ὣς οὐκ αἰνότερον καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο γυναικὸς,
ἥτις δὴ τοιαῦτα μετὰ φρεσὶν ἔργα βάληται.
For, in proportion as that nature is elevated and pure, does it become more shameful and degraded when, by a total suppression of its better instincts, it has been given over to wickedness.
Of the minor infirmities of our nature, as well as of its grosser faults, the women of Homer betray much less than the men. Nowhere has he introduced into a prominent position the character of a vicious woman. The only instance of the kind is among a portion of the female attendants in the palace of Ulysses, where, out of fifty, no more than twelve were at last the willing tools, having at first[967] been the reluctant victims, of the lust of the proud and rapacious band of Suitors. Clytemnestra, indeed, appears as a lofty criminal in the perspective of the poem, but her wickedness, too, is wholly derivative. Ægisthus corrupts her by a long course of effort, for, as Homer informs us, she had been a right-minded person; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσι[968]. On the one side we have only to place her and the saucy slut Melantho; on the other, we have Andromache, Hecuba, and Briseis in the Iliad; in the Odyssey, Penelope and Euryclea, Arete and Nausicaa; the slightly drawn figures, such as that of the mother of Ulysses in the Eleventh Odyssey, are in the same spirit as the more full delineations. There is not a single case in the poems to qualify the observation, first, that the woman of Homer is profoundly feminine: secondly, that she is commonly the prop of virtue, rarely the instrument, and (in this reversing the order of the first temptation) never the source, of corruption.
In company with all that we have seen, we likewise find that the limits of the position of woman are carefully marked, and that she fully comprehends them. There is nowhere throughout the poems a single effort at self-assertion: the ground that she holds, she holds without dispute. If at any point a stumblingblock could be likely to be found, it would be between a mother just parting with her authority, and a son newly come of age. Yet Penelope and Telemachus never clash, and thoroughly understand one another. Again, the Homeric man, even the Homeric good man, is sometimes the subject of hasty, vehement, and tumultuous passions; the woman never. She finds her power in gentleness; she rules with a silken thread; she is eminent for the uniformity of her self-command, and for the observance of measure in all the relations of life. The misogynism which marked Euripides and other later writers has, and could have, no place in Homer: the moral standard of his women is higher than that of his men; their office, which they perform without fault, is to love and to minister, and their reward to lean on those whom they serve.
The lower aspect of the relation between the two sexes is in the poems wholly secondary. All that tends to sensualize it is commonly repelled or hidden, and, when brought into mention at all, is yet carefully and anxiously depressed. Even the cases of exception, which lie beyond the pale of marriage, are kept in a certain analogy with it, and are as far as possible removed from the promiscuous and brutal indulgence, which marked the later Pagan ages, including those of the greatest pride and splendour, and which still so deeply taints the societies of Christendom.
We may find, if it be needed, some further evidence of the high position of woman upon earth in the relation subsisting between the Homeric gods and goddesses respectively. For that relation approaches as nearly as may be to equality in force and intelligence, while in purity the latter are on the whole superior. After Jupiter, the deities most elevated in Homer are, Juno and Minerva, Neptune and Apollo; and of all these, I think, we must consider Minerva to have stood first in his estimation. This arrangement could not but harmonize with, while it also serves to measure, his ideas of the earthly place and character of woman.
A similar inference is suggested by the tendency of the Greeks to enshrine many ideas, sometimes great, and occasionally both great and good, in feminine impersonations.
We will, lastly, inquire into the employments of women in the heroic age; both to ascertain how nearly they could approach to the summits of society, and also what was their general share in the division of occupations.