“Listen, O people,” says Susarion, who may be called the inventor of comedy. “Susarion says this: Women are an evil, but nevertheless, O countrymen, it is not possible to have a househould without evil, for to marry is an evil and not to marry is an evil.”[7] (Stob. 69, 2).
A satiric poet (Hipponax)[8] gives it as his opinion that “a man has only two very pleasant days with his wife—one when he marries her, the other when he buries her.” A comic poet (Philemon) says pithily, “Woman is an immortal necessary evil.”[9] Euripides says:—
“Terrible is the force of the waves of the sea, terrible the rush of river and the blasts of hot fire, terrible is poverty, and terrible are a thousand other things; but none is such a terrible evil as woman. No painter could adequately represent her: no language can describe her; but if she is the creation of any of the gods, let him know that he is a very great creator of evils and a foe to mortals.” (Stob. 73, 1.)
Quotations like these could be made in hundreds, but they really tell us little. They could be matched by a large number of sayings from the same authors in which woman is praised to the skies. Euripides was specially blamed as a hater of women. The remark was made in the presence of Sophocles. “Yes,” said he, “in his tragedies.” And even in his tragedies he has painted women of exquisite tenderness of heart, and capable of the grandest self-sacrifice and of the purest love.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOMERIC WOMEN.
In treating of Greek women I can only select prominent periods. And the first that comes before us is the Homeric.[10] And here we require all the power of transporting ourselves into different times that we can command; for the phenomena are singular and unique. If we look at the external position of women, we must place the Homeric age exceedingly low in civilization. Women have almost no rights; they are entirely under the power of man, and they live in continual uncertainty as to what their destiny may be. The woman may be a princess, brought up in a wealthy and happy home; but she knows that strangers may come and carry her off, and that she may therefore at some time be a slave in another man’s house. This uncertainty seems to have produced a strong impression on their character. They are above all women meek. If the terrible destiny comes upon them, they submit to it with all but unrepining gentleness, and their gentle ways soon overcome the heart of their warrior tyrants, and they make them their companions and friends. But low though this position be, it has to be noted that it is the inevitable result of the character of the times. Might was right. The strong arm alone could assert a right. The warrior had to defend even what belonged to him against any new comer. He himself sacked the cities of others. His own city, too, might be sacked, and if his wife’s fate was to be carried off and to become the mistress of his conqueror, his own was to perish mercilessly by the cold edge of the sword. Man and woman alike held their lives in their hands. Women were not warriors, and therefore they had to depend entirely on the protection of men, and were consequently subject to them.
Such was their external position. But when we look to the actual facts of the case, nowhere in the whole range of literature are women subjected to a sway so gentle, so respectful, so gracious. Indeed, it can scarcely be called a sway at all. The physical force which, no doubt, exists is entirely in the background. In the front we see nothing but affection, regard, and even deference. The men appear never to have found fault with the women. It was natural for a woman to love, and she might do what they would deem an eccentric or disproportionate action in consequence of this influence; but it was either a man or a god that was to blame. She was for the time mad. Even in the case of Helen, who brought so many disasters on Greeks and Trojans, the men find no fault. She reproaches herself bitterly, but the men think that it was Paris who was to blame, for he carried her off forcibly. How could she help it? And how could she prevent Paris falling in love with her? It was the business of woman to make any man happy whom destiny brought into her company, to diffuse light and joy through the hearts of men. Helen was surpassingly beautiful, knew all womanly works to perfection, was temperate and chaste, according to their ideas,[11] and had a mind of high culture. All these were gifts of the gods, and could not but attract. The Trojans themselves were not surprised that Paris should have fallen under the spell of her charms; for a being so beautiful was a worthy object of contest between Greeks and Trojans. But she did nothing to excite Paris. She would have been happier with Menelaus. And when Paris was slain and Troy captured, Helen gladly returned to her former husband, and again occupied her early queenly position with dignity and grace, as if nothing had happened.
The only woman in regard to whom harsh words are used is Clytemnestra; but even in her case the man is much more censured than the woman, and if she had merely yielded to Ægisthus, under the strong temptations, or rather overpowering force, to which she was exposed, not much would have been said. Agamemnon would have wreaked his vengeance on the male culprit, and restored his wife to her former place. But at last she became the willing consort of Ægisthus, and his willing accomplice in the dreadful crime of murder. Yet even for this it is on Ægisthus that the poet lays the burden of the blame. For this mild judgment of women there were several causes. First, the Homeric Greeks were strongly impressed by the irresistible power of the gods and of fate, and the weakness of mortals; they thus found an easy excuse for any aberrations of men, but especially of helpless women; and their strong sense of the shortness of life and the dreariness of death led them to try to make the best of their allotted span.
Then their ideas of love and marriage tended to foster gentleness. In the Homeric poems there is no love-making; the idea of flirtation is absolutely and entirely unknown. They no doubt spoke sweet words to each other, but they kept what they said to themselves. And a man who wished to marry a girl proved the reality of his desire generally by offering the father a handsome gift for her, but sometimes by undertaking a heavy task, or engaging in a dangerous contest. And when she left her father’s home, she bent all her ways to please the man who had sought after her, and she succeeded. In the Homeric poems the man loves the woman, and the woman soon comes to love her husband, if she has not done so before marriage. The Homeric Greeks are, even at this early stage, out-and-out monogamists.[12] Monogamy is in the very heart of the Greek heroes. No one of them wishes for more than one woman.