Chapter I: Women in the Heroic Ages

There is no question connected with Grecian manners more difficult than that which concerns the character and condition of women.[1050] On so many points did they differ in this matter from us, that, unless we can conceive ourselves to be in the wrong, the condemnation of the whole Hellenic theory of female rights and interests and influence must, as a matter of course, ensue. I do not say that, after all, this is not the conclusion we should come to. Reason may possibly be on our side; but certainly it appears to me, that too little pains has hitherto been taken to arrive at the truth; and as it is a consideration by no means unimportant, I have bestowed on it more than ordinary attention in the hope of letting in additional light, however little, on this obscure and unheeded department of antiquities.

Footnote 1050:

Describing the approach to the temple of Aphrodite, Lucian says:
εὐθὺς ἡμῖν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ τεμένους Ἀφροδίσιοι προσέπνευσαν
αὖραι.—Amor. § 12. These gentle airs should breathe into the style
and language of the author who treats of the women of Greece; but,
in my own case, research I fear and the effects of fifty-two degrees
of north latitude will prevent this consummation so devoutly to be
wished.

In form the Greek woman was so perfect as to be still taken as the type of her sex. Her beauty, from whatever cause, bordered closely upon the ideal, or rather was that which, because now only found in works of art, we denominate the ideal. But our conceptions of form never transcend what is found in Nature. She bounds our ideas by a circle over which we cannot step. The sculptors of Greece represented nothing but what they saw,[1051] and even when the cunning of their hand was most felicitous, even when loveliness and grace and all the poetry of womanhood appeared to breathe from their marbles, the inferiority of their imitations to the creations of God, in properties belonging to form, in mere contour, in the grouping and developement of features, must have sufficed to impress even upon Pheidias, that high priest of art, the conviction of how childish it were to dream of rising above nature. The beauty of Greece was, indeed, a creature of earth, but suggested aspirations beyond it. Every feature in the countenance uttered impassioned language, was rife with tenderness, instinct with love. The pulses of the heart, warm and rapid, seemed to possess ready interpreters in the eye. But, radiant over all, the imagination shed its poetic splendour, communicating a dignity, an elevation, a manifestation of soul, which lent to passion all the moral purity and enduring force that belong to love, when love is least tainted with unspiritual and ignoble selfishness.

Footnote 1051:

On the beauty of the modern Greek women I can speak from my own
observation; but most travellers are of the same opinion, and Mr.
Douglas, in particular, gives the following testimony in their
favour: “Though the delicacy of her form is not long able to sustain
the heat of the climate and the immoderate use of the warm bath, I
can scarcely trust myself to describe the beauty of a young Greek
when arriving at the age which the ancients have so gracefully
personified as the Χρυσοστέφανος Ἥβη. Were we to form our ideas of
Grecian women from the wives of Albanian peasants we should be
strangely deceived; but the islands of Andro, Tino, and, above all,
that of Crete, contain forms upon which the chisel of Praxiteles
would not have been misemployed.”—Essay, &c. p. 159.

I despair, however, of representing by words what neither Pheidias nor Polycletos could represent in marble or ivory. The women of Greece were neither large nor tall. The whole figure, graceful but not slender, left the imagination nothing to desire. It was satisfied with what was before it. Limbs exquisitely moulded,[1052] round, smooth, tapering, a _torso_ undulating upwards in the richest curves to the neck, a bosom somewhat inclined to fulness, but in configuration perfect, features in which the utmost delicacy was blended with whatever is noblest and most dignified in expression. Both blue eyes and black[1053] were found in Greece, but the latter most commonly. Even Aphrodite, spite of her auburn hair, comes before us in the Iliad with large black eyes, beaming with humid fire. No goddess but the Attic virgin has the cold blue eye of the North, becoming her maidenly character, reserved, firm, affectionate, with a dash of shrewishness. The nose was straight and admirably proportioned, without anything of that breadth which in the works of inferior sculptors creates an idea of Amazonian fierceness. Beauty itself had shaped the mouth and chin, and basked and sported in them. In these, above all, the Grecian woman excelled the barbarians. Other features they might have resembling hers, but seldom that Attic mouth, that dimpled, oval, richly-rounded chin, which imprinted the crowning characteristic of womanhood upon her face, and stamped her mistress of man and of the world.

Footnote 1052:

Cf. Winkelmann, iv. 4. 44.

Footnote 1053:

Plat. Repub. iv. t. vi. p. 167.—That black eyes were most common
among the Greeks may be inferred from this, that, in describing the
parts of the eye, they called the iris τὸ μέλαν, which is sometimes
of one colour, and sometimes of another.—Arist. Hist. Anim. I. viii.
2. He observes, further on, that some persons had black eyes, others
deep blue, others gray, others of the colour of goats.—§4. Other
animals have eyes of one colour, except the horse, which has
sometimes one blue eye. Eyes moderate in size and neither sunken nor
projecting were esteemed the best.—§. 5. Large eyes, likewise, were
greatly admired. Hence Hera is called βοῶπις by Homer. Aristœnetos,
describing his Laïs, says: ὀφθαλμοὶ μεγάλοι τε καὶ διαυγεῖς καὶ
καθαρῷ φωτὶ διαλάμποντες.—Scheffer ad Æl. Hist. Var. xii. 1. With
respect to the colour of the hair see Winkelmann, iv. 4. 38. It was,
of course, considered a great beauty to have it long, and,
therefore, Helen, in honour of Clytemnæstra, cut off the points
only.—Eurip. Orest. 128. seq.

A creature thus fashioned and gifted with an intellect which, if less robust and comprehensive, is equally active with that of man and still more flexible, could scarcely be degraded into a domestic drudge and slave, and in Greece was not.[1054] Already, in the heroic ages, women occupied a commanding position in society, somewhat less honourable than is their due, but, in many respects, higher and more to be envied than was appropriated to them in the ignorant and corrupt times of chivalry which the Homeric period has been thought greatly to resemble. In those days, though fashion required more reserve in the female character than is consistent with the spirit of modern manners, persons of different sexes could meet and converse together without scandal. Gentlewomen of the highest rank went abroad under their own guidance. On the arrival of a foreign ship upon the shore we find an Argive princess descending without any male protector to cheapen articles of dress and trinkets, which however, as the event proved, was not without danger, for both she herself and a number of her maids were carried away captives by the perfidious strangers.[1055]

Footnote 1054:

On the respect paid to women, see Demosth. in Ev. et Mnes. § 11.

Footnote 1055:

Herodot. i. 1.

Homer abounds with proofs both of the liberty women enjoyed and the high estimation in which they were held. They were quite as much as is consistent with prudence and delicacy the companions of men.[1056] And in more than one particular, as in the bathing[1057] and perfuming of distinguished male guests, the manners of those times allowed of or rather enjoined familiarities greater than the customs of any civilised modern nations permit. Ladies lived at large with their husbands and families in the more frequented parts of the house, dined and drank wine with them, rode or walked out in their company, or, attended by a female servant, and were, in fact, in the modern sense of the word, mistresses of the house and everything it contained.

Footnote 1056:

Athen. i. 18.

Footnote 1057:

Describing the beauty of Hippodameia, daughter of Anchises, Homer
says, she excelled all the maidens of her age in beauty, skill in
female accomplishments, and endowments of the mind, for which reason
Alcathoos, the noblest man in Troy, chose her to be his wife.—Iliad,
ε. 480. sqq. He must necessarily, therefore, have enjoyed
opportunities of studying her character. Another illustration of the
freedom of heroic female manners is furnished by the author of the
Little Iliad, who relates that, when Aias and Odysseus were
contending for the armour of Achilles, the Greeks, by the advice of
Nestor, sent certain scouts to listen beneath the battlements of
Troy to the conversation of the virgins who, in the cool of the
evening, it may be presumed, were wont to walk upon the ramparts and
converse frankly of the exploits of their illustrious enemies.—Sch.
Aristoph. Equit. 1051. Cf. Il. ζ. 239.

When the husband happened to be absent it was not, indeed, considered delicate, if the mansion was filled with youthful and petulant guests, for the wife to be seen much among them,[1058] though it still appears to have been incumbent upon married ladies to exercise the rites of hospitality, which sometimes, as in the case of Helen, opened the way to intrigue and elopement. A similar event, veiled in mythological obscurity, shipwrecked the virtue of Alcmena.[1059] Clytemnæstra, too, and Ægialeia the wife of Diomede, fell before the temptations afforded by the absence of their lords,[1060] while Penelope surrounded with youthful suitors, assailed by reports of her husband’s death, alternately soothed and menaced, remained true to her vows and became to all ages the pattern of conjugal fidelity.

Footnote 1058:

Hom. Odyss. α. 330. sqq.

Footnote 1059:

Apollod. ii. 4. 8.

Footnote 1060:

Ovid. Ibis. 349. seq. Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 384. 1093.

The examples are many of the facility of their intercourse with strangers. Sthenobœa wife of Prœtos, king of Argos, must have enjoyed numerous occasions of being alone with Bellerophon before she could, like the wife of Potiphar, have tried his honour and forfeited her own.[1061] Helen after her return to Sparta, banquets and associates freely with strangers at the table of her husband, where, by her conversation and remarks, we discover how quick and penetrating the understanding of women was in those ages supposed to be. Nothing could be further from the mind of those heroic warriors than the idea of regarding woman merely as an object of desire, or as a household drudge.[1062] If she receives praise for her beauty, or industrious habits, still more is she celebrated for her mental endowments, for her wisdom, for her maternal love. Where in fiction or in life shall we find a lady more gentle, more graceful, more accomplished, more gifted with every charm of womanhood than Helen, who, nevertheless, falls a prey to seduction! Where more feminine tenderness, or truer love than in Andromache? Where more matronly sweetness and dignity than in the Phæacian Arete; more unblameable vivacity, blithe unreserve, greater sensibility, united with the noblest maiden modesty, self command and proud consciousness of virtue, than in that loveliest of poetical creations her daughter Nausicaa.

Footnote 1061:

Apollod. ii. 3. 7. Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 1041.

Footnote 1062:

Hesiod suggests a luxurious picture of female life in the heroic
ages.—Opp. et Dies. 519. seq.

Homer himself felt all the charm of this exquisite creation and lingered over it with the fondness of a parent. She is the very flower of the heroic age. In the rapid glimpse afforded us of her life, we discover what the condition and occupations of a noble virgin were in those primitive times, a felicitous mixture of splendour and simplicity, approaching nature in the rough energy of the passions, with feelings healthy and vigorous and happy in the utter absence of sickly sentimentality. Though daughter to a king Nausicaa does not disdain to care for the family wardrobe. Her nuptial day is not far distant, and, agreeably to the nature of her sex in all ages, she is desirous that her dress should on that occasion appear to the best advantage, but to her father modestly feigns to think principally of her brothers.[1063] Alcinoos aware of the feint, smiles inwardly while he approves of her solicitude. With his ready permission she piles the garments on the royal car drawn by mules, and then, mounting the seat whip in hand, departs for the distant rivulet accompanied by her maids. Of these girls, the poet says, two, clothed by the graces with loveliness, used to sleep in the Princess’s chamber one on either side the door.

On reaching the secluded spot, the umbrageous embouchure of a mountain brook where they usually performed their lowly task, it was their first care to unharness the mules, which were turned loose to graze on the shore. Their labours occupy them but a portion of the morning, and these concluded, they dine sumptuously enough, in some shady nook overlooking the stream, on wine and viands brought along with them from the palace. To remove every idea of sordid toil and fatigue Homer is careful to represent them full of life and animal spirits, bounding sportively along the meadows, having first bathed and lubricated their limbs with fragrant oils. The game which engages them while their robes and veils are drying on the pebbly beach received in later ages the name of Phæninda,[1063] and consisted in throwing a ball unexpectedly from one individual to another of a large party scattered over a field. As it was uncertain to whom the person in possession of the ball would cast it, every one was on the watch, and much of the sport arose from the eagerness of each to catch it.

Footnote 1063:

See Book II. v2-Chapter III.

In this game the princess takes part, laughing and singing with the rest, and it is a clumsy throw of hers which sends the ball into the river that excites the loud exclamation from her maids which awakens Odysseus. Her conversation with the hero thereupon ensuing suggests a high notion of female education at the period. The maids of honour terrified at his strange and grotesque appearance, unclothed, and deformed with ooze and mud, take to flight, but Nausicaa relying on the respect due to her father maintains her ground. Odysseus reverencing her youth and beauty prefers his petition from a distance. She grants far more than he seeks, and with many indications of female gentleness mingles so much self-possession, forethought, compassion for misfortune, consideration of what is due to her own character, and confidence in the generosity and unsuspicious goodness of her parents, that we are constrained to suppose the existence of much instruction, mental training, and knowledge of the world. And if such qualifications had not at that time been found in women, Homer had much too keen a sense of propriety to have hazarded his reputation and his bread by supposing their prevalence in his poems.[1064]

Footnote 1064:

Clytemnæstra, again, in Æschylus exhibits considerable knowledge of
geography, which she could only have acquired from conversation with
travellers or from the songs of the poets.—Agamemn. 287. sqq.

How the women of the heroic times received their instruction it is not difficult to comprehend, though there has come down to us very little positive information on the subject. The poets, those prophetic teachers of the infancy of humanity, had already commenced their revelations of the good and beautiful. Wandering from town to town, under the immediate direction of Providence, they scattered far and near the seeds of civilisation. Their songs were in every mouth: both youths and maidens imbibed the wisdom they contained, and with their sprightly strains, as in the case of Nausicaa, enlivened their lighter moments when alone, or delighted the noble and numerous guests at their fathers’ board. Homer, indeed, nowhere introduces a lady singing at an entertainment, excepting in Olympos, where the Muses represent the sex; but Æschylus, a poet profoundly versed in antiquity, speaks of Iphigenia as performing this sweet office in her father’s hall.[1065] The daughter of Alcinoos, however, shares in the amusements and instruction supplied by the bard during the entertainment described by Homer, and converses freely with their illustrious guest.[1066]

Footnote 1065:

And Theocritus enumerates among the accomplishments of Helen, that
she could sing and play upon the cithara.—Eidyll. xviii. 35. sqq. et
Kiesling ad Theocrit. Cf. Æneid. vi. 647.

Footnote 1066:

Odyss. θ. 457. sqq.

Footnote 1067:

Apophthegms, Old and New, § 278.

We have above seen that women in those ages were not creatures of mere luxury or show. Possessing considerable physical power and energy, and much skill in the elegant and useful arts of life, they were deterred by no false pride or ignorant prejudices from converting their capacity to the use of their families. The magnificence of their attire, their costly ornaments, or the consciousness of the highest personal beauty, nowise interfered with their thrifty habits; and Lord Bacon[1067] tells a very good anecdote to show that the same in former days was the case in England. There was a lady of the West country, he says, who gave great entertainments at her house to most of the gallant gentlemen of her neighbourhood, among whom Sir Walter Raleigh was one. This lady, though otherwise a stately dame, was a notable good housewife, and in the morning betimes she called to one of her maids that looked to the swine, and asked, “Is the piggy served?” Sir Walter’s chamber being near the lady’s, he heard this homely inquiry. A little before dinner the lady came down in great state to the drawing-room, which was full of gentlemen, and as soon as Sir Walter Raleigh saw her, “Madam,” says he, “is the piggy served?” To which the lady replied, “You know best whether you have had your breakfast.”

An Homeric princess resembled this stately dame of the West, in thinking nothing beneath her which could contribute to the comfort or elegant adornment of those she loved. The employments of women in those ages, however, included some things which, in the present state of the useful arts, would seldom fall to their share, and among these were the labours of the loom, to excel in which was evidently considered one of their chiefest accomplishments and most necessary duties.[1068] In this occupation they took refuge from anxiety and sorrow; to this we find Hector with rough tenderness urging his beloved wife to have recourse, when her affection would withdraw him from his post;[1069] and Telemachus, in a tone somewhat too authoritative, recommends, in the Odyssey, the same course to his mother:[1070] and in the Eastern world the same tastes and habits continued to prevail down to a very late age. When Sisygambis, the captive Persian queen, was presented, however, by Alexander with purple and wool, she sank into an agony of grief and tears: they reminded her of happier days. But the conqueror, misunderstanding her feelings, and desirous to remove the notion that he was imposing any servile task, observed:—"This garment, mother, which you see me wear, is not merely the gift but the work also of my sisters."[1071] Similar presents passed between near relations in Persia; for in Herodotus we find Amestris, the queen of Xerxes, conferring upon her husband, as a gift of price, a richly variegated and ample pelisse, which the labours of her own fair hands had rendered valuable.[1072] Augustus, too, even when all simplicity of manners had expired with the republic, affected still to bring up the females of his family upon the antique model, and wore no garments but such as were manufactured in his own house.[1073]

Footnote 1068:

Alexand. ab Alexand. iv. 8.

Footnote 1069:

Iliad, ζ. 491.

Footnote 1070:

Odyss. α. 357.

Footnote 1071:

Q. Curt. v. 2. 18.

Footnote 1072:

Herod. ix. 188.

Footnote 1073:

Suet. in Vit. § 64. Conf. Feith. Antiq. Homer. iv. 34.

To return: constant practice and the delight which familiar and voluntary labour inspires, had already in the heroic ages, enabled the Grecian ladies to throw much splendour and richness of invention into their fabrics. The desire also, perhaps, of excelling in works of this kind the ladies of Sidon, communicated an additional impulse to their industry. At all events, Homer makes it abundantly clear that they understood how to employ with singular felicity the arts of design, and to represent in colours brilliant and varied, cities, landscapes, human figures, and all the complicated movements of war.[1074] We must, no doubt, allow something for the poet’s own skill in painting; but, after every reasonable deduction, enough will remain still to prove that at the period of the Trojan war Greece had made remarkable progress in every art which tends to ameliorate and embellish human life.

Footnote 1074:

In northern Greece and Macedonia women could depict such scenes from
the life, since they learned the use of arms, and engaged personally
in war.—Athen. xiii. 10. Tradition relates that Queen Matilda and
her maids wrought the tapestry of Bayeux, representing the conquest
of England by her husband.

Carding, also, and spinning entered into the list of their occupations. Even Helen though frail as fair, is laborious as a Penelope, plying her shuttle or her golden distaff, and surrounded habitually by a troop of she-manufacturers.[1075] Arete, queen of Phæacia, is likewise depicted sitting at the fire, distaff in hand, encircled by her maids;[1076] and the wife of Odysseus, famed for her household virtues, is seen in the Odyssey at her own door spinning the purple thread.[1077] The work-baskets of the ladies of that period, if we can rely on a poet’s word, were such as more modern dames might envy, formed of beaten gold and chased with figures richly wrought, and grouped with infinite taste and judgment.[1078] In these their balls of purple were deposited when spun, though probably reed baskets or osier work contented the ambition of ladies less aspiring than Europa.

Footnote 1075:

Iliad, ζ. 491.—Odyss. δ. 131.—Theocrit. Eidyll. xviii. 32. sqq.

Footnote 1076:

Odyss. ζ. 491. 38.—Feith by mistake introduces the name of Nausicaa
instead of that of her mother.—Ant. Hom. iv. 3. 2.

Footnote 1077:

Odyss. υ. 97.

Footnote 1078:

Mosch. Eidyll. ii. 37. seq.

Women also, but chiefly slaves, performed in those primitive times all the operations of the kitchen. They even in the great establishment of Alcinoos work at the mill, as they do also in the palace of Odysseus, where guided perhaps by the nature of the climate we find the young women preferring for this operation the cool of the night.[1079] Even in later ages, when juster ideas of what is due to the sex prevailed, this severe toil sometimes devolved upon female slaves, though in general it was the males, and of these the most worthless, who worked the mills, regarded at length almost in the light of correctional establishments.[1080] But the making of bread was very properly appropriated to women almost throughout the East. The Egyptians, indeed, an effeminate and servile people, very early, as we learn from Genesis, confounded the offices of the sex; but among the Lydians, even in the palace of Crœsos, we meet with a female baker,[1081] and the Persian armies carried along with them women to bake their bread in their longest and most dangerous expeditions.[1082] In Greece to preside over the oven, was up to a very late period the prerogative of the fair. One hundred and ten women had the honour of being locked up with the handful of warriors who during three years baffled the whole force of the Peloponnesos from the glorious walls of Platæa,[1083] and in the primitive ages of Macedonia the queen herself prepared the bread distributed among the royal shepherds.[1084]

Footnote 1079:

Odyss. η. 103. seq.—ο. 107.

Footnote 1080:

Theoph. Char. c. v.

Footnote 1081:

Herod. i. 51.

Footnote 1082:

Herod. vii. 187.

Footnote 1083:

Thucyd. ii. 78.

Footnote 1084:

Herod. viii. 139.

The Sacred Scriptures have rendered familiar and reconciled to us the simplicity of patriarchal manners. To behold the daughter of Bethuel or of Laban coming forth to draw water for her flock, does not strike us as at all out of keeping with the opulence or dignity of her father, or with her own feminine delicacy; and we know that at this present day the wealthiest Bedouin Sheikh of the desert, though lord of a thousand camels, discovers nothing in his daughter’s condition which should relieve her from this healthful employment. Similar notions prevailed among the Greeks of the Heroic Age. For though in many cases slave-maidens[1085] are found engaged in drawing water from the springs, virgins of noble birth, nay the daughters themselves of kings, descend to the fountain with their urns, mingling there with female captives and young women of inferior rank. Thus, for example, the princess of the Lestrygons in Homer goes forth with her water-jar[1086] to the well, and even among the Athenians, where refinement of manners first sprang up, and civilisation made most rapid strides, the daughters of the citizens in early times used to descend to the fountain of Callirrhoe to draw water.[1087] But the task was commonly allotted to female captives and other slaves. Euryclea, Odysseus’ house-keeper, sends a troop of girls on this errand with orders to be quick in their movements, and Hector, in his deep fear for Andromache, already in apprehension beholds her toiling at the fountains of Argos.[1088]

Footnote 1085:

Eurip. Electr. 107. 309. sqq.

Footnote 1086:

Odyss. κ. 105.

Footnote 1087:

Herod. vi. 137—The historian uses the name of Enneacrounos given to
the fountain by the tyrants. A similar practice is noticed by
Arrian.—Anab. Alexand. ii. 3

Footnote 1088:

Odyss. φ. 153. seq.—Iliad. ζ. 59. seq.