Greek Women Part 11

WIFE.--I esteem those people to be truly miserable who have no benefit from their labors.

[Ill.u.s.tration 176 _THE GRECIAN TOILETTE From an antique vase The Greek women took great care of their bodies. It was their habit after bathing to anoint themselves with perfume, pastes or liquids, pomades, and oils.

Nos. 1, 2 and 6 exhibits the basin, supplied with perfumed water. The figure at No. 6 is washing from her hair the color of powder which had been applied the evening before. The colors used might be black, red, silver, gold, or any other tint, according to taste. The eyebrows were tinted to harmonize. Nos. 9 and 10 represent the application of oil, which followed completion of the coiffure. Nos. 3 and 4 exhibit the slave's simple dress and the rich transparent costume of the lady. The mirrors, Nos. 4, 5, and 11, were framed in ivory or chiselled silver, ornamented with precious stones. One of the fetes in honor of Minerva was that of the Parasols, which were often made of silk, see No. 7._]

ISCHOMACHUS.--Suppose, dear wife, you take into your service one who can neither card nor spin, and you teach her to do those things, will it not be an honor to you? Or if you take a servant who is negligent and does not understand how to do her business, or has been given to pilfering, and you make her diligent and instruct her in the manners of a good servant, and teach her honesty, will you not rejoice in your success, and will you not be pleased with your action? So, when you see your servants sober and discreet, you should encourage and show them favor.

But those who are incorrigible and will not follow your directions you must punish. Consider how laudable it will be for you to excel others in the well-ordering of your house. Be therefore diligent, virtuous, and modest, and give your necessary attendance on me, your children, and your house, and your name shall be honorably esteemed, even after your death; for it is not the beauty of your face and form, but your virtue and goodness, which will bring you honor and esteem that will last forever."

Thus does he conclude his first discourse with his wife on the subject of her duties, and she is diligent to learn and to practise what has been taught her. When, a little later, he asks her to find him a parcel which he had brought home, and she, with flushed cheeks and troubled look, has to confess that she is unable to find it, he takes this occasion to talk to her on order and harmony in all things. He tells her not to be grieved over her failure to find the parcel, as it is his fault for not having a.s.signed a definite place for each thing. He shows her how everything is perfectly arranged in a chorus, in a large army, and in the crew of a vessel, that all may be done harmoniously and in order. "Let us therefore fix upon a proper place where our stores may be laid up, not only in security, but where they may be so disposed that we may know where to look for every particular thing. By this means, we shall know what we gain and what we lose; and in surveying our storehouses, we shall be able to judge what is necessary to be brought in or what may want repairing and what will be impaired by keeping."

With the simplicity natural to men of high intelligence, he does not hesitate to confess that he finds beauty even in kitchen utensils orderly arranged.

The young wife is enchanted at his idea, and they go through the house a.s.signing a place for each thing; they distribute duties to the slaves, and give them other instructions, with the endeavor to win their affections and elevate their characters. Ischomachus then tells her that all care will be useless if the mistress of the house do not watch to see that the established order is not disturbed. Comparing her to magistrates who make the laws of a city respected, he adds: "This, dear wife, I chiefly commend to you, that you may look upon yourself as chief overseer of the laws within our house."

He tells her that it is within her jurisdiction to oversee everything in the house, as a garrison commander inspects his soldiers; that she has as great power in her own home as a queen, to distribute rewards to the virtuous and diligent and to punish those who deserve it. He desires her not to be displeased that he has intrusted more to her than to any of the servants, for they have not the same incentive to preserve those things which are not their own but hers.

Up to this time, it is the loving and inexperienced child who has been conversing with her husband. Now, it is the woman, the mistress of the house, who says:

"It would have been a great grief to me if, instead of those good rules you instruct me in for the welfare of our house, you had directed me to have no regard to the possessions I am endowed with; for as it is natural for a good woman to be careful and diligent about her own children rather than to have a disregard for them, so it is no less agreeable and pleasant to a woman, who has any share of sense, to look after the affairs of her family rather than to neglect them."

The great Socrates admires much the wisdom of his friend's wife, and adds, asking Ischomachus to continue the narrative: "It is far more delightful to hear the virtuous woman described than if the famous painter Zeuxis were to show me the portrait of the fairest woman in the world."

This dialogue between husband and wife is doubtless typical of the relations between married couples in the Athenian household, and in the girl-wife one may recognize the innocence and ingenuousness of the average maiden of fifteen transferred from the seclusion of her girlhood life at home to the seclusion of married life in her husband's house. It is noticeable that in the training provided by Ischomachus no provision whatever is made for intellectual discipline, or for social obligations, which leaves the reader to infer that the career of the wife was to be a purely domestic one, and that her aspirations must be confined within the walls of her house.

While such implicit obedience was the rule, however, there were notable exceptions to such ingenuousness on the part of the wife, and there were doubtless many instances where the wife was the ruling power of the household because of mental superiority, domineering disposition, or amount of dower. Human nature is much the same the world over, and strong personality in women demanded expression in ancient as well as in modern times. It is also true that there were instances of beautiful affection between husband and wife, though the fact that such were much talked of proves that conjugal love was the exception, not the rule.

It is a pity that we do not know more of the wives and sisters and mothers of great Athenians, as the few of whom we know are of unusual interest. Many wives enjoyed the hearty admiration and companionship of their husbands. Cimon, in spite of occasional lapses on his part, had an unusually pa.s.sionate affection for his wife, Isodice, and was filled with bitterest grief at her death. Socrates mentions Niceratus as "one who was in love with his wife and loved by her." There is a pleasing anecdote of Themistocles, told us by Plutarch, which shows where in his household lay the seat of authority. "Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and, through his mother, his father also, to indulge him, he told him he had the most power of anyone in Greece, 'for the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother.'"

Plutarch also relates of the great statesman that of two who made love to his daughter, he preferred the man of worth to the one who was rich, saying that he desired a man without riches rather than riches without a man! The most pleasing, however, among the wives of great Athenians is the wife of Phocion, the incorruptible, as she is presented to us in the pages of Plutarch. The latter describes Phocion's simple way of living, and speaks of his wife as employed in kneading bread with her own hands. "She was," he continues, "renowned no less among the Athenians for her virtues and simple living than was Phocion for his probity." It happened once when the people were entertained with a new tragedy, that the actor, as he was about to enter the stage to perform the part of a queen, demanded to have a number of attendants, sumptuously dressed, to follow in his train; and when they were not provided, he became sullen and refused to act, keeping the audience waiting, till at last Melanthius, who had to furnish the chorus, pushed him on the stage, crying out: "What! don't you know that Phocion's wife is never attended by more than a single waiting-woman, but you must needs be grand, and fill our women's heads with vanity?" This speech, spoken loud enough to be heard, was received with great applause. Phocion's wife herself once said to a visitor from Ionia, who showed her all her rich ornaments made of gold and set with jewels, her wreaths, necklaces, and the like: "For my part, all my ornament is my husband Phocion, now for the twentieth year in office as general at Athens."

Aristotle said many things which are quoted as suggesting his low estimate of the weaker s.e.x, but he loved with great tenderness his wife Pythias, niece and adopted daughter of his friend Hermias, ruler of Atarneus and a.s.sos in Mysia. When she died after a few brief years of wedded life, Aristotle gave directions that at his own death the two bodies should be placed side by side in the same tomb. When his own death came, he left behind a second wife, Herpyllis, whose virtues he esteemed, and he besought his friends to care for her, and to provide her with another husband should she wish to marry again.

These instances of domestic affection dissolve the cold logic of rigid theory, and prove how, in spite of legislation and convention, love is lord of all, and that among the Athenians happy married life was not unknown.

Nor was the strong-minded woman altogether lacking in Athens, for there was Elpinice, sister of Cimon, who, taking the Spartan women as her model, went about alone, and did many other things which shocked the staid Athenian matrons. Unpleasant remarks were made about her--as in the case of every woman who defies convention: among them, that she was over intimate with Polygnotus the painter, who portrayed her as Laodice in his fresco of the Trojan women in the Stoa Poikile. But the essence of this scandal may have been merely that she served the painter as a model, at a time when few women would have dared to visit an artist's studio. To her brother Cimon she proved a devoted sister. Once, when he was on trial for his life, she pleaded with Pericles so earnestly that acquittal was the result; and later she arranged with this great rival the negotiations that led to Cimon's return from banishment. So lovable was she that Callias, one of the richest men in Athens, fell violently in love with her, and offered to pay the fine to which her father was condemned, if he could obtain the daughter in marriage; and with Elpinice's own consent, Cimon betrothed her to Callias.

We have reserved a brief consideration of the best known of all Athenian women, one who defies all out notions regarding the prevailing conventions--Xanthippe, wife of the philosopher Socrates. From all accounts, it seems likely that she was an aristocratic lady, in reduced circ.u.mstances, who had married Socrates when advanced in life, she herself being beyond the years at which women usually marry, yet a score of years younger than her husband. Socrates once said he married her for the excitement of conquest, just as one would enjoy the breaking of a high-spirited horse; but, at any rate, the philosopher was worsted, and Xanthippe ruled the household. Xanthippe has acquired the reputation of being the typical scold of antiquity. Doubtless this reputation is not without foundation, yet she should have our sympathy, for the strangest and most difficult of husbands fell to her lot. Her naturally infirm temper must have been tried beyond endurance by the calm unconcern of her husband toward the domestic problem of "making both ends meet."

Ugly, careless of dress, keeping bad company, given to trances, utterly neglectful of his family--can one be surprised that the wife of such a man should lose all patience with him, and through repeated failures to improve him should by degrees become an arch termagant? Yet the stories of Xanthippe's temper rest on uncertain authority, and her reputation may be due largely to the fact that it was necessary for the story mongers to provide a foil for the always serene and placid philosopher. Plato, the most reliable authority, tells us nothing disparaging of Xanthippe, and the violent grief he attributes to her at the last parting suggests a high degree of affection for her phlegmatic spouse. Socrates preferred philosophical discussions with his friends to the society of his wife in his last hours of life, but he committed her and her children tenderly to their care. Thus parted the ill-a.s.sorted pair, each of whom has attained world-wide celebrity--the one as the world's philosopher, the other as the proverbial shrew.

In the early days of the Athenian democracy, women were powerful influences in civic matters, as is instanced in the case of Cylon and his conspirators, all of whom were ruthlessly slain except those who fell at the feet of the archons' wives, who in pity saved them.

Herodotus tells a story which shows the intense interest of the Athenian women in public affairs in early times. There was always great rivalry between Athens and the neighboring island of aegina. At one time, the Athenians demanded of the aeginetans the fulfilment of certain conditions regarding the statues of Attic olive wood which the latter had stolen from the Epidaurians. "The people of aegina refused; and the members of an expedition sent against them, attempting to drag away the sacred statues with ropes, were seized with madness and destroyed, one after another, so that only one man returned alive to Athens. This man, recounting the disasters, was surrounded by the women whose husbands had been killed, and each one pierced him with the bodkin that fastened her garment; so that he died under their hands. The conduct of these women filled the Athenians with horror, and, as a punishment, they obliged all the women of Athens to give up the Dorian dress which they wore, and instead to clothe themselves with the Ionian tunic, which had no need of any pin to fasten it."

Under the tyrants, the women of aristocratic families throughout h.e.l.las possessed an influence which was lost under the levelling process of democracy. Pisistratus, after his first banishment, furthered the reestablishment of his tyranny by wedding the daughter of Megacles, and thus winning for himself the influence of the powerful Alcmaeonidae. He worshipped Athena as his patron G.o.ddess, and, to give proper religious sanction to his return, arranged a singular ceremony, which Herodotus regards as "the most ridiculous that was ever imagined," but which introduces to us the most beautiful Athenian maiden of the times:

"In the Paeanian tribe, there was a woman named Phya, four cubits tall, and in other respects handsome. Having dressed this woman in a complete suit of armor, and placed her in a chariot, and instructed her how to a.s.sume a becoming demeanor, the followers of Pisistratus drove her to the city, having sent heralds before to proclaim: 'O Athenians, welcome back Pisistratus, whom Athena herself, honoring above all men, now conducts back to her own citadel!' Thus the report was spread about that the G.o.ddess Athena was bringing back Pisistratus; and the people, believing it to be true, paid worship to the woman, and allowed Pisistratus to return." The return was most happily effected, and, soon after, the usurper celebrated the marriage of this "counterfeit presentment" of the G.o.ddess to one of his sons.

Woman was to continue to play a fateful part in the history of the usurped power of Pisistratus. The tyrant ill-treated his young wife, and this threw her father, Megacles, again into the party of the opposition.

Pisistratus was once more driven from Athens, and this time from Attica as well. But he returned a third time, and established his power so firmly that at his death he bequeathed it to his sons unimpaired.

Hippias and Hipparchus ruled wisely at first, and carried on the many public works in which Pisistratus had engaged; but their downfall finally came through an insult to a highborn Athenian maiden, and the story as told by Thucydides shows how highly a sister's honor was cherished at Athens.

Harmodius, an aristocratic young Athenian, had rejected the friendship of Hipparchus, preferring that of Aristogiton, a citizen of modest station. The tyrant basely avenged himself. After summoning a sister of Harmodius to come to take part in a certain procession as bearer of one of the sacred vessels, Hippias and Hipparchus publicly rejected the maiden when she presented herself in her festal dress, a.s.serting that they had not invited her to partic.i.p.ate, as she was unworthy of the honor.

Harmodius was very indignant at this insult, and with his friend, who was equally incensed, formed a plot which led to the death of Hipparchus, though Harmodius was also killed in the prosecution of the plan. Aristogiton was put to the torture; and tradition relates that Leaena, his mistress, was also tortured, and fearing lest in her agony she might betray any of the conspirators bit off her tongue. After the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, the Athenians honored her memory by a bronze statue of a lioness without a tongue, which was set up on the Acropolis. The Athenians by this act showed their delight in a play on names, as _Leaena_ is the Greek word for "lioness."

The Athenian woman has never had the reputation for patriotism that characterized her Spartan sister, yet at times she showed an almost superhuman devotion to the State. After the sack of Athens by Mardonius and his troops in the Persian War, a senator, Lycidas, advised his fellow countrymen to accept the terms which were offered them by the Persian general. The Athenians in scorn stoned to death the man who could suggest such a cowardly deed. And the women, hearing what their husbands had done, pa.s.sed the word on to one another, and, gathering together, they went of their own accord to the house of Lycidas and inflicted the same punishment on his wife and children--a cruel act, but one showing their love of country and their hatred of treason.

These women, who could be so ruthless when patriotism was involved, knew how to be genuine comforters when their own loved ones were in trouble.

The orator Andocides and his companions were tried and imprisoned for impiety in violating the Eleusinian mysteries. "When," says Isocrates, "we had all been bound in the same chamber, and it was night, and the prison had been closed, there came to one his mother, to another his sister, to another his wife and children, and there was woe and lamentation as they wept over their misfortunes."

In so brilliant a race, it was impossible that some women should not rise above the surface and, by extraordinary virtue and by intellectual and spiritual endowments of a high order, win the lasting regard of men.

IX

ASPASIA

The period in Greek history when the intellectual and artistic life of h.e.l.las reached its zenith is known as the Golden Age of Pericles. The lofty ideals of this greatest of Greek statesmen incited him to make Athens the seat of a mighty empire that should spread the n.o.blest and most elevating influences throughout all h.e.l.las. He called to his a.s.sistance all the great men of his native city, and made also the fine arts serve as handmaidens of Athens and contribute to her power and splendor. Every condition was present for the realization of an intellectual and artistic epoch such as the world had never witnessed.

At the disposal of Pericles was an inexhaustible treasury--the acc.u.mulation of the tribute of subject allies. The quarries of Pentelicon offered in great abundance the material necessary for the erection of public buildings which might express in sensuous form the n.o.blest ideals of the Greek race. There were in Athens statesmen, philosophers, artists, dramatists, historians, men preeminent in all departments of the higher life. Foremost among these was Pericles's friend and counsellor, Phidias, a "king in the domain of art, as Pericles was in political life."

"What an age it was, truly, when, as the companions of Pericles, there were a.s.sembled in one city Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides, Meton and Hippocrates, Aristophanes and Phidias, Socrates and Anaxagoras, Appollodorus and Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Parrhasius;--in a city which had but lately lost aeschylus, and was soon to possess Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle; a city which, moreover, to make the ill.u.s.trious dead its own, erected statues to their memory!"

"What should we expect the pupils of such masters to be? What they were,--the masters of Greece. Thucydides says that Athens was at this time the instructress of Greece, as she was the source of its supplies.

Behold this fine democracy going from the theatre of Sophocles to the Parthenon of Phidias, or to the Bema where Pericles speaks to them in the language of the G.o.ds; listening to Herodotus, who recounts the great collision between Europe and Asia; Hippocrates of Cos, and the Athenian Meton, of whom one founded the science of medicine, and the other, mathematical astronomy; Anaxagoras, who eliminates the idea of G.o.d as distinct from matter; Socrates, who establishes the principles of morals! What lessons were these! Art, history, poetry, philosophy--all take a sublime flight. There is no place for second-rate talent here.

The art that Athens honors most is the greatest of all arts--architecture; her poetry is the drama--the highest expression of poetic genius, for it unites all forms in itself, as architecture calls all the other arts to its service. At this fortunate moment all is great, the power of Athens as well as the genius of the eminent men who guide the city and do it honor."

Such, in brief, is the picture of Athens in her greatest days, as drawn by an eminent historian. The splendor and supremacy of the city in this epoch were largely due to the constructive genius of one man--Pericles; and if we study his private life to the end that we may discover the formative influences which contributed to his greatness, we find that the chief source of his inspiration was a woman--the Milesian Aspasia, the most brilliant and cultured woman of cla.s.sic times.

Aspasia ranks as one of the most remarkable women of all antiquity; and her ascendency as one of the foremost of her s.e.x is due to the fact that she is the only woman whose name appears in the brilliant galaxy of the Periclean age and that the greatest leaders in that coterie of great men were glad to acknowledge their indebtedness to her for Instruction and inspiration. She is the only woman prominent in the life of Athens of whom much is known to us, and she has won for herself a place altogether unique in the history of Greek womanhood.

She was the daughter of one Axiochus, and was born and reared in Miletus, the most pleasure-loving and artistic of the cities of Asia Minor. The story of her childhood and youth is a closed book, but we know that she was carefully trained in rhetoric, music, and the fine arts, and became the possessor of every feminine accomplishment. Her preceptress is said to have been the celebrated Thargelia, also of Miletus, who exerted her power for the Great King during the Persian War and finally married one of the kings in Thessaly. How Aspasia was drawn to Athens is not known, but the most probable theory is that she settled there as a young and brilliant teacher of rhetoric, following the precedent established by Anaxagoras in philosophy and by Protagoras and other men in rhetoric, who found in Athens the most profitable field for the exercise of their talents. Here Aspasia gathered about her all the learned and accomplished men of Athens. She was no mere creature of pleasure, who ministered to luxury and l.u.s.t; but by her beauty and culture she sought to draw to her the first men of the town, that she might learn of them as they of her. "Nor was it long before it was recognized that she enchained the souls of men by no mere arts of deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures of h.e.l.lenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians, even such men as Socrates, sought her out in order to listen to her conversation."

There could be nothing more natural than that when Pericles and Aspasia met the soul of each should discover in the other its affinity, Pericles was married to an Athenian kinswoman, but they did not find conjugal life altogether congenial, and by mutual agreement their marriage ties were dissolved and Pericles found for his wife another husband. He then took Aspasia to his home and called her his wife. They could not wed, for she was a foreigner, and their union in consequence lacked civil sanction; yet it was a real marriage in all but in name, based on the truest and tenderest affection, and dissolved only by death.

So remarkable was Pericles's devotion to Aspasia, that Plutarch records, as an indication of its sincerity, that the great Athenian kissed Aspasia upon going out in the morning and upon his return home--clearly an unusual occurrence in Athenian homes, or it would not have seemed worthy of mention. The possession of so rare a woman was doubtless in many respects invaluable to the great statesman. Plutarch states that the latter was first attracted to the Milesian by her wisdom and political sagacity. Socrates, who confessed also his own indebtedness to Aspasia, states that she was Pericles's teacher in the art of rhetoric, and could even write his speeches. Pericles was a reserved man, who devoted himself strictly to his official cares and refrained from social intercourse with those about him. Hence he found in Aspasia not only the delight of his leisure moments and a sympathizing friend and counsellor hi his perplexities, but also the link that connected him with the daily life about him. She knew how to be at ease in every kind of society; how to keep informed of everything that took place in the city that Pericles should know; how to keep in touch with the great movements throughout h.e.l.las and to make them contribute to the glory of Athens: and in all these, and in many other respects, she proved of use to him in his political life.

It is probable that Aspasia was still in her twenties when Pericles first met her, while he himself was much older. She must have possessed a fascinating personality which at once captivated the great statesman; but, aside from her intellectual gifts, it is difficult in this day to a.n.a.lyze her charm. There is no positive evidence that she was beautiful, according to Greek standards, though this is the natural inference.

Ancient writers call her the good, the wise, the eloquent; they speak of her "honey-colored" or golden hair, of her "silvery voice," of her "small, high-arched foot," but no writer of the time has expressly said that she was beautiful. In the museums of Europe, there are various busts on which her name is inscribed, but they impress us rather by the expression of earnest and deep thought, by the delicacy and distinction of the features, than by mere beauty. Her charm lay, no doubt, rather in her wisdom, her vivacity, her sweetness of utterance, than in perfection of form and feature. Aspasia made the home of Pericles the first salon that history has made known to us; and what woman ever gathered about her a more brilliant coterie of friends? With Phidias and his group of eminent artists, she talked of the embellishment of the Acropolis with beautiful temples and statues; with Anaxagoras and Socrates, she discussed the problems of philosophy and the narrow conservatism of the Athenians; with Sophocles and Euripides, she conversed concerning the works of the dramatists and the ideal women presented in their plays.

Herodotus, perhaps, was the inimitable story teller of this learned circle, and the melancholy Thucydides dwelt on the dark tragedy underlying human events; no doubt the satirical Aristophanes sometimes attended, for the Platonic dialogues show us the social side of his nature, and, while in his plays he scorns the philosophical set, he found among them intellectual companionship; and the young and gay Alcibiades was doubtless frequently present, talking with the hostess of the latest events in the high life of the city, of betrothals and marriages, of scandals and escapades.

One of the sons of Pericles scoffed at this circle of intellectual lights, and made fun of their metaphysical speculations and learned talk; but this merely indicates that such a salon was an innovation in Athens, and, therefore, led to harsh criticism and unseemly gossip on the part of those who could not appreciate its privileges. Music, poetry, and wit relieved the serious discussion of politics, philosophy, and literature. The salon of Aspasia must have been altogether decorous, for many men broke the traditions of their fathers and brought their wives to converse about wifely duties with the famous hetaera. She seems to have thought earnestly and deeply on the duties and destiny of woman, to have realized how contracted were the lives of Athenian women, and to have wished to better their condition, aeschines, in one of his dialogues, gives us in her conversation with Xenophon and his wife Philesia a glimpse of her method.

"Tell me, Philesia," said Aspasia, "whether if your neighbor had a piece of gold of more value than your own, you would not choose it before your own?" "Yes," answered Philesia. "If she had a gown, or any of the female ornaments, better than yours, would not you choose them rather than your own?" "Yes," answered she. "But," said Aspasia, "if she had a husband of more merit than your own, would not you choose the former?" Upon this, Philesia blushed. Aspasia then addressed herself to Xenophon. "If your neighbor, Xenophon, had a horse better than your own, would you not choose him preferably to your own?" "Yes," answered he. "If he had an estate or a farm of more value than your own, which would you choose?"

"The former," answered he; "that is, that which is of more value." "But if his wife were better than your own, would not you choose your neighbor's?" Xenophon was silent upon this question. Aspasia therefore proceeded thus: "Since both of you, then, have refused to answer me in that point only which I wanted you to satisfy me in, I will tell you myself what you both think: you, Philesia, would have the best of husbands, and you, Xenophon, the best of wives. And, therefore, if you do not endeavor that there be not a better husband and wife in the world than yourselves, you will always be wishing for that which you shall think best: you, Xenophon, will wish you might be married to the best of wives, and Philesia, that she might have the best of husbands."

Thus this brilliant and withal domestic woman would counsel women to be the best of wives, and men the most considerate of husbands, that each might find in the joys of home and in conjugal harmony their greatest felicity. Doubtless many a wife went away from her with higher conceptions of wifely duty than custom had taught her, and sought to make her home a more congenial retreat for her husband. Many, however, looked askance at these gatherings of men and women and could see nothing but evil in their violations of custom. Husbands, too, saw in these novel proceedings dangerous tendencies; for if their wives became emanc.i.p.ated, there would be a limit to their own pleasant indulgences.

It was Aspasia who preeminently labored to this end. The status of woman at Athens was far from ideal, and the need tor reform was great; and if we endeavor to discover who was chiefly responsible for the agitation which had for its purpose the emanc.i.p.ation of woman from the thraldom in which she was held, we find that it was the wise and far-seeing Aspasia.