Part 6 (1/2)
Only one woman in ten has been found in some measure desirable, and the poet concludes with a lengthy and comprehensive dunciad of the female s.e.x, the gist of which is as follows: ”Zeus made this supreme evil--woman: even though she seem to be a blessing, when a man has wedded one she becomes a plague.”
How much truth is there in Semonides's views on the women of his time?
The poet agrees with Hesiod in regarding woman as a necessary evil. Nine women out of ten he finds altogether bad, and the tenth is prized only for her domestic virtues. Industrious, quiet, economical, the mother of children, she is merely the good housewife, which seems to have been the primitive ideal of the perfect woman. The poem treats of women of the middle cla.s.s, and is important in showing the freedom of movement, and appearance in public, of the married woman. She is not shut up in the harem; but in the use of her tongue, and in her capacity as a busybody, there seems to be no restraint upon her. Semonides's range of vision was narrow, and he probably knew not much beyond his own little island, but we may credit him with expressing the prevalent views of the honest burghers of Amorgus.
Phocylides of Miletus, a successor of Semonides by rather more than a century, composed in the same strain an epigrammatic satire on woman. It is manifestly an imitation of the tirade of Semonides.
”The tribe of women,” says he, ”is of these four kinds,--that of a dog, that of a bee, that of a burly sow, and that of a long-maned mare. This last is manageable, quick, fond of gadding about, fine of figure; the sow kind is neither good nor bad; that of the dog is difficult and snarling; but the bee-like woman is a good housekeeper, and knows how to work. This desirable marriage, pray to obtain, dear friend.”
The bitterest of all the observations against woman by the iambic writers, however, is that of Hipponax, a brilliant satirist of the sixth century before Christ, He says:
”Two happy days a woman brings a man: the first, when he marries her; the second, when he bears her to the grave.”
Theognis is another of the poets of Greece who took a gloomy view of life, and was not happy in his matrimonial ties. He laments that marriages in his native town of Megara are made for money, and avers that such marriages are the bane of the city. Says Theognis:
”Rams and a.s.ses, Cyrnus, and horses, we choose of good breed, and wish them to have good pedigrees; but a n.o.ble man does not hesitate to wed a baseborn girl if she bring him much money; nor does a n.o.ble woman refuse to be the wife of a base but wealthy man, but she chooses the rich instead of the n.o.ble. For they honor money; and the n.o.ble weds the baseborn, and the base the highborn; wealth has mixed the race. So, do not wonder, Polypaides, that the race of the citizens deteriorates, for the bad is mixed with the good.”
To sum up this cursory survey of the iambic poets, we find that in their period woman is still regarded as the determining factor of man's weal or woe, but that there exists in the s.e.x every variety of woman which lack of education and, especially, lack of appreciation can produce.
Woman is prized by man only for her domestic virtues; and any endeavor she may make to step beyond the narrow circle of the home is resented by the lords of creation. Man looks down on her as his inferior, and gives her no share in his larger life. Among the aristocratic the bane of wealth has entered, and marriages of convenience are the prevailing custom.
When we pa.s.s from the iambic to the elegiac poets, we begin to note the causes why wedded life, especially among the Ionian Greeks, does not present the beautiful pictures of domestic bliss and conjugal comrades.h.i.+p so attractive in heroic times. The martial elegists show how woman could still inspire man to deeds of valor, but the erotic poets give us glimpses of the root of the evil that was undermining the very foundations of domestic life. The Greek woman did not develop under enlarged conditions with the same rapidity as the Greek man; the wife was expected to be merely the mother of her husband's children and the keeper of his house; for companions.h.i.+p and pleasure he looked elsewhere.
The free woman, or the hetaera, has entered upon the stage. Poets were inspired by love, but romantic love between husband and wife is being replaced by the love of the beautiful and highly educated ”companion,”
or the natural place of the highborn woman is being invaded by the baser pa.s.sion for ”those fair and stately youths, with their virgin looks and maiden modesty ”--two cla.s.ses that were to play so large a role in society in the greatest days of Greece, and who were to bring about its downfall.
In the fragments of Alcman are many allusions to his pa.s.sion for his sweetheart Megalostrata; and many of the elegies of Mimnermus are said to have been addressed to a flute player, Nanno, who, according to one account, did not return his pa.s.sion. The following, translated by Symonds, shows the intensity of his love:
”What's life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
When to the gold-haired G.o.ddess cold am I, When love and love's soft gifts no more delight me, Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die!
Ah! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth; On man and maids they beautifully smile: But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth, Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile.
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn Scarce serve the very suns.h.i.+ne to behold-- Unloved of youths, of every maid the scorn-- So hard a lot G.o.ds lay upon the old.”
Even from Solon the Sage, maker of const.i.tutions, we possess some amorous verses, of so questionable a character that it would hardly be fitting to present them in this volume. They are ascribed to his early youth. They afforded much comfort to the libertines of antiquity, who were glad to be able to cite so respectable an exemplar; but the good people were scandalized by these couplets.
Ibycus resembles Sappho in the intensity of his pa.s.sion and in his conception of Eros as a concrete existence. ”Love once again looking upon me from his cloud-black brows, with languis.h.i.+ng glances drives me by enchantments of all kinds to the endless nets of Cypris. Verily, I tremble at his onset as a chariot horse, which hath won prizes, in old age goes grudgingly to try his speed in the swift race of cars.”
Anacreon, to English readers the best known of the erotic poets of Greece, had as his mistress the golden-haired Eurypyle. He was very susceptible to the influence of love, and, owing to the grace and sweetness and ease of expression in his verses, has won an enduring fame. Many of his verses and numerous imitations of his poems are extant, and in these love is the constant theme.
Stesichorus was the composer of love poems with a plot, which were highly popular among the ladies of ancient days. As forerunners of the Greek Romance they possess unique literary importance, and as love stories of an early day they throw much light on the status and ideals of woman. Aristoxenus had preserved an outline of the plot of the _Calyce:_ ”The maiden Calyce having fallen madly in love with a youth, prays to Apollo that she may become his lawful wife; and when he continues to be indifferent to her, she commits suicide.” Ancient critics favorably comment on the purity and modesty of the maiden, and the story indicates that marriages were not always a matter of arrangement, that love at times determined one's choice, and that to the ancient highborn maiden death was preferable to dishonor. Another of these romantic poems, called _Rhadina_, tells also a tale of unhappy love, how a Samian brother and sister were put to death by a cruel tyrant because the sister resisted his advances.
Yet we cannot hold that woman had in this period universally a.s.sumed a lower status than that accorded her in the Homeric poems. Among Ionian peoples, this was doubtless true; but among aeolians and Dorians, woman had not only attained a greater degree of freedom than was permitted her in the Heroic Age, but had also shown herself the equal of man in literary and aesthetic pursuits. In this transition age, the name of one woman--Sappho--presents itself as the bright morning star in the history of cultured womanhood.
VI
SAPPHO
Toward the close of the seventh century before Christ, a singular phenomenon presented itself in the history of Greek womanhood.
Heretofore Greek women have been beautiful; they have been fascinating; they have exerted great influence on the course of events; but it cannot be said that they have been intellectual. At the time mentioned, there occurred an unusual movement in the intellectual realm. This remarkable movement centres about the name of the first great historical woman of Greece--Lesbian Sappho, ”the Tenth Muse.” In the history of universal woman, Sappho holds a position altogether unique; for she is not only regarded as the greatest of lyric poets, but she was also the founder of the first woman's club of which we have any record. Sappho consecrated herself heart and soul to the elevation of her s.e.x. As poetry and art const.i.tute the natural channels for the aesthetic cultivation of woman, she trained her pupils to be poets like herself. The result of her lifelong devotion to the service of Aphrodite and the Muses was that she herself not only achieved an immortal reputation as a poet, but through her inspiring influence her pupils carried the love of poetry and of intellectual and artistic pursuits back to their distant homes. Hence, it is not surprising to learn that from this time there were to be found here and there in the Greek world women who in intellectual pursuits were the peers of their male compeers, and that there should be found among women the nine terrestrial Muses, so called as a counterpart to the celestial Nine.