Similar language is used in the case of Andromache[1008]. The ideas of the heroic age would have admitted no such depravation of marriage.
In truth it would seem not only as if, before Christianity appeared, notwithstanding the advance of civilization, the idea and place of woman were below what they should have been, but actually as if, with respect to all that was most essential, they sank with the lapse of time.
The contrast between the views of the marriage state entertained in the heroic age, and at the period which we regard as the acmè of the Greek civilization, will, perhaps, be best conceived by referring to the passage ascribed to Demosthenes, as it is quoted by Athenæus, which explains succinctly the several uses of prostitutes, concubines, and wives, apparently as classes all alike recognised, and without any note of a moral difference in their social position and repute respectively. The first are for pleasure, the second for daily use, the last for legitimate offspring, and for good housekeeping[1009].
And yet it continued to be, in the time of Aristotle, a favourable distinction of Greece as compared with the barbarians, that the woman was not with them equivalent to the slave. Throughout their history they continued to be a nation of monogamists, except where they became locally tainted with oriental manners[1010].
Again, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, taking a general survey of the relation between man and wife, describes it as a government indeed, but as analogous to that natural and perfect form of government which he terms aristocracy. It is founded on merit and fitness. The man leaves to the woman all for which she is best suited, and each kind contributes its particular gifts to make up the common stock.
There was much, then, of solidity, and permanence in the ground secured for the Greek woman by the heroic age. But the philosopher, sagacious and dispassionate as he is, had still a much less elevated view of her position than Homer had exhibited.
There may[1011], he says, be in a tragedy a good or bad woman, a good or a bad slave; there is room for variety even in these; καί τοίγε ἴσως τούτων τὸ μὲν χεῖρον τὸ δὲ ὅλως φαῦλόν ἐστι. No such classification, no such comparison, could have found place in the heroic age. Yet more remarkable is the little postscript assigned to the widows of the dead in the funeral oration assigned by Thucydides to Pericles: “If I must also say a few words, for you that are now widows, concerning what constitutes the merit of a woman, I will sum up all in one short admonition. It will be much for your character not to sink beneath your own actual nature (τῆς ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γένεσθαι); and to be as little talked about as possible among men, whether for praise or for dispraise[1012].”
SECT. X.
The office of the Homeric Poems in relation to that of the early Books of Holy Scripture.
Even if they are regarded in no other light than as literary treasures, the position, both of the oldest books among the Sacred Scriptures, and, next to them, of the Homeric poems, is so remarkable, as not only to invite, but to command the attention of every inquirer into the early condition of mankind. Each of them opens to us a scene, of which we have no other literary knowledge. Each of them is, either wholly or in a great degree, isolated; and cut off from the domain of history, as it is commonly understood. Each of them was preserved with the most jealous care by the nation to which they severally belonged. By far the oldest of known compositions, and with conclusive proof upon the face of them that their respective origins were perfectly distinct and independent, they, notwithstanding, seem to be in no point contradictory, while in many they are highly confirmatory of each other’s genuineness and antiquity. Still, as historical representations, and in a purely human aspect, they are greatly different. The Holy Scriptures are like a thin stream, beginning from the very fountain-head of our race, and gradually, but continuously finding their way through an extended solitude, into times otherwise known, and into the general current of the fortunes of mankind. The Homeric poems are like a broad lake outstretched in the distance, which provides us with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full and marvellous, but which is entirely dissociated by an interval of many generations from any other records, except such as are of the most partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which they have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost profane to compare them. In this point of view, the Scriptures stand so far apart from every other production, on account of their great offices in relation to the coming of the Redeemer, and to the spiritual training of mankind, that there can be nothing either like or second to them.