Bekker points out[210] that the custom of women washing men prevailed in the middle ages, and he quotes passages in which women bathe the men and then clothe them. He also supplies a parallel to the Spartan girls divesting themselves of their clothes. One passage describes the baptism of damsels by an archbishop, when it is said that the maidens were stripped of all their clothing before all the barons, and they were whiter than the flower of the eglantine.
The question has not yet been finally settled whether shame in regard to the uncovering of parts of the body is or is not a mere social convention. It is a point which anthropologists should decide. A curious contribution to it occurs in a recent book of travels by G. F. Scott Elliot. “These people,” he says of the Wakavirondo,[211] “are dressed chiefly in air, and, as one always finds in scantily clothed native races, are peculiarly moral as compared with the decently attired Waganda and other races. In Madagascar, West Africa, and the Cape I have always found the same rule. Chastity varies inversely as the amount of covering.” Mr. Henry T. Finck discusses the question fully in his chapter on nudity and bathing, with copious illustrations from the sentiments and practices of various countries, in his ‘Lotos-Time in Japan.’[212] But whatever the results of such inquiries may be, they seem to me to bear only slightly on the determination of the influence which women have exercised in past times.
(3) LOVE-MAKING IN HOMER’S TIME.
There is no trace in Homer of that passionate and bewildering love of a man for a woman which is the favourite theme of modern novels. Buchholz, in discussing the feelings of the Homeric Greeks in regard to sexual passion, thus describes this love: “Von der Ueberschwänglichkeit der modernen Gefühlsschwärmerei, vermöge deren zwei Individuen verschiedenen Geschlechts mit himmelhochjauchzendem Entzücken im Gefühle des ewigen Füreinanderexistirens und Ineinanderaufgehens sich berauschen und selige Wonne schlürfen, haben die homerischen Menschen keine Idee.”[213]
There has been much discussion as to when Greek writers began to treat of this love. There is a full treatment of the subject in Rohde’s ‘Der Griechische Roman’ (p. 14), where he refers to the essay of Bulwer Lytton on the influence of love and real life, and quotes his opinion that it is in Euripides that first appears the distinction between love as a passion and love as a sentiment. Bennecke devotes a large portion of his chapter on ‘Women in Greek Poetry’ to show that “there is no trace in literature of what we now understand by the word ‘love’ earlier than the end of the fourth century B.C.” “The general consensus of opinion,” he says, “has agreed to ascribe this great change, the greatest change, perhaps, that has ever come over art, to the influence of two men, Euripides and Menander. My object in writing now is to endeavour to show, firstly, that this general view is a mistaken one, arising from an insufficient appreciation of the true nature of the change; and, secondly, that the real originator of the new feeling which we encounter in Alexandrian literature—in other words, the first man who had the courage to say that a woman is worth loving—was Antimachus of Colophon.”[214] It is evident that Bennecke’s appreciation of modern love is widely different from that of Buchholz.
CHAPTER II.
WOMEN IN THE GREEK PERIOD.
(1) ON THE CHARACTER OF SAPPHO.
In 1816 Welcker published a pamphlet entitled ‘Sappho von einem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreyt,’ in which he endeavoured to show that the principal accusation against the poetess was totally unfounded. It was republished in his ‘Kleine Schriften.’[215] He carried most of the scholars of his own day with him. But Col. Mure renewed the accusations in his ‘History of Greek Literature,’[216] and especially in an article in the ‘Rheinisches Museum.’[217] Mure was much influenced by what he had seen of society in the courts of European capitals, where, according to him, the courtly ladies were stained with every vice. The German scholar Kock (1862) defended the same opinions as those of Mure. Welcker replied to both critics, but especially to Kock, in an article in the ‘Rheinisches Museum’ (1863), which was afterwards republished in his ‘Kleine Schriften.’[218] Since that time judgment has generally been given in favour of Sappho, though the subject has been noticed rather than discussed in most treatises on Sappho and her works. Among those who have examined the subject carefully, Kublinski and Brandt deserve special attention. Kublinski subjects to minute criticism the notices in ancient writers regarding those historians and critics who were the first to concern themselves with Sappho. Some of these flourished at a very early date, and were natives of Mytilene. They all speak of her poetry and her virtue in the highest terms. The Mytileneans honoured her though she was a woman,[219] and it was said that she united splendour and grace of diction with all that was honourable.[220] Brandt in his charming book on Sappho brings vividly before us the spirit and the life of the poetess. He refuses to discuss the details of the accusations against her, which he describes as the “chatter of a later, unpoetic and degenerate period,” “because through Welcker’s excellent treatise the honour of the poetess has been vindicated, and we are firmly convinced that the accusations are untenable.” Then he shows how the writers of the later age were incapable of appreciating the warmth of her friendships, her passionate love of beauty, and her delight in all that is fair and lovely in this lovely world.
The vile insinuations of the later times against Sappho arose from the misrepresentations which the writers of the new comedy made of her. She was one of their stock characters. Kock[221] quotes one play called ‘Sappho,’ written by an ancient comic writer, and five by writers of the new comedy. Unfortunately, the fragments are meagre in the extreme, and do not furnish us with any idea of the contents of the plays. They show, however, that the writers paid no regard to chronology, for one of them represented the poets Archilochus (700 B.C.) and Hipponax (546 B.C.) as in love with Sappho. In other plays also, named ‘Leucadia,’ Sappho was the subject, and in one of these Menander describes the poetess as madly in love with Phaon, and in consequence, throwing herself from the Leucadian rock. This is no doubt a pure invention, and it is likely that all the late stories about Sappho owed their origin to the unbridled and loose imaginations of the comic poets. Some of these stories are embodied in a Latin letter from Sappho to Phaon. This letter has been attributed to Ovid, and appears in the modern editions of the ‘Heroides.’ But its genuineness has been rejected by many scholars. It does not appear in the best MSS. of the ‘Heroides.’ It imagines Sappho to be furiously in love with Phaon, and in her passion she throws away all sense of self-respect and decency. But it does not support the contentions of Col. Mure and Kock. The two scholars who have lately defended the ascription of it to Ovid[222] insist that the verses of the letter which give a colour to the accusations have been wrongly interpreted, and that on the contrary they imply that she was entirely innocent.