The performance of these pious duties commenced very early. Immediately on attaining the age of five years, they might be called on to officiate, clothed in saffron robes,[[1142]] in the rites of Artemis Brauronia, when a she-goat was sacrificed to the goddess, while professed rhapsodists chaunted select passages from the Iliad. Here they were initiated in the mysteries of their national piety,[[1143]] accompanied by all the charms of music, and of a style of declaiming no less impressive than that of the theatre. At this festival, celebrated every five years, all the ceremonies were performed by virgins, none of whom could be above ten years old;[[1144]] we must, therefore, infer that they underwent much previous training, and were instructed carefully respecting the object of the rites. Another religious festival at which youthful virgins only officiated, was the Arrhephoria, celebrated in honour of Athena or Herse. The ceremonies performed on this occasion appear to have required something more of preparation, since it was necessary that the youthful sacrificers should, at least, be seven years old and not exceed eleven. Four, selected for their noble birth and training, presided, and other two were chosen to weave the sacred peplos, while engaged in which they resided in the Sphæresterion, on the rock of the Acropolis, habited in white garments with ornaments of gold.[[1145]] The bread which they eat during their seclusion was called Anastatos.[[1146]]
I own it is not a little remarkable, that in proving the women of Athens to have received what in our times are regarded as the humblest elements of education, we should be compelled to rely on indirect evidence, or on mere inferences, or, indeed, that the point should require proof at all.[[1147]] This fact itself is decisive of their comparative seclusion.[seclusion.] Had they mingled much in society, more occasions would have occurred of dwelling on their acquirements, and in dramatic compositions of representing them delivering opinions, and exhibiting tastes and preferences, obviously incompatible with an uncultivated intellect. But, though the difficulty of the investigator be augmented by the paucity and indistinct manner of the witnesses, we are still not left entirely without ground for coming to a decision, and if writers have, hitherto, so far as I know, overlooked some of the principal testimonies, that must be regarded only as an additional cause for bringing them forward now.[[1148]]
A report current in antiquity, and preserved by Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides,[[1149]] represents the daughter of that great historian as the continuator of her father’s work, and as, in fact, the author of the whole eighth book. The biographer does not, indeed, receive the legend, but in rejecting it his assigned reasons are not that in the days of Thucydides Athenian ladies were not taught to read, and were, therefore, incapable of any species of literary exertion, but that the portion in question of the history bears evident marks of the same lofty and masculine mind to which we owe the rest, and no-wise resembles the productions of a woman. Had Marcellinus known the art of writing to have formed no part of an Athenian lady’s education, that could have been the proper reason to assign for his doubt. He might, under such circumstances, have ridiculed the folly of such a supposition. But no such objection occurred to him. He knew well that they could and did write, and had, therefore, recourse to the proper argument for establishing his point.
Again, in that fragment of the oration of Lysias which he wrote for the children of Diodotos, an Athenian woman of rank is introduced defending, under very distressful circumstances, the rights of her children against her own father. Diodotos, it seems, had married his niece, and by her had several children. He was at length required by the commonwealth to proceed on a military expedition, during which he fell under the walls of Ephesos. Diogeiton, father of his wife, having been appointed guardian of the children, endeavours to defraud them of their property, and their mother, calling in the aid of impartial arbiters, pleads before them her children’s cause, and the orator, addressing one of the tribunals of Athens, does not hesitate to put in her mouth language worthy of a rhetorician. This, however, I am aware, cannot be regarded as a proof. But, in the course of her speech she discloses a circumstance which must be so considered. During the period of her stay in her fathers house, the old man removed from one street to another, and in the confusion a small memorandum book, dropped from among his papers, was picked up by one of the children and brought to their mother.[[1150]] It happened to contain the account of the money her husband had left on departing for the army; this she reads,[[1151]] and thus discovers the state in which the affairs of the family had been left on the departure of her husband.
Another proof that writing formed one of the accomplishments of women occurs in Xenophon. Ischomachos is laying open the road to domestic happiness and wealth. He enters, as elsewhere will be shown, into a variety of interesting details, and among other things, discusses the character and duties of a housekeeper; for in Greece the principal care of the household was always committed to women. Thus, going back to the Heroic ages, we find Euryclea the housekeeper of Odysseus,[[1152]] and Hector’s palace in Troy is also placed under the care of a woman.[[1153]] In the Cretan states, moreover, even the public tables had female inspectors,[[1154]] and at Athens, where domestic economy was so much better understood than in the rest of Greece, women necessarily obtained the government of the household,[[1155]] which men would have certainly managed more imperfectly. But in well-regulated families, the supreme control of everything rested with the wife, whom Xenophon[[1156]] represents engaging with her husband in taking a list of all the moveables in the house, and this afterwards remains in her hands as a check upon the housekeeper, which, had she not known how to read, it would not have been. Besides, she is spoken of as aiding in writing the catalogue, and displays throughout the dialogue so much ability and knowledge that it would not surprise us to find her discoursing with Socrates on household affairs. There is, moreover, a remark of Plato[[1157]] subversive at the same time of another error on this same subject, which exhibits women exercising their judgment in literary matters. Children, he says, may find comedy more agreeable, but educated women, youths, and the majority indeed of mankind, will prefer tragedy. Here we find the opinion corroborated that both the comic and tragic theatres were open to them, otherwise it could not have been known which they would prefer. But of this more elsewhere.
In all countries, a great part of a woman’s education takes place after marriage. But at Athens, where they entered so early[[1158]] into the connubial state, marriage itself must be reckoned among the principal causes of their mental developement. They came into the hands of their husbands unformed, but pliable and docile. The little they had been taught seemed rather designed to fit them to receive his instructions than to dispense with them.[[1159]] Their seclusion from the world preserved their character unfixed and impressionable. They passed from the nursery, as it were, to the bridal chamber, timid, unworldly, unsophisticated, and the husband, if he desired it, might fashion their mind and opinions as he pleased. In the women of Athens we, accordingly, observe the most remarkable contrast to the Spartans. Their influence, in effect greater, perhaps, acted invisibly, warming and impelling the ruder masculine clay, but without humbling their lords or exposing them to the ridicule of living under petticoat government. Yet in Themistocles we have an example of the sway they exercised. Fondling one day his infant son he observed, sportively, but with that ambitious consciousness of power ever present to the mind of a Greek—"This little fellow is the most influential person I know." His friends inquired his meaning—"Why, replied Themistocles, he completely governs his mother, while she governs me, and I the whole of Greece."[[1160]]
The steps by which an Athenian girl might arrive at so envied a position are not unworthy our attention. From the age of fifteen she might look to become the mistress of a family; and it is probable that the maxim of Cleobulos,[[1161]] that women should approach their nuptials young in years but old in understanding, often governed their conduct. Love no doubt was not the only matchmaker at Athens.[[1162]] In general the heart, as in modern times, followed in the train of prudential calculation. But this arose, not so much from any impracticability[[1163]] of obtaining interviews, as from the habitual preference for gold, which, in all ages, has been found to actuate the conduct of the majority. To this day, in every country in Europe, marriage in the upper classes is too frequently a matter of mere bargain and sale, in which the feelings remain altogether unconsulted. And it was the same at Athens, though to suppose with Müller that interest was always the sole motive would be palpably to embrace an error, alike uncountenanced by history and philosophy.
When it is said that virgins in all Ionic states led an extremely secluded life, we are not thence to conclude that no opportunity of beholding, or even conversing with them, was enjoyed by men.[[1164]] It has already been seen that from the age of five years various ceremonies of their ancestral religion[[1165]] led females into the street, that they walked leisurely, arrayed with every resource of art and magnificence, in frequent processions to the temples, and it is known that numerous private occasions, such as funerals, marriages, &c., exposed them to the indiscriminate gaze of the public. Thus, we have in Terence a youth who from beholding a young lady with face uncovered and dishevelled hair lamenting at her mother’s funeral, falls desperately in love;[[1166]] and the wife in Lysias, whose frailty led to the murder of Eratosthenes,[[1167]] was first seen and admired under similar circumstances. Excuses, in fact, were never wanting to be in public, and occasions unknown to us were clearly afforded men for becoming acquainted with the temper and character of their future spouses, since we find Socrates conversing with men well acquainted with their country’s manners, jocularly feigning to have chosen Xantippe for her fierce, untameable spirit.[[1168]]
It has been supposed by many distinguished scholars, that, at Athens,[[1169]] the theatre—that great bazaar of female beauty in modern states—was closed against the women, at least the comic theatre. One principal ground of this opinion is the coarse and licentious character of the old comedy which, with its broad humour, political satire, and reckless disregard of decency, appears fitted for men only, and those not the most refined. But there are strange contradictions in human nature. The very religion of Greece teemed with indecency. Phallic statues crowded the temples and the public streets. Phallic emblems entered into many of the sacred ceremonies at which women, even in their maiden condition, assisted, and the poems chaunted at sacrifices, where they associated in every rite, were, in many parts, broader than an Utopian legislator would consider permissible. Besides, to prove the nullity of this objection, we need only note the history of our own stage. English women refused not, when they were in fashion, to behold, under the protection of a mask,[[1170]] the comedies of Massinger, Wycherly, Beaumont and Fletcher. They still read, and, on the stage, admire, Shakespeare, and from these the interval is not wide to Aristophanes, the lewdest and most shameless of ancient comic writers.[[1171]] And, further, it should never be forgotten, that their perverted religion flung its protecting wing over the stage. Plays exhibited during the festivals of Bacchos were, like our old mysteries and moralities, strictly sacred shows, and, consistently, women could no more have been excluded from them than from the other exhibitions connected with public worship.
As on many other points, however, the positive and direct testimonies to be adduced in proof of the position I maintain are scanty, and of modern authorities nearly all are against me. Still, truth is not immediately to be deserted because there happens to be much difficulty in defending it. It will be time enough to run when we have exhausted all our resources. An unknown writer, but still a Greek,[[1172]] relates that, during the acting of the Eumenides, that awe-inspiring and terrible drama of Æschylus, the sight of the furies rushing tumultuously, like dogs of hell, upon the stage, with their frightful masks and blood-dripping hands, shed so deep a terror over the theatre, that children were thrown into fits, and pregnant women seized with premature birth-pangs. This, if admitted, would be evidence decisive as regards the tragic stage. But, because it is impossible to elude its force, modern critics boldly assume the privilege to treat the whole passage contemptuously, opposing scorn when they have no counterproof to oppose. Such a mode of arguing, however, by whomsoever pursued, must clearly bear upon the face of it the mark of sophistry, for in that way there is no position which might not be overthrown or established.