Woman in the Golden Ages/Woman in Greek Poetry

by Amelia Gere Mason

WOMAN IN GREEK
POETRY
✠
● Denunciation of Woman in Early Poets ●
● Kindlier Attitude of Homer ●
● Penelope ● Nausicaä ● Andromache ● Helen ●
● Contemptuous Attitude of the Dramatists ●
● Their Fine Types ●
● Iphigenia ● Alcestis ● Antigone ●
● Consideration for Women in the Heroic Age ●

WOMAN IN GREEK POETRY

I

he badness of man is better than the goodness of woman,” says a Jewish proverb. And worse still, "A man of straw is better than a woman of gold." As men made the proverbs, these may be commended for modesty as well as chivalry. The climax is reached in this amiable sentiment : " A dead wife is the best goods in a man's house." Under such teaching it is not at all surprising that the Jews began their morning invocations, two thousand years ago, with these significant words : " Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a heathen, who hast not made me a slave, who hast not made me a woman."

These are very good samples of the manner in which women were talked of in ancient days. In

Egypt, however, they fared rather better. We are even told that men pledged obedience to their wives, in which case they doubtless spoke of them more respectfully. At all events, they had great political influence, were honored as priestess or prophetess, and had the privilege of owning themselves and their belongings. But a state of affairs in which

Men indoors sit weaving at the loom,

And wives outdoors must earn their daily bread,

has its unpleasant side. How it was regarded by women does not appear, but if they found a paradise they were speedily driven out of it. Evidently men did not find the exchange of occupations agreeable. Two or three centuries before our era, a Greek ruler came to the throne, who had other views, and every woman awoke one morning to the fact that her day was ended, her power was gone, and that she owned nothing at all. Everything that she had, from her house and her land to her feathers and her jewels, was practically confiscated, so that she could no longer dispose of it. These women had rights, and lost them. Why they were taken away we do not know. Possibly too much was claimed. But all this goes to prove that " chivalrous man " cannot be trusted so long as he holds not simply the balance of power, but the whole of it.

Apart from this little episode, the early world never drifted far from the traditions of the Garden of Eden, where Adam naturally reserved the supremacy for himself, and sent obedient Eve about her housewifely duties among the roses and myrtles. If these were soon turned into thorns and thistles, it was only her proper punishment for bringing into the world its burden of human ills.

The changes were rung on this theme in all races and languages. The esthetic Greeks surpassed the Jews in their denunciations, and exhausted their wit in cynical phrases that lacked even the dignity of criticism. No writers have abused women more persistently. It is an evidence of great moral vitality that, in the face of such undisguised contempt, they were able to maintain any prestige at all. If we may credit the poets who gave the realistic side of things, there was neither honor nor joy in the life of the average woman who dwelt in the shadow of Helicon. It was bare and cheerless, without even the sympathy that tempers the hardest fate. This pastoral existence, which seems so serene, had its serpent, and that serpent was a woman. A wife was a necessary evil. If a man did not marry, he was doomed to a desolate age ; if he did, his happiness" was sure to be ruined. Out of ten types of women described by the elder Simonides, only one was fit for a wife, and this was because she had the nature of a bee and was likely to add to her husband's fortune. As the proportion was so small, the risk may be imagined. Her side of the ques­tion was never taken into account at all. The comfort of so insignificant a being was really not worth considering. " A man has but two pleasant days with his wife," says the satirist ; " one when he marries her, the other when he buries her."

Hesiod mentions, among the troubles of having a wife, that she insists upon sitting at table with her husband. Later, when the Greeks found their pleasure in fields of the intellect which were closed to women, even this poor privilege was usually denied her, and always when other men were present. Hesiod was evidently a disappointed man, and took dark views of things, women in particular, but he only followed the fashion of his time in making them responsible for the troubles and sorrows of men. It was the old, old story : " The woman gave me, and I did eat." She was the Pandora who had let loose upon the world all the ills, and kept in her box the hope that might have made them tolerable. If she found her position an unpleasant one, she had the consolation of being told that she was one of the evils sent into the world by the gods, to punish men for the sin of Prometheus. The other was disease.

This is a sorry picture, but it reflects the usual Greek attitude toward women, and cannot be ignored, much as we should like to honor the sense of justice, and the heart as well as the intellect of men of so brilliant a race.

II

There is another side, however, upon which it is more pleasing to dwell. By some curious paradox, the Hellenic poets, who delighted in saying such disagreeable things, have given us many of the finest types of womanhood, though these women lived only in the imagination of great men, or so near the border-land of shadows as to be half mythical. It may be said to the credit of Homer that he never joined in the popular chorus of abuse. His women are not permitted to forget their subjection, but the high-born ones at least are treated with gentle courtesy, and he indulges in no superfluous flings at their inferiority or general worthlessness. Many of them hold places of honor and power. These women of a primitive age, who stand at the portals of the young world luminous and smiling, or draped in the stately dignity of antique goddesses, still retain the distinction of classic ideals. They look out from the misty dawn of things with veiled faces, but we know that love shone from their soft eyes, and words of wisdom fell from their rosy lips.

The vulgar of my sex I most exceed

In real power, when most humane my deed,

says the gentle Penelope, as, tear-dimmed and constant, she weaves and unweaves the many-colored threads, and waits for her royal lord, who basks in the smiles of Calypso over the sea, and forgets her until he tires of the fascinating siren and begins to long for his home. If there was a trace of artfulness in the innocent device of the faithful wife, it was all the weapon she had to save her honor. There is no lovelier picture of radiant girlhood than the graceful Nausicaä, as she takes the silken reins in her white hands, and drives across the plains in the first flush of the morning to help her maids " wash their fair garments in the limpid streams." When the snowy robes are laid in the sun to dry, they play a game of ball, this daughter of kings leading all the rest. We hear the echo of her silvery laughter, and see the flash of her shining veil as her light feet fly over the greensward. But the dignity of the princess asserts itself with the forethought and sympathy of the woman in the discreet words with which she greets the destitute stranger, and modestly directs him to her royal mother. Her swift eye notes his air of distinction, his courteous address, and she naively wishes in her heart that the gods would send her such a husband. It is to Arête that she bids him go, to the beloved queen who shares the throne of Alcinous with " honors never before given to a woman." Simple is this gentle lady and gracious, whether she sits in her stately palace working rare designs in crimson and purple wools, or gives wise counsel to her husband, or goes abroad among the people, who adore her as a goddess,

To heal divisions, to relieve the oppressed,

In virtue rich, in blessing others, blessed.

A more touching though less radiant figure is Andromache, who shows no trace of weakness as she folds her child to her bosom, after the tender farewell of her brave husband, and goes home, sad and prophetic, to " ply her melancholy loom," and brood over the hopelessness of her coming fate.

These are the great Homeric types, women of simple and noble outlines, untouched by the fires of passion, wise, loyal, efficient, and brave, but rich in sympathy and all sweet affections. The central figures of the fireside, with needle and distaff in hand, they were not without a fine intelligence which, after the fashion of primitive times, found its field in the every-day problems of life. The mysteries of knowledge and speculation had not opened to them.

There is no fairer thing

Than when the lord and lady with one soul

One home possess.

This was the poet's domestic ideal, and the ages have not brought a better one, though they have brought us many things to make it more beautiful. But what shall we say of Helen, the alluring child of fancy and romance, who stands as an eternal type of the beauty that led captive the Hellenic world ? Even this fair-haired daughter of the gods, who set nations at variance, and did so many things not to be commended, gathers a subtle charm from the domestic setting which the poet's art has given her. She sits serenely in the midst of the woes she has brought, teaching her maidens to work after strange patterns, and weaving her own tragic story in the golden web. It does not occur to her that she is very wicked ; indeed, she thinks regretfully that, after all, she is worthy of a braver man. The tears that fall do not dim her brightness. Gray-haired men go to their death under the spell of her divine loveliness, but forget to chide. She is the helpless victim of Aphrodite, who is indulgently charged with all her frailties. Twice ten years have gone since she sailed away from Sparta, but when her forgiving husband takes her home she has lost none of that mystic beauty which is " never stale and never old." She takes her place as naturally as if she had not left it, plays again the pleasant role of hostess, and looks with care after the comfort of her guests. When Telemachus goes to see her, and recalls the uncertain fate of the wandering heroes, she gives him the " star-bright " veil her own hands have wrought to help dry the tears she has caused to flow. But she is troubled by no superfluous grief. What the gods send she tranquilly accepts.

When the poets began to analyze, the glamour of this witching goddess was lost, and she became a sinning, soul-destroying woman, a human Circe that lured men to ruin. But the Greeks did not like to see their idols slandered or broken, so in later times they gave her a shadowy existence on the banks of the Nile, where we catch a last glimpse of her, sitting unruffled among the palms, in all the splendor of her radiant beauty, twining wreaths of lotus-flowers for her golden hair, and learning rare secrets of Eastern looms, while men fought and died across the sea for a phantom. It is not upon these fanciful pictures, however, that we like to dwell. The Helen who lives and breathes for us is the Helen of Homer, fair and sweet, more sinned against than sinning, pitying the sorrows she cannot cure, but saved by her matchless charm from the chilling frost of mortal censure.

These women of Homer were mostly wives and daughters of kings. Whether it was because he had been greeted with gentle words and caressing smiles by the fair patricians to whom he recited his verses that he painted them in such glowing colors, or because the women of the heroic age really had the unstudied grace and simple dignity that spring from conscious freedom, we cannot know. But it is certain that the measure of honor and liberty which they enjoyed was a privilege of caste rather than of sex, though it gave them a virile quality, and added a fresh luster of spontaneity to their domestic virtues.

The lesser women had small consideration. We find the captives, even of royal descent, tossed about among their masters with no regard to their wishes, or rights — if they had any, which seems doubtful. The gentle Briseïs, a high priest's daughter, and as potent a factor in the final disasters of the Greeks as the divine Helen herself, was the merest puppet in the hands of the so-called heroes who quarreled over her, and Chryseïs was only saved from the same fate by the kind interference of Apollo. The bitterest drop in the cup of Hector was the thought of his wife led away weeping by some "mail-clad Achaian," with no one to hear her cries or save her from the hopeless fate of weaving and carrying water at the bidding of another. The women of the people fared little better, if as well. Ulysses had no hesitation in putting to death a dozen of his wife's maids whose conduct did not please him, and he threatened his devoted nurse Euryclea with a like fate, if she revealed the secret of his identity, which she had been the first to divine.

III

It is difficult to comprehend the attitude of the dramatists of the golden age toward women. They have left many fine and powerful types ; they have created heroines of singular moral grandeur and a superb quality of courage that led them to face death or the bitterest fate as serenely as if they were composing themselves to pleasant dreams ; but there was no insult or injustice too great to be heaped upon their sex.

There is not anything, nor will be ever,

Than woman worse, let what will fall on man,

says Sophocles, Æschylus, who is, on the whole, the most kindly disposed, makes Eteocles call the Theban maidens a " brood intolerable," " loathed of the wise," and emphasizes his opinion in these flattering lines :

Ne'er be it mine, in ill estate or good,

To dwell together with the race of women.

Euripides strikes the bitterest note of all, and sums up his verdict with crushing force :

Dire is the violence of ocean waves,

And dire the blast of rivers and hot fires,

And dire is want and dire are countless things,

But nothing is so dire and dread as woman.

No painting could express her dreadfulness.

No words describe it. If a god made woman

And fashioned her, he was for men the artist

Of woes unnumbered, and their deadly foe.

And this in spite of such characters as Alcestis and Iphigenia, who, from a man's point of view, certainly deserved an apotheosis! It is said that Euripides was unfortunate in his wives, which may account, in part, for his cynical temper. One might suspect that the author of such a diatribe gave ample cause for disaffection, and that he had no more than his deserts. But he seems to have avenged himself, as smaller men have done, by railing at the whole sex. It is easy enough to understand the portrayal of a Phædra or a Medea in dark colors, and one can forgive the mad ravings of despair. But so many needless words of general contempt signify more than a dramatic purpose. To-day they would not be possible in a civilized country. The drama reflects the dominant sentiments of the time, if not always those of the author, and the frequency of such ungracious, not to say virulent, attacks proves the complaisance of a Greek audience and the absence of all consideration for women. Even Aristophanes takes Euripides to task for being a woman-hater, and turns upon him the sharpest points of his satire ; but he has himself added the last touch of abuse, which only misses its aim for modern ears by its incredible coarseness. He gives to women all of the lowest vices, without a redeeming virtue. Their presence at the comedy was quite out of the question.

One is tempted to multiply these quotations, as they put in so vivid a light the injustice sufifered by women when the expression of such sentiments was habitual. The saddest feature of it is that men abused them for the ignorance and frivolity which they had themselves practically compelled. The dramatists lived and wrote in an age when men had reached a higher plane of knowledge from which orthodox women were rigidly excluded. The natural consequence of this exclusion was a total lack of companionship, which sent the Attic woman into a species of slavery, while her husband found his society in a class that was better educated and more interesting, but less respectable. This state of things was reflected in Athenian literature, especially in the comedies, and it doubtless led to the general disdain of women so freely expressed in the tragedies. To reconcile such an attitude with the strong character of many of the women portrayed is not easy, unless we take them as object-lessons to their sex in the honor and glory of self-sacrifice.

In the glamour the poets have cast about their great creations, and the marvelous power with which they have made these women live for us, we are apt to lose sight of the fact that the moral force of the best of them is centered in the superhuman immolation of themselves for the benefit of men, to whom it never occurs that any consideration whatever is due to these innocent sufferers. They are, subject to men, and ready to lay down their lives, if need be, to make the world comfortable and pleasant for them ; yet they have only sorrow for themselves.

More than a thousand women is one man

Worthy to see the light of life,

says the young Iphigenia, as she folds her saffron veil about her, and goes to her doom with words of love and forgiveness, praying for the cruel masters she dies to save. The essence of her training, as of her religion, lies in this meekly uttered sentiment, though the fated child pleads for pity, since " the sorriest life is better than the noblest death." Strong men, among whom are her father and Achilles, the heroes of the ancient world, stand calmly by and let her die. The powerful lover, who will give his life later to avenge the death of his friend, is sorry to lose so sweet a flower for his wife, but he makes no real effort to save her. When she is told that the gods have decreed her sacrifice for the good of her country, the cry of nature is silenced, the touching appeal is stilled. She rises to a divine height of courage, and is the consoler rather than the consoled.

Not less pathetic is the fate of Alcestis, though it is a voluntary one. She robes herself for the tomb as tranquilly as if she were going out on a message of mercy. With sad dignity she crowns with myrtle the altar at which she prays, but not until she takes leave of the familiar room so conse­crated by love and happiness do the tears begin to fall. This tender wife, who freely gives her life to save her husband, does not falter as she passion ately embraces her weeping children, and bids a kind farewell to her pitying servants. The only thing she asks for herself is to see the sun once more, and she tries to inspire this selfish, posing, half-hearted husband with her own fortitude, as her spirit " glides on light wing down the silent paths of sleep." One cannot help wondering if she never had a misgiving that the man who could ask his wife to comfort him for his unspeakable misery in letting her die for him was not worth dying for. But the Greek women had been long trained in the school of passive suffering, and it never seemed to occur to them that it was not quite in the nature of things for the weaker half of the human family to have a monopoly of the sacrifices. It was a part of their destiny ; the gods so willed it. Men looked upon it as a comfortable arrangement for themselves, that had good moral results for women. To-day we are inclined to ask why a discipline that is good for women, and tends toward their moral perfection, is not also good for men, who have a like need of being perfected.

But, in spite of rational theories, the world's heart still thrills to a generous emotion so overpowering as to drown all consideration of self, whether or not it is faulty in its mundane wisdom or its arithmetic. And this it is which casts so lasting a glamour over the women who loom out of the twilight of that far-off time, in noble proportions that dwarf the selfish, arrogant men with whom they are mated. They rise to the dignity of goddesses in their divine pity and courage, while the great Achilles, the masculine ideal of the Greeks, weeps like a child, and sends a generation of men to sleep on the plains of Troy, because he cannot have what he wishes.

Yet it is in the minds of men that these women were conceived, and it is impossible to suppose that they had not at least some faint counterpart in real life, though possibly men, and women as well, are apt to make ideals of what they think ought to be rather than of what is. But why did the Greek poets cast such ridicule and dishonor upon the sex which they have shown capable of such supreme devotion and such exalted virtues?

There is a touch of justice in the bitter scorn with which the blind Œdipus speaks of his sons who

Keep house at home like maidens in their prime,

while his daughters wear themselves to death for him and for his sorrows.

No women they, but men in will to toil.

Perhaps Antigone is a trifle too coldly perfect, too faultlessly wise — a tacit reflection upon every- day human nature, that likes its ease, and counts the cost of its renunciations. We look for a trace of weakness, a warm burst of living tenderness. But duty is shy like love, and chary of expression. " I do not love a friend who loves in words," is the cry of her steadfast soul. There she stands, in the still majesty of a sorrow that lies too deep for tears, supreme among the classic types of the world as a model of filial devotion. Cordelia, true and loyal as she is, and tender at heart, does not approach her in strength and dignity. But the duty of the Greek heroine does not end with her father's death. She lays down her life at last that the false-hearted brother, who has given her no gentle consideration in her days of helplessness and despair, may not lie unburied on the plains of Thebes, and so wander without rest in Hades. She laments the lost pleasures of living. No husband or children are to be hers. Yet no enthusiasm of passion or romance tempers this " cold statue's fine-wrought grace." The man she was to marry is secondary. Love, in our sense, does not enter as a motive power into her life, but her human need of sympathy is shown in a few pathetic words :

And yet, of all my friends,

Not one bewails my fate ;

No kindly tear is shed.

There are a few women of colossal wickedness who serve as foils, or shadows in the picture. Their very sins are a part of the overmastering strength that defies its hard imitations. " Of all things, as many as have life and intellect, we women are the most wretched race ; we must first purchase a husband with excess of money, then receive him as our lord," is the bitter protest of the wronged Medea, and the key-note to her tragical destiny. Clytemnestra says that she has always been trained to obey, but she towers far above her warrior husband in force as in crime. She resents his unfaithfulness; she does not forgive him for the inhuman sacrifice of their innocent daughter; she meets him on his own ground. It is appalling, the stern and pitiless passion with which her untamed spirit, spurred on by the white-hot hate which is often a great love reversed, tramples upon every human impulse, and sweeps a whole race with her to destruction. The clash of elemental forces is there, even though the responsibility is shifted upon the gods, who use these frail mortals as blind instruments in their inscrutable plans.

But these monsters of crime are few, and seem to throw into stronger relief the self-forgetful women who exalt their inferior position, and bend their heads to the yoke with such stately dignity that they seem to command even in obeying. For, in spite of the important part assigned them in the world of affairs as well as at the fireside, they are constantly reminded of their little worth. " Let not women counsel," is the advice of men to the wisest of them,

Woman, know

That silence is a woman's noblest part,

says the ill-tempered Ajax to his amiable wife. This gentle Tecmessa wishes to die with him, for "Why should I wish to live if you are dead?" He only tells her to mind her own affairs and be silent. Telemachus orders his faithful mother not to meddle with men's business, but it was precisely because she did meddle with it, and tried, by various simple arts, to bring order into the chaos men had raised, that his royal father had any home to return to, or any kingdom to leave to his ungracious son.

IV

So far as we can gather from Homer, women of the better sort had a degree of consideration in the heroic age which they lost at a later period. When men fought or tilled the soil, it was in the natural order of things that they should stay at home to look after their children and households. The division of duties was fair enough. In a reign of brute force they needed protection, and though it was pretty well settled that men were born to rule and women to be ruled, there was evidently a great deal of pleasant companionship in family life. Compared with the seclusion of the Oriental harem, the position of these women was one of freedom, and it lasted to historic times. Their supreme distinction was a moral one. Books they had not. Of literature nothing was known beyond the verses and tales of wandering minstrels. Art was little more than a handicraft. If men worked in marble or in metal, women designed patterns for weaving and embroidery. Men had not begun to put their thoughts or speculations into enduring form, and women were not excluded from a large part of their lives. But so perfectly did many of them realize the world's ideal of feminine virtues that we ask no more. They stand upon pedestals, like the masterpieces of Greek sculpture, noble in their simplicity and lovely in the repose of their surpassing strength. But the dramatists reflected in a thousand ways the altered spirit of an age in which good women had no visible part. Their immortal heroines are equally strong and instinct with vitality, though less simple and of severer mold, but they are revered from afar as the goddesses were, while real women are a target for abuse and ridicule. It is to no rare and perishable beauty, no fleeting grace, no intellectual brilliancy, that they owe their eternal charm, but to their moral greatness, their strength of sacrifice. These exalted ideals, so bravely tender, so patiently enduring, were the victims of adverse des­tiny or of their own devotion. But the world held for them no reward in the masculine heart. There were many women in classic story who died for men, but only one for whom men were willing to die, and this was Helen, whose divine beauty appealed to the senses and the imagination. She was made to be loved, to command ; all others were made to serve. The Greeks adored beauty ; they lived in it, they created it. Here lay their pride; here more than once they found their Nemesis. But virtue they gave a place apart, as they did the wise Athena, who towered in golden isolation over the Attic divinities. It had no share in the joy of existence.

Beneath the glad paeans of heroes we hear at intervals, across the ages, the clear voices of women chanting a miserere in an undertone of sorrow or despair. Doubtless the poets saw and felt the tragical side of their lives, but tradition had the inevitability of fate, as it has had in other times. They have given us great and lonely ideals of womanhood, but a somber picture of the place held by living women in the Athenian world.