evidence is lacking, incidental touches and sidelights on the Woman
Question point unerringly to the one great woman of ancient Athens as
the originator of the first movement for the emancipation of woman
recorded in history.
As Aspasia, through her intercourse with the great, had attained
unbounded influence in the State, and as her circle was the exponent of
the ideas which offended the conventional spirit, it was natural that
she should be involved in the storm of criticism that befell the leaders
of thought. As a woman who had stepped out of the beaten track of
womanhood, she was made the subject of the coarsest slanders. She was
called the Hera to this Zeus, Pericles, the Omphale, the Deianira of the
Heracles of the day; her girl friends and pupils, who enjoyed the same
liberty she claimed for herself, were most violently defamed; she was
said to have induced, for the basest of reasons, Pericles to bring on
the Peloponnesian and Samian wars. The comic poets, as the chief organs
of the opposition, engaged in this most merciless and unjust tirade
against the party of the philosophers. None of their charges, however,
can be said to have had any basis in fact, and all may easily be
accounted for when the envy and hatred of the ignorant toward the
beautiful and accomplished and independent woman is taken into
consideration. In the Athens of the fifth century before our era, when
people were just beginning to break away from the narrow conservatism
of centuries, a woman who enjoyed an unheard-of degree of liberty, and
because of her talents was regarded with admiration by the greatest men
of the city, might well be the target for the grossest abuse. A vicious
woman would be the last to undertake, as did Aspasia, the study of
philosophy, which, with Socrates, was the study of virtue.
The party of the philosophers suffered for their opinions, Phidias was
accused of theft, and died in prison; Anaxagoras, to escape the charges
against him, went into voluntary exile; and Aspasia was brought to trial
on a charge of impiety, which merely meant that she, as others of her
circle, set at naught the polytheism of the multitude, and recognized
but one creative mind in the government of the universe, an accusation
under which Socrates later suffered martyrdom. She was brought before
the judges, and Pericles pleaded her cause. Plutarch says that he
pleaded with tears; and as the people could not resist the emotion of
their great leader, she was acquitted.
Perides's last days were passed in the gloom of the outbreak of the
Peloponnesian War, of the plague that depopulated the city, and of the
discontent of his beloved people. No brilliant sun ever had a more
gloomy setting. Yet in his last moments his thoughts were of the two
beloved objects that had absorbed his tenderest affections. "Athens has
intrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," Pericles said,
when dying; and there could be no stronger testimony to the purity of
Aspasia's character, to the influence of her life on his, to the role
she had played in that Golden Age of Athens.
Athens and Aspasia--these were linked in the thoughts of the dying
statesman; and as he made the one great, so he made the other immortal.
Had his life not been blessed with union with hers, had his temperament
not been sweetened by her companionship, had his policy not been moulded
partly by her counsel and her wisdom, had his taste not been made so
subtle and refined by communion with her artistic temperament, Athens
would not have been embellished by the works of art which have made that
city the unapproachable ruler in the domain of the spirit. Woman's
influence, where it has counted most, has always been a silent one, and
has worked through man. Is not Aspasia worthy of the laurel wreath for
the results of her life on "the city of the violet crown"?
X
APHRODITE PANDEMUS
For the proper understanding of the status of woman among the Greeks of
ancient times, it becomes necessary for the historian of Greek womanhood
to call attention to a conspicuous social phenomenon pervading the life
of all the nations of antiquity, but nowhere else so marked a feature of
the higher life as in the lands of Hellas--a phenomenon bringing about
social conditions that divided the female population of Greece into two
sharply distinguished classes: the citizen-woman and the courtesan or
mistress.
This notable aspect of Greek life is due to the fact that the ancient
Hellene, as a rule, sought recreation and pleasure, not at the domestic
hearth, but in the society of clever women, who had not only cultivated
their physical charms, but had also trained their intellects and
sensibilities so as to become _virtuosi_ in all the arts of pleasure.
Their pleasing forms of intercourse, their light and vivacious
conversation, lent to association with them a peculiar seductiveness and
fascination.
To designate this class of women in a manner which would distinguish
them from the citizen-women on the one hand and the debased prostitute
on the other, they were euphemistically called
"hetaerae," or companions.
The term _hetaerae_ had been originally a most honorable one, and Sappho
had used it, in the highest and best sense, of her girl friends as
implying companions of like rank and interests. It is not known when it
was first used with sinister suggestion, but, like our word _mistress_,
it fell from its honorable estate and became the usual term to describe
these women of pleasure.
The causes of the extent of hetairism among the Greeks are to be found
in their religious conceptions, their political institutions, and the
innate sensualism of the Greek peoples.
The Greeks were worshippers of the productive forces of nature as
manifested in animal and plant life. Aphrodite is the female and
Dionysius the male personification of the generative principles, and in
consequence the religious ceremonials of these two deities assumed at
times a most licentious aspect. In course of time, a distinction arose
in the conception of Aphrodite, expressed by the surname applied to her.
Thus Aphrodite Urania came to be generally regarded as the goddess of
the highest love, especially of wedded love and fruitfulness, in
contrast to Aphrodite Pandemus, the goddess of sensual lust and the
patron deity of courtesans.
We could hardly expect high moral ideas in regard to sexual relations
among the Greeks, whose deities were so lax. Zeus himself was given to
illicit intercourse with mortal maidens and was continually arousing the
jealousy of his prudent wife, the Lady Hera. Aphrodite was not faithful
to her liege lord, Hephaestus, but was given to escapades with the
warlike Ares. Apollo had his mortal loves, and Hades abducted the
beautiful Proserpina. A people who from their childhood were taught such
stories could hardly be expected to be more moral than their deities.
As has been shown in a previous chapter, the Greek conception of the
city-state lay at the basis of laws and customs which repressed the
citizen-woman and prevented proper attention to her education and to
the full and well-rounded cultivation of womanly graces.
The State
hedged itself about with the most rigid safeguards to preserve the
purity of the citizen blood. Stringent laws were passed prohibiting any
citizen-man from marrying a stranger-woman, or any stranger-man from
marrying a citizen-woman. To enforce these laws, it was necessary to
keep the wives and daughters of the State within the narrow bounds of
the gynaeceum; and they were forbidden a knowledge of public affairs,
which would make them more interesting to men. Hence the limitations of
their culture made it impossible for them to be in every sense the
companions of their husbands. But it is not natural for men to be
deprived of the sympathy and inspiration that is found in association
with cultivated women; hence there was, especially in Athens, a peculiar
sphere for the cultivated hetaera. The men of the city recognized the
need of feminine society in their recreations, in their political life,
and on military expeditions. The hetaera entered this sphere, from which
the citizen-woman was excluded.
A further reason for the predominance of hetairism is seen in the
artistic impulses of the Greek people. These courtesans made an art of
the life of pleasure. Cultivating every feminine grace, carefully
attentive to all the little niceties of social intercourse, studying in
every way how to be agreeable to the men, adepts in conversation,
devotees of the Muses and the Graces, they knew how to make their
relations with men answer to all the impulses of a beauty-loving people.
And as the Greeks found aesthetic satisfaction in their masterpieces of
prose and poetry, in their works of architecture and sculpture and
painting, so they found it in their association with the hetaerae.
Owing to such conditions, there arose a most unnatural division of the
admitted functions of woman in the world-order. Says the great orator
Demosthenes: "We take a hetaera for our pleasure, a concubine for daily
attention to our physical wants, a wife to give us legitimate children
and a respected house"--an utterance narrowly defining the status of the
hetaera as contrasted with that of the honorable wife.
The latter was the
housewife and mother, nothing more, though surrounded by all the
dignities and privileges of her high station; the former was the
companion, the comrade in whose society were found recreation and
sympathy and intellectual delight, but she was outside the pale of
society, not respected, yet not altogether despised.
It is difficult to ascertain the beginnings of hetairism among the
Greeks. There is a noteworthy absence of it in the Homeric poems, though
the Greek chieftains frequently had concubines, who were slaves captured
in war.
Allusions in the lyric poets show that as early as the sixth century
before our era the hetaera had made her appearance. The earliest
reference to the social evil in the history of Athens is found in the
administration of the lawgiver Solon, who was the first to legalize
prostitution. With the avowed purpose of forestalling the seduction of
virgins and wives, he bought slave girls in the markets of Asia Minor
and placed them in public houses in Athens. This regulation for the
protection of the home was generally regarded as deserving of praise.
Thus speaks the comic poet Philemon:
"But you did well for every man, O Solon: For they do say you were the first to see The justice of a public-spirited measure, The saviour of the State (and it is fit For me to utter this avowal, Solon);
You, seeing that the State was full of men, Young, and possessed of all the natural appetites, And wandering in their lusts where they'd no business.
Bought women and in certain spots did place them, Common to be and ready for all comers.
They naked stood: look well at them, my youth,--
Do not deceive yourself; aren't you well off?
You're ready, so are they: the door is open--
The price an obol: enter straight--there's No nonsense here, no cheat or trickery; But do just what you like, how you like.
You're off: wish her good-bye; she's no more claim on you."
In the early days antedating the Persian War, before the Athenians had
been corrupted by power and by extensive intercourse with the outside
world, it was regarded as shameful for a married man to associate with a
hetaera. When the husband was guilty of such conduct, the insulted wife
could obtain a decree of separation, which involved the return to the
wife's family of the full dowry, while the enmity of the wife's kindred
was visited upon the unfaithful husband. During the Golden Age of
Pericles, however, Athens departed from her earlier simplicity, and the
increase of wealth and the influx of foreigners swept away the
old-fashioned standards of morality. The influence of Pericles and
Aspasia on smaller minds seems to have been unfortunate.
Reverential
regard for the marriage bond became a thing of the past, and hetairism
became the common practice. Almost all the great men of Athens had
relations with hetaersae; the young men gave themselves up to the life of
pleasure; and with the disruption of family ties began the downfall of
the State.
In Corinth, hetairism was invested with all the sanctity of religion,
and these votaries of pleasure enjoyed a distinction accorded them in no
other Greek city. When Xerxes was advancing against Hellas with his vast
armament, the courtesans of Corinth betook themselves in solemn
procession to the temple of Aphrodite, the patron deity of the city, and
implored her aid for the preservation of the fatherland, dedicating
their services to her in return for a favorable answer to their prayers,
and vowing to reward with their unpurchased embraces the victorious
warriors upon their return. The goddess was supposed to have heard their
petitions, and out of gratitude the Corinthians dedicated to Aphrodite a
painting, in which were represented various hetaerae who had supplicated
the goddess, while beneath were inscribed the following verses of
Simonides:
"These damsels, in behalf of Greece, and all Their gallant countrymen, stood nobly forth, Praying to Venus, the all-powerful goddess; Nor was the queen of beauty willing ever To leave the citadel of Greece to fall Beneath the arrows of the unwarlike Persians."
Private individuals frequently vowed, upon the fortunate issue of some
undertaking, to dedicate to the goddess of love a certain number of
hetaerae. These votaries of Aphrodite were called _hierodulae_, or temple
attendants. Pindar in his immortal verses thus describes them:
"O hospitable damsels, fairest train Of soft Persuasion,--
Ornament of the wealthy Corinth,
Bearing in willing hands the golden drops That from the frankincense distil, and flying To the fair mother of the Loves,
Who dwelleth in the sky,
The lovely Venus,--you do bring to us
Comfort and hope in danger, that we may Hereafter, in the delicate beds of Love, Reap the long-wished-for fruits of joy Lovely and necessary to all mortal men."
Strabo states that there were over a thousand _hierodulae_ in the Corinth
of his day. Because of the enormous number of such damsels and of the
respect which was accorded them, Corinth became the most noted hetaera
city. Here dwelt the wealthiest and most beautiful hetaerae. As the most
important commercial centre of Greece, the city was the abiding place of
wealthy merchants and travellers; these fell victims to the voluptuous
and licentious life of the place, and the vast fortunes accumulated by
the professional courtesans were acquired by the ruin of many a
merchant. The expression "Corinthian maiden" denoted the acme of
voluptuousness, and to "Corinthianize" became synonymous with leading
the most dissolute life.
In other prominent commercial centres of Hellas and of the Greek
colonies hetairism also flourished. Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, had
its demi-monde quarter, and the number of courtesans in Athens and its
harbor town was only surpassed by that of Corinth.
The inland cities were much more moral in this regard.
From Sparta, in
its best days, hetaerae were rigidly excluded. Plutarch records a saying
of the Spartans, that when Aphrodite passed over the Eurotas River she
put off her gewgaws and female ornaments, and for the sake of Lycurgus
armed herself with shield and spear. This _Venus armata_
of the
Spartans, as well as their sturdy morals, forbade the presence of the
seductive strangers in their midst; but Ares was ever susceptible to
Aphrodite, and the Spartan warrior, when located in the voluptuous
Ionian cities, frequently forgot his early training, and fell a victim
to his environment.
There were in Athens, in the fifth and fourth centuries, four classes of
hetaerae, graded according to political standing. The first and lowest
class was that of the public prostitute--slaves bought by the State for
the public houses, which were taxed for the benefit of the city and were
under the supervision of city inspectors. These unfortunate women were
gathered from the slave markets of Samos, Lesbos, Cyprus, and the
Ionian cities, where every year large numbers of wretched human beings,
who had been torn from their homes, usually as a result of war, were
exposed for sale. These included many young girls who had been taken
captive in the sacking of cities or had been stolen from their homes by
the fiends in human form who made it a business to secure maidens of
promising beauty or charm for the bawdy houses of the Greek cities. From
these markets, too, came usually the hetaerae of the second class, who
were likewise slaves, but were the property of panders or procuresses,
who bought girls of tender age and educated them for the sake of the
wealth to be acquired from traffic in lust. Aged and faded hetaerae, who
had passed their lives in gross licentiousness and had finally lost
their hold on the public, especially devoted themselves to this horrible
trade. They owned their own houses, and had in conjunction with them
regular schools or institutes for the training of hetaerae. In these
institutes the girls were trained in physical culture, in music and
dancing, and frequently in all the branches of learning that were
popular at the time. They became experts in all the arts of pleasure,
and were offered every advantage that would make them pleasing to men.
From these institutes often emerged young women who played an important
role in the social and intellectual life of the day, as Leontium,
Gnathaena, Pythionice, and others. The names of certain of these
establishments are preserved, as those of Nicarete, of Bacchis, and of
the Thracian Sinope, who removed her institute from AEgina to Athens.
Girls in such establishments remained at all times in the relation of
slaves, and were compelled always to surrender to the mistresses or the
panders the funds they collected from the sale of their favors. As young
girls they acted as musicians or dancers at the banquets of the men,
and as they developed into womanhood they entered upon their careers as
regular courtesans. Often they were hired out for a considerable time;
or if a good purchaser presented himself, they were sold outright, and
lived as the kept mistress of a single lover. From him they usually
obtained their freedom, in time, either as a mark of favor, or as the
readiest means of ridding himself of a burden when the lover had wearied
of the hetaera's charm.
Slave girls who obtained their freedom belonged to the third and most
numerous hetaera class; they lived on a fully independent footing, and
conducted their business on their own account. This class attached
themselves especially to young and inexperienced men, preferably to
youths who were still under parental control. They frequented the
schools of rhetoricians and philosophers and the studios of artists, and
sought in every way possible to make themselves interesting and
indispensable to men. The _jeunesse doree_ of the day found in
association with these young and beautiful and independent damsels their
especial delight. At the banquets and drinking bouts of the young men,
they were invited to take part; and the gay and frivolous youths would
assemble in numbers at their houses, or take them on pleasure trips in
the suburbs of the city, and would frequently engage in serenades and
torchlight processions in their honor. Such a life was full of pitfalls
for the young men, and they frequently brought down on themselves the
rage of parents for their intercourse with these sirens.
The avarice and
greed of women of this class was such that they led their lovers into
every form of deceit to obtain for them money and presents. To purloin
and sell a mother's jewels and to contract debts in a father's name were
frequent devices to which youths resorted whose parents kept a tight
hold on the purse strings. These heroines of the demi-monde also sought
to draw their lovers away from serious pursuits. Lucian, in his
_Dialogues of Courtesans_, recounts an interesting conversation between
two hetaerae, Chelidonion [Little Swallow] and Drosis
[Dewdrop], about a
youth whom his father had suddenly checked in his wild career and placed
in the hands of a wise and artful tutor, to the end that he might be
drawn away from his wild associations and given instruction in
philosophy.
The fourth and most elevated hetaera class was that of freeborn women,
who were attracted to this calling because of dissatisfaction with the
restraint of home and longing for the ease and independent life which it
seemed to offer. Frequently, the daughters of citizens, through the
poverty or greed of their parents, or their own wilfulness, were driven
to a life of shame. Usually, they changed their names, to bring
forgetfulness of their former standing, and they sought by outward
splendor to make up for the loss of virtue. To us in this day such a
change seems most disgraceful; but to the Greeks it appeared to be in
many instances nothing more serious than a change of patron goddess.
Thus the maiden transferred herself from the protection of one of the
austere virgin goddesses, Artemis and Athena, to that of the gracious
and seductive Paphian goddess; or the widow, who with the death of her
husband had lost her means of subsistence, would renounce Hera, the
goddess of wedded love, for the frivolous and light-minded Aphrodite.
This transfer was usually accompanied with solemn religious ceremonies,
Greek epigrammatists frequently give us a poetical treatment of such
life histories, and we thereby gain glimpses into the woes of many a
feminine heart; thus we have a pathetic genre picture of a maiden, who,
weary of the spindle and the service of Athena, betakes herself to the
patron goddess of the hetaerae and pledges to her for her protection a
tithe of all her earnings in her new calling.
The giving of votive offerings to Aphrodite for successes and rich gains
in their dealings with men was a customary act of
"pious" hetaerae. Toilet
articles which enhance beauty, and costly gifts, such as statues, were
frequently dedicated to the goddess. The hetaerae who followed in the wake
of the Athenian army led by Pericles to Samos built a temple to
Aphrodite from the tithes of their gains. This giving of votive
offerings is frequently the subject of Greek epigrams.
The daughters or widows of citizens constituted but the smaller number
of hetaerae of this class. The larger number were stranger-women, chiefly
from Ionia, who came to Athens, attracted by its prominence in politics
and the arts, that they might play their role on a larger and more
brilliant stage. In the various cities of Asia Minor, there were groups
of freeborn women who had broken away from the conventional bonds and
had devoted themselves to intellectual and artistic pursuits and to the
cultivation of every personal grace and charm. It was natural that they
and others like them from other parts of Hellas should flock to Athens.
Such women, though they were politically only resident aliens, wer