THE ATHENIAN WOMAN, ASPASIA, AND THE FIRST SALON
· Vassalage of the Athenian Woman ·
· Her Ignorance and Seclusion ·
· Religious Festivals · The Hetæræ ·
· Aspasia · Her Position · Her Gifts ·
· Tribute of Socrates ·
· Devotion of Pericles ·
· The First Salon · Opinions of the Philosophers ·
· Woman’s Inferior Position a Cause of Athenian Decline ·
The Athenians agreed with the opinion ascribed to Pericles that “the best wife is the one of whom the least is said either of good or evil.” But this wise statesman does not seem to have found his theory agreeable in practice, as he sent away his own wife, who was quite innocent even of local fame, to put in her place the cleverest and most talked of woman of her time. She accepted the inevitable with becoming philosophy, if not gratefully, and it must be said to his credit that he was kind enough to help her to another husband. But what became of his theory? One is tempted to think that Thucydides, who put these words into his mouth, was speaking largely for himself, as it is clear that he thought women too unimportant, if not too precious, to be talked about; else why did the great historian so utterly ignore them?
It is a significant fact which upsets many pleasant little theories about the superior justice of a democracy, that women who shared the power and glory of their husbands in the heroic age,—even if they had little of their own,—and preserved a measure of influence under the rule of kings in historic times, lost their honored position in republican Athens. In a rule of the people they had no longer the prestige of an aristocracy, and they did not count politically. As they held no recognized place of honor, and it was not respectable to shine by their talents, they had no apparent claim to consideration. They might stand on a pedestal to add to the glory of men, they might grace a hereditary throne for the honor of a family, but it never occurred to the classic world that woman sprang, as the witty Frenchman said, “from the side of Adam, and not from his feet.”
To all intents and purposes, the Attic women were slaves, with no rights and few privileges. We do not know much about them directly, as they left no record of themselves, and very little was written of them except by the satirists, who are always ready to distort the truth in order to “point a moral or adorn a tale.” Historians were strangely silent regarding them; unless of royal lineage, women were too insignificant. It is difficult, in the face of the few facts we know, to credit the brilliant Athenians with any chivalry. We must either suppose that the poets were a sour and disappointed race, or that they reflected the spirit of their time. Apart from the few great ideals that lived in the imaginations of men, everything that has come down to us shows the light estimate in which women were held. They were a lower order of beings, and anything done by their advice was invalid. “Women are an evil,” says the comedian, “and yet, my countrymen, one cannot set up a house without evil; for to be married or not to be married is alike bad.” This arrogant and contemptuous tone runs through the Attic literature, as I have shown more fully elsewhere.
From the vague and shadowy outlines of a life that was practically shut out from the light of day twenty-five centuries ago, we cannot gather with certainty even the moral and domestic value of women who were treated with lofty disdain by poets, satirists, and historians alike. But we do know that intellectually they counted for nothing, within the pale of orthodox society. At a period when the central idea was culture, when art was at its zenith, and there were giants in literature, the wives and daughters of men noted before all things for brilliancy and esprit had fallen into hopeless ignorance and vassalage. They lacked even the companionship and the small diversions of the Oriental harem, where the inmates, though they had only a small fraction of a husband, could break the monotony by gossiping or quarreling with the other wives. The women of the better class at Athens had special apartments, usually in the upper story, so that they could not go out without being seen. Men went to market themselves or sent their slaves. We learn from Aristophanes that they often put their wives under lock and key, with a seal when they went away, also that they kept Molossian hounds to frighten away possible lovers. A woman addressed her husband as “master,” was always a minor, and could transact no business on her own account, which even Plato thought unjust. If he died she was not his heir, but the ward of her son or of some male relative. In her marriage she was not consulted, and she was never supposed to know any man but the one chosen for her. Solon, who wished to prevent mercenary marriages, decreed that no dowries should be given, and that the bride could have only three suits of clothes; later, unions were arranged by the families, on a basis of equal fortunes. Infidelity on the part of the husband was no ground of complaint. As wives were so closely guarded there does not seem to have been much danger of indiscretions, but they were sent away on the slightest suspicion, and their punishments were carried to the utmost refinement of cruelty. In spite of this surveillance, possibly because of it, sins against morality were more frequent than in Sparta.
After the age of sixty, women were permitted to go to funerals outside of their families, if they would not mourn too violently. These occasions must have been rather welcome than otherwise, as Greek funerals were not hopelessly solemn affairs, except to the immediate family. Brides had the special privilege of sitting at table at their own wedding banquets, to which only relatives or very near friends were asked. The amusements of women seem to have consisted largely in looking out of the window and making their toilets. If they went to the theater at all, they were limited to tragedy and had to take back seats.
We have an account of one model husband who is not content that his young wife should simply know how to spin, weave, and direct her maids, so he tries to educate her. She is only fifteen, and he says that she has lived under the strictest restraint so that she might “see as little, hear as little, and ask as few questions as possible.” When he has her properly domesticated so that she dares to speak in his presence, he explains their mutual responsibilities in terms that must have mystified this child of nature a little, tells her to do well what the gods have suited to her and men approve, to use no cosmetics or aids to beauty, and to knead bread or fold linen for exercise, since she must not walk out. The main thing he dwells upon is the necessity of looking closely after their common fortunes; but she has also to take care of the children, and nurse the slaves when they are ill. He kindly admits that if she is superior to him she will be mistress,—taking good care, however, that such an unfortunate state of affairs shall not exist so far as education is concerned,—and assures her that the better she serves the interests of his family and household, the more she will be honored. This is all very well so far as it goes, and we may readily admit that it is of more vital importance to administer the affairs of one’s family with judgment and dignity than to talk about art or read Homer. But the docile wife had a housekeeper as well as plenty of slaves, and, naturally, abundant leisure. It certainly implied a degree of what Socrates called “manly understanding” on her part, to follow her husband’s abstruse reasoning on the duties of women, and his minute instructions for carrying them out; yet this wise representative of the most civilized race the world has known never so much as hints that she has an intellect.
Socrates listens with great interest to this advanced theory of wife-training as it is unfolded to him, and sagely remarks that the husband is responsible for her errors if he does not properly teach her. It seems that he did not try the system on Xanthippe, or if he did it was a dismal failure, as the much-abused woman is never quoted as a model or a saint, and we do not hear that he taxed himself with her shortcomings. He said that he married her for the excitement of conquest—the same motive that leads a man to try his power over a high-spirited horse; also as a discipline, because he was sure that he could endure every one else if he could endure her. It would be curious to know what she thought about it, but one cannot help suspecting that she had the lion’s share of the discipline, and that Socrates was a greater success as a philosopher and talker than as a husband.
There was one exception, however, to this rigid seclusion, a small recognition of the fact that women probably have souls. They were allowed a part in religious festivals, and these were events in their lives. They meant a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of the outer world. Perhaps they meant also a little spiritual consolation, which must often have been greatly needed; but of this we are not sure. The Hellenic divinities were not eminently consoling, and the wise Athena was particularly unsympathetic, though the Athenian virgins had at least the pleasure of making her richly ornamented robes, and putting them on her once a year. The woman in the comedy says that at seven she could carry the peplum in the procession, at ten she ground cakes for the patron goddess, and when she grew to be a beautiful maiden, she had charge of the sacred basket.
One can imagine the flutter of pleasure with which the young girls of the golden age of Athens donned their white draperies and gold-embroidered mantles to march in the Panathenaic procession to the Acropolis. Their snowy veils floated airily in the breeze, as they went up the marble steps of the propylæa chanting choral hymns and carrying in their hands the branches of silvery olive to lay at the feet of the stately goddess. How bright the sky! how blue the sparkling sea! How beautiful the white temples and colonnades, alive with sculptured heroes! Before them rose Hymettus in its robe of violet haze, and the cone of Lycabettus, sharply outlined in the clear air. Sheltered behind the low hills on the other side of the vast olive-groves, the magnificent temple of Eleusis, with its heart of mystery, towered in its peerless majesty, and the restless waves of Salamis lapped the shore at its side. This world of beauty was young then and fresh, with no age-old tragedies to sadden the brilliant crowd that wound in dazzling array through the forest of columns and statues. The flower of Athens was there—brave, handsome, and clever men, poets, artists, and philosophers, warriors on prancing horses, beautiful women and laughing children. If the uncaged maidens were tempted to flirt a little with their soft, dark eyes, who can blame them? They were young and human, companionship was sweet, and they too had tender hearts, though small account was made of them.
But the day ends. The sacred Athena is resplendent in her new robe. The gay crowd moves back past the exquisite little Ionic temple of Victory and down the massive steps into the agora, where life goes on as before. Men throng the porticos and talk of the new play of Sophocles, or the last statue of Phidias, or the prospects of war, or any of the thousand and one things that come uppermost in the affairs of a great city. When the shadows fall and the stars come out bright and shining in that crystal air, they gather at banquets or symposia, where flute-players and dancing-girls are brought in to amuse them, or some Lais or Phryne of the hour enthralls them by her beauty and dazzles them with her wit. But the wives and daughters of these men, who do not see fit to educate them for companions, go back to their lonely homes and to an isolation from all social and intellectual interests as deep as if they were asleep in the sculptured tombs of the Via Sacra.
The women of Athens fulfilled their duties with becoming modesty, so far as we know. They were respectably ignorant, and did not encroach upon the time-honored privileges of men. It is true that Elpinice, the sister of Cimon, was a trifle strong-minded, and, taking the Spartan women as models, went about alone; but we do not hear that she had any following. Unpleasant things were said about her, which we are safe in doubting, as unpleasant things have always been said of women who presumed to have opinions of their own, or to walk outside of the straight line of tradition. At all events, a rich Athenian fell in love with her, and was glad to take her without a dowry and pay the fine of her distinguished father. But it is certain that no appreciable number of Attic ladies were disposed to incur the odium of public opinion so distinctly expressed in these words:
Good women must abide within the house;
Those whom we meet abroad are nothing worth.
Why in the face of such reverent submission were they so contemptuously spoken of? We are often told to-day that women cannot expect any privileges when they want rights. It may be pertinent to ask, in the name of consistency, why they had no privileges when they sat humbly at the feet of their husbands and demanded no rights?
But it was among these women that the great dramatists lived and created the masterpieces of the world. It may be that they saw and felt the cheerless side of so fettered a life, and that is why they painted their heroines in such somber colors, too often innocent victims of men’s misdeeds, and doomed to suffering with the sad inevitability of fate. But the noble character and fine intelligence given to so many of them must have had some counterpart in reality. Did the city that produced Antigone, Iphigenia, and Alcestis, have no great women, or did their creators look elsewhere for the moral dignity that made them possible? And where were the models found? Not, surely, among the hetæræ whose power, whatever it may have been, was not a moral one. Not even among the goddesses, who were notoriously vain, selfish, crafty, and cruel. We know that a thousand untold tales of virtue and heroism are hidden behind closed doors, and we may well believe they were not without precedent among these apparently colorless and pent-up lives.
Then it is easy perhaps to err in assuming that there were no women who rose above hard conditions into a degree of companionship with their husbands. It is true they had no education and were excluded from the society of men who had it, but it is impossible to suppose that the women of so brilliant a race were utterly without the clear perception and flexible intelligence which made its men so famous. Nor can we infer invariable misery. There have been good men in all ages who loved their families, and women whose light could not be extinguished. The great Cimon is said to have had an ardent affection for his wife, and he was inconsolable after her death, though he did not curb his wandering fancies while she lived. Socrates mentions Niceratus as “one who was in love with his wife and loved by her.” There is a familiar anecdote of Themistocles that puts him in a pleasant light. He said in a laughing way that his little son was greater than any man in Greece, “for the Athenians command the Greeks, I command the Athenians, his mother commands me, and he commands his mother.” If reports be true, however, the influence of his wife was largely theoretical, as it did not suffice to keep him from doing some very disreputable things. But he wished a worthy man for his daughter, rather than a rich one, saying he “would prefer a man without money to money without a man.” Aristotle is not quoted among the champions of women, but he tenderly loved his own wife, whom he married in spite of the reverses which had ruined her family. Her life was brief, but he left orders that when he died her remains should be transferred to the tomb which held his own, according to her last request. This was done long years after her death, though he had another wife whose virtues he commends, asking his friends to give her kind attention and provide her with a suitable husband if she wishes to marry again. These instances among well-known men are worthy of note, and others might be cited. But the exceptions prove the rule, and the very fact that it was a matter of comment when a man was in love with his wife shows that it was rare.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the great Athenians were without the sympathy and influence of educated women; indeed, it may be safely said that no great things in art or literature have ever been done without this inspiration. The ignorance of the Attic woman had its natural protest, though it did not come from an orthodox source. Respectability was on the side of servitude. It had a dull time, but it was decorous, and consoled itself, as it has often done since, with the reflection that dullness was its natural lot. No doubt it took pride in its nothingness, and looked with haughty disdain upon the clever foreign women who were free to do as they chose. Fashion is imperious, not to say cruel, and even the Chinese lady hobbles along on her distorted feet with a happy consciousness of distinction that amply repays her for all her suffering.
But social conventions had small weight with the foreign hetæræ or companions, who had no legal rights, and no caste to lose. The real power of women was in their hands. They were intelligent, often gifted, and the better class had refined and graceful manners, which the Athenian wives evidently had not. It was said of them that they were delicate at table, and not like the native women, who “stuffed their cheeks, and tore off the meat.” They were also noted for wit and esprit, a quality of volatilized intellect that has always had great social charm. These advanced women of the day, who cast into the shade their illiterate sisters, monopolized both attention and honors. Men praised the good women who stayed at home and looked after their families, but sought the society of clever ones who did neither of these fine things. With curious inconsistency, they found the culture which was reprehensible and out of the proper order of nature in their wives and daughters so charming in other women as to merit the highest distinction. Poets sang of them, artists immortalized them, statesmen and philosophers paid court to them.
’T is not for nothing that where’er we go
We find a temple of hetæræ there,
But nowhere one to any wedded wife,
says the poet.
Unfortunately, talent and the virtues did not always go together, and it is impossible, at this distance, to determine with any certainty who were good and who were not. In the conservative circles of Athens, intelligence itself was a vice in women, and put them under a ban. They might pray to Athena, and offer incense to her, and embroider her robes, but it would not do to take this personification of wisdom and knowledge for a model; indeed, it is not quite clear why so dangerous a representative of the sex that was thought to have no intellect worth considering should have been chosen to preside over all the Attic divinities. There was a time, according to Varro, when it had been customary for women to take part with men in public councils. In the early ages they voted to name Athens after Athena, outvoting the men by one. Poseidon was angry, and the sea overflowed. To appease the god, the citizens imposed a punishment on their wives. They were to lose their votes, the children were to receive no more their mother’s name, and they were no longer called Athenians. Perhaps this is why they were relegated forever after to ignorance and obscurity. Athena, however, retained her power, and men still worshiped the gray-eyed goddess in the abstract, as their fathers had done, doubtless quite content that the superfluous wisdom of woman should be given a pedestal so high and remote that it was not likely to cause serious inconvenience in family relations. But their personal devotion was largely reserved for Aphrodite, who was more beautiful and facile, if not so wise, and still less fit to be held up as a worthy example for her sex. The race had not greatly changed since its men went to their death for the “divine Helen,” and thought the world well lost for a sight of her radiant beauty.
The witty Phryne, whose exquisite face and form was made immortal by Apelles and Praxiteles, was given a statue of gold between two kings at Delphi. In the cypress-grove at Corinth there was a monument to the beautiful Lais, who had enriched the city with fine architecture. Lamia built a splendid portico for the people of Sicyon, and a temple at Athens was consecrated to her under the name of Aphrodite. One of the most striking and costly monuments in Greece was also erected there to Pythionice. The wit and fascination of Glycera brought her the honors due to a queen. Some of her letters to Menander were preserved, and they were said to show not only a tender and delicate sentiment, but a fine intellectual sympathy with her poet lover. No doubt the tributes offered to the notoriously dissolute women were largely the expression of a beauty-loving people who cherished “art for art’s sake.”
But there were other women with serious gifts of a high order, who were far less likely to be honored with temples and statues. Leontium, the disciple and favorite of Epicurus, wrote a treatise against Theophrastus that was quoted by Cicero as a model of style. She had a thoughtful face, and was painted in a meditative attitude by Theodorus. It matters little whether Diotima was Arcadian priestess or philosopher; she was the friend of Socrates, the counselor of the wisest and subtlest of men. It was her high and spiritual conception of love that he quoted at the famous symposium of Plato, raising the conversation from a curious blending of unholy passion and metaphysical subtlety to a region of light. Famous among the disciples of Pythagoras was Perictione, who attracted the attention of Aristotle by writing on such grave subjects as “Wisdom” and “The Harmony of Woman.” She was duly conservative, and accepted the passive position of her sex, dwelling on their need of a forbearing spirit. Possibly this amiable attitude accounts in part for the kind consideration of the philosopher. More advanced and less popular was Hipparchia, the wife of Crates, an eminent Cynic, who called the statue of Phryne “a votive offering of the profligacy of Greece.” She recognized virtue as the supreme end of life, but contended that “virtue is the same in a man as in a woman.” To Theodorus she said: “What Theodorus is not wrong in doing, the same thing Hipparchia ought not to be wrong in doing.” That she was severely attacked goes without saying. Such sentiments were subversive of the inalienable rights of man, in the code of the classic world. It was easier and more agreeable to discredit the woman than to raise their own standards. Themista, the wife of Leon, was a philosopher, corresponded with Epicurus, and was called by Cicero “a sort of female Solon.” Lastheneia was a pupil of Plato, and went so far as to disguise herself in a man’s robes in order to hear him discourse at the Academy.
Perhaps it is unfair to group these women together. They were of different shades, and not all contemporary. Some of them were Athenians. Of most of them we have no knowledge except such as may be gathered from a few passing words in connection with famous men, and even this is involved in doubt and contradiction. What were the attractions of Archaianassa, to whom Plato wrote sonnets, or did she ever exist outside of the realm of dreams?
For dear to me Theoris is,
says Sophocles. Did he find in her the talent that inspired his own? And what was the secret of Archippa’s influence, that he should have left her his fortune? Or is she, too, a myth? Nor can we divine the gifts that drew the eloquent Isocrates to Metaneira.
How far the honor accorded to so many of the hetæræ was due to their talents and how far to their personal fascination, it is difficult to say. In many cases, beauty was their chief distinction. Some are known to have been fair and frail; others were apparently of good character as well as brilliant intellect. A poet of the time speaks of one as
Pure and on virtue’s strictest model formed.
It would not be quite safe, however, to measure them by our standards. We may go to the Greeks for art and literature, but not for morals. Things that we consider criminal, they looked upon as quite natural and innocent. No doubt, too, many things which we consider so harmless as to pass unnoted would have been censured by them as violations of all laws of decorum.
There was one woman, however, whose individuality was too strong to be altogether merged into that of the man with whom her name is associated. Aspasia stands supreme, after Sappho, as the most brilliant and lettered woman of classic times. The center of a circle so luminous that the ages have not greatly dimmed its radiance, she is likely to live as long as the world cherishes the memory of its greatest men. She was the prototype of the charming and intellectual women who made the literary courts of the Renaissance so famous two thousand years afterward; also of the more familiar ones who shone as leaders of the powerful salons of France a century or two later. Even to-day the aspiring woman who dreams of reviving the social triumphs of her sex recalls the golden days of Athens and wonders what magic drew so many of the great poets, statesmen, and philosophers of the world from the groves of the Academy, the colonnades of the Lyceum, the porticos, and the gymnasia, to pour their treasures of wit and thought at the feet of the fair Ionian. She may remember, too, that this fascinating woman was not only the high priestess who presided at the birth of society as we know it, but was also the first to assert the right of the wife to be educated, that she might live as the peer and companion of her husband, not as his slave.
Little is known of the facts of her life. She was the first woman who came from Miletus, the pleasure-loving city of roses, and song, and beautiful maidens. Why or how she left her home we are not told, but there is a vague tradition that her parents were dead and that she went away with the famous Thargelia, whose vigorous intellect, together with her wit and beauty, made her a political power in Thessaly and the wife of one of its kings during the Persian wars, though her personality is the faintest of shadows to-day. It is supposed that Aspasia was young, scarcely more than twenty, when she came to Athens, possibly to live with a relative; but this is only a surmise. As a foreigner, whatever her rank, she was outside the pale of good society. The high-born Athenian women looked askance at her, were jealous of her, and said wicked things about her. To be sure, the all-powerful Pericles took her to his home and called her his wife, but she was not a citizen like themselves, and could not lawfully bear his name.
The relation, however, left-handed though it may have been, was a recognized and permanent one, not less regular perhaps than the morganatic marriages of royal princes to-day, which make a woman a pure and legal wife but never a queen. So rare was the devotion of the grave statesman that it was thought worthy of record, and it was a matter of gossip that he kissed Aspasia when he went out and when he came in—clearly a startling innovation among Athenian husbands. Still more astonishing was the fact that he listened to her counsel and talked with her on State affairs, which, according to their traditions, no reputable woman ought to know anything about. Plutarch tells us that some went so far as to say that he paid court to her on account of her wisdom and political sagacity. Socrates confesses his own indebtedness to her in the use of language, and says that she made many great orators. He thinks it no wonder that Pericles can speak, as he has so excellent a mistress in the art of rhetoric, one who could even write his speeches. He was himself so pleased with a funeral oration she had spoken in his presence, partly from previous thought and partly from the inspiration of the moment, that he learned it by heart. A friend to whom he repeated it was amazed that a woman could compose such a speech, and Socrates added that he might recall many more if he would not tell. This special address was such a masterpiece of wisdom and eloquence that Pericles was asked to give it every year. As he was quite able to write his own, there was no room for jealousy, even if Aspasia sometimes found in the same field a happy outlet for her fine talent and living enthusiasm.
All this points to a strong probability that the gifted Milesian came to Athens to teach rhetoric and other arts of which she was mistress, as a Frenchwoman might seek her fortune in our own country to-day. But she had not the same immunity from criticism, as the very fact of her talents, and her ability to utilize them, sufficed to put her under a cloud. This, too, might account for the wicked things Aristophanes said of her, but we cannot imagine that Socrates would have advised his friends to send their sons to her for training had they been true. He knew her well, had profited by her instructions, and no one will charge him with gallantry or the disposition to give undue praise. He was essentially a truth-seeker. It is a matter of note, too, that the philosophers had only pleasant words for Aspasia. Her detractors were the satirists and comic poets; but who ever went to either for justice or truth? She was clear-sighted, penetrating, and versed not only in letters but in civil affairs, so it was easy enough to say that she was the power behind the throne in the Samian and Peloponnesian wars. It is certain, however, that Pericles was too wise a statesman to be led into a war by any one against his judgment. It is quite likely that she had young girls in her house who came to be instructed in the refinements and amenities of life, as poetic maidens had flocked to Sappho from all the isles of the sea a century or so before. This again was a fruitful source of calumny and satire. But it is impossible to read the Attic comedians without a conviction that they measured every one by their own moral standards, which were of the lowest and coarsest. A woman who could discuss philosophy with Socrates and Anaxagoras, art with Phidias, poetry with Sophocles and Euripides, politics and history with Thucydides, if occasion offered, and affairs of the gay world with the young Alcibiades, was not likely to escape the tongue of scandal among people who numbered the silent subjection of women among their most sacred traditions.
Of the beauty of Aspasia we are not sure. We hear of her “honey-colored” or golden hair, of her “small, high-arched foot,” of her “silvery voice”; but no one of her time has told us that she was beautiful. There is a bust on which her name is inscribed, but it gives us no clue to
