Part 9 (2/2)

The second attempt at the reformation of Sparta is also remarkable for the unselfishness and n.o.bility of the women who took part.

After the execution of King Agis, his wife, Agiatis, was compelled by Leonidas to become the wife of his son Cleomenes, though the latter was as yet too young to marry. As Agiatis was the heiress of the great estate of her father, Gylippus, the old king was unwilling that she should be the wife of anyone but his son. Agiatis was, says Plutarch, ”in person the most youthful and beautiful woman in all Greece, and well-conducted in her habits of life.” She resisted the union as long as she could; but when forced to marry, she became to the youth a kind and obliging wife. Cleomenes loved her very dearly, and often asked her about the reforms of Agis; and she did not fail to inspire him with the lofty ideals of her former gentle and high-minded husband. Cleomenes himself, in consequence, fell in love with the old ways, and, after Leonidas's death, attempted to carry out the reforms in which Agis had failed. His mother, Cratesiclea, was also very zealous to promote his ambitions; and in order that she might effectually a.s.sist him in his plans, she accepted as her husband one of the foremost in wealth and power among the citizens. With her help, the king succeeded in breaking the power of the ephors, and a return to the system of Lycurgus was partially accomplished. But Cleomenes had aroused a formidable enemy in the person of Aratus, head of the Achaean League. He carried into Achaea the war against Aratus, and made himself master of almost all Peloponnesus, but, through the persistence of his enemies, almost as quickly lost that territory. In the midst of his misfortunes, he received news of the death of his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached. ”This news afflicted him extremely,” says Plutarch, ”and he grieved as a young man would do, for the loss of a very beautiful and excellent wife.” When all seemed lost, he received promise of a.s.sistance from King Ptolemy of Egypt, but only on condition that he send the latter his mother and children as hostages. Plutarch thus continues the story:

”Now Ptolemy, the King of Egypt, promised him a.s.sistance, but demanded his mother and children for hostages. This, for a considerable time, he was ashamed to discover to his mother; and though he often went to her on purpose, and was just upon the discourse, yet he still refrained, and kept it to himself; so that she began to suspect, and asked his friend whether Cleomenes had something to say to her which he was afraid to speak. At last, Cleomenes venturing to tell her, she laughed aloud, and said: 'Was this the thing that you had so often a mind to tell me, but were afraid? Make haste and put me on s.h.i.+pboard, and send this carca.s.s where it may be most serviceable to Sparta, before age destroys it unprofitably here,' Therefore, all things being provided for the voyage, they went by land to Taenarum, and the army waited on them. Cratesiclea, when she was ready to go on board, took Cleomenes aside into Poseidon's temple, and, embracing him, who was much dejected and extremely discomposed, she said: 'Go to, King of Sparta; when we come forth at the door, let none see us weep or show any pa.s.sion that is unworthy of Sparta, for that alone is in our power; as for success or disappointment, those wait on us as the deity decrees,' Having this said, and composed her countenance, she went to the s.h.i.+p with her little grandson, and bade the pilot put out at once to sea. When she came to Egypt, and understood that Ptolemy entertained proposals and overtures of peace from Antigonus, and that Cleomenes, though the Achaeans invited and urged him to an agreement, was afraid for her sake to come to any without Ptolemy's consent, she wrote to him, advising him to do that which was most becoming and most profitable for Sparta, and not, for the sake of an old woman and a little child, stand always in fear of Ptolemy. This character she maintained in her misfortunes.”

Cleomenes, however, soon realized how little reliance is to be put in the favors of princes. Antigonus of Syria took the part of Aratus against him, and Ptolemy, who had been ever ready to help the valiant Spartan, did not care to invite the hostility of a greater foe.

Cleomenes was defeated by Antigonus, and became an exile at the court of Ptolemy, but it proved to be a prison instead of a home. Upon the death of the elder Ptolemy, his son kept Cleomenes and his friends under restraint, and, to please Antigonus, purposed putting them to death.

Cleomenes and his companions, knowing that a tragic end awaited them, determined to break through their prison bars and to rouse the populace to a revolt against Ptolemy. They easily made their escape, but the people could not be persuaded to undertake any struggle for liberty; and so the devoted band resolved to die. Then each one killed himself, except Panteus, the youngest and handsomest of them all, who was selected by Cleomenes to wait till the rest were dead, so that he might perform for them the last offices. He carefully arranged all the bodies of his comrades, and then, kissing his beloved king and throwing his arms about him, slew himself. The news of this sad event, having spread through the city, finally reached the aged mother, Cratesiclea, who, though a woman of great spirit, could hardly bear up against the weight of this affliction, especially as she knew that an equally tragic fate awaited her grandchildren.

The Egyptian king ordered that Cleomenes's body should be flayed, and that his children, his mother, and the women that were with her, should be put to death. Among these was the wife of Panteus, still very young and exquisitely beautiful, who had but lately been married. Her parents would not suffer her to embark with Panteus for Egypt so soon after they had been married, though she eagerly desired it, and her father had shut her up and kept her forcibly at home. But she found means of escape. A few days after Panteus's departure, she slipped out by night, mounted a horse and rode to Taenarum, and there embarked on a vessel sailing for Egypt, where she soon found her husband, and with him cheerfully endured all the sufferings and hards.h.i.+ps that befell them in a hostile country.

She was now the moral support of the whole company of helpless women.

She moved about among them, comforting and consoling. She gave her hand to Cratesiclea, as the latter was being led out by the soldiers to execution, held up her robe, and begged her to be courageous, being herself not in the least afraid of death, and desiring nothing else than to be killed before the children were put to death. When they reached the place of execution, the children were first killed before Cratesiclea's eyes; and afterward she herself suffered death, with these pathetic words on her lips: ”O children, whither are you gone?”

Panteus's wife, as her husband did for the men, performed the last offices for the women. In silence and perfect composure, she looked after every one that was slain, and laid out the bodies as decently as circ.u.mstances would permit. And then, after all were killed, adjusting her own robe so that she might fall becomingly, she courageously submitted to the stroke of the executioner.

Thus ended the second great movement for the reformation of Sparta, and henceforth Sparta, as an independent State; disappears from history. The story of the fall of Sparta owes its human interest chiefly to the women involved, and Plutarch recognizes this fact when, in concluding his story of Cleomenes, he, with the Greek dramatic contests before his mind, says: ”Thus Lacedaemon, exhibiting a dramatic contest in which the women vied with the men, showed in her last days that virtue cannot be insulted by fortune.”

Chilonis, Agesistrata, Agiatis, Cratesiclea, the wife of Panteus,--what a pity that we do not know her name!--const.i.tute the most admirable feminine group that Greek history offers us. What especially charms us is that they unite with the strength and self-abnegation of the ancient Spartan matron a sweetness, a tenderness, a womanliness, which we have not been accustomed to attribute to Spartan women. They are Spartans, but they are, above all, women.

VIII

THE ATHENIAN WOMAN

Divergent views have been entertained by writers who have discussed the social position of woman at Athens and the estimation in which she was held by man. Many scholars have a.s.serted that women were held in a durance not unlike that of the Oriental harem, that their life was a species of va.s.salage, and that they were treated with contempt by the other s.e.x; while the few have contended that there existed a degree of emanc.i.p.ation differing but slightly from that of the female s.e.x in modern times. As is usually the case, the truth lies in the golden mean between these two extremes; and a careful perusal of Greek authors, with the judgment directed to the spirit of their references to women rather than to a literal interpretation of disparate pa.s.sages, will show that the status of the freeborn Athenian woman, while by no means ideal or conforming to our present standards, was far better than is usually conceded by the writers upon Greek life.

It cannot be denied, however, that the social position of the Athenian woman was far inferior to that of the woman of the Heroic Age, and that, despite the boasted democracy and freedom of thought of the period, woman's status in the years of republican Athens was a reproach to the advanced culture and love of the good and the beautiful of which the city of the violet crown was the exponent. There had been a revolution in the habits of life of the Greeks since the days when Homer sang of the women of heroic Greece, and the student does not have to search far to discover the princ.i.p.al causes of the change.

The chief of these is the Greek idea of the city-state, which reached its highest development in Athens. Citizens.h.i.+p was, as a rule, hereditary, and every possible legal measure was taken to preserve its purity. The main principle of this hereditary citizens.h.i.+p was that the union from which the child was sprung must be one recognized by the State. This was accomplished by requiring a legitimate marriage, either through betrothal by a parent or guardian, or through a.s.signment by a magistrate. Pericles revised the old conditions, which had become lax during the tyranny, by pa.s.sing a measure limiting citizens.h.i.+p to those who were born of two Athenian parents. Greater stress was laid on the citizens.h.i.+p of the mother than on that of the father, as the child was regarded as belonging naturally to the mother. It was possible to increase the citizen body by a vote of the people; but in the best days of Athens her citizens.h.i.+p was regarded as so high a privilege that the franchise was most jealously guarded. Consequently, in the fifth century we see in Athens and Attica a population of about four hundred thousand, of which not more than fifty thousand were citizens; the rest consisted of minors, of resident aliens numbering some fifteen thousand, and of slaves, of whom there were about two hundred thousand in the Periclean Age.

To preserve the purity of the citizens.h.i.+p in so large a population of residents, increased by thousands of visitors and strangers who frequented the metropolis, every precaution was taken that the daughters of Athens should not be wedded to foreigners, and that no spurious offspring should be palmed off on the State. Hence marriage by a citizen was restricted to a union with a legitimate Athenian maiden with full birthright. The marriage of an Athenian maiden with a stranger, or of a citizen with a foreigner, was strictly forbidden, and the offspring of such a union was illegitimate.

Under such a conception of polity, marriage lay at the very basis of the State; and respect for the local deities, obligations of citizens.h.i.+p, and regard for one's race and lineage, demanded that every safeguard should be thrown about it, and that the women of Athens should conform to those enactments and customs which would fit them to be the mothers of citizens and would keep from them every entangling intrigue with strangers.

The result of this polity was a singular phenomenon: there were in Athens two cla.s.ses of women--one carefully secluded and restricted, under the rigid surveillance of law and custom; the other, free to do whatever it pleased, except to marry citizens. Yet the latter cla.s.s would gladly have exchanged places with the former; while the former, no doubt, envied the freedom and social accomplishments of the latter. The one cla.s.s consisted of the highborn matrons of Athens, glorying in their birthright, and rulers of the home; the other, of the resident aliens of the female s.e.x, unmarried, emanc.i.p.ated intellectually as untrammelled morally, who could become the ”companions” of the great men of the city.

Thus, owing to the Athenian conception of the city-state, the natural functions of woman--domesticity and companions.h.i.+p, which should be united in one person, were divided, the Athenian man looking to his wife merely for the care of the home and the bearing and rearing of children, and to the hetaera for comrades.h.i.+p and intellectual sympathy. This evil was the canker-worm which gnawed out the core of the social life of Athens and caused the unhappiness of the female s.e.x.

At the birth of a girl in Athens, woollen fillets were hung upon the door of the house to indicate the s.e.x of the child, the olive wreath being used to proclaim the birth of a boy. This custom demonstrates the relative importance of son and daughter in the eyes of the parents and the public. The son was destined for all the victories that public life and the prestige of the State can give; therefore, the olive, symbol of victory, served to make known his advent. The daughter's life was to be one of domestic duties, hence the band of wool, with its connotation of spinning and weaving, was a fitting emblem of the career for which the babe was destined. The plan of a Greek house indicates how secluded woman's whole life was to be. In the interior part of the Greek mansion, separated from the front of the building by a door, lay the _gyncaeconitis_, or women's apartments, usually built around a court.

Here were bedrooms, dining-rooms, the nursery, the rooms for spinning and weaving, where the lady of the house sat at her wheel. This was, in brief, the feminine domain.

In the seclusion of the _gyncaeconitis_, the girl-child was reared by its mother and nurse. Her playthings--dishes, toy spindles, and dolls--were such as to cultivate her taste for domestic duties. No regular public and systematized instruction was provided for a girl; no education was deemed necessary, for her life was to be devoted to the household, away from the world of affairs. But though there were no schools for maidens to attend, reading and writing and the fundamentals of knowledge were regularly imparted by a loving mother or a faithful nurse. The frescoed walls made the girls acquainted with the stories of mythology, and music and the recitation of poetry were frequent sources of instruction and recreation in the homes of the well-to-do. The maidens were, above all, made proficient in the strictly feminine arts of housekeeping, spinning, weaving, and embroidery. They were rigidly excluded from any intercourse with the other s.e.x, and their contact with the outside world was confined to partic.i.p.ation in the religious festivals, which occupied so large a part in the everyday life of the Greeks. ”When I was seven years of age,” says the chorus of Athenian women in the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes, ”I carried the mystic box in the procession; then, when I was ten, I ground the cakes for our patron G.o.ddess; and, clad in a saffron-colored robe, I was the bear at the Brauronian festival; and I carried the sacred basket when I became a beautiful girl.” Such were the opportunities granted to the highborn Athenian maiden for occasional glimpses of the splendor and activity of her native city; and can we doubt that on such occasions she was impressed by the sublimity of the temples and works of art, and that there were cast many modest glances at the handsome youths on horseback, who, in turn, were fascinated by the beauty and freshness of these tenderly nurtured maidens?

The seclusion of Athenian girls and the careful rearing which they received at the hands of mothers and nurses were such as to fit them to rule the home. The Athenian maiden was noted throughout h.e.l.las for her modesty and sweetness. The intelligence was not cultivated, but the heart and sensibilities had ample scope for development in the duties and recreations of the _gynaeconitis_ and in the partic.i.p.ation in religious exercises. Such a simple and peaceful rearing tended to preserve the delicacy of the soul and to keep unstained innocence and purity. When comparison is inst.i.tuted with the Spartan system, preference must be given to the Athenian method of education, with all its defects. The sweet modesty imparted by seclusion was far more womanly than the boldness of bearing acquired by athletic exercises in the presence of young men. The Spartan system trained the woman for public life, to be the patriotic mother of warriors; the Athenian system prepared the maiden to be the guardian of the home, the affectionate and devoted mother.

When the maiden reached the age of fifteen, her parents began negotiations for her marriage. An Athenian marriage was essentially a matter of convenience, and was usually arranged by contract between the respective fathers of the youth and maiden. Equality of birth and fortune were generally the chief considerations in the selection of the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law; and in an atmosphere where the attractions of a maiden were so little known, a professional matchmaker frequently brought the interested parties together. Thus the rustic Strepsiades, in Aristophanes's _Clouds_, expresses the wish that the feminine matchmaker had perished miserably who had induced him to marry the haughty, luxurious, citified niece of aristocratic Megacles, son of Megacles.

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