Part 11 (2/2)

Harmodius, an aristocratic young Athenian, had rejected the friends.h.i.+p of Hipparchus, preferring that of Aristogiton, a citizen of modest station. The tyrant basely avenged himself. After summoning a sister of Harmodius to come to take part in a certain procession as bearer of one of the sacred vessels, Hippias and Hipparchus publicly rejected the maiden when she presented herself in her festal dress, a.s.serting that they had not invited her to partic.i.p.ate, as she was unworthy of the honor.

Harmodius was very indignant at this insult, and with his friend, who was equally incensed, formed a plot which led to the death of Hipparchus, though Harmodius was also killed in the prosecution of the plan. Aristogiton was put to the torture; and tradition relates that Leaena, his mistress, was also tortured, and fearing lest in her agony she might betray any of the conspirators bit off her tongue. After the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, the Athenians honored her memory by a bronze statue of a lioness without a tongue, which was set up on the Acropolis. The Athenians by this act showed their delight in a play on names, as _Leaena_ is the Greek word for ”lioness.”

The Athenian woman has never had the reputation for patriotism that characterized her Spartan sister, yet at times she showed an almost superhuman devotion to the State. After the sack of Athens by Mardonius and his troops in the Persian War, a senator, Lycidas, advised his fellow countrymen to accept the terms which were offered them by the Persian general. The Athenians in scorn stoned to death the man who could suggest such a cowardly deed. And the women, hearing what their husbands had done, pa.s.sed the word on to one another, and, gathering together, they went of their own accord to the house of Lycidas and inflicted the same punishment on his wife and children--a cruel act, but one showing their love of country and their hatred of treason.

These women, who could be so ruthless when patriotism was involved, knew how to be genuine comforters when their own loved ones were in trouble.

The orator Andocides and his companions were tried and imprisoned for impiety in violating the Eleusinian mysteries. ”When,” says Isocrates, ”we had all been bound in the same chamber, and it was night, and the prison had been closed, there came to one his mother, to another his sister, to another his wife and children, and there was woe and lamentation as they wept over their misfortunes.”

In so brilliant a race, it was impossible that some women should not rise above the surface and, by extraordinary virtue and by intellectual and spiritual endowments of a high order, win the lasting regard of men.

IX

ASPASIA

The period in Greek history when the intellectual and artistic life of h.e.l.las reached its zenith is known as the Golden Age of Pericles. The lofty ideals of this greatest of Greek statesmen incited him to make Athens the seat of a mighty empire that should spread the n.o.blest and most elevating influences throughout all h.e.l.las. He called to his a.s.sistance all the great men of his native city, and made also the fine arts serve as handmaidens of Athens and contribute to her power and splendor. Every condition was present for the realization of an intellectual and artistic epoch such as the world had never witnessed.

At the disposal of Pericles was an inexhaustible treasury--the acc.u.mulation of the tribute of subject allies. The quarries of Pentelicon offered in great abundance the material necessary for the erection of public buildings which might express in sensuous form the n.o.blest ideals of the Greek race. There were in Athens statesmen, philosophers, artists, dramatists, historians, men preeminent in all departments of the higher life. Foremost among these was Pericles's friend and counsellor, Phidias, a ”king in the domain of art, as Pericles was in political life.”

”What an age it was, truly, when, as the companions of Pericles, there were a.s.sembled in one city Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides, Meton and Hippocrates, Aristophanes and Phidias, Socrates and Anaxagoras, Appollodorus and Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Parrhasius;--in a city which had but lately lost aeschylus, and was soon to possess Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle; a city which, moreover, to make the ill.u.s.trious dead its own, erected statues to their memory!”

”What should we expect the pupils of such masters to be? What they were,--the masters of Greece. Thucydides says that Athens was at this time the instructress of Greece, as she was the source of its supplies.

Behold this fine democracy going from the theatre of Sophocles to the Parthenon of Phidias, or to the Bema where Pericles speaks to them in the language of the G.o.ds; listening to Herodotus, who recounts the great collision between Europe and Asia; Hippocrates of Cos, and the Athenian Meton, of whom one founded the science of medicine, and the other, mathematical astronomy; Anaxagoras, who eliminates the idea of G.o.d as distinct from matter; Socrates, who establishes the principles of morals! What lessons were these! Art, history, poetry, philosophy--all take a sublime flight. There is no place for second-rate talent here.

The art that Athens honors most is the greatest of all arts--architecture; her poetry is the drama--the highest expression of poetic genius, for it unites all forms in itself, as architecture calls all the other arts to its service. At this fortunate moment all is great, the power of Athens as well as the genius of the eminent men who guide the city and do it honor.”

Such, in brief, is the picture of Athens in her greatest days, as drawn by an eminent historian. The splendor and supremacy of the city in this epoch were largely due to the constructive genius of one man--Pericles; and if we study his private life to the end that we may discover the formative influences which contributed to his greatness, we find that the chief source of his inspiration was a woman--the Milesian Aspasia, the most brilliant and cultured woman of cla.s.sic times.

Aspasia ranks as one of the most remarkable women of all antiquity; and her ascendency as one of the foremost of her s.e.x is due to the fact that she is the only woman whose name appears in the brilliant galaxy of the Periclean age and that the greatest leaders in that coterie of great men were glad to acknowledge their indebtedness to her for Instruction and inspiration. She is the only woman prominent in the life of Athens of whom much is known to us, and she has won for herself a place altogether unique in the history of Greek womanhood.

She was the daughter of one Axiochus, and was born and reared in Miletus, the most pleasure-loving and artistic of the cities of Asia Minor. The story of her childhood and youth is a closed book, but we know that she was carefully trained in rhetoric, music, and the fine arts, and became the possessor of every feminine accomplishment. Her preceptress is said to have been the celebrated Thargelia, also of Miletus, who exerted her power for the Great King during the Persian War and finally married one of the kings in Thessaly. How Aspasia was drawn to Athens is not known, but the most probable theory is that she settled there as a young and brilliant teacher of rhetoric, following the precedent established by Anaxagoras in philosophy and by Protagoras and other men in rhetoric, who found in Athens the most profitable field for the exercise of their talents. Here Aspasia gathered about her all the learned and accomplished men of Athens. She was no mere creature of pleasure, who ministered to luxury and l.u.s.t; but by her beauty and culture she sought to draw to her the first men of the town, that she might learn of them as they of her. ”Nor was it long before it was recognized that she enchained the souls of men by no mere arts of deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures of h.e.l.lenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians, even such men as Socrates, sought her out in order to listen to her conversation.”

There could be nothing more natural than that when Pericles and Aspasia met the soul of each should discover in the other its affinity, Pericles was married to an Athenian kinswoman, but they did not find conjugal life altogether congenial, and by mutual agreement their marriage ties were dissolved and Pericles found for his wife another husband. He then took Aspasia to his home and called her his wife. They could not wed, for she was a foreigner, and their union in consequence lacked civil sanction; yet it was a real marriage in all but in name, based on the truest and tenderest affection, and dissolved only by death.

So remarkable was Pericles's devotion to Aspasia, that Plutarch records, as an indication of its sincerity, that the great Athenian kissed Aspasia upon going out in the morning and upon his return home--clearly an unusual occurrence in Athenian homes, or it would not have seemed worthy of mention. The possession of so rare a woman was doubtless in many respects invaluable to the great statesman. Plutarch states that the latter was first attracted to the Milesian by her wisdom and political sagacity. Socrates, who confessed also his own indebtedness to Aspasia, states that she was Pericles's teacher in the art of rhetoric, and could even write his speeches. Pericles was a reserved man, who devoted himself strictly to his official cares and refrained from social intercourse with those about him. Hence he found in Aspasia not only the delight of his leisure moments and a sympathizing friend and counsellor hi his perplexities, but also the link that connected him with the daily life about him. She knew how to be at ease in every kind of society; how to keep informed of everything that took place in the city that Pericles should know; how to keep in touch with the great movements throughout h.e.l.las and to make them contribute to the glory of Athens: and in all these, and in many other respects, she proved of use to him in his political life.

It is probable that Aspasia was still in her twenties when Pericles first met her, while he himself was much older. She must have possessed a fascinating personality which at once captivated the great statesman; but, aside from her intellectual gifts, it is difficult in this day to a.n.a.lyze her charm. There is no positive evidence that she was beautiful, according to Greek standards, though this is the natural inference.

Ancient writers call her the good, the wise, the eloquent; they speak of her ”honey-colored” or golden hair, of her ”silvery voice,” of her ”small, high-arched foot,” but no writer of the time has expressly said that she was beautiful. In the museums of Europe, there are various busts on which her name is inscribed, but they impress us rather by the expression of earnest and deep thought, by the delicacy and distinction of the features, than by mere beauty. Her charm lay, no doubt, rather in her wisdom, her vivacity, her sweetness of utterance, than in perfection of form and feature. Aspasia made the home of Pericles the first salon that history has made known to us; and what woman ever gathered about her a more brilliant coterie of friends? With Phidias and his group of eminent artists, she talked of the embellishment of the Acropolis with beautiful temples and statues; with Anaxagoras and Socrates, she discussed the problems of philosophy and the narrow conservatism of the Athenians; with Sophocles and Euripides, she conversed concerning the works of the dramatists and the ideal women presented in their plays.

Herodotus, perhaps, was the inimitable story teller of this learned circle, and the melancholy Thucydides dwelt on the dark tragedy underlying human events; no doubt the satirical Aristophanes sometimes attended, for the Platonic dialogues show us the social side of his nature, and, while in his plays he scorns the philosophical set, he found among them intellectual companions.h.i.+p; and the young and gay Alcibiades was doubtless frequently present, talking with the hostess of the latest events in the high life of the city, of betrothals and marriages, of scandals and escapades.

One of the sons of Pericles scoffed at this circle of intellectual lights, and made fun of their metaphysical speculations and learned talk; but this merely indicates that such a salon was an innovation in Athens, and, therefore, led to harsh criticism and unseemly gossip on the part of those who could not appreciate its privileges. Music, poetry, and wit relieved the serious discussion of politics, philosophy, and literature. The salon of Aspasia must have been altogether decorous, for many men broke the traditions of their fathers and brought their wives to converse about wifely duties with the famous hetaera. She seems to have thought earnestly and deeply on the duties and destiny of woman, to have realized how contracted were the lives of Athenian women, and to have wished to better their condition, aeschines, in one of his dialogues, gives us in her conversation with Xenophon and his wife Philesia a glimpse of her method.

”Tell me, Philesia,” said Aspasia, ”whether if your neighbor had a piece of gold of more value than your own, you would not choose it before your own?” ”Yes,” answered Philesia. ”If she had a gown, or any of the female ornaments, better than yours, would not you choose them rather than your own?” ”Yes,” answered she. ”But,” said Aspasia, ”if she had a husband of more merit than your own, would not you choose the former?” Upon this, Philesia blushed. Aspasia then addressed herself to Xenophon. ”If your neighbor, Xenophon, had a horse better than your own, would you not choose him preferably to your own?” ”Yes,” answered he. ”If he had an estate or a farm of more value than your own, which would you choose?”

”The former,” answered he; ”that is, that which is of more value.” ”But if his wife were better than your own, would not you choose your neighbor's?” Xenophon was silent upon this question. Aspasia therefore proceeded thus: ”Since both of you, then, have refused to answer me in that point only which I wanted you to satisfy me in, I will tell you myself what you both think: you, Philesia, would have the best of husbands, and you, Xenophon, the best of wives. And, therefore, if you do not endeavor that there be not a better husband and wife in the world than yourselves, you will always be wis.h.i.+ng for that which you shall think best: you, Xenophon, will wish you might be married to the best of wives, and Philesia, that she might have the best of husbands.”

Thus this brilliant and withal domestic woman would counsel women to be the best of wives, and men the most considerate of husbands, that each might find in the joys of home and in conjugal harmony their greatest felicity. Doubtless many a wife went away from her with higher conceptions of wifely duty than custom had taught her, and sought to make her home a more congenial retreat for her husband. Many, however, looked askance at these gatherings of men and women and could see nothing but evil in their violations of custom. Husbands, too, saw in these novel proceedings dangerous tendencies; for if their wives became emanc.i.p.ated, there would be a limit to their own pleasant indulgences.

It was Aspasia who preeminently labored to this end. The status of woman at Athens was far from ideal, and the need tor reform was great; and if we endeavor to discover who was chiefly responsible for the agitation which had for its purpose the emanc.i.p.ation of woman from the thraldom in which she was held, we find that it was the wise and far-seeing Aspasia.

<script>