So much for the woman herself, her selfish spirit, her vile career; but as Cleopatra is one of the best known and most striking examples of a Pagan woman, with qualities and in circumstances peculiarly characteristic of Paganism, I must make a few remarks on these points.
One of the most noticeable of these is that immorality seems to have been no bar to social position. Some of those who were most attractive and sought after were notoriously immoral. Aspasia, whom Socrates and Pericles equally admired, and whose house was the resort of poets, philosophers, statesmen, and artists, and who is said to have been one of the most cultivated women of antiquity, bore a sullied name. Sappho, who was ever exalted by Grecian poets for the sweetness of her verses, attempted to reconcile a life of pleasure with a life of letters, and threw herself into the sea because of a disappointed passion. Lais, a professional courtesan, was the associate of kings and sages as well as the idol of poets and priests. Agrippina, whose very name is infamy, was the admiration of courtiers and statesmen. Lucilla, who armed her assassins against her own brother, seems to have ruled the court of Marcus Aurelius.
And all these women, and more who could be mentioned, were--like Cleopatra--cultivated, intellectual, and brilliant. They seem to have reigned for their social fascinations as much as by their physical beauty. Hence, that class of women who with us are shunned and excluded from society were not only flattered and honored, but the class itself seems to have been recruited by those who were the most attractive for their intellectual gifts as well as for physical beauty. No woman, if bright, witty, and beautiful, was avoided because she was immoral. It was the immoral women who often aspired to the highest culture. They sought to reign by making their homes attractive to distinguished men. Their houses seem to have been what the salons of noble and fascinating duchesses were in France in the last two centuries. The homes of virtuous and domestic women were dull and wearisome. In fact, the modest wives and daughters of most men were confined to monotonous domestic duties; they were household slaves; they saw but little of what we now call society. I do not say that virtue was not held in honor. I know of no age, however corrupt, when it was not prized by husbands and fathers. I know of no age when virtuous women did not shine at home, and exert a healthful influence upon men, and secure the proud regard of their husbands. But these were not the women whose society was most sought. The drudgeries and slaveries of domestic life among the ancients made women unattractive to the world. The women who were most attractive were those who gave or attended sumptuous banquets, and indulged in pleasures that were demoralizing. Not domestic women, but bright women, carried away those prizes which turned the brain. Those who shone were those that attached themselves to men through their senses, and possibly through their intellects, and who were themselves strong in proportion as men were weak. For a woman to appear in public assemblies with braided and decorated hair and ostentatious dress, and especially if she displayed any gifts of eloquence or culture, was to proclaim herself one of the immoral, leisurely, educated, dissolute class. This gives point to Saint Paul's strict injunctions to the women of Corinth to dress soberly, to keep silence in the assemblies, etc. The modest woman was to "be in subjection." Those Pagan converts to the "New Way" were to avoid even the appearance of evil.
Thus under Paganism the general influence of women was to pull men down rather than to elevate them, especially those who were attractive in society. Virtuous and domestic women were not sufficiently educated to have much influence except in a narrow circle. Even they, in a social point of view, were slaves. They could be given in marriage without their consent; they were restricted in their intercourse with men; they were confined to their homes; they had but few privileges; they had no books; they led a life of terror from the caprices of their lords and masters, and hence inspired no veneration. The wives and daughters of the rich tyrannized over their servants, decked themselves with costly ornaments, and were merely gilded toys, whose society was vapid and uninteresting. The wives and daughters of the poor were drudges and menials, without attraction or influence; noisy, quarrelsome, garrulous women, who said the least when they talked the most.
Hence under Paganism home had none of those attractions which, in Christian countries, invest it with such charms. The home of the poor was squalid and repulsive; the home of the rich was gaudy and tinselled enough, but was dull and uninspiring. What is home when women are ignorant, stupid, and slavish? What glitter or artistic splendor can make home attractive when women are mere butterflies or slaves with gilded fetters? Deprive women of education, and especially of that respect which Christian chivalry inspires, and they cannot rise to be the equal companions of men. They are simply their victims or their slaves. What is a home where women are treated as inferiors? Paganism never recognized their equality with men; and if they ever ruled men, it was by appealing to their lower qualities, or resorting to arts and devices which are subversive of all dignity of character. When their personal beauty fled, their power also departed. A faded or homely woman, without intelligence or wit, was a forlorn object in a Pagan home,--to be avoided, derided, despised,--a melancholy object of pity or neglect, so far as companionship goes. She may have been valued as a cook or drudge, but she was only a menial. Of all those sins of omission of which Paganism is accused, the worst was that it gave to women no mental resources to assist them in poverty, or neglect, or isolation, when beauty or fortune deserted them. No home can be attractive where women have no resources; and women can have no resources outside of domestic duties, unless educated to some art or something calculated to draw out their energies and higher faculties by which they win the respect and admiration, not of men only, but of their own sex.
It was this lack of education which Paganism withheld from women which not only destroyed the radiance of home, but which really made women inferior to men. All writers, poets, and satirists alike speak of the inferiority of women to men,--not physically only, but even intellectually; and some authors made them more vicious than men in natural inclination. And when the mind was both neglected and undervalued, how could respect and admiration be kindled, or continue after sensual charms had passed away? Paganism taught the inequality of the sexes, and produced it; and when this inequality is taught, or believed in, or insisted upon, then farewell to the glory of homes, to all unbought charms, to the graces of domestic life, to everything that gilds our brief existence with the radiance of imperishable joy.
Nor did Paganism offer any consolations to the down-trodden, injured, neglected, uninteresting woman of antiquity. She could not rise above the condition in which she was born. No sympathetic priest directed her thoughts to another and higher and endless life. Nobody wiped away her tears; nobody gave encouragement to those visions of beauty and serenity for which the burdened spirit will, under any oppressions, sometimes aspire to enjoy. No one told her of immortality and a God of forgiveness, who binds up the bleeding heart and promises a future peace and bliss. Paganism was merciful only in this,--that it did not open wounds it could not heal; that it did not hold out hopes and promises it could not fulfil; that it did not remind the afflicted of miseries from which they could not rise; that it did not let in a vision of glories which could never be enjoyed; that it did not provoke the soul to indulge in a bitterness in view of evils for which there was no remedy; that it did not educate the mind for enjoyments which could never be reached; that it did not kindle a discontent with a condition from which there is no escape. If one cannot rise above debasement or misery, there is no use in pointing it out. If the Pagan woman was not seemingly aware of the degradation which kept her down, and from which it was impossible to rise, Paganism did not add stings to her misery by presenting it as an accident which it was easy to surmount. There would be no contentment or submission among animals if they were endowed with the reason of men. Give to a healthy, but ignorant, coarse, uncultivated country girl, surrounded only with pigs and chickens, almost without neighbors, a glimpse of the glories of cities, the wonders of art, the charms of social life, the triumphs of mind, the capacities of the soul, and would she be any happier, if obliged to remain for life in her rustic obscurity and labor, and with no possible chance of improving her condition? Such was woman under Paganism. She could rise only so far as men lifted her up; and they lifted her up only further to consummate her degradation.
But there was another thing which kept women in degradation. Paganism did not recognize the immaterial and immortal soul: it only had regard to the wants of the body. Of course there were exceptions. There were sages and philosophers among the men who speculated on the grandest subjects which can elevate the mind to the regions of immortal truth,--like Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,--even as there were women who rose above all the vile temptations which surrounded them, and were poets, heroines, and benefactors,--like Telessa, who saved Argos by her courage; and Volumnia, who screened Rome from the vengeance of her angry son; and Lucretia, who destroyed herself rather than survive the dishonor of her house. There are some people who rise and triumph over every kind of oppression and injury. Under Paganism there was the possibility of the emancipation of the soul, but not the probability. Its genius was directed to the welfare of the body,--to utilitarian ends of life, to ornaments and riches, to luxury and voluptuousness, to the pleasures which are brief, to the charms of physical beauty and grace. It could stimulate ambition and inculcate patriotism and sing of love, if it coupled the praises of Venus with the praises of wine. But everything it praised or honored had reference to this life and to the mortal body. It may have recognized the mind, but not the soul, which is greater than the mind. It had no aspirations for future happiness; it had no fears of future misery. Hence the frequency of suicide under disappointment, or ennui, or satiated desire, or fear of poverty, or disgrace, or pain.
And thus, as Paganism did not take cognizance of the soul in its future existence, it disregarded man's highest aspirations. It did not cultivate his graces; it set but a slight value on moral beauty; it thought little of affections; it spurned gentleness and passive virtues; it saw no lustre in the tender eye; it heard no music in the tones of sympathy; it was hard and cold. That which constitutes the richest beatitudes of love it could not see, and did not care for. Ethereal blessedness it despised. That which raises woman highest, it was indifferent to. The cold atmosphere of Paganism froze her soul, and made her callous to wrongs and sufferings. It destroyed enthusiasm and poetic ardor and the graces which shine in misfortune. Woman was not kindled by lofty sentiments, since no one believed in them. The harmonies of home had no poetry and no inspiration, and they disappeared. The face of woman was not lighted by supernatural smiles. Her caresses had no spiritual fervor, and her benedictions were unmeaning platitudes. Take away the soul of woman, and what is she? Rob her of her divine enthusiasm, and how vapid and commonplace she becomes! Destroy her yearnings to be a spiritual solace, and how limited is her sphere! Take away the holy dignity of the soul, and how impossible is a lofty friendship! Without the amenities of the soul there can be no real society. Crush the soul of a woman, and you extinguish her life, and shed darkness on all who surround her. She cannot rally from pain, or labor, or misfortune, if her higher nature is ignored. Paganism ignored what is grandest and truest in a woman, and she withered like a stricken tree. She succumbed before the cold blasts that froze her noblest impulses, and sunk sullenly into obscurity. Oh, what a fool a man is to make woman a slave! He forgets that though he may succeed in keeping her down, chained and fettered by drudgeries, she will be revenged; that though powerless, she will instinctively learn to hate him; and if she cannot defy him she will scorn him,--for not even a brute animal will patiently submit to cruelty, still less a human soul become reconciled to injustice. And what is the possession of a human body without the sympathy of a living soul?
And hence women, under Paganism,--having no hopes of future joy, no recognition of their diviner attributes, no true scope for energies, no field of usefulness but in a dreary home, no ennobling friendships, no high encouragements, no education, no lofty companionship; utterly unappreciated in what most distinguishes them, and valued only as household slaves or victims of guilty pleasure; adorned and bedecked with trinkets, all to show off the graces of the body alone, and with nothing to show their proud equality with men in influence, if not in power, in mind as well as heart,--took no interest in what truly elevates society. What schools did they teach or even visit? What hospitals did they enrich? What miseries did they relieve? What charities did they contribute to? What churches did they attend? What social gatherings did they enliven? What missions of benevolence did they embark in? What were these to women who did not know what was the most precious thing they had, or when this precious thing was allowed to run to waste? What was there for a woman to do with an unrecognized soul but gird herself with ornaments, and curiously braid her hair, and ransack shops for new cosmetics, and hunt for new perfumes, and recline on luxurious couches, and issue orders to attendant slaves, and join in seductive dances, and indulge in frivolous gossip, and entice by the display of sensual charms? Her highest aspiration was to adorn a perishable body, and vanity became the spring of life.