SOCIAL ENJOYMENT OF WOMEN (From an ancient painting.)[ToList]
Akin to spinning are the arts of weaving and embroidering. We frequently see in vase-paintings women with embroidering-frames in their laps. The skill of Greek ladies in embroidery is sufficiently proved by the tasteful embroidered patterns and borders on Greek dresses, both of men and women. The vase-paintings supply many examples.
Our remarks about female duties in preparing the meal must be short. The heavy parts of the duty, like grinding the corn in hand-mills, were performed by servants. In the palace of Odysseus twelve female slaves were employed all day in grinding wheat and barley in an equal number of hand-mills, to supply the numerous guests. The hand-mill consisted (like those still used in some Greek islands) of two stones, each about two feet in diameter, the upper one of which was made to rotate by means of a crooked handle, so as to crush the corn poured through an opening in it.
Baking and roasting meat on the spit were among the duties of female slaves. In every house of even moderate wealth, several of these were kept as cooks, chambermaids, and companions of the ladies on their walks, it being deemed improper for them to leave the house unaccompanied by several slaves. How far ladies took immediate part in the preparing of dainty dishes we can not say. In later times it became customary to buy or hire male slaves as cooks.
Antique representations of women bathing, adorning themselves, playing, and dancing, are numerous. The Athenian maiden, unlike her Spartan sister, did not think it proper to publicly exhibit her bodily skill and beauty in a short chiton, but taking a bath seems to have been among her every-day habits as is shown by the numerous bathing scenes on vases. In one of them, a slave pours the contents of a hydria over her nude mistress. Cowering on the floor in another we see an undressed woman catching in her hand the water-spout issuing from a mask of Pan in the wall into a bath. An alabastron and comb are lying on the floor. A picture on an amphora in the museum of Berlin offers a most interesting view of the interior of a Greek bath-chamber. We see a bathing establishment built in the Doric style. By a row of columns the inner space is divided into two bath-chambers, each for two women. The water is most likely carried by pressure to the tops of the hollow columns, the communication among which is effected by means of pipes about six feet from the ground. The openings of the taps are formed into neatly modeled heads of boars, lions, and panthers, from the mouths of which a fine rain spray is thrown on the bathers. Their hair has been tightly arranged into plaits. The above-mentioned pipes were evidently used for hanging up the towels; perhaps they were even filled with hot water to warm the bathing linen. Whether our picture represents a public or private bath seems doubtful. The dressing after the bath has also been frequently depicted.
We need not enter upon the subject here. We will mention the chief utensils, as the comb, ointment-bottle, mirror, etc., on a following page. The scenes thus depicted are undoubtedly borrowed from daily life, although Aphrodite, with her attendance of Cupids and Graces, has taken the place of mortal women.
For music, games, and dances, we mention only a game at ball, which was played in a dancing measure, and, therefore, considered as a practice of graceful movements. Homer mentions Nausikaa as a skilled player of this game. It is remarkable that wherever women playing at ball appear in pictures they are represented in a sitting posture. (See cut, page 205.)
The swing was essentially a female amusement. In commemoration of the fate of Erigone, daughter of Ikarios, a festival had been ordained at Athens at which the maidens indulged in the joys of the swing. Illustrations of this pastime occur frequently on vases, free from any mythological symbolism, even in cases where Eros is made to move the swing.