Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

While such implicit obedience was the rule, however, there were notable exceptions to such ingenuousness on the part of the wife, and there were doubtless many instances where the wife was the ruling power of the household because of mental superiority, domineering disposition, or amount of dower. Human nature is much the same the world over, and strong personality in women demanded expression in ancient as well as in modern times. It is also true that there were instances of beautiful affection between husband and wife, though the fact that such were much talked of proves that conjugal love was the exception, not the rule.

It is a pity that we do not know more of the wives and sisters and mothers of great Athenians, as the few of whom we know are of unusual interest. Many wives enjoyed the hearty admiration and companionship of their husbands. Cimon, in spite of occasional lapses on his part, had an unusually passionate affection for his wife, Isodice, and was filled with bitterest grief at her death. Socrates mentions Niceratus as "one who was in love with his wife and loved by her." There is a pleasing anecdote of Themistocles, told us by Plutarch, which shows where in his household lay the seat of authority. "Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and, through his mother, his father also, to indulge him, he told him he had the most power of anyone in Greece, 'for the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother.'"

Plutarch also relates of the great statesman that of two who made love to his daughter, he preferred the man of worth to the one who was rich, saying that he desired a man without riches rather than riches without a man! The most pleasing, however, among the wives of great Athenians is the wife of Phocion, the incorruptible, as she is presented to us in the pages of Plutarch. The latter describes Phocion's simple way of living, and speaks of his wife as employed in kneading bread with her own hands. "She was," he continues, "renowned no less among the Athenians for her virtues and simple living than was Phocion for his probity." It happened once when the people were entertained with a new tragedy, that the actor, as he was about to enter the stage to perform the part of a queen, demanded to have a number of attendants, sumptuously dressed, to follow in his train; and when they were not provided, he became sullen and refused to act, keeping the audience waiting, till at last Melanthius, who had to furnish the chorus, pushed him on the stage, crying out: "What! don't you know that Phocion's wife is never attended by more than a single waiting-woman, but you must needs be grand, and fill our women's heads with vanity?" This speech, spoken loud enough to be heard, was received with great applause. Phocion's wife herself once said to a visitor from Ionia, who showed her all her rich ornaments made of gold and set with jewels, her wreaths, necklaces, and the like: "For my part, all my ornament is my husband Phocion, now for the twentieth year in office as general at Athens."

Aristotle said many things which are quoted as suggesting his low estimate of the weaker sex, but he loved with great tenderness his wife Pythias, niece and adopted daughter of his friend Hermias, ruler of Atarneus and Assos in Mysia. When she died after a few brief years of wedded life, Aristotle gave directions that at his own death the two bodies should be placed side by side in the same tomb. When his own death came, he left behind a second wife, Herpyllis, whose virtues he esteemed, and he besought his friends to care for her, and to provide her with another husband should she wish to marry again.

These instances of domestic affection dissolve the cold logic of rigid theory, and prove how, in spite of legislation and convention, love is lord of all, and that among the Athenians happy married life was not unknown.

Nor was the strong-minded woman altogether lacking in Athens, for there was Elpinice, sister of Cimon, who, taking the Spartan women as her model, went about alone, and did many other things which shocked the staid Athenian matrons. Unpleasant remarks were made about her--as in the case of every woman who defies convention: among them, that she was over intimate with Polygnotus the painter, who portrayed her as Laodice in his fresco of the Trojan women in the Stoa Poikile. But the essence of this scandal may have been merely that she served the painter as a model, at a time when few women would have dared to visit an artist's studio. To her brother Cimon she proved a devoted sister. Once, when he was on trial for his life, she pleaded with Pericles so earnestly that acquittal was the result; and later she arranged with this great rival the negotiations that led to Cimon's return from banishment. So lovable was she that Callias, one of the richest men in Athens, fell violently in love with her, and offered to pay the fine to which her father was condemned, if he could obtain the daughter in marriage; and with Elpinice's own consent, Cimon betrothed her to Callias.

We have reserved a brief consideration of the best known of all Athenian women, one who defies all out notions regarding the prevailing conventions--Xanthippe, wife of the philosopher Socrates. From all accounts, it seems likely that she was an aristocratic lady, in reduced circumstances, who had married Socrates when advanced in life, she herself being beyond the years at which women usually marry, yet a score of years younger than her husband. Socrates once said he married her for the excitement of conquest, just as one would enjoy the breaking of a high-spirited horse; but, at any rate, the philosopher was worsted, and Xanthippe ruled the household. Xanthippe has acquired the reputation of being the typical scold of antiquity. Doubtless this reputation is not without foundation, yet she should have our sympathy, for the strangest and most difficult of husbands fell to her lot. Her naturally infirm temper must have been tried beyond endurance by the calm unconcern of her husband toward the domestic problem of "making both ends meet." Ugly, careless of dress, keeping bad company, given to trances, utterly neglectful of his family--can one be surprised that the wife of such a man should lose all patience with him, and through repeated failures to improve him should by degrees become an arch termagant? Yet the stories of Xanthippe's temper rest on uncertain authority, and her reputation may be due largely to the fact that it was necessary for the story mongers to provide a foil for the always serene and placid philosopher. Plato, the most reliable authority, tells us nothing disparaging of Xanthippe, and the violent grief he attributes to her at the last parting suggests a high degree of affection for her phlegmatic spouse. Socrates preferred philosophical discussions with his friends to the society of his wife in his last hours of life, but he committed her and her children tenderly to their care. Thus parted the ill-assorted pair, each of whom has attained world-wide celebrity--the one as the world's philosopher, the other as the proverbial shrew.

In the early days of the Athenian democracy, women were powerful influences in civic matters, as is instanced in the case of Cylon and his conspirators, all of whom were ruthlessly slain except those who fell at the feet of the archons' wives, who in pity saved them. Herodotus tells a story which shows the intense interest of the Athenian women in public affairs in early times. There was always great rivalry between Athens and the neighboring island of Ægina. At one time, the Athenians demanded of the Æginetans the fulfilment of certain conditions regarding the statues of Attic olive wood which the latter had stolen from the Epidaurians. "The people of Ægina refused; and the members of an expedition sent against them, attempting to drag away the sacred statues with ropes, were seized with madness and destroyed, one after another, so that only one man returned alive to Athens. This man, recounting the disasters, was surrounded by the women whose husbands had been killed, and each one pierced him with the bodkin that fastened her garment; so that he died under their hands. The conduct of these women filled the Athenians with horror, and, as a punishment, they obliged all the women of Athens to give up the Dorian dress which they wore, and instead to clothe themselves with the Ionian tunic, which had no need of any pin to fasten it."

Under the tyrants, the women of aristocratic families throughout Hellas possessed an influence which was lost under the levelling process of democracy. Pisistratus, after his first banishment, furthered the reestablishment of his tyranny by wedding the daughter of Megacles, and thus winning for himself the influence of the powerful Alcmæonidæ. He worshipped Athena as his patron goddess, and, to give proper religious sanction to his return, arranged a singular ceremony, which Herodotus regards as "the most ridiculous that was ever imagined," but which introduces to us the most beautiful Athenian maiden of the times:

"In the Pæanian tribe, there was a woman named Phya, four cubits tall, and in other respects handsome. Having dressed this woman in a complete suit of armor, and placed her in a chariot, and instructed her how to assume a becoming demeanor, the followers of Pisistratus drove her to the city, having sent heralds before to proclaim: 'O Athenians, welcome back Pisistratus, whom Athena herself, honoring above all men, now conducts back to her own citadel!' Thus the report was spread about that the goddess Athena was bringing back Pisistratus; and the people, believing it to be true, paid worship to the woman, and allowed Pisistratus to return." The return was most happily effected, and, soon after, the usurper celebrated the marriage of this "counterfeit presentment" of the goddess to one of his sons.