Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

The ape-like wife is perhaps the worst of the lot: "This one, above all, has Zeus given as the greatest evil to men. Her face is most hateful. Such a woman goes through the city a laughing-stock to all the men. Short of neck, with narrow hips, withered of limb, she moves about with difficulty. O wretched man, who weds such a woman! She knows every cunning art, just like an ape, nor is ridicule a concern to her. To no one would she do a kindness, but every day she schemes to this end,--how she may work some one the greatest injury."

But at last we reach the bee: "The man who gets her is lucky; to her alone belongs no censure; one's household goods thrive and increase under her management; loving, with a loving spouse, she grows old, the mother of a fair and famous race. She is preeminent among all women, and a heavenly grace attends her. She cares not to sit among the women when they indulge in lascivious chatter. Such wives are the best and wisest mates Zeus grants to men."

Only one woman in ten has been found in some measure desirable, and the poet concludes with a lengthy and comprehensive dunciad of the female sex, the gist of which is as follows: "Zeus made this supreme evil--woman: even though she seem to be a blessing, when a man has wedded one she becomes a plague."

How much truth is there in Semonides's views on the women of his time? The poet agrees with Hesiod in regarding woman as a necessary evil. Nine women out of ten he finds altogether bad, and the tenth is prized only for her domestic virtues. Industrious, quiet, economical, the mother of children, she is merely the good housewife, which seems to have been the primitive ideal of the perfect woman. The poem treats of women of the middle class, and is important in showing the freedom of movement, and appearance in public, of the married woman. She is not shut up in the harem; but in the use of her tongue, and in her capacity as a busybody, there seems to be no restraint upon her. Semonides's range of vision was narrow, and he probably knew not much beyond his own little island, but we may credit him with expressing the prevalent views of the honest burghers of Amorgus.

Phocylides of Miletus, a successor of Semonides by rather more than a century, composed in the same strain an epigrammatic satire on woman. It is manifestly an imitation of the tirade of Semonides.

"The tribe of women," says he, "is of these four kinds,--that of a dog, that of a bee, that of a burly sow, and that of a long-maned mare. This last is manageable, quick, fond of gadding about, fine of figure; the sow kind is neither good nor bad; that of the dog is difficult and snarling; but the bee-like woman is a good housekeeper, and knows how to work. This desirable marriage, pray to obtain, dear friend."

The bitterest of all the observations against woman by the iambic writers, however, is that of Hipponax, a brilliant satirist of the sixth century before Christ, He says:

"Two happy days a woman brings a man: the first, when he marries her; the second, when he bears her to the grave."

Theognis is another of the poets of Greece who took a gloomy view of life, and was not happy in his matrimonial ties. He laments that marriages in his native town of Megara are made for money, and avers that such marriages are the bane of the city. Says Theognis:

"Rams and asses, Cyrnus, and horses, we choose of good breed, and wish them to have good pedigrees; but a noble man does not hesitate to wed a baseborn girl if she bring him much money; nor does a noble woman refuse to be the wife of a base but wealthy man, but she chooses the rich instead of the noble. For they honor money; and the noble weds the baseborn, and the base the highborn; wealth has mixed the race. So, do not wonder, Polypaides, that the race of the citizens deteriorates, for the bad is mixed with the good."