On reaching the secluded spot, the umbrageous embouchure of a mountain brook where they usually performed their lowly task, it was their first care to unharness the mules, which were turned loose to graze on the shore. Their labours occupy them but a portion of the morning, and these concluded, they dine sumptuously enough, in some shady nook overlooking the stream, on wine and viands brought along with them from the palace. To remove every idea of sordid toil and fatigue Homer is careful to represent them full of life and animal spirits, bounding sportively along the meadows, having first bathed and lubricated their limbs with fragrant oils. The game which engages them while their robes and veils are drying on the pebbly beach received in later ages the name of Phæninda,[[1063]] and consisted in throwing a ball unexpectedly from one individual to another of a large party scattered over a field. As it was uncertain to whom the person in possession of the ball would cast it, every one was on the watch, and much of the sport arose from the eagerness of each to catch it.
In this game the princess takes part, laughing and singing with the rest, and it is a clumsy throw of hers[hers] which sends the ball into the river that excites the loud exclamation from her maids which awakens Odysseus. Her conversation with the hero thereupon ensuing suggests a high notion of female education at the period. The maids of honour terrified at his strange and grotesque appearance, unclothed, and deformed with ooze and mud, take to flight, but Nausicaa relying on the respect due to her father maintains her ground. Odysseus reverencing her youth and beauty prefers his petition from a distance. She grants far more than he seeks, and with many indications of female gentleness mingles so much self-possession, forethought, compassion for misfortune, consideration of what is due to her own character, and confidence in the generosity and unsuspicious goodness of her parents, that we are constrained to suppose the existence of much instruction, mental training, and knowledge of the world. And if such qualifications had not at that time been found in women, Homer had much too keen a sense of propriety to have hazarded his reputation and his bread by supposing their prevalence in his poems.[[1064]]
How the women of the heroic times received their instruction it is not difficult to comprehend, though there has come down to us very little positive information on the subject. The poets, those prophetic teachers of the infancy of humanity, had already commenced their revelations of the good and beautiful. Wandering from town to town, under the immediate direction of Providence, they scattered far and near the seeds of civilisation. Their songs were in every mouth: both youths and maidens imbibed the wisdom they contained, and with their sprightly strains, as in the case of Nausicaa, enlivened their lighter moments when alone, or delighted the noble and numerous guests at their fathers’ board. Homer, indeed, nowhere introduces a lady singing at an entertainment, excepting in Olympos, where the Muses represent the sex; but Æschylus, a poet profoundly versed in antiquity, speaks of Iphigenia as performing this sweet office in her father’s hall.[[1065]] The daughter of Alcinoos, however, shares in the amusements and instruction supplied by the bard during the entertainment described by Homer, and converses freely with their illustrious guest.[[1066]]
We have above seen that women in those ages were not creatures of mere luxury or show. Possessing considerable physical power and energy, and much skill in the elegant and useful arts of life, they were deterred by no false pride or ignorant prejudices from converting their capacity to the use of their families. The magnificence of their attire, their costly ornaments, or the consciousness of the highest personal beauty, nowise interfered with their thrifty habits; and Lord Bacon[[1067]] tells a very good anecdote to show that the same in former days was the case in England. There was a lady of the West country, he says, who gave great entertainments at her house to most of the gallant gentlemen of her neighbourhood, among whom Sir Walter Raleigh was one. This lady, though otherwise a stately dame, was a notable good housewife, and in the morning betimes she called to one of her maids that looked to the swine, and asked, “Is the piggy served?” Sir Walter’s chamber being near the lady’s, he heard this homely inquiry. A little before dinner the lady came down in great state to the drawing-room, which was full of gentlemen, and as soon as Sir Walter Raleigh saw her, “Madam,” says he, “is the piggy served?” To which the lady replied, “You know best whether you have had your breakfast.”
An Homeric princess resembled this stately dame of the West, in thinking nothing beneath her which could contribute to the comfort or elegant adornment of those she loved. The employments of women in those ages, however, included some things which, in the present state of the useful arts, would seldom fall to their share, and among these were the labours of the loom, to excel in which was evidently considered one of their chiefest accomplishments and most necessary duties.[[1068]] In this occupation they took refuge from anxiety and sorrow; to this we find Hector with rough tenderness urging his beloved wife to have recourse, when her affection would withdraw him from his post;[[1069]] and Telemachus, in a tone somewhat too authoritative, recommends, in the Odyssey, the same course to his mother:[[1070]] and in the Eastern world the same tastes and habits continued to prevail down to a very late age. When Sisygambis, the captive Persian queen, was presented, however, by Alexander with purple and wool, she sank into an agony of grief and tears: they reminded her of happier days. But the conqueror, misunderstanding her feelings, and desirous to remove the notion that he was imposing any servile task, observed:—"This garment, mother, which you see me wear, is not merely the gift but the work also of my sisters."[[1071]] Similar presents passed between near relations in Persia; for in Herodotus we find Amestris, the queen of Xerxes, conferring upon her husband, as a gift of price, a richly variegated and ample pelisse, which the labours of her own fair hands had rendered valuable.[[1072]] Augustus, too, even when all simplicity of manners had expired with the republic, affected still to bring up the females of his family upon the antique model, and wore no garments but such as were manufactured in his own house.[[1073]]
To return: constant practice and the delight which familiar and voluntary labour inspires, had already in the heroic ages, enabled the Grecian ladies to throw much splendour and richness of invention into their fabrics. The desire also, perhaps, of excelling in works of this kind the ladies of Sidon, communicated an additional impulse to their industry. At all events, Homer makes it abundantly clear that they understood how to employ with singular felicity the arts of design, and to represent in colours brilliant and varied, cities, landscapes, human figures, and all the complicated movements of war.[[1074]] We must, no doubt, allow something for the poet’s own skill in painting; but, after every reasonable deduction, enough will remain still to prove that at the period of the Trojan war Greece had made remarkable progress in every art which tends to ameliorate and embellish human life.
Carding, also, and spinning entered into the list of their occupations.[occupations.] Even Helen though frail as fair, is laborious as a Penelope, plying her shuttle or her golden distaff, and surrounded habitually by a troop of she-manufacturers.[[1075]] Arete, queen of Phæacia, is likewise depicted sitting at the fire, distaff in hand, encircled by her maids;[[1076]] and the wife of Odysseus, famed for her household virtues, is seen in the Odyssey at her own door spinning the purple thread.[[1077]] The work-baskets of the ladies of that period, if we can rely on a poet’s word, were such as more modern dames might envy, formed of beaten gold and chased with figures richly wrought, and grouped with infinite taste and judgment.[[1078]] In these their balls of purple were deposited when spun, though probably reed baskets or osier work contented the ambition of ladies less aspiring than Europa.
Women also, but chiefly slaves, performed in those primitive times all the operations of the kitchen. They even in the great establishment of Alcinoos work at the mill, as they do also in the palace of Odysseus, where guided perhaps by the nature of the climate we find the young women preferring for this operation the cool of the night.[[1079]] Even in later ages, when juster ideas of what is due to the sex prevailed, this severe toil sometimes devolved upon female slaves, though in general it was the males, and of these the most worthless, who worked the mills, regarded at length almost in the light of correctional establishments.[[1080]] But the making of bread was very properly appropriated to women almost throughout the East. The Egyptians, indeed, an effeminate and servile people, very early, as we learn from Genesis, confounded the offices of the sex; but among the Lydians, even in the palace of Crœsos, we meet with a female baker,[[1081]] and the Persian armies carried along with them women to bake their bread in their longest and most dangerous expeditions.[[1082]] In Greece to preside over the oven, was up to a very late period the prerogative of the fair. One hundred and ten women had the honour of being locked up with the handful of warriors who during three years baffled the whole force of the Peloponnesos from the glorious walls of Platæa,[[1083]] and in the primitive ages of Macedonia the queen herself prepared the bread distributed among the royal shepherds.[[1084]]
The Sacred Scriptures have rendered familiar and reconciled to us the simplicity of patriarchal manners. To behold the daughter of Bethuel or of Laban coming forth to draw water for her flock, does not strike us as at all out of keeping with the opulence or dignity of her father, or with her own feminine delicacy; and we know that at this present day the wealthiest Bedouin Sheikh of the desert, though lord of a thousand camels, discovers nothing in his daughter’s condition which should relieve her from this healthful employment. Similar notions prevailed among the Greeks of the Heroic Age. For though in many cases slave-maidens[[1085]] are found engaged in drawing water from the springs, virgins of noble birth, nay the daughters themselves of kings, descend to the fountain with their urns, mingling there with female captives and young women of inferior rank. Thus, for example, the princess of the Lestrygons in Homer goes forth with her water-jar[[1086]] to the well, and even among the Athenians, where refinement of manners first sprang up, and civilisation made most rapid strides, the daughters of the citizens in early times used to descend to the fountain of Callirrhoe to draw water.[[1087]] But the task was commonly allotted to female captives and other slaves. Euryclea, Odysseus’ house-keeper, sends a troop of girls on this errand with orders to be quick in their movements, and Hector, in his deep fear for Andromache, already in apprehension beholds her toiling at the fountains of Argos.[[1088]]