Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

This notable aspect of Greek life is due to the fact that the ancient Hellene, as a rule, sought recreation and pleasure, not at the domestic hearth, but in the society of clever women, who had not only cultivated their physical charms, but had also trained their intellects and sensibilities so as to become virtuosi in all the arts of pleasure. Their pleasing forms of intercourse, their light and vivacious conversation, lent to association with them a peculiar seductiveness and fascination.

To designate this class of women in a manner which would distinguish them from the citizen-women on the one hand and the debased prostitute on the other, they were euphemistically called "hetæræ," or companions. The term hetæræ had been originally a most honorable one, and Sappho had used it, in the highest and best sense, of her girl friends as implying companions of like rank and interests. It is not known when it was first used with sinister suggestion, but, like our word mistress, it fell from its honorable estate and became the usual term to describe these women of pleasure.

The causes of the extent of hetairism among the Greeks are to be found in their religious conceptions, their political institutions, and the innate sensualism of the Greek peoples.

The Greeks were worshippers of the productive forces of nature as manifested in animal and plant life. Aphrodite is the female and Dionysius the male personification of the generative principles, and in consequence the religious ceremonials of these two deities assumed at times a most licentious aspect. In course of time, a distinction arose in the conception of Aphrodite, expressed by the surname applied to her. Thus Aphrodite Urania came to be generally regarded as the goddess of the highest love, especially of wedded love and fruitfulness, in contrast to Aphrodite Pandemus, the goddess of sensual lust and the patron deity of courtesans.

We could hardly expect high moral ideas in regard to sexual relations among the Greeks, whose deities were so lax. Zeus himself was given to illicit intercourse with mortal maidens and was continually arousing the jealousy of his prudent wife, the Lady Hera. Aphrodite was not faithful to her liege lord, Hephæstus, but was given to escapades with the warlike Ares. Apollo had his mortal loves, and Hades abducted the beautiful Proserpina. A people who from their childhood were taught such stories could hardly be expected to be more moral than their deities.

As has been shown in a previous chapter, the Greek conception of the city-state lay at the basis of laws and customs which repressed the citizen-woman and prevented proper attention to her education and to the full and well-rounded cultivation of womanly graces. The State hedged itself about with the most rigid safeguards to preserve the purity of the citizen blood. Stringent laws were passed prohibiting any citizen-man from marrying a stranger-woman, or any stranger-man from marrying a citizen-woman. To enforce these laws, it was necessary to keep the wives and daughters of the State within the narrow bounds of the gynæceum; and they were forbidden a knowledge of public affairs, which would make them more interesting to men. Hence the limitations of their culture made it impossible for them to be in every sense the companions of their husbands. But it is not natural for men to be deprived of the sympathy and inspiration that is found in association with cultivated women; hence there was, especially in Athens, a peculiar sphere for the cultivated hetæra. The men of the city recognized the need of feminine society in their recreations, in their political life, and on military expeditions. The hetæra entered this sphere, from which the citizen-woman was excluded.

A further reason for the predominance of hetairism is seen in the artistic impulses of the Greek people. These courtesans made an art of the life of pleasure. Cultivating every feminine grace, carefully attentive to all the little niceties of social intercourse, studying in every way how to be agreeable to the men, adepts in conversation, devotees of the Muses and the Graces, they knew how to make their relations with men answer to all the impulses of a beauty-loving people. And as the Greeks found æsthetic satisfaction in their masterpieces of prose and poetry, in their works of architecture and sculpture and painting, so they found it in their association with the hetæræ.

Owing to such conditions, there arose a most unnatural division of the admitted functions of woman in the world-order. Says the great orator Demosthenes: "We take a hetæra for our pleasure, a concubine for daily attention to our physical wants, a wife to give us legitimate children and a respected house"--an utterance narrowly defining the status of the hetæra as contrasted with that of the honorable wife. The latter was the housewife and mother, nothing more, though surrounded by all the dignities and privileges of her high station; the former was the companion, the comrade in whose society were found recreation and sympathy and intellectual delight, but she was outside the pale of society, not respected, yet not altogether despised.

It is difficult to ascertain the beginnings of hetairism among the Greeks. There is a noteworthy absence of it in the Homeric poems, though the Greek chieftains frequently had concubines, who were slaves captured in war.

Allusions in the lyric poets show that as early as the sixth century before our era the hetæra had made her appearance. The earliest reference to the social evil in the history of Athens is found in the administration of the lawgiver Solon, who was the first to legalize prostitution. With the avowed purpose of forestalling the seduction of virgins and wives, he bought slave girls in the markets of Asia Minor and placed them in public houses in Athens. This regulation for the protection of the home was generally regarded as deserving of praise. Thus speaks the comic poet Philemon: