Woman; Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome, and Among the Early Christians

by Sir James Donaldson

First of all the ancient idea of a State has to be firmly kept in mind. The ancient Greeks did not dream, as we have said, of any political constitution more extensive than a city. Athens was the largest of these city-States in Greece, and yet it probably never numbered more than thirty thousand citizens. These citizens, according to the Greek idea, were all connected by ties of blood more or less distant; they all had the same divine ancestor; they all worshipped the same gods in the same temples, and they possessed many rights, properties, and privileges in common. It was therefore of supreme importance that in the continuation of the State only true citizens should be admitted, and, accordingly, the general principle was laid down that none could become citizens but those whose fathers and mothers had been the children of citizens. From this it followed that the utmost care should be taken that no spurious offspring should be palmed upon the State. The women could not be trusted in this matter to their own sense of propriety. It was natural for a woman to love. Even men were powerless before irresistible love, and much less self-control could be expected from weak women. Means must therefore be devised to prevent the possibility of anything going wrong, and, accordingly, the citizen-women had special apartments assigned to them, generally in the upper story, that they might have to come downstairs, and men might see them if they ventured out. Then they were forbidden to be present at any banquet. The men preferred to dine by themselves, rather than expose their wives to their neighbour’s gaze. And in order to defy all possibility of temptation, the women must wrap up every part of their bodies. In addition to these external arrangements, laws were passed such as might deter the most venturesome.

A citizen-woman could have almost[41] no other association with a citizen than marriage. The most transient forcible connexion imposed the duty of marriage, or was followed by severe penalties. And she could not marry any but a citizen. Association with a stranger never could become a marriage. And after she was married, infidelity was punished with the most terrible disgrace. Her husband was compelled to send her away. No man could marry her again; for if any one ventured on such a course, he was thereby disfranchised. She was practically expelled from society and excommunicated. If she appeared in a temple, any one could tear her dress off, and maltreat her to any extent with impunity, provided he stopped short of killing her. Her accomplice also might be put to death if the husband caught him. Restrictions of the most stringent nature and punishments the most terrible were employed to keep the citizenship pure. To help further to realize the position of the Athenian wife, we have to add that she was generally married about the age of fifteen or sixteen. Up to this time she had seen and heard as little as possible, and had inquired about nothing.[42] Her acquaintance with the outside world had been made almost exclusively in religious processions. “When I was seven years of age” say the chorus of women in the ‘Lysistrata,’[43] “I carried the mystic box in procession; then when I was ten I ground the cakes for our patron goddess, and then, clad in a saffron-coloured robe, I was the bear at the Brauronian festival; and I carried the sacred basket when I became a beautiful girl.” Such were the great external events in the life of a high-born Athenian maid. When she married, her life was not much more varied. Her duties lay entirely within the house. They were summed up in the words, “to remain inside and to be obedient to her husband.” She superintended the female slaves who carded the wool; she made, or assisted in making the garments of her husband and children; she had charge of the provisions; and she was expected to devote some time to the infants. If she went out at all, it was to some religious procession or to a funeral, and if old she might occasionally visit a female friend and take breakfast with her, or help her in some hour of need. For the discharge of the duties which fell to an Athenian woman no great intellectual power was needed, and accordingly the education of girls was confined to the merest elements.

Such was the treatment of Athenian women. What were the results? One can easily perceive that there was very little of love-making before marriage. A girl of thirteen or fourteen preparing for a life of sewing, spinning, provision-getting, and child-nursing is not generally an object of much attraction to grown-up men. The romantic element is decidedly deficient. And then, even if there had been some romantic element, the young men had no opportunities of free intercourse. Accordingly matches were managed to a large extent by old women, who were allowed to go from house to house, and who explained to the young woman the qualities of the young man and to the young man the qualities of the young woman. A marriage concluded in such a way might or might not be happy, but there could be little ideal love about it. Nor is there any reason to believe that the Athenians were very fond of their wives. They liked them if they managed their houses economically, and had healthy children, especially sons. But they were absent from them the most part of the day; they did not discuss with them subjects of the highest moment; they did not share with them their thoughts and aspirations. The domestic sentiment was feeble: this comes out in various ways. One instance will suffice. Sophocles[44] presents one of his characters as regretting the loss of a brother or sister much more than that of a wife. If the wife dies you can get another, but if a brother or sister dies, and the mother is dead, you can never get another brother or sister. The one loss is easily reparable, the other is irreparable.

This state of matters had a powerful effect on the wives. Many of them consoled themselves in their loneliness with copious draughts of unmixed wine. They often made assignations through their slaves, and were fond of stealing out of the house whenever they could find an opportunity. And faithlessness, though the punishment was so terrible, was not uncommon. In fact their human nature could not bear the strain laid upon it. No doubt there were many among them who were good and faithful wives, and we must not always judge Southern girls by our Northern constitutions of body and soul. I have known a Greek girl who attained to peerless beauty before she was fourteen. Every feature was perfect, her dark eyes twinkled at one time with the wildest merriment, at another gazed with a strange and weird-like melancholy as if into infinite darkness. She could speak fluently four languages, and she had read largely in the literatures of each. And when I came upon her in her sad melancholy moods, she would tell me that she was puzzled with the mystery of life, and was wondering what it all meant. I have no doubt there were many such girls in old Athens, and many an Athenian wife could discuss the highest subjects with her husband. In fact, it is scarcely possible to conceive that such a marvellous crop of remarkable men, renowned in literature and art, could have arisen if all the Athenian mothers were ordinary housewives. But circumstances certainly were exceedingly unfavourable to them; and though there never was in the history of the world such a numerous race of great thinkers, poets, sculptors, painters, and architects, in one city at one time as in Athens, not one Athenian woman ever attained to the slightest distinction in any one department of literature, art, or science. “Great,” says Pericles, in the famous funeral oration which Thucydides[45] puts into his mouth, “is the glory of that woman who is least talked of among the men, either in the way of praise or blame.” And this glory the Athenian women attained to perfection.

We pass from the citizen-women of Athens to the other class of free women—the strangers. A stranger had no rights or privileges in any of the ancient States. Any justice that he might obtain could be gained only by the friendly services of some citizen. If this was true of the man-stranger, it was also true of the woman-stranger. She was not entitled to the protection of the city-State. No laws were made for her benefit. She had to look after her own interests herself or get some man to do it for her by her own arts of persuasion. The one object that the State kept before it in regard to these stranger-women was to see to it that they did not in any way corrupt the purity of the citizen blood. The statesmen thought that great dangers might arise from their presence in a community. Political peril might threaten the very existence of the State if strangers, with strange traditions and foreign interests, were to take even the slightest part in the management of public affairs. And the gods might be fearfully insulted, and inflict dreadful vengeance, if any one of these stranger-women were to find her way into the secret recesses of ancestral worship and perform some of the sacred functions which only the citizen-women could perform. The Spartans accordingly did not permit any strangers, male or female, to reside in their city. These strangers might come to certain festivals for a few days, but the period of their stay was strictly limited.

Athens pursued a different policy. She was a commercial city. She was at the head, and ultimately ruler, of a larger confederacy of Greek States which sent their taxes to her. Besides, the city itself was full of attractions for the stranger, with its innumerable works of art, its brilliant dramatic exhibitions, its splendid religious processions, its gay festivals, its schools of philosophy, and its keen political life. Athens could not exclude strangers. It had, therefore, to take the most stringent precautions that this concourse of strangers should not corrupt the pure citizen blood. Accordingly, laws were enacted which prohibited any citizen-man from marrying a stranger-woman or any stranger-man from marrying a citizen-woman. If the stranger-man or woman ventured on such a heinous offence any one could inform against him or her. The culprit was seized, all his or her property was confiscated, and he or she was sold into slavery. The citizen-man or woman involved in such an offence had to suffer very severe penalties. The stranger-women, therefore, could not marry. Marriage was the only sin that they could commit politically in the eye of an Athenian statesman. They might do anything else that they liked.

Now it is not conceivable that in such circumstances a numerous class of women would betake themselves to perpetual virginity. If any one had propounded such a sentiment the Greek mind would have recoiled from it as unnatural, and plainly contrary to the will of the gods. And accordingly these women might form any other connexions with men, temporary or permanent, except marriage, and the Greek saw nothing in this but the ordinary outcome of human nature under the peculiar circumstances of the case. Besides, in Athens a special sphere lay open for them to fill. The citizen-women were confined to their houses, and did not dine in company with the men. But the men refused to limit their associations with women to the house. They wished to have women with them in their walks, in their banquets, in their military expeditions. The wives could not be with them then, but there was no constraint on the stranger-women. The Greek men did not care whether the offspring of stranger-women was pure or not. It mattered not either to the State or to religion. There was no reason for confining them. And accordingly they selected these stranger-women as their companions, and “Hetaira,” or companion, was the name by which the whole class was designated. Thus arose a most unnatural division of functions among the women of those days. The citizen-women had to be mothers and housewives—nothing more; the stranger-women had to discharge the duties of companions, but remain outside the pale of the privileged and marriageable class. These stranger-women applied their minds to their function, with various ideas of it, and various methods. Many adopted the lowest possible means of gaining the good-will of men; but many set about making themselves fit companions for the most intellectual and most elevated among men.

They were the only educated women in Athens. They studied all the arts, became acquainted with all new philosophical speculations, and interested themselves in politics. Women who thus cultivated their minds were sure to gain the esteem of the best men in Greece. Many of them also were women of high moral character, temperate, thoughtful, and earnest, and were either unattached or attached to one man, and to all intents and purposes married. Even if they had two or three attachments, but behaved in other respects with temperance and sobriety, such was the Greek feeling in regard to their peculiar position, that they did not bring down upon themselves any censure from even the sternest of Greek moralists. One of these women[46] came to Athens when Socrates was living, and he had no scruple in conversing with her on her art, and discussing how she could best procure true friends. And, in fact, these were almost the only Greek women who exhibited what was best and noblest in woman’s nature. One of these, Diotima of Mantinea,[47] must have been a woman of splendid mind, for Socrates speaks of her as his teacher in love, when he gives utterance, in the ‘Symposium,’ to the grandest thoughts in regard to the true nature and essence of divine and eternal beauty.

Almost every one of the great men of Athens had such a companion, and these women seem to have sympathized with them in their high imaginations and profound meditations. Many of them were also courageously true to their lovers. When the versatile Alcibiades had to flee for his life, it was a “companion” that went with him,[48] and, being present at his end, performed the funeral rites over him. But of all these women there is one that stands prominently forward as the most remarkable woman of antiquity, Aspasia of Miletus. We do not know what circumstance induced her to leave her native city Miletus. Plutarch[49] suggests that she was inflamed by the desire to imitate the conduct of Thargelia, another Milesian, who gained a position of high political importance by using her persuasive arts on the Greeks whom she knew, to win them over to the cause of the King of Persia. This may have been the case, but a good deal that is said about Aspasia must be received with considerable scepticism. Like Sappho, she became the subject of comedies, but, unlike Sappho, she was bitterly attacked by the comic poets and others during her lifetime. The later Greek writers were in the habit of setting down the jests of the comic writers as veritable history, and modern commentators and historians have not been entirely free from this practice. Whatever brought her to Athens, certain it is that she found her way there, and became acquainted with the great statesman Pericles. She made a complete conquest of him. He was at the time married, but there was incompatibility of temper between him and his wife. Pericles therefore made an agreement with his wife to have a divorce, and get her married to another, and so they separated to the satisfaction of both. He then took Aspasia as his companion, and there is no good reason for supposing that they were not entirely faithful to each other, and lived as husband and wife till death separated them. Of course husband and wife they could not be according to Athenian law, but Pericles treated her with all the respect and affection which were due to a wife. Plutarch tells us, as an extraordinary trait in the habits of a statesman who was remarkable for imperturbability and self-control, that he regularly kissed Aspasia when he went out and came in.

Her house became the resort of all the great men of Athens. Socrates was often there. Phidias and Anaxagoras were intimate acquaintances, and probably Sophocles and Euripides were in constant attendance. Indeed, never had any woman such a salon in the whole history of man. The greatest sculptor that ever lived, the grandest man of all antiquity, philosophers and poets, sculptors and painters, statesmen and historians, met each other and discussed congenial subjects in her rooms. And probably hence has arisen the tradition that she was the teacher of Socrates in philosophy and politics, and of Pericles in rhetoric.[50] Her influence was such as to stimulate men to do their best, and they attributed to her all that was best in themselves. Aspasia seems especially to have thought earnestly on the duties and destiny of women. The cultivated men who thronged her assemblies had no hesitation in breaking through the conventionalities of Athenian society, and brought their wives to the parties of Aspasia, and she discussed with them the duties of wives. She thought that they should strive to be something more than mere mothers and housewives. She urged them to cultivate their minds, and be in all respects fit companions for their husbands. Unfortunately we know very little more. Did she come to any definite conclusion as to the functions of woman? It is difficult to say. The hints are very obscure. But in all probability the conclusion to which she came was that neither man nor woman can adequately perform their mission in life separately, that a man can never do his best without the inspiration and support of a congenial woman, and that woman should seek her work in vigorous and sympathetic co-operation with some congenial man. Probably Plato has put into the mouth of Aristophanes the sentiments which the philosopher had heard often in the Socratic circles, which regarded Aspasia as their instructress in those matters. Referring to the myth that man was split in two, and that his two halves go in search of each other, he says,[51] “For my part, I now affirm, in reference to all human beings, both men and women, that our race would become happy if we were able to carry out our love perfectly, and each one were to obtain his own special beloved, thus returning to his original nature. And if this is best, the best in present circumstances is to come as near as possible to this, and this occurs when we obtain the beloved that is by nature meet for us.” There is no reason to suppose that Aspasia had any romantic notions in regard to love or the destiny of woman. She was, on the whole, practical, and thought that woman should find her satisfaction in work, not in dreams. She did not imagine that one could have only one love, and that if she did not get that, or lost it, she should repine and turn from life. She was in the world to be an active being, and, accordingly, when Pericles died, she formed a connexion with Lysicles, a sheep-seller, believing him to be the best citizen she could obtain, and made him, though not a bright man, the foremost politician in Athens for a time.[52]