· Homeric and Spartan Types Compared ·
· Training of the Spartan Woman ·
· Her Education Superior to that of Men ·
· Her Executive Talent ·
· Her Heroism ·
· Agesistrata Cratesiclea Chelonis ·
· The Puritans of the Classic World ·
The strength and vigor of the Homeric types reappear in the Spartan woman, but without their sweetness and charm. Was this charm the subtle touch of the poet’s imagination, or was it due in part to the setting that brought into relief their most lovable qualities? Their central point of character was a domestic one, and round this clustered all the gentler virtues. The central trait of the Spartan woman was patriotism, and to this even the tenderest affections were subordinate. The colder light of history shows them in outlines that are hard and stern. The fine symmetry of an ideal womanhood was lost in the excess of a single virtue that overshadowed all the others. Some one tells a mother who is waiting for tidings of a battle that her five sons have perished. “You contemptible slave,” she replies, “that is not what I wish to know. How fares my country?” On learning that it was victorious, she says, “Willingly then do I hear of the death of my sons.” “A glorious fate!” exclaims another, to a friend who offered her sympathy for the loss of her boy in war. “Did I not bear him that he might die for Sparta?” Here lay the first and last duty of these women. Natural affection, private interest, inclination, everything we deem sacred, even to life, was at the bidding of the State, which strangled itself and its citizens with petty tyrannies in the name of liberty. They were dedicated to the State, ordered to rear men for the State, sacrificed to the State. This destiny they accepted without a murmur, finding in it their glory and their pride.
Even as children the Spartan women caught the spirit of civic devotion, which was to be the dominant one in their lives. An anecdote in point is told of the little Gorgo, who was afterward the wife of the brave Leonidas. When a child of eight years, she happened to be in the room one day while a messenger was trying to bribe her father to aid the Persians. He offered ten talents at first, and gradually raised the sum until the child, suspecting danger, said: “Go away, father; this stranger will corrupt you.” It is pleasant to record that her advice was laughingly taken. When she was grown to womanhood, she rendered great service to her country, and proved her own sagacity, by finding a message of vital concern so concealed in a wax tablet that no one had suspected it. “You Lacedæmonians are the only women in the world to rule men,” said a foreigner to her. “We are the only women who bring forth men,” was the ready reply. When her distinguished husband went away to his last battle, with forebodings of his fate, he could find no better parting words than these: “Marry nobly and bear brave sons.” We might regard the consolation as questionable, but it shows the inexorable tyranny of a single idea.
It was from Sparta that the beautiful Helen sailed away on that fateful day which changed the face of the primitive world, and the tradition of her loveliness was not lost. The Spartan women were still noted for beauty of a healthy, vigorous, luxuriant sort, but it seems to have lacked the distinctly feminine and magical quality that raised Helen to the ranks of the goddesses. They were of firmer mold and less sensuous type. Aphrodite fared badly among the sturdy people in the valley of the Eurotas. She had but one temple, and even there she sat armed with a sword and veiled, with ignominious fetters on her feet. Artemis, active, fleet of foot, and strong, held the place of honor. Delicacy and tenderness were marks of inferiority which Spartan training tended to efface. These brave, decided, clear-headed, and efficient women had abundant heroism, but little of the warm, sympathetic temperament which we call womanly and they called weak. This goes far to prove that, within certain limits, the accepted standard of what is womanly, and what is not, depends largely upon custom, or fashion, or expediency, and suggests some unpleasant possibilities if the race of women should be fully educated to the hard uses and material ideals of a purely industrial or commercial life, as outlined in the brains of many modern social reformers. Such uses may be a present necessity rather than a choice, but whether the gain in strength and independence will compensate for the inevitable loss of many gentler qualities is one of the problems for the future to solve. In any case, the old theory of a divine law that has fixed the nature as well as the status of women in the economy of creation, is likely to be seriously disturbed, as it was in the Sparta of old. In the martial chorus that called itself the song of liberty, the musical, love-inspired voices of women were lost. It celebrated the apotheosis of force, which has always been fatal to the finer and more spiritual gifts of the less militant sex. But for once it served them indirectly a good turn, in spite of certain hardening effects upon the character and manners. This is quite evident when we compare the Doric woman with the secluded Athenian of softer ways but with no outlet for her intelligence, and apparently no influence.
Fortunately the supreme aim of the founders of Sparta was one which they were wise enough to know could not be attained without a larger freedom and development for women. It was a one-sided training that was given them, and the freedom was not altogether satisfactory from our point of view, if indeed we should call it freedom at all. But as an important factor in the State they were duly honored. It was an accepted theory that brave and vigorous men must spring from brave and vigorous women, so the aim of all their discipline was to make strong and healthy mothers. No delicate girl was allowed to marry, for the same reason that no sickly child was allowed to live. To insure the vitality of the race and the consequent glory of the State, girls were trained with boys in athletic exercises. They ran, wrestled, and boxed with them in public,—sometimes with no veil but their modesty,—danced with them at festivals, and marched freely with them in religious processions. All this naturally gave them masculine manners, and inevitably led to a spirit of independence and a virile character. The more refined Athenians criticized them and looked upon them much as the conventional Parisian of to-day, who will not send a daughter across the street without a chaperon, looks upon the irrepressible American girl of the frontier. Contrary also to the usual fashion, it was the maidens who had the privilege of living in the public view. They did not even veil their faces, as the married women did.
With all their mannish tendencies, the Spartan women are said to have been noted for purity of character. It is safe perhaps to take with a degree of reservation the assertion that immorality according to their standards was practically unknown. We might at least justly find fault with the standards, and object to the material view taken of relations which we are in the habit of investing with a delicate halo of romance. It was an affair of the State, however, rather than of the individual, and it is a nice point to decide as to the morality of women who accepted from necessity certain prescribed modes of living in which they had no choice. So peculiar were the general notions of decorum that it was considered disgraceful for a bridegroom to be seen in the company of his wife; yet he could exchange her at will or at the command of the rulers, and jealousy was laughed at as a “vain and womanish passion.” But it was the pride of the Spartans that no invasion of the sanctity of the home was ever heard of! They excused themselves for what we should call moral delinquencies of the worst sort—if indeed they thought any excuse needed, which is not probable—by the convenient maxim that the end justifies the means. The interests of the State were above any moral law whatever. No doubt the arbitrary manner in which women were often disposed of for the public good, or at the caprice of their lords, seemed to them a better sort of fate than living in seclusion, as their Attic sisters did, under the roof of a man who gave them no liberty, and no society, not even his own. They certainly were not troubled with an excess of sentiment; but marriages were, on the whole, happy, and love was often a factor in them, which was rarely the case among their more civilized neighbors. It was not in the nature of these practical people to look at things from an esthetic point of view. Their notions were confessedly utilitarian. To-day we should call many of them scientific. Happily, modern science has not yet meddled quite so far with the rights of the individual, though clearly headed in that direction.
If the Spartan woman did not relish such cavalier treatment, she had the small comfort of knowing that men were not free themselves, and that really, on the whole, she had the best of it. “The door of his court is the boundary of every man’s freedom,” was a Lacedæmonian maxim. Outside of it, all of his movements were controlled by the State. In this paradise of socialism, he was punished for not marrying, for waiting too long, and for marrying the wrong woman, that is, one who was too old, or too young, or too rich, or too far above or below him in station. Archidamus, one of their rulers, was fined for marrying a little woman, because she would “bring them a race of pygmies instead of kings.” There were special penalties for those who sought money instead of merit and suitability. The fortune-hunter fared badly in Sparta. We have grown civilized and changed all that. A man suffered his penalty for remaining single, even if he were a coward whom no one was permitted to marry, which seems doubly hard. The poor bachelors who would not or could not take a wife, were stripped and marched in a procession about the market-place on a cold day once a year, as a fit target for ridicule and contempt, not to say more tangible missiles. If any woman had a private grudge, she might vent it with impunity, even to blows, while the unfortunate victim was forced to chant his own miserere. Maiden ladies of mature age were rare among the hills of Lacedæmon.
Notwithstanding the low ideals which would seem to have reduced the women of Sparta to the position of useful animals, valued solely for their physical vigor and fitness to be mothers of a hardy race, they evidently constituted a leisure class which had a monopoly of whatever learning and refinement were to be found there. They lived in such comfort as they could command, while their husbands slept on cold beds of reeds, dined on black bread and coarse rations at the public table, and practised every form of asceticism to fit themselves for war. Their sons were taken from them at seven, to be put under the training of men and subjected to the same stern discipline. The spinning, weaving, and other work of the family was given to slaves, so that the privileges of luxury and idleness fell to the women alone. They came and went as they chose, and were even thought to have intellects worth cultivating. Men looked upon literary and artistic pursuits as effeminate. A Spartan king replied to some one who brought to his notice the greatest musician of his time, by pointing to his cook as the best maker of black broth. This social Utopia in which the individual was lost in the mass, and no one could safely be superior to his neighbor, was the blessed haven of mediocrity and what we should call indolence. War was the only honorable business; even trade and the mechanic arts were left to slaves. A Spartan visiting Athens was much disturbed on hearing that a man had been fined for idleness, and naïvely asked to see one who was punished for keeping up his dignity. Life was materialized, and all fine ideals were destroyed save the single one of national glory, for which they willingly stifled personal feeling and personal talent. Things of the intellect and spirit were quite ignored.
But the Doric women had to some extent the tastes of the Æolians, and were as a rule far better educated than their husbands. We hear of clubs or associations of women for the cultivation of the mind, and for teaching girls after the fashion of the time. In music they excelled. Aristophanes introduces in “Lysistrata” choruses of Spartan and Athenian maidens who sing in friendly rivalry. Many of the parthenia, or processional hymns, were written by foreign poets for these young girls, whose spiritual aspirations found vent in that way. They did not give voice to personal emotions, but to great religious or patriotic enthusiasms.
Whatever education may have been given to women, it is not likely that their intellectual standards were very broad or very high; at least, we have no visible evidence of it, as we find no living trace of their talents for some centuries after the brief poetic flowering that followed Sappho, and even then not in Sparta. It was among the Dorians of a later time, and mainly in the colonies, that the feminine taste for literature revived, but it took a didactic or philosophical form, and they wrote in prose.
The talent of the Spartan women was largely executive, and they were noted for judgment, as well as for heroism. As nurses they were in great demand in other parts of Greece. A strong proof of their gifts of administration is found in the fact that they had equal rights of inheritance with men, and came in time to own two fifths of the land and a large share of the personal property. This gave them a dignity and influence not accorded to their sex elsewhere. Aristotle did not like their freedom and power. He claimed that they ruled their husbands too imperiously; also, that they were liable to be troublesome in times of war, as it was impossible to bring them under military discipline. If they ruled the rulers, he thought that the results would be the same as if they ruled in their own right. Plutarch tells us that “the Spartans listened to their wives, and women were permitted to meddle more with public business than men with the domestic.” Again he says that “women considered themselves absolute mistresses in their houses; indeed, they wanted a share in affairs of State, and delivered their opinions with great freedom concerning the most weighty matters.” But freedom is relative, and a little of it goes a great way where there has been, as a rule, none at all. It does not seem that any fears on this subject were realized, as their influence, so far as we know, was conservative, and they were subordinate in theory if not always in fact. “When I was a girl I was taught to obey my father, and I obeyed him,” said a woman, when asked to do something of doubtful propriety; “and when I became a wife I obeyed my husband; if you have anything just to urge, make it known to him first.” A clever if not very chivalrous writer of the time says: “It becomes a man to talk much, and a woman to rejoice in all she hears”—a comfortable arrangement for dull husbands, who would be sure at least of an appreciative audience at home.
But we find instances of heroic devotion among these hardy women, for which we look in vain among the ignorant and secluded wives of Athens. It is a pity that Plutarch did not give some of them a distinct place in his gallery of celebrities. He had a superior wife himself, a well-bred woman of dignity, tenderness, great mental vigor, simple taste, and distinguished virtues, who was above the vanities of her time, and bore sorrow like a philosopher. He loved her devotedly, praised her fortitude, and admired her strength. This perhaps accounts for the fact that he was kindly disposed toward women in general, and thought that their fame should be known, since love of glory was not confined to one sex. But if he did not set them on a pinnacle of their own, he has shown us by various anecdotes that they could counsel like seers and die like heroes. In the decline of Sparta, when Agis planned to restore the old simplicity it had lost with the coming of luxury and foreign ways, he asked the aid of his mother, the brave Agesistrata, a woman of great wealth and influence. She thought the division of property he proposed neither wise nor practicable, and advised him against it. But when she found his heart set upon it as a means of winning glory, as well as bringing back the people to virtue and simpler manners, she consented not only to give up her own great fortune, but to induce others to join her. As the wealth of Sparta was largely in the hands of women who were less disinterested and did not care to lose either their luxuries or their power, this socialistic movement failed, and its self-sacrificing leaders were put to death. When Agesistrata was led into the prison to see her son, he lay strangled before her. She tenderly placed her own dead mother by his side, and baring her neck with calm dignity, said: “May this prove for the good of Sparta.”
In the second attempt to restore the prestige of the falling State, Cratesiclea rivals the great heroines of the dramatists in her noble self-surrender. Ptolemy demanded, as the price of his alliance, that Cleomenes should send his mother and son to Egypt as hostages. When she heard of it she smilingly said: “Was this the thing you have so long hesitated to tell me? Send this body of mine at once where it will be of the most use to Sparta, before age renders it good for nothing.” She went without tears, saying that no one must see them weep. Finding afterward that the king was hampered by the fear that some ill might befall them, she sent him word to do what was best, and never mind what became of an old woman and a little child. This enterprise, too, was a futile one, but the women who had inspired men with their own courage and devotion died as bravely as they had lived. It is a touching scene where the young and beautiful wife of Panteus pays the last offices to her dead friends, then, folding her robe modestly about her, tranquilly tells the executioner to do his work.
“In women too there lives the strength of battle,” says Sophocles, and nowhere could he have found such heroic examples as among the rugged hills of Sparta. Out of such material, Antigones and Iphigenias are created.
Beneath a discipline of the affections so severe that it seems as if they must have been crushed altogether, we sometimes fall upon unsuspected depths of tenderness. Chelonis left her husband in his day of power, to care for her father, who had been deposed and was in disgrace and need. When the political tables were turned, and her father was again on the throne, she pleaded with eloquence and tears for her husband’s life. Her wise and tactful words saved him, but he was exiled. She was urged by her family to stay and enjoy the fruits of their victory, but, turning sorrowfully away, she took her children, kissed the altar where they had found a sanctuary, and went out with her disgraced husband to poverty and obscurity.
We cannot measure these Spartan women by the standards of to-day. They did not belong to the age of university courses, society functions, and Christian ideals. Love as we understand it played a small part in their lives, and of romance there is little trace, though examples of conjugal affection are not rare. Of what we call learning they probably had very little, and of esthetic taste still less, but of clear judgment, solid character, and fearless courage, they had a great deal. They were trained as companions and helpers of men, not as their toys, though they were always subject to them. It was a simple life they led—a life with few graces and few of our complexities. They were the Puritans of the classic world, without the Puritan conscience or moral sense, but with more than Puritan courage and fortitude.
