Greek Women Part 12

Owing to the intellectual awakening at Athens during the Periclean Age and the influx of new ideas from the various h.e.l.lenic countries, a liberal party had arisen in the city, chiefly under the leadership of Pericles and Anaxagoras--a radical party, headed by men of culture and science, who taught that knowledge was power, who despised the established religion, and who set at naught the domestic manners of the day by seeking to elevate woman. Socrates, also, was heartily in sympathy with the objects of this party, as was the dramatist Euripides.

On the other side were the ultra-conservatives, of whom Cimon and Aristophanes were representatives. The latter frequently made Pericles, Aspasia, Socrates, and Euripides the subjects of his satire. These Tories of the day saw in the tenets of the new party the subversion of all the principles of the old democracy, and they fought most bitterly to preserve established inst.i.tutions. Toward the close of Xenophon's treatise on _Domestic Economy_, Critobulus, who has been impressed by the story of Ischomachus, wishes to learn how he too, may educate his young wife, and Socrates advises him to consult with Aspasia. The profound deference in which she was held by all the philosophers is a further indication that from her they had derived many of their advanced ideas regarding the relations of the s.e.xes. Hence while positive 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 coa.r.s.est 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 mult.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.las--a phenomenon bringing about social conditions that divided the female population of Greece into two sharply distinguished cla.s.ses: the citizen-woman and the courtesan or mistress.

This notable aspect of Greek life is due to the fact that the ancient h.e.l.lene, 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 a.s.sociation with them a peculiar seductiveness and fascination.

To designate this cla.s.s of women in a manner which would distinguish them from the citizen-women on the one hand and the debased prost.i.tute 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.ddess of the highest love, especially of wedded love and fruitfulness, in contrast to Aphrodite Pandemus, the G.o.ddess of sensual l.u.s.t and the patron deity of courtesans.

We could hardly expect high moral ideas in regard to s.e.xual 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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 prost.i.tution. 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 appet.i.tes, And wandering in their l.u.s.ts 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 a.s.sociate 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 sanct.i.ty of religion, and these votaries of pleasure enjoyed a distinction accorded them in no other Greek city. When Xerxes was advancing against h.e.l.las 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 G.o.ddess was supposed to have heard their pet.i.tions, and out of grat.i.tude the Corinthians dedicated to Aphrodite a painting, in which were represented various hetaerae who had supplicated the G.o.ddess, while beneath were inscribed the following verses of Simonides:

"These damsels, in behalf of Greece, and all Their gallant countrymen, stood n.o.bly forth, Praying to Venus, the all-powerful G.o.ddess; 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 G.o.ddess 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 acc.u.mulated 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 h.e.l.las 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 surpa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 st.u.r.dy 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 cla.s.ses of hetaerae, graded according to political standing. The first and lowest cla.s.s was that of the public prost.i.tute--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 cla.s.s, 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 l.u.s.t. Aged and faded hetaerae, who had pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tutes for the training of hetaerae. In these inst.i.tutes 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 inst.i.tutes 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 inst.i.tute 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 cla.s.s; they lived on a fully independent footing, and conducted their business on their own account. This cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.semble 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociations and given instruction in philosophy.

The fourth and most elevated hetaera cla.s.s 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 G.o.ddess.

Thus the maiden transferred herself from the protection of one of the austere virgin G.o.ddesses, Artemis and Athena, to that of the gracious and seductive Paphian G.o.ddess; or the widow, who with the death of her husband had lost her means of subsistence, would renounce Hera, the G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess of the hetaerae and pledges to her for her protection a t.i.the 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 G.o.ddess. The hetaerae who followed in the wake of the Athenian army led by Pericles to Samos built a temple to Aphrodite from the t.i.thes of their gains. This giving of votive offerings is frequently the subject of Greek epigrams.

The daughters or widows of citizens const.i.tuted but the smaller number of hetaerae of this cla.s.s. 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 h.e.l.las should flock to Athens.

Such women, though they were politically only resident aliens, were granted great freedom and had the benefit of all the intellectual advantages the city afforded. Marriage was the only political sin these beautiful and cultivated strangers could commit; they might do anything else that they liked. Hence they entered into relations with citizens as "companions," and soon became an important factor in the social life of the day. Bringing with them from their homes all the attractions and graces that attended the service of the Muses, they undoubtedly exercised a beneficial influence on the social customs and manners, but they also contributed much to the general demoralization of the Athenian people.

From the number of these women of foreign birth came the most beautiful and distinguished, as also the most selfish and proud, representatives of the hetaera cla.s.s. Through their beauty and the outward splendor of their station they posed as veritable priestesses of Aphrodite, while through their intellectual brilliancy and their social charms they exercised a great influence over the daily life of the Athenians.

To this cla.s.s belonged the celebrated "daughters of the people," for whose favor the most prominent and dignified men of the State became suppliants. As Propertius sang of Lais, they could literally boast that "all h.e.l.las lay before their doors." Among these hetaerae we see the high life of the day on a most brilliant scale. Their dwellings were most sumptuous in their appointments; the walls were painted in frescoes, pieces of statuary and rich tapestries embellished their apartments, while the grounds about their houses were laid off with flower beds and beautiful fountains. Their apparel was of the richest fabrics and was made up in the most fashionable styles. They possessed numberless jewels and ornaments of enormous value. They never appeared in public without an imposing cortege of female slaves and eunuchs. Much of the etiquette of the courts of princes was maintained in their establishments.

To keep up this elaborate state, they sold their favors at almost shameless prices. Thus the elder Lais, Gnathaena, and Phryne were celebrated for their incredible demands. There is a story that the orator Demosthenes made a trip to Corinth and paid ten thousand drachmae for a single evening with the younger Lais. As has been intimated, Corinth possessed the most voluptuous, Athens the most highly cultivated hetaerae. The excessive charges of "the Corinthian maiden" gave occasion for the proverb: "Not every man can journey to Corinth." Not only the celebrated beauties made such exorbitant demands, but even the ordinary courtesans asked prices which forbade to men of moderate means intercourse with them.

Beauty and wealth were the factors which determined the social status of the hetaerae, and with the fading of beauty and the squandering of their gains many celebrated hetaerae fell from the highest to the lowest station.

The princ.i.p.al cla.s.sification of the queens of the demi-monde, however, was into "domestic" and "learned" hetaerae. The former attracted chiefly by their beauty and their social grace; the latter, by their native wit, their vivacity, and their intellectual endowments. These gifted women entered into intimate relations with the philosophers and rhetoricians of the day; they visited the lecture halls, devoted themselves to earnest study, and carried on their prost.i.tution under the protection of philosophy. They allied themselves with the various philosophical schools, and by their manner of bestowing their favors sought to advance the interests of the sect they espoused.

They found, too, in the pursuit of philosophy the justification of their calling. The hetaerae of the Academy claimed that they were merely putting into practice Plato's doctrine of the community of women. The followers of the Cyrenaic school, with its doctrine of moderation in the pursuit of pleasure, maintained that they carried out the maxims of Aristippus in their pursuit of the joys of love. The female adherents of the Cynics, or "the b.i.t.c.hes," as they were called, sought to surpa.s.s one another in taking the beasts as models of imitation. The Dialecticians found in their system the widest range for feminine cleverness of speech, and defended hetairism with the greatest subtlety and the most ingenious sophism. The feminine Epicureans saw in the teachings of their school, with its doctrine of friendship and of the broadest cultivation of the sensibilities, the fullest justification for the pursuit of s.e.xual enjoyment, and they sought to ill.u.s.trate the greatest voluptuousness and refinement in their methods of gratifying animal pa.s.sion.

The hetaerae of the various schools surpa.s.sed the men in their imitation of the jargon and the manners of the leading lights of their systems.

Many of the philosophers yielded themselves readily to the seductions of their beautiful and clever adherents; yet there were some choice spirits who deplored the demoralizing tendencies which hetairism brought into serious pursuits, and protested in no uncertain language.