THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT GREECE. 



329 



monious development of woman's nature, as it is 

 of man's, is freedom, but this is the very last 

 thing which she acquires. Impediments have 

 arisen on every hand to hinder her from bringing 

 her powers into full activity. Ignorance, preju- 

 dice, absurd modes of thought prevalent in par- 

 ticular ages, conventional restraints of an ar- 

 bitrary nature, laws that have sought to attain 

 special aims without regard to general culture 

 and well-being — these and like causes have pre- 

 vented us from seeing what woman might become 

 if she were left unfettered by all influences but 

 those that are benign and congenial. It is the 

 part of the historian to take note of these ob- 

 stacles, and to see what, notwithstanding these, 

 woman can do and aims at doiDg. 



The first condition, therefore, of a successful 

 study of woman's history, is to come unbiased 

 to the task. We must for the time keep in abey- 

 ance our prevalent opinions. There is peculiar 

 need lor this in this subject, because, should we 

 have false opinions, they are sure to be held with 

 a tenacity which is great in proportion to their 

 falsehood ; and should we have true, we a/e 

 likely to give them an exaggerated importance 

 and power; for all opinions on women are apt to 

 be intense. We have therefore to suspend our 

 ordinary modes of thought, and enter into con- 

 ceptions and feelings and a manner of life widely 

 different from our own. Some of these differ- 

 ences I must explain before I enter on my his- 

 tory. 



And, first of all, the Greeks looked at the re- 

 lations between the sexes from a point of view 

 utterly strange to us. Among us there exists a 

 clear and definite doctrine which lays down rigid- 

 ly what is right and what is wrong. The Greeks 

 had no such doctrine. They had to interrogate 

 Nature and their own hearts for the mode of ac- 

 tion to be pursued. They did not feel or think 

 that one definite course of conduct was right and 

 the others wrong; but they had to judge in each 

 case whether the action was becoming, whether 

 it was in harmony with the nobler side of human 

 nature, whether it was beautiful or useful. Util- 

 ity, appropriateness, and the sense of the beauti- 

 ful, were the only guides which the Greeks could 

 find to regulate them in the relations of the sexes 

 to each other. 



We have to add to this that their mode of 

 conceiving Nature was quite different from ours. 

 To them everything was natural, or, if you like, 

 supernatural. If wine gladdened or maddened 

 the heart of man, the influence was equally that 

 of a god. The Greek might be perplexed why a 



god should madden him, but he never doubted 

 the fact. And so it was with love. The influence 

 which the one sex exercises on the other is some- 

 thing strangely mysterious. Two persons of dif- 

 ferent sexes meet. If we look at them, we see 

 nothing very remarkable in either ; and if we 

 continue our look for an hour or two, we might 

 notice nothing remarkable going on. Yet a very 

 extraordinary change has taken place. The hearts 

 of both have begun to vibrate wildly. The com- 

 monplace man has had wings furnished to his 

 mind, and he sees heaven opening before his 

 eyes, and an infinite tenderness suffuses his soul. 

 The girl, who could not utter a word in her own 

 behalf before, has had her lips unsealed, and wit 

 and brightness and poetry sparkle in every sen- 

 tence which she addresses to her companion. She 

 too flings from her the ordinary routine of daily 

 life, and sees before her a paradise of purest 

 bliss and unending joy. Whence comes all this 

 inspiration ? Whence this temporary elevation 

 of the mental powers ? Whence this unsealing 

 of mortal eyes, till they see the beatific vision ? 

 " From a divine power," said the Greeks. And 

 this divine power seemed to them the most irre- 

 sistible of all. It swayed the gods themselves. 

 If the gods themselves could not but yield to the 

 magic power, how could it be expected that a 

 mortal could resist ? The religion of the Greeks 

 could not with such a mode of conception strong- 

 ly aid them in self-restraint. It could merely in. 

 culcate forbearance and compassion. And this 

 we find to be the case. In a speech which Sopho- 

 cles puts into the mouth of Dejanira, she ex- 

 presses her conviction that a wife has no right to 

 expect a husband to be always faithful to her, or 

 to blame the woman with whom he falls in love. 

 " Thou wilt not," she says, " tell thy tale to an 

 evil woman, nor to one who knows not the nature 

 of man, that he does not naturally rejoice always 

 in the same. For whosoever resists Love in a 

 close hand-to-hand combat, like a boxer, is not 

 wise. For he sways even the gods as he wishes, 

 and me myself also ; and how should he not sway 

 another woman who is such as I am ? So that if 

 I find fault with my husband caught with this 

 disease, or with this woman the cause along with 

 him of nothing that is evil or disgraceful to me, I 

 am unquestionably mad." l Such religious for. 

 bearance is not found in poetry only. It is incul- 

 cated on wives as a strict part of their duty by a 

 female Pythagorean philosopher, Perictione, who 

 wrote on the harmony of woman, and the senti. 

 ment disappears only before a philosophy such 

 i Trach., 438. 



