Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/125

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STATUS OF WOMEN
89

living, were gay and light-hearted, but heartless and superficial. "The systematic repression of a natural appetite was totally foreign to Greek modes of thought"; "the Greek conception of excellence was the full and perfect development of humanity in all its organs and functions."[1] To such a scheme of life women were essential, but it offered them little honor. Simonides of Amorgos (seventh century B.C.) classified women, saying that God made of earth the lazy ones, of the sea the fickle ones. Other classes Simonides distinguished by the animals whom they resembled in character; for instance, the bee class was those who were industrious, thrifty, faithful — healthy mothers with grace and high virtues.[2] Aristotle says that in former times all Greeks bought each other's wives.[3] Lykurgus in Sparta and Solon in Athens[4] adopted very low and different policies about the discipline and relations of the sexes; their standpoint was that of man or the state, and woman was used for purposes assumed to be good, and in ways assumed to be expedient and practicable. Whether any good resulted to the male sex or the state under either plan is very doubtful, but the women were degraded in each case. At Athens, in order to have children of full civil standing, it was necessary that a man should marry the daughter of a citizen, but the women of this class were so secluded in the women's apartments, and lived such a remote life, that young men could not know young women. Therefore the wife of full rank was a status-wife. In the fifth century very many Athenians married foreign wives, in spite of the disabilities which their children would incur; it seems evident that they became acquainted

  1. Lecky, W. E. H.: History of European Morals, etc.. II, 291: Mahaffy, J. P.: Social Life in Greece, etc., 104, 117.
  2. Bergk, T.: Griechische Literaturgeschichte, II, 197.
  3. Politics, II, 5, 11.
  4. Athenæus: Deipnos, 25.