy of the passions, with feelings healthy and vigorous and happy in the utter absence of sickly sentimentality. Though daughter to a king Nausicaa does not disdain to care for the family wardrobe. Her nuptial day is not far distant, and, agreeably to the nature of her sex in all ages, she is desirous that her dress should on that occasion appear to the best advantage, but to her father modestly feigns to think principally of her brothers.[[1063]] Alcinoos aware of the feint, smiles inwardly while he approves of her solicitude. With his ready permission she piles the garments on the royal car drawn by mules, and then, mounting the seat whip in hand, departs for the distant rivulet accompanied by her maids. Of these girls, the poet says, two, clothed by the graces with loveliness, used to sleep in the Princess’s chamber one on either side the door.