Part 12 (1/2)

Later the boy went to school, where he learned to read, write, cipher, recite poetry, and to sing in the chorus or to the sound of the flute.

At last came gymnastics. This was the whole of the instruction; it made men sound in body and calm in spirit--what the Greeks called ”good and beautiful.”

To the young girl, secluded with her mother, nothing of the liberal arts was taught; it was thought sufficient if she learned to obey.

Xenophon represents a rich and well-educated Athenian speaking thus of his wife with Socrates: ”She was hardly twenty years old when I married her, and up to that time she had been subjected to an exacting surveillance; they had no desire that she should live, and she learned almost nothing. Was it not enough that one should find in her a woman who could spin the flax to make garments, and who had learned how to distribute duties to the slaves?” When her husband proposed that she become his a.s.sistant, she replied with great surprise, ”In what can I aid you? Of what am I capable? My mother has always taught me that my business was to be prudent.” Prudence or obedience was the virtue which was required of the Greek woman.

=Marriage.=--At the age of fifteen the girl married. The parents had chosen the husband; it might be a man from a neighboring family, or a man who had been a long-time friend of the father, but always a citizen of Athens. It was rare that the young girl knew him; she was never consulted in the case. Herodotus, speaking of a Greek, adds: ”This Callias deserves mention for his conduct toward his daughters; for when they were of marriageable age he gave them a rich dowry, permitted them to choose husbands from all the people, and he then married them to the men of their choice.”

=Athenian Women.=--In the inner recess of the Athenian house there was a retired apartment reserved for the women--the Gynecaeum. Husband and relatives were the only visitors; the mistress of the household remained here all day with her slaves; she directed them, superintended the house-keeping, and distributed to them the flax for them to spin. She herself was engaged with weaving garments. She left the house seldom save for the religious festivals. She never appeared in the society of men: ”No one certainly would venture,” says the orator Isaeus, ”to dine with a married woman; married women do not go out to dine with men or permit themselves to eat with strangers.” An Athenian woman who frequented society could not maintain a good reputation.

The wife, thus secluded and ignorant, was not an agreeable companion.

The husband had taken her not for his life-long companion, but to keep his house in order, to be the mother of his children, and because Greek custom and religion required that he should marry. Plato says that one does not marry because he wants to, but ”because the law constrains him.” And the comic poet Menander had found this saying: ”Marriage, to tell the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.” And so the women in Athens, as in most of the other states of Greece, always held but little place in society.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] The marble of Pentelicus and the honey of Hymettus.

[67] This legendary king was called Theseus.

[68] Certain limitations, however, are referred to below, under ”Metics.”--ED.

[69] Not to mention the Archons, whom they had not ventured to suppress.

[70] Xenophon, ”Memorabilia,” iii., 7, 6.

CHAPTER XIII

WARS OF THE GREEKS

THE PERSIAN WARS

=Origin of the Persian Wars.=--While the Greeks were completing the organization of their cities, the Persian king was uniting all the nations of the East in a single empire. Greeks and Orientals at length found themselves face to face. It is in Asia Minor that they first meet.

On the coast of Asia Minor there were rich and populous colonies of the Greeks;[71] Cyrus, the king of Persia, desired to subject them.

These cities sent for help to the Spartans, who were reputed the bravest of the Greeks, and this action was reported to Cyrus; he replied,[72] ”I have never feared this sort of people that has in the midst of the city a place where the people a.s.semble to deceive one another with false oaths.” (He was thinking of the market-place.) The Greeks of Asia were subdued and made subject to the Great King.

Thirty years later King Darius found himself in the presence of the Greeks of Europe. But this time it was the Greeks that attacked the Great King. The Athenians sent twenty galleys to aid the revolting Ionians; their soldiers entered Lydia, took Sardis by surprise and burned it. Darius revenged himself by destroying the Greek cities of Asia, but he did not forget the Greeks of Europe. He had decreed, they say, that at every meal an officer should repeat to him: ”Master, remember the Athenians.” He sent to the Greek cities to demand earth and water, a symbol in use among the Persians to indicate submission to the Great King. Most of the Greeks were afraid and yielded. But the Spartans cast the envoys into a pit, bidding them take thence earth and water to carry to the king. This was the beginning of the Median wars.

=Comparison of the Two Adversaries.=--The contrast between the two worlds which now entered into conflict is well marked by Herodotus[73]

in the form of a conversation of King Xerxes with Demaratus, a Spartan exile: ”'I venture to a.s.sure you,' said Demaratus, 'that the Spartans will offer you battle even if all the rest of the Greeks fight on your side, and if their army should not amount to more than one thousand men.' 'What!' said Xerxes, 'one thousand men attack so immense an army as mine! I fear your words are only boasting; for although they be five thousand, we are more than one thousand to one. If they had a master like us, fear would inspire them with courage; they would march under the lash against a larger army; but being free and independent, they will have no more courage than that with which nature has endowed them.' 'The Spartans,' replied Demaratus, 'are not inferior to anybody in a hand-to-hand contest, and united in a phalanx they are the bravest of all men. Yet, though free, they have an absolute master, the Law, which they dread more than all your subjects do you; they obey it, and this law requires them to stand fast to their post and conquer or die.'” This is the difference between the two parties to the conflict: on the one side, a mult.i.tude of subjects united by force under a capricious master; on the other, little martial republics whose citizens govern themselves according to laws which they respect.

=First Persian War.=--There were two Persian wars. The first was simply an expedition against Athens; six hundred galleys sent by Darius disembarked a Persian army on the little plain of Marathon, seven hours distant from Athens.

Religious sentiment prevented the Spartans from taking the field before the full moon, and it was still only the first quarter; the Athenians had to fight alone.[74] Ten thousand citizens armed as hoplites camped before the Persians. The Athenians had ten generals, having the command on successive days; of these Miltiades, when his turn came, drew up the army for battle. The Athenians charged the enemy in serried ranks, but the Persians seeing them advancing without cavalry and without archers, thought them fools. It was the first time that the Greeks had dared to face the Persians in battle array. The Athenians began by turning both flanks, and then engaged the centre, driving the Persians in disorder to the sea and forcing them to reembark on their s.h.i.+ps.

The victory of Marathon delivered the Athenians and made them famous in all Greece (490).