Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

The two centuries of Greek history following Hesiod are chiefly known to us through the lyric poets, as epic poetry declined and the writing of history had not yet begun. Lyric poetry is an index to the hearts of the people: for in lyric poetry are expressed the thoughts and feelings of reflective man. Woman is the great mainspring of existence; she it is who is the general cause of man's thoughts, emotions, passions, joys, and sorrows. Hence, as lyric poetry is the poetry of the heart, we find recorded in the verses of Grecian lyrists man's attitude toward woman in this period of "storm and stress" in the development of Greek nationality.

Archilochus is the father of iambic poetry, and he made it the medium of expression of personal passion and satire. With all the ardor of his nature, he loved Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, of the island of Paros, where the poet had made his home. Certain fragments of his poems, still extant, indicate the intensity of the flame with which he was consumed. Archilochus has left us an exquisite picture of his loved one, clad in all the beauty and grace a poetic lover could portray, with a rose and a myrtle branch in her hand, and her tresses falling caressingly over her shoulders. He sighed "were it to touch but her hand," and she seems at first to have returned his affection. The lovers were betrothed, but suddenly the father objected, and the match was broken off. Love immediately turned into hate, and passion changed into rage. Thereupon, as Horace says:

"Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo,"

Archilochus used the iambic metre as his weapon of attack. As his love had been ardent, so, when betrayed, his rage was uncontrollable. Every possible taunt was cast at those who had deceived him. "Each verse he wrote was polished and pointed like an arrow head. Each line was steeped in the poison of hideous charges against his sweetheart, her sister, and her father. The set of poems which he produced, and, as it would appear, recited publicly at the festival of Demeter, was so charged with wit and fire that the country rang with them. The daughters of Lycambes, tradition avers, went straightway and hanged themselves--unable to endure the flight of fiery serpents that had fallen upon them; for, to quote the words of Browning, Archilochus had the art of writing verse that 'bit into the live man's flesh like parchment,' that sent him wandering, branded and forever shamed, about his native fields and streets."

Archilochus's verses indicate that, in the eighth century before our era, there was in Greece a certain freedom of intercourse between the sexes, and that love was, at times at least, the basis for betrothal; it also shows the absolute control of the father over the hand of his daughter. The poet's story is also the earliest we have of love betrayed, and the name of Neobule is inextricably intertwined with the rise of satiric verse.

A different note is struck by Archilochus's contemporary, Semonides of Amorgus, who takes up and continues the tradition of Hesiod in speaking of woman in tones of contempt and disparagement. He composed a celebrated satire on woman, in which her various temperaments are ascribed to a kinship with different domestic animals,--the hog, the fox, the dog, the ass, the mare, the ape,--or are compared to mud, sea water, and the bee.

Semonides first deals with the class of women of the hog variety: "God made the mind of woman in the beginning of different qualities; for one he fashioned like a bristly hog, in whose house everything tumbles about in disorder, bespattered with mud, and rolls upon the ground; she, dirty, with unwashed clothes, sits and grows fat on a dungheap."

The woman like mud is thus satirized: "This woman is ignorant of everything, both good and bad; her only accomplishment is eating: cold though the winters be, she is too stupid to draw near the fire."

Here is the poet's picture of the woman who resembles the sea: "She has two minds; when she laughs and is glad, the stranger seeing her at home will give her praise--there is nothing better than this on the earth, no, nor fairer; but another day she is unbearable, not to be looked at or approached, for she is raging mad. To friend and foe she is alike implacable and odious. Thus, as the sea is often calm and innocent, a great delight to sailors in summertime, and oftentimes again is frantic, tearing along with roaring billows, so is this woman in her temper."

The woman who resembles a mare offers other disagreeable qualities: She is "delicate and long-haired, unfit for drudgery or toil; she would not touch the mill, or lift the sieve, or clean the house out! She bathes twice or thrice a day, and anoints herself with myrrh; then she wears her hair combed out long and wavy, dressed with flowers. It follows that this woman is a rare sight to one's guests; but to her husband she is a curse, unless he be a tyrant who prides himself on such expensive luxuries."