Part 12 (1/2)
Owing to the intellectual awakening at Athens during the Periclean Age and the influx of new ideas from the various h.e.l.lenic countries, a liberal party had arisen in the city, chiefly under the leaders.h.i.+p of Pericles and Anaxagoras--a radical party, headed by men of culture and science, who taught that knowledge was power, who despised the established religion, and who set at naught the domestic manners of the day by seeking to elevate woman. Socrates, also, was heartily in sympathy with the objects of this party, as was the dramatist Euripides.
On the other side were the ultra-conservatives, of whom Cimon and Aristophanes were representatives. The latter frequently made Pericles, Aspasia, Socrates, and Euripides the subjects of his satire. These Tories of the day saw in the tenets of the new party the subversion of all the principles of the old democracy, and they fought most bitterly to preserve established inst.i.tutions. Toward the close of Xenophon's treatise on _Domestic Economy_, Critobulus, who has been impressed by the story of Ischomachus, wishes to learn how he too, may educate his young wife, and Socrates advises him to consult with Aspasia. The profound deference in which she was held by all the philosophers is a further indication that from her they had derived many of their advanced ideas regarding the relations of the s.e.xes. Hence while positive evidence is lacking, incidental touches and sidelights on the Woman Question point unerringly to the one great woman of ancient Athens as the originator of the first movement for the emanc.i.p.ation of woman recorded in history.
As Aspasia, through her intercourse with the great, had attained unbounded influence in the State, and as her circle was the exponent of the ideas which offended the conventional spirit, it was natural that she should be involved in the storm of criticism that befell the leaders of thought. As a woman who had stepped out of the beaten track of womanhood, she was made the subject of the coa.r.s.est slanders. She was called the Hera to this Zeus, Pericles, the Omphale, the Deianira of the Heracles of the day; her girl friends and pupils, who enjoyed the same liberty she claimed for herself, were most violently defamed; she was said to have induced, for the basest of reasons, Pericles to bring on the Peloponnesian and Samian wars. The comic poets, as the chief organs of the opposition, engaged in this most merciless and unjust tirade against the party of the philosophers. None of their charges, however, can be said to have had any basis in fact, and all may easily be accounted for when the envy and hatred of the ignorant toward the beautiful and accomplished and independent woman is taken into consideration. In the Athens of the fifth century before our era, when people were just beginning to break away from the narrow conservatism of centuries, a woman who enjoyed an unheard-of degree of liberty, and because of her talents was regarded with admiration by the greatest men of the city, might well be the target for the grossest abuse. A vicious woman would be the last to undertake, as did Aspasia, the study of philosophy, which, with Socrates, was the study of virtue.
The party of the philosophers suffered for their opinions, Phidias was accused of theft, and died in prison; Anaxagoras, to escape the charges against him, went into voluntary exile; and Aspasia was brought to trial on a charge of impiety, which merely meant that she, as others of her circle, set at naught the polytheism of the mult.i.tude, and recognized but one creative mind in the government of the universe, an accusation under which Socrates later suffered martyrdom. She was brought before the judges, and Pericles pleaded her cause. Plutarch says that he pleaded with tears; and as the people could not resist the emotion of their great leader, she was acquitted.
Perides's last days were pa.s.sed in the gloom of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, of the plague that depopulated the city, and of the discontent of his beloved people. No brilliant sun ever had a more gloomy setting. Yet in his last moments his thoughts were of the two beloved objects that had absorbed his tenderest affections. ”Athens has intrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me,” Pericles said, when dying; and there could be no stronger testimony to the purity of Aspasia's character, to the influence of her life on his, to the role she had played in that Golden Age of Athens.
Athens and Aspasia--these were linked in the thoughts of the dying statesman; and as he made the one great, so he made the other immortal.
Had his life not been blessed with union with hers, had his temperament not been sweetened by her companions.h.i.+p, had his policy not been moulded partly by her counsel and her wisdom, had his taste not been made so subtle and refined by communion with her artistic temperament, Athens would not have been embellished by the works of art which have made that city the unapproachable ruler in the domain of the spirit. Woman's influence, where it has counted most, has always been a silent one, and has worked through man. Is not Aspasia worthy of the laurel wreath for the results of her life on ”the city of the violet crown”?
X
APHRODITE PANDEMUS
For the proper understanding of the status of woman among the Greeks of ancient times, it becomes necessary for the historian of Greek womanhood to call attention to a conspicuous social phenomenon pervading the life of all the nations of antiquity, but nowhere else so marked a feature of the higher life as in the lands of h.e.l.las--a phenomenon bringing about social conditions that divided the female population of Greece into two sharply distinguished cla.s.ses: the citizen-woman and the courtesan or mistress.
This notable aspect of Greek life is due to the fact that the ancient h.e.l.lene, as a rule, sought recreation and pleasure, not at the domestic hearth, but in the society of clever women, who had not only cultivated their physical charms, but had also trained their intellects and sensibilities so as to become _virtuosi_ in all the arts of pleasure.
Their pleasing forms of intercourse, their light and vivacious conversation, lent to a.s.sociation with them a peculiar seductiveness and fascination.
To designate this cla.s.s of women in a manner which would distinguish them from the citizen-women on the one hand and the debased prost.i.tute on the other, they were euphemistically called ”hetaerae,” or companions.
The term _hetaerae_ had been originally a most honorable one, and Sappho had used it, in the highest and best sense, of her girl friends as implying companions of like rank and interests. It is not known when it was first used with sinister suggestion, but, like our word _mistress_, it fell from its honorable estate and became the usual term to describe these women of pleasure.
The causes of the extent of hetairism among the Greeks are to be found in their religious conceptions, their political inst.i.tutions, and the innate sensualism of the Greek peoples.
The Greeks were wors.h.i.+ppers of the productive forces of nature as manifested in animal and plant life. Aphrodite is the female and Dionysius the male personification of the generative principles, and in consequence the religious ceremonials of these two deities a.s.sumed at times a most licentious aspect. In course of time, a distinction arose in the conception of Aphrodite, expressed by the surname applied to her.
Thus Aphrodite Urania came to be generally regarded as the G.o.ddess of the highest love, especially of wedded love and fruitfulness, in contrast to Aphrodite Pandemus, the G.o.ddess of sensual l.u.s.t and the patron deity of courtesans.
We could hardly expect high moral ideas in regard to s.e.xual relations among the Greeks, whose deities were so lax. Zeus himself was given to illicit intercourse with mortal maidens and was continually arousing the jealousy of his prudent wife, the Lady Hera. Aphrodite was not faithful to her liege lord, Hephaestus, but was given to escapades with the warlike Ares. Apollo had his mortal loves, and Hades abducted the beautiful Proserpina. A people who from their childhood were taught such stories could hardly be expected to be more moral than their deities.
As has been shown in a previous chapter, the Greek conception of the city-state lay at the basis of laws and customs which repressed the citizen-woman and prevented proper attention to her education and to the full and well-rounded cultivation of womanly graces. The State hedged itself about with the most rigid safeguards to preserve the purity of the citizen blood. Stringent laws were pa.s.sed prohibiting any citizen-man from marrying a stranger-woman, or any stranger-man from marrying a citizen-woman. To enforce these laws, it was necessary to keep the wives and daughters of the State within the narrow bounds of the gynaeceum; and they were forbidden a knowledge of public affairs, which would make them more interesting to men. Hence the limitations of their culture made it impossible for them to be in every sense the companions of their husbands. But it is not natural for men to be deprived of the sympathy and inspiration that is found in a.s.sociation with cultivated women; hence there was, especially in Athens, a peculiar sphere for the cultivated hetaera. The men of the city recognized the need of feminine society in their recreations, in their political life, and on military expeditions. The hetaera entered this sphere, from which the citizen-woman was excluded.
A further reason for the predominance of hetairism is seen in the artistic impulses of the Greek people. These courtesans made an art of the life of pleasure. Cultivating every feminine grace, carefully attentive to all the little niceties of social intercourse, studying in every way how to be agreeable to the men, adepts in conversation, devotees of the Muses and the Graces, they knew how to make their relations with men answer to all the impulses of a beauty-loving people.
And as the Greeks found aesthetic satisfaction in their masterpieces of prose and poetry, in their works of architecture and sculpture and painting, so they found it in their a.s.sociation with the hetaerae.
Owing to such conditions, there arose a most unnatural division of the admitted functions of woman in the world-order. Says the great orator Demosthenes: ”We take a hetaera for our pleasure, a concubine for daily attention to our physical wants, a wife to give us legitimate children and a respected house”--an utterance narrowly defining the status of the hetaera as contrasted with that of the honorable wife. The latter was the housewife and mother, nothing more, though surrounded by all the dignities and privileges of her high station; the former was the companion, the comrade in whose society were found recreation and sympathy and intellectual delight, but she was outside the pale of society, not respected, yet not altogether despised.
It is difficult to ascertain the beginnings of hetairism among the Greeks. There is a noteworthy absence of it in the Homeric poems, though the Greek chieftains frequently had concubines, who were slaves captured in war.
Allusions in the lyric poets show that as early as the sixth century before our era the hetaera had made her appearance. The earliest reference to the social evil in the history of Athens is found in the administration of the lawgiver Solon, who was the first to legalize prost.i.tution. With the avowed purpose of forestalling the seduction of virgins and wives, he bought slave girls in the markets of Asia Minor and placed them in public houses in Athens. This regulation for the protection of the home was generally regarded as deserving of praise.
Thus speaks the comic poet Philemon:
”But you did well for every man, O Solon: For they do say you were the first to see The justice of a public-spirited measure, The saviour of the State (and it is fit For me to utter this avowal, Solon); You, seeing that the State was full of men, Young, and possessed of all the natural appet.i.tes, And wandering in their l.u.s.ts where they'd no business.
Bought women and in certain spots did place them, Common to be and ready for all comers.
They naked stood: look well at them, my youth,-- Do not deceive yourself; aren't you well off?
You're ready, so are they: the door is open-- The price an obol: enter straight--there's No nonsense here, no cheat or trickery; But do just what you like, how you like.