Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

GREEK WOMAN IN RELIGION

More spiritual by nature, more inclined to mysticism, with keener intuitions, woman has ever taken a more prominent part in religious matters than man. Hence, even in such a country as Hellas, where woman was excluded from so many lines of human activity, we find that in religious observance she had equal freedom with man, and far exceeded him in devoutness and religious fervor. The Greeks, though they had only the light of nature to guide them, were essentially a spiritual people. They saw the hand of the Unseen everywhere manifesting itself in natural phenomena: they recognized divinities in the fertility of the soil, in the stars of the heavens, in the crystal waters of the spring, in the rain and in the storm cloud, in the winds of the forest. They even personified abstractions, and deified emotions and virtues. Nor were they merely content with inward piety, but endeavored in every way by outward observance to worship the deities which were the creations of their own myth-making faculties; and in all the religious ceremonials of the Greeks woman played a prominent role.

All the Greek peoples gloried in being of the same blood and language and religion. Though widely separated politically and engaged in endless wars among themselves, the chief bond of union known to them was the common cult of some divinity and participation in the same religious festivals. The oracles, the temples, the games, the processions in honor of their gods, tended to maintain the unity of Greece and were the promoters of national sentiment. Woman's part in these bonds of union made her influential in the welfare of the common country, and religious ceremonies were to her occasions in which she could feel herself an essential factor in Greek life.

In the childhood of the world, man, who reached conclusions by a long process of reasoning, stood in awe of the intuitive faculty in woman that enabled her to arrive at a truth without apparent effort. Hence the spirit of divination was thought to be inherent in the sex, and women were prophetesses from remote ages. Among pagan peoples, the earliest manifestations of the prophetic instinct in woman were recognized in the persons of certain seers to whom was given the name of Sibyls. The word in its etymology signifies the "will of God," and was applied to the inspired prophetesses of some deity, chiefly of Apollo. The Sibyls were generally represented as maidens, dwelling in lonely caverns or by sacred springs, who were possessed of the spirit of divination and gave forth prophetic utterances while under the influence of enthusiastic frenzy. Their number, their names, their countries, their times, are matters about which we have no certain knowledge; but twelve are mentioned by ancient writers, of whom three were certainly Greek--the Delphian, the Erythrean, and the Samian. Herophila, the Erythrean Sibyl, was the most celebrated of them all, and she is represented as wandering from her Ionian home, by manifold journeyings, to Cumæ, in Magna Græcia, whence she became known as the Cumæan Sibyl. She it was whom Æneas consulted before his descent into Hades, and who later sold to the last Tarquin the prophetic books. It was believed that her age reached a thousand years.

Women also were priestesses at the oracles of Hellas, which were seats of the worship of certain divinities, where prophecies were imparted to inquiring souls through the instrumentality of the attendants of the deity. The oldest and most venerated of the oracles was that of Zeus at Dodona, mentioned by Homer. Here, among the prophetic oaks, priestesses read the future in the rustling of the leaves and in the creaking of the branches, in the bubbling of a spring and in the sounds made by brazen cymbals hung near the sacred shrine. Herodotus visited this oracle, and gives the names of the three priestesses who officiated in his time. These priestesses--Promenia, Timarete, Nicandra--related to him a very interesting story concerning the origin of the oracle. They traced its sacred legends back to the worship in the famous temple of Thebes in Egypt. Two doves, they said, flew away one day from the city of Thebes and took their flight into distant lands. One alighted in Libya, on the spot where the oracle of Jupiter Ammon was later established; while the other, crossing the sea, flew as far as Dodona, where, perching on an oak, in human voice she commanded those that heard her to establish there an oracle of Zeus. For this reason the priestesses were known as Peliades, or doves. When, however, Herodotus inquired of the priests in Thebes about the tradition, they told a different story: that two priestesses of their temple had once been carried off from Egypt by the Phoenicians and sold into slavery, and that one of these priestesses finally established herself at Dodona. So, whether dove or priestess, the tradition of the Egyptian origin of the oracle seemed confirmed.

Apollo, however, rather than Zeus, was the god of prophecy, and it was generally in connection with his shrines that oracles were spoken. Usually, fountains whose water was supposed to influence the workings of the mind, or caverns whence escaped a gas producing delirium or hallucination, were regarded as places where the divinity was present. Hence there existed numerous oracles of Apollo in Greece proper and in Asia Minor. The most celebrated of the latter was the oracle of the Didymæan Apollo at Branchidæ, near Miletus, where a priestess uttered prophecies, seated on a wheel-shaped disk, after she had bathed the hem of her robe and her feet in the sacred spring and had breathed the vapors arising from it.

The most illustrious of all the oracles of ancient Hellas was at Delphi, which is situated, like a vast amphitheatre, above the beautiful plain of Cirrha in Phocis, with the double summits of Parnassus forming the background. Delphi became the centre of the Hellenic religion, and the fame of its oracle extended as far as to Lydia in the east, and to Rome and the Etruscans in the west. At first, a young maiden took the part of the priestess of Apollo who gave the responses; but the authorities realizing the dangers to which the beauty of the priestess might lead, a woman of at least fifty years of age was later selected for the honor, and finally, as one prophetess was not sufficient to answer the questions of the vast crowd of pilgrims that assembled to consult the oracle, three were chosen. The name given to the inspired priestess was always the same, that of Pythia.

To prepare the priestess for the ordeal which was to make known the will of the god, she was kept fasting for a number of days--a condition favorable to hallucinations, and then was given laurel leaves to chew because of their narcotic virtue. Then the Pythia was seated on a tripod, placed in the middle of the sanctuary, over an opening in the ground whence mephitic vapors were escaping. Her head was crowned with a garland made from the tree of Apollo, and about the tripod coiled a snake, the emblem of the art of divination. The exhalations from the abyss were deemed to be the very breath of the god, with which he inspired his priestess. Soon she grew pale and trembled with convulsive movements; her only utterances at first were groans and sighs; and now, with eyes aflame, with hair dishevelled, and with foam on her lips, amid shrieks of anguish she gave forth a few incoherent, disconnected words. The god had at last spoken through his priestess. The words were carefully written down by the attendant priest, who gave a rhythmic form to the response, and thus a revelation of the future was made known to the anxious inquirer.

The Pythia was consulted by all the peoples of Greece, as well as by kings and strangers from foreign lands. Colonies to Italy, to Africa, to the regions about the Black Sea, were sent at her command; she sanctioned laws; she taught Lycurgus that the best laws were those which obliged rulers to rule well and subjects to obey well. To the conquered, she counselled resignation and hope. Peoples lusting for conquest, she bade revive their piety toward the gods and seek the mercy of heaven by showing themselves merciful. She was also the guardian of individual morality. To a king desiring peace of mind, she declared that his unhappiness was due to his and his predecessors' wrong-doings, and recommended the exercise of clemency when he returned home. Being asked: "Who is the happiest of men?" she replied: "Phædrus, who has died for his country," A man named Glaucus wished to withhold a treasure which had been confided to him, but decided first to get the sanction of the oracle; the Pythia revealed to him the woes reserved for the perjured. To the lot of Gyges, the wealthy and powerful king, she preferred that of a poor Arcadian farmer who cultivated his plot of ground in peace of mind. By pure and elevated moral teachings, the Pythia instructed the bands of pilgrims who assembled at Delphi. Such was the power in the hands of a woman. Frail and nervous, she yet represented a religious institution the most influential in the pagan world; she largely determined the destiny of Greeks and barbarians alike. The wisdom of this oracular centre is generally ascribed in modern times to the college of priests assembled at Delphi, who interpreted the responses of the Pythia; but, whatever the nature of the mechanism by which this oracle retained its influence for centuries, the people in general had, for ages, perfect faith that the responses came directly from the god of prophecy through his inspired priestess. It is undoubtedly true that the Greeks, as well as the Hindoos, Gauls, and Germans, attributed to woman the gift of second-sight; and the immaculate life which the Pythia was required to lead attests the fact that to receive the inspiration of the god of light there were needed a purity of heart and a devoutness of spirit which could only be found in a woman. Strange to say, it was the law that no woman could consult this oracle of Apollo, whose divine will was revealed through a woman; women could, however, indirectly receive a response through the mediation of a man.

The Greeks were fond of the pomp and splendor of religious festivals. They celebrated such festivals whenever occasion offered, and during their continuance all regular occupations ceased. Plato saw in the prevailing custom other advantages besides the purely religious effect. "The gods," he says, "touched with compassion for the human race, which nature condemns to labor, have provided for intervals of repose in the regular succession of festivals instituted in their own honor." These festivities were not only a feature of the national religion; they were the schools of patriotism, of poetry, and of art. Each city had its own special festivals, and there were also those national celebrations in which all people joined. Zeus was the national deity of the Greeks; Olympia was his most sacred seat; and the Olympian festival was the greatest event in Greece.