THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMAN IN GREECE AND ROME.*
To estimate justly in an article the "position and influence" of women in a single epoch and a single nation would be a hard task. To do so in the case of Greece and Rome during a period which extends from Homer to Tertnllian is a plain impossibility. The subject is immense, the evidence obscure, and the path leads everywhere "over the treacherous ashes of concealed fires." The controversies, for instance, which centre around the single name of Helen would by themselves demand a volume, for her champions range in almost historic sequence from the Dioscuri to Mr. Gladstone, while students of the second part of Faust claim. that Goethe alone understood Homer's symbolism just as they alone understand his. But in a perplexed inquiry a prudent critic may at any rate put aside any attempt to appreciate woman's " influence " as at • Woman i Ter PositioT and Itkitaenoe in...Ancient- Greece and Home-. By James Donaldson, LL.D.. Principal of tit. 4aarews. tmska: Lonirmans and Co. De. net.] best a work of supererogation. When Pascal, who was a philosopher, wrote: Si le nes cis Cleoptitro elU t4 plus court, touts la face de la terra aural change, he set up a standard of judgment which all but the blind must .accept, but which will continually baffle historians; while the uncertainty of the best written evidence may be deduced from the story that when Euripides, whose authority, is now so often quoted, was described to Sophocles as a misogynist, that judicious. poet replied : "Yes, in his tragedies." Of the " position," on the other hand, of women in classical antiquity some rude estimate may perhaps be formed, and it may safely be said that it would rarely have satisfied the modern advocates' of their claims. Here and there in Grecian history a Helen, a Sappho, or an Aspasia becomes distinguished, but the positiOn held by women in general was, we imagine, 'a poor one. fair woman was in heroic days a desirable possession, a thing for which men might well fight or cities be sacked, but elle was little more. Indeed, what we call the romantic sentiment for women was down to. the end of the classical period in Greece almost, if not entirely, undeveloped. The whole story, for example, of Helen seems to exclude romance. Of love for her, as we understand the word, there is none. She is merely, as it were, a rare ornament, a jewel of price, to be won and kept, or, if lost, recovered. Men do not esteem but value her. "Wondrously," say the Trojan elders, "is she like unto the immortal goddesses to look upon," and there- fore, if they could; they would fain still keep this delight of their eyes, this admired ornament of Troy. But at last they count the cost, and, finding it too heavy, utter the despondent sentence "But nevertheless even so, even though such she be, let her depart in the ships "; while in the end Menelaus takes her back to Sparta, where she "resumes her place as a matter of course"—the words are Mr. Gladstone's- " and bears it with unconstrained and perfect dignity." There is no more real romance in the tale than there might be nowadays about the robbery and recovery of a unique picture, which finally, after being reframed and revarnished, "resumes its place" in the palace of a millionaire. The glamour, indeed, of the Homeric epic blinds us to the rudeness of Homeric life, and when Hesiod, by a collocation not unknown elsewhere, places side by side "a house, a wife, and a ploughing-ox" as the three things which a farmer should first procure, he probably indicates the true "position" which wives held in the heroic age. And in classical Athens that position had certainly not improved, but the reverse. Respectable women were there condemned to an almost Oriental seclusion and treated as of almost no concern. " Their glory is to be least spoken of among men, whether for praise or blame," says Pericles in the great Funeral Oration, and, in consequence, about the wife of Pericles history tells us little, but about his mistress much. And when Socrates would spend his last hours most profitably, his first Care is to be rid of his wife. "Crib, let ROM one take this woman (ramp) away" are the words which Plato puts into his mouth just before he begins rubbing his lea' as a pre- liminary to that discourse on immortality which 'Lady Jane Grey loved to read, but poor Xanthippe was unworthy to hear. Or take the Oeconomicus of Xenophon, and study the question put to a husband, "Is there any one with whom you converse less than with your wife ?" to which the answer is,'" Well; at least there are not many." And then read how Isomachus, who is held up as a type of new and more enlightened view's, deals with his fifteen-year-old bride. She has been "'very carefully guarded so that she might see as little, hear as little, and ask as few questions as possible," and her only accomplishment is cooking. She is scared and shy, a little creature who hopes to charm her husband with powder, rouge, and high heels, but who listens with eager gratitude to a discourse on household manageinent. "What a fair sight it is when shoes are placed in due order," says the model husband, and from shoes he goes on to clothes, and Pots, and pans, and everything. There is nothing about affectiowbut his final advice is that she should keep her health. and core- plesion by "washing, and kneading, by shaking and making the beds," just because when a man sees' his wife trim, smart, and active, it "snakes her a: powerful rival to a maidservant?' That is the ideal of an Athenian, wife as set out, not by a satirist or a dreamer, but by the plain and practical XemiPhon. Her business was to perpetuate the race; to guard' the household gear,niad„if her lord had vagrant
fancies, to be, in the euphemistic language of the time, always "sensible" (0.44pror). And all this befell in Athens, "the violet-crowned," "the mother of arts and eloquence," while Pallas Athene, in chryselephantine splendour, looked on undisturbed, and even her owl never blinked. . .
At Sparta, on the other hand, the condition of women was very different though perhaps hardly better. The retiring graces of girlhood, the sweet intimacies of home, the tender- ness of motherly affection, were all ruthlessly swept aside by the Spartan legislator in order to secure a race of women who could breed men, and like Lampito in the Lgsistrata, were " beautiful, fresh-coloured, vigorous and fit to throttle a bull." At the thought of a Spartan damsel the famous words, " eocabitur Virago," leap unbidden to the lips, and the Spartan mother's I)vIeijItri Tar is still quoted to strike schoolboys with awe ; while we can well believe that beings who boasted that "they alone brought forth men" soon claimed also that "they alone ruled men," and, in the absence of all but physical ideals, quickly became, as Aristotle found them, "luxurious and incorrigible." They play, no doubt, a great part in story-books; Plato admired. them, and Plutarch is full of anecdotes about them ; but on the whole, perhaps the world is well rid of such stalwart heroines, and it is refreshing to turn from them to such a picture of simple womanhood as is presented on a chance Roman tombstone :—
" Suom mareitum cords deilexit save, Gnatos duos creavit, horunc alterum In terra linquit, alium sub terra beat; Sermon° lepido, tam autem incessu commode, Domum servavit, lanam fecit Dixi Abet ."
These are words which go home straight to the heart and show us by a rare glimpse what the households of Rome sometimes were, while the continual recurrence in inscriptions of such epithets as univira, lanifica, pudica, pia, and domiseda prove that what the'early Romans thought about the position of women is pretty much what most plain and simple folk think still. If the Roman view differed at all from that which has prevailed amid most sane and Bober nations since, it was a certain austere sternness. The Roman father was always a severe, and sometimes a hard, man. Trained himself to obedience, when he became head of a household he expected it, and when he married the same law which speaks of him as "taking a wife for the procreation of children" gave him an authority over her which, however modified by custom or affection, was strictly unlimited. That authority was not, indeed, always borne with patience ; but, in spite of some occasional outbreaks, it was in the Reptblican period generally maintained, and sometimes exercised with severity. But with the commencement of the Empire, when the wealth of the world began to pour into Rome, the old morality and the old domestic life were swept away. Marriage then became a thing mocked at ; the laws which kept women in perpetual tutelage were evaded by subtle jurists, and every license was conceded to wit or wealth, to intellect or beauty. At least in the higher ranks of society the emancipation of women from all control was never more complete than in the first century of the Empire, and it was exactly coincident with the decadence of Roman greatness.
But these loose and hazardous reflections only touch the edge of the vast and almost unexplored theme to which the Principal of St. .Andrews has in the present volume drawn attention. Nor does he himself venture far out to sea. Rather he makes a series of short and happy excursions, which induce the reader to wish that the voyage might be prolonged further. Behind all that scholar's have told us about antiquity, be shows that almost one half of ancient life is still practically unknown, and that we can only understand it by examining what the position, not of some few conspicuous women, but of the great mass of average women;.waa in those, far-off days. But he rather points out-the. path of• exploration than pursues it. Once, indeed, in a remarkable discussion on the retrograde influence of Christianity, aa understood. in the first three centuries, his treatment a the subject is conspicuously novel and original. Far the most: part, however, his work is rather a , series of suggestive essays. on comkaratIvely well-known facts than a lfzesin.-eontribution tcr' knowledge-. As such, Weever, it bile great value, and the author exhibita exactly. the learning; insight and judgment which we need for the full investigation of a difficult but fascinating subject. If Dr. Donaldson is unable to carry his own inquiries further,
we can only hope that the present volume may tempt some scholar of equal gifts into the new field of classical research which it so happily points out.
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