Greek Women Part 14

Anyone who makes a careful perusal of the philosophical literature of Athens in the fourth century before our era will be struck with the amount of attention that has been paid to the question of the social and domestic position of woman. If he trace the subject back, he will observe that in the dramatic literature of the latter part of the previous century the same problems received the consideration of Euripides and Aristophanes. And the conviction will be forced upon him that this agitation was rooted in a sociological movement of great import, and that the dramatic and philosophical writers merely gave a literary form to the debates which profoundly stirred Athenian society in the fifth century.

This discussion of woman's rights is a subject of perennial interest, and the underlying currents in such movements are usually the same in every age. They take their rise, too, not in the efforts of philanthropic men who recognize that the status of woman is not what it should be, but in the efforts of the members of the s.e.x themselves, who are sufficiently intelligent to see that they, while having an abundant share of the burdens, have not a fair share of the emoluments of life, and consequently endeavor to better the conditions which environ themselves and their sisters.

In this chapter we shall make a study of the dramatists and philosophers of Athens, in so far as they give insight into the social life of the city in its most important epoch, and outline what they contribute to our knowledge of Greek woman and the ever-present Woman Question.

For the early part of this brilliant period we must rely on the ideal pictures of tragedy for the higher side, and the ribald travesties of comedy for the lower side of feminine life, aeschylus flourished just before and during the glorious period following the Persian War,--the good days before the influx of foreigners and the new education corrupted the life and undermined the faith of the citizens. In his seven extant plays he has presented to us only three feminine characters of any importance,--Clytemnestra, Electra, and Ca.s.sandra,--all belonging to the cycle of tragedies treating of the fate of King Agamemnon and his royal house at Mycenae. The dramatist's pictures of home life show his high conception of the ability and the importance of women and of the large part they play in human history. His Clytemnestra is a ruling queen exercising all the functions of royalty, but her powerful nature has been debased by grief and sin. She identifies herself with the "ancient bitter Alastor," who visits on Agamemnon the curse of his house. She is self-sufficingness, adamantine purpose, studied craft, and cold disdain incarnate. With fulsome speech and consummate flattery she welcomes her husband home; and when the deed is done and he lies dead by her hand, in exultant tones she rejoices in the blood upon her robe as "a cornfield in the dews of spring." Truly she is the most powerful portrait of feminine guilt that dramatic literature affords us. aeschylus drew his scenery and his characters largely from the conditions of the Heroic Age as pictured by Homer, and was little affected by the current of everyday life about him.

As aeschylus has given us Clytemnestra for an ideal type of feminine power and wickedness, so Sophocles has presented two immortal heroines, Antigone and Electra, who are statuesque in the beauty and grandeur of their characters. In Antigone we observe two fundamental qualities,--enthusiasm in the performance of duty, and intensity of domestic affection, as seen in her efforts to reconcile her brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, her desire to s.h.i.+eld her sister Ismene, her self-sacrifice for the sake of her brother Polynices, and her filial devotion to her aged father. Electra also is an ideal type of sisterly love. Ill-treated by her unnatural mother, abused by the cowardly and brutal tyrant who had usurped her father's place, only one ray of hope was left her, that her brother Orestes would return to avenge their wrongs upon the guilty pair. When the deed is done, and Orestes is pursued by the Furies, she proves herself a devoted and unselfish sister. In these two characters we have sublime conceptions of heroic devotion to duty, but the more human womanly traits have been lost in the poet's delineation of them as the embodiment of lofty ideals.

Mahaffy finds in these two heroines something hard and masculine, traits which would not stir the sympathies of the reader or hearer and lead to emulation. He prefers Sophocles's Deianira and Tecmessa as being "truly 'female women,' as Homer would say, gentle and loving, not above jealousy, and for that reason a finer and clearer contrast to the heroes than are the coa.r.s.er and more dominant heroines." ... "If these criticisms be just," he adds, "they will show that, in the most perfect and exclusive Athenian society--that is to say, among Thucydides's and Sophocles's set, the ideal of female character had degenerated; that to these men, whose affections were centred on very different objects, the notion of a true heroine was no longer natural, but was supplanted by a hard and masculine type. The old free, n.o.ble woman, whom aeschylus had, in early days, still known, was banished from their city life to make way for the domestic slave of the Attic household, called 'mistress,'

but as such contrasted with the 'companions,' who gradually supplanted her in Athenian society."

The types of womanhood presented by aeschylus and Sophocles belonged to a state of society which had pa.s.sed away, and were too remote from the life of their own day to be ideals for the daughters of Athens. These dramatists did not touch upon the problems which were then engaging the thoughts of enlightened men and women. There is nothing in aeschylus, absorbed as he was in the problems of destiny, to show that he felt the many weighty problems that confronted the social life of his time; and the serene Sophocles gives no hint that the world about him was not the best of all possible worlds. But how was it with the sombre and melancholy Euripides? What insight does he give us into the social life of the times?

There was a famous saying of Sophocles that "he himself represented men as they ought to be--Euripides, men as they are." This means that Euripides, while making the old legends the foundation of his tragedies, attributed to his heroes and heroines the faults and pa.s.sions of ordinary men and women and utilized his plots to present the problems which confronted society as he knew it. As a follower of Anaxagoras and a member of the party of philosophers, he was dissatisfied with the conditions of life about him, and endeavored, through his dramas, to a.s.sist the movements for reform. He was, in many respects, a daring innovator, and this explains the bitter hostility which Aristophanes, the ultra-conservative, exhibited toward him. The glaring fault in Athenian social life was the status of woman, and to the solution of this problem Euripides bent all his energies. He used woman and the moral conflicts originating through the relations of the s.e.xes as a _motif_ for his poetry, and the whole body of his plays is a commentary on the Woman Question. He found in the portrayal of woman a new field for his genius, as well as a new means of advocating an unpopular but righteous cause.

Yet we are confronted by the prevailing opinion that Euripides was a woman hater who utilized his tragedies to present his unfavorable opinion of the s.e.x. This view, presented by many modern writers, rests, however, on false a.s.sumptions. To exhibit the low views of woman held by the men of his day, the poet attributes to certain of his characters condemnations of the s.e.x as a whole; and these are taken to be expressions of the personal opinion of the author. Thus Hippolytus engages in a lengthy tirade beginning:

"Why hast thou given a home beneath the sun, Zeus, unto woman, specious curse to man?"

[Ill.u.s.tration 232 _PHRYNE After the painting by Henry I. Siemiradsky.

Phryne, with a modesty one would not expect in a woman of her cla.s.s, was very careful to keep her beautiful figure concealed, avoiding the public baths and having her body always enveloped in a long and graceful tunic.

But on two occasions the beauty-loving Greeks had displayed to them the charms of her person. The fist was at the solemn a.s.sembly at Eleusis, on the feast of the Poseidonia. Having loosened her beautiful hair and let fall her drapery, Phryne plunged into the sea in the sight of all the a.s.sembled Greeks._

_Phryne was of very humble origin, and originally obtained her livelihood by gathering capers; but her beauty afterward gained great wealth for her. At Delphi there was erected a statue in gold of her._]

But Hippolytus throughout is characterized as a p.r.o.nounced misogynist, and this and similar pa.s.sages found their inspiration in the characters and the situation and produce a well-defined dramatic effect.

Furthermore, while the poet's unfavorable opinions of women are frequently cited out of their connection, his complimentary expressions are lost sight of. In contrast to the harsh criticisms of men who vent their spleen against those whom they have injured, or of women who find fault with their s.e.x where the dramatic purpose justifies the expressions used, there can be cited pa.s.sages in which maidenly modesty and wifely fidelity are commended; or one might quote the deeply emotional words of Admetus or Theseus concerning the joys of happy married life, or the tender expressions which fathers, like Agamemnon, utter in reference to their daughters. In the fragments also occur pa.s.sages friendly and unfriendly to woman, but, as these are without their context, it is difficult to judge them fairly. Hence the conclusion from a study of the dialogues of Euripides is that every unfavorable judgment of woman finds its full justification in the economy of the drama; nowhere is there convincing indication that the poet himself had any hatred for the s.e.x.

If we turn from the dialogues to the choruses, we may expect to find the author's true opinions, and here occur no traces whatever of unfriendly criticism. Male choruses sing of the unbounded happiness which is gained in the possession of a good wife; female choruses sing of entrancing love, of the blessings of a happy married life, while faithlessness and sinful pa.s.sion are condemned. They refer at times to evil report concerning women, but always with indignation and in manifest effort to correct a wrong judgment. Thus, for example, the chorus of the _Ion_:

"Mark--ye whose strains of slander Scourge evermore Woman in song, and brand her Wanton and wh.o.r.e,-- How high in virtue's place We pa.s.s men's lawless race, Nor spit in viper-lays your venom-store.

But let the Muse of taunting On men's heads pour Her indignation, chanting Her treason-lore; Sing of the outraged maid; Tell of the wife betrayed Of him who hath displayed his false heart's core--"

The nature of the characters of Euripides is the most important of all the testimony of the plays as evidence of the social life of Athens, since the poet drew them from real life, and consequently his men and his women are necessarily fair specimens of the men and women to be found in Athenian society. It is noticeable that the men are, as a rule, far inferior to the women, both in manners and in n.o.bility of character, and are not to be compared with the heroes of aeschylus and Sophocles.

Hippolytus is indeed a notable example of youthful purity; Pylades, of unselfish friends.h.i.+p; Achilles, of courtly chivalry; Ion, of youthful piety; Theseus, of devoted patriotism; and the peasant husband of Electra, of knightly regard; but the majority of the male characters are selfish, quarrelsome, and ordinary. How different do we find the case when we consider the dramatist's women!

Differing from his countrymen in the conception of the character, capabilities, and rights of woman, Euripides has in his plays presented ideals of a womanhood which would give woman something higher to live for than the drudgery of household duties, and would raise the s.e.x in the estimation of men. Heroism in everyday life is the lesson he constantly teaches by the examples of such women as Alcestis, the devoted wife and mother; as Polyxena, the brave martyr-maiden; as Andromache, faithful in thraldom to the memory of her valiant husband; as Macaria and Iphigenia, sacrificing themselves for the sake of a great cause; and as Electra, the devoted sister. Nowhere can one find a longer catalogue of n.o.ble women, not heroines of prehistoric days living in a golden age, but women who in character and sentiments were like to those met with every day in every community. Euripides's heart was burdened by the sorrows and wrongs of the s.e.x; and he combated the social system which was at the root of the evil, not by violent a.s.saults upon it, not by seeking to overturn that which was the product of centuries and was a natural result of the Greek idea of the city-state, but by showing women how they could better their condition and by giving men more exalted ideas of the nature of woman. Says Mr. Arthur S. Way, the translator and ardent advocate of Euripides, who, of all Greek scholars, has most profoundly and sympathetically investigated this question:

"Euripides set himself to appeal to human hearts as he found them, to exalt men's estimate of woman, to redeem women from despair of themselves, by uplifting before them inspiring ideals of womanhood which might be types and examples for all time. And, first, he gave them those transcendent four--who in the union of the sweetness and lovable gentleness of the pure womanly with the magnificent exaltation of the highest heroism are unapproached by Homer's Penelope and Andromache, or by Sophocles's Antigone. He gave them Alcestis, who surrendered her life freely, not so much for her husband as for wifely duty's sake, and never flinched nor faltered as the horror of great darkness swallowed her up, but by strength of a mother's love stayed up the feet that were sinking into Hades, till her dying breath had made her children's future sure, and then in death's grasp quietly laid her hand, and so was drawn down, faintly and ever more faintly murmuring love. He gave them Iphigenia, who, summoned from the cloistered shelter of her home as to a bridal, found herself set without warning before the altar of death, and yet shrank and shuddered only till the full import of the great sacrifice demanded dawned upon her, and then sprang full-statured to the height of a G.o.dlike resolve; who grasped in her pure hands the scales of national justice, who bore up with her slender wrists the fate of her fatherland, and sang the triumph pasan of h.e.l.las as she paced to death. He gave them Macaria, who attained a height of selfless heroism unimagined till that hour, in that unasked she gave her life for the salvation of a n.o.ble house and of alien helpers; who refused to hearken to the suggestion which whispered a hope of escape, but with unreverted eyes turned from all joys and all hopes of young life, and spent her last breath in consolation and encouragement to those who clung with adoring love and pa.s.sionate tears about her parting feet. He gave them Polyxena, the most pathetic figure of all, sustained by no proud consciousness of salvation wrought from suffering, but only welcoming death as an angel of deliverance from shame and long regrets, who stood on the grave-mound, arrayed in spotless innocence, with modest lips that calmly made in the name of honor their last request, and so gave her throat to the sword, while the fierce men who but now had clamored for her blood acclaimed her of all maidens n.o.blest of soul.

"He brought before them women in all the relations of life, everywhere surpa.s.sing the men in goodness, in constancy, in wisdom, in counsel.

They watched the ministering angel who sat by a brother's bed, and wiped the dew of agony from his brow and the foam of madness from his lips; they held their breath while a gentle-hearted priestess bemoaned to her unknown brother the cruel destiny which even then drew her to the verge of fratricide. They saw the wife who hailed a death of fire to be reunited to her slain lord, and the wife who devoted herself to save, or die with, her husband. They heard one mother plead the cause of honor and right against cold statecraft; they listened as another besought her doomed sons to be reconciled. They thrilled beholding the princess-slave whose love was stronger than death and whose highborn spirit flashed defiance to a treacherous foe; and that other, who, remembering her hero-husband, would not suffer the imminent death to make herself or her children play a craven part, but mingled proud scorn of the murderous usurper with regrets for hopes foregone. In the n.o.ble words of Professor Mahaffy: 'These are the women who have so raised the ideal of the s.e.x, that in looking upon them the world has pa.s.sed from neglect to courtesy, from courtesy to veneration; these are they, who, across many centuries, first of frivolity and sensuality, then of rudeness and barbarism, join hands with the ideals of our religion and our chivalry, the martyred saints, the chaste and holy virgins of romance--nay, more, with the true wives, the devoted mothers, of our own day.'

"But there are female characters in his plays which have been pointed to as proving a very different att.i.tude toward women. Of these, Phaedra was the best-abused by his enemies, who wilfully shut their eyes to her true character. She is, by the very plot of the play, the helpless victim of the malice of a G.o.ddess. With her brain beclouded by fever frenzy, she agonizes for clear vision and wails for peace of mind. She is a pure-souled, true-hearted woman, who tingles with shame and shudders with horror at the hideous thing that has been born in her. She is driven by the imminence of ruin to a desperate expedient to s.h.i.+eld her name from the unmerited dishonor which she might well believe, from the ambiguously worded threat with which Hippolytus departed, was to be cast upon her. He gave her cause to think that he would accuse her to his father of a crime of which she knew herself innocent. In her despair, she saw no help but to forestall him by an accusation equally false.

"Medea and Creusa--even Clytemnestra and Hermione--are not portrayed as transgressors without excuse: in each case, the audience heard the woman plead her cause and proclaim the doctrine that woman has rights as well as man, that what man avenges as the inexpiable wrong is not a light offence against her. It may well be that they were not ripe for the reception of ideas so unheard-of, that many of them mistook his drift; but the seed sank in, to bear fruit in due time.

"In each instance the sinner is a woman deeply wronged, or in sore straits, or under daemoniac influence: there are no such gratuitously wicked characters as Goneril, Lady Macbeth, or Tamora. Yet no one calls Shakespeare a misogynist. Why, then, was it possible for Euripides's enemies to charge him with being one, a charge doubtless echoed by a good many thoughtless and stupid people in his day, but little creditable to modern scholars.h.i.+p? For three reasons: first, the wilful or obtuse misunderstanding of such characters as Phaedra--the representation of these by Euripides was the main ground on which Aristophanes alleged that the tendency of his plays was immoral.

Secondly, we occasionally come upon the censures of the faults and foibles of women--their p.r.o.neness to scandal, to uncharitable judgments of their fellows, their pettiness, frivolity, and so forth. It must be admitted, too, that the context sometimes justifies us in concluding that the poet is uttering his own sentiments. It was, indeed, to be expected that a thinker who had so high a conception of what women might be should be painfully impressed by the contrast presented by what they too often were. Nor is it matter for wonder that he should take opportunities of bringing the same feeling home to them. It is not enough to set n.o.ble ideals before people who are not yet conscious of the incompatibility of their present habits and aims with the emulation of those ideals. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, as indeed these were, compared with the hideous presentments of female morality in which Aristophanes revels, till his readers might imagine that pure and temperate women were quite the exception in the Athens of his day. And was he not a friend to women who gave, for the sake of his sisters for whom heroic ideals might seem set too high, this winsome model, 'not too fair and good for human nature's daily food'?

"'Beauty wins not love for woman from the yokemate of her life: Many an one by goodness wins it; for to each true-hearted wife, Knit in love unto her husband, is Discretion's secret told.

These her gifts are: though her lord be all uncomely to behold, To her heart and eyes shall he be comely, so her wit be sound; ('Tis not eyes that judge the _man_; within is true discernment found): Whensoever he speaks, or holds his peace, shall she his sense commend, Prompt with sweet suggestion when with speech he fain would please a friend: Glad she is, if aught untoward hap, to show she feels his care: Joy and sorrow of the husband aye the loyal wife will share: Yea, if thou art sick, in spirit will thy wife be sick with thee, Bear the half of all thy burdens--naught unsweet accounteth she: For with those we love our duty bids us taste the cup of bliss Not alone, the cup of sorrow also--what is love but this?'"

The ill-deserved reputation of being a misogynist which attaches to Euripides is due, not to his own plays, but to the satire and drollery of his rival, the comedian Aristophanes, who, in B. C. 411 or 410, produced the _Thesmophoriazusae_, a play so cleverly constructed that, while it seemed to defend the female s.e.x against the charges of Euripides, really presented them in a more disgusting light.

Aristophanes represents the world of women as thrown into consternation and revolt through the production of the tragedies of Euripides, such as the _Hippolytus_, wherein the female s.e.x is so severely arraigned.

Unable to endure his accusations, an a.s.sembly of women is called at the Thesmophoria to plan the destruction of their arch enemy. Euripides, however, hears of the a.s.sembly, and prevails on his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, to disguise himself as a woman and seek admittance, that he may plead the cause of the tragedian. The humor of the debate lies in the fact that, after several women have roundly abused Euripides for slandering their s.e.x, Mnesilochus, attired in rustic female garb, eloquently reminds them of the truths which Euripides might have divulged had he chosen to do so. One sin after another is glibly and facetiously piled up against the feminine record, until the few calumnies attributed to Euripides seem insignificant beside the mountain of crimes and foibles the supposed matron heaps up against her sisters.

The picture which Aristophanes, in his clever bit of satire, presents of the women of his day is an exceedingly repulsive one. They are represented as profligate, licentious, stupid, fond of drink, thieves and liars. No other Greek writer has given them so base a character. But we must remember that we are reading comedy. "The point of the _Thesmophoriazusae_, so far as the women are concerned, is that, while Aristophanes pretends to pillory Euripides for his abuse of them, his own satire is far more searching and penetrates more deeply into the secrets of domestic life."

The grotesque distortion by Aristophanes of the character of the philosopher Socrates is sufficiently well known; the contrast between the sentiments which he attributes to Euripides and the tragic poet's own views as presented in his plays is very striking; hence the pictures that he draws of the life and manners of women must not be accepted without important allowances. Aristophanes was writing to make people laugh, not to reveal the secrets of the household, and his plays were exclusively for an audience of men. Hence coa.r.s.eness and buffoonery, as elements of comic effect, are continually availed of, and Aristophanes considered that he was witty in maligning the female s.e.x. It would clearly be unfair and even absurd to regard Aristophanes as an accurate expositor of feminine life in Athens. But it is a noticeable fact that, from B. C. 411 onward, there is, as seen in the extant plays of Aristophanes, a marked prominence given to the female s.e.x. Women, who heretofore have played but a subordinate role in comedy, now frequently have the princ.i.p.al parts. Comedy, more truly than any other department of literature, reflects the current thought; and while the characters of comedy play a role that is the reverse of actuality, comic invention deals with real movements, and this intentional prominence of the usually neglected s.e.x can have but one interpretation: the Woman Question had become a problem which profoundly engaged the attention of the society of the time.

It is a difficult task to attempt to trace in the comedies of Aristophanes the thread of a social movement. He utilized the events and opinions of the day for fun making, and did not greatly concern himself with the serious aspects of social problems. He was an ultra-conservative, and desired to bring the new thought of the day into disrepute by exhibiting its ludicrous side. Hence he makes use of the woman's rights movement to give free rein to his fancy, and to delight the public with obscene jokes on the vices and weaknesses of women and with clever caricatures of their leaders. Yet the attentive reader can get glimpses here and there into the more serious aspects of the question, and can recognize behind some of the distorted, caricatured figures types which are not in themselves comic.

The other two plays of Aristophanes in which women figure prominently are the _Lysistrata_ and the _Ecclesiazusae_. In each of these the company of women is directed by a leader who in talents and aggressiveness is far superior to her fellows. These two have not the many small weaknesses of the other dames; they have the collective interest of their s.e.x at heart; and they know how to form a plan and how to carry it through. The other women, in spite of their thoughtlessness and weakness of character, are dominated by the strong personalities of their self-appointed leaders. Hence, by a study of the controlling spirit of each play, in spite of the caricature in the poet's delineation, we may be able to form some conception of the currents of thought of the day as they affected women.

Lysistrata is the wife of an Athenian magistrate, and has been strongly affected by the ill success of the Peloponnesian War. She has meditated long over the experiences of the female s.e.x in general during the last decade of the war. During the first ten years, the Grecian women had borne in silence and without forming any opinions, in the narrow confines of the home, the mistakes of their husbands; but gradually they had observed how politics, in the hands of the men, was going from bad to worse, and how want was increasing year by year. They began to ask questions, to find fault in a mild way, though only with the result that the men sent them back to their domestic duties with the brusque answer: "War shall be a care to men." That which finally roused the women to action was the realization that the men, in the face of events, had unanimously recognized their own helplessness. Lysistrata therefore, in Aristophanes's play, counsels the women to break their chains, seize the reins of government, and bring the dreadful war to an end. She tells the a.s.sembled women that they have carried a double burden in the war. As mothers, they have borne sons whom they have been compelled to send forth to death; while as wives, they have been deprived of their husbands; even the maidens have grown old in single blessedness, on account of the absence of men available as husbands. With such words as these she arouses the spirit of her comrades. They, in turn, speak of their virtues, their natural gifts, and their love for their native country, to which they are so much indebted, and in duty to it they are ready to turn their attention to things of war; for, say they: "The Attic woman is no slave, and has sufficient courage to take up arms in her country's cause: now, war shall be a care to women."

These reflections have a decided importance in a consideration of the social history of the times by suggesting how the female s.e.x developed under the trying conditions of war.

In the poet's delineation of Lysistrata, the scene in which she describes to the a.s.sembled Athenian and Laconian deputies their political sins gains special importance. She possesses historical insight. By recounting historical facts, she reminds them of what the Laconians have done for the Athenians, and what the latter for the Laconians, and awakens them to general Pan-h.e.l.lenic interests, for which they should labor in common instead of weakening their power in fratricidal war. In this address she characterizes herself as follows: "I am a woman, it is true; but I have understanding; and of myself I am not badly off in respect of intellect. By having often heard the remarks of my father and my elders, I have not been ill educated."

We have then in the _Lysistrata_ the women of the day led on in a great patriotic movement by an educated and eloquent woman. The play exhibits a constant battle of words between men and women, each grouped in a chorus. The women seize the Acropolis and make themselves experts in the science of war. Their plans succeed; and the husbands are reduced to a terrible plight by the novel resolution adopted by their wives to bring them to terms. Envoys at length come from the belligerent parties, and peace is concluded under the direction of the clever Lysistrata.

If from the unbridled drollery and serious moral of the drama we endeavor to reach conclusions regarding the Woman Question, they will be found to be about as follows. There were at this time certain prominent women who were endeavoring to have the natural capabilities of the female s.e.x more justly esteemed, and energetic voices were being raised against the humble status of woman in society and in public affairs.

This movement was quickened in the latter part of the century, owing to the mistakes of the Peloponnesian War, but the efforts of women to a.s.sert their rights were met by the violent opposition of the conservative party. The leader in the _Lysistrata_, in her gift of speech and breadth of understanding, typifies some historical women who took a prominent part in the movement, and these were, probably, some aristocratic ladies who had been influenced by Aspasia.

The unique importance of the _Lysistrata_ consists in its portraiture of the leaders of the woman's rights movement and in its suggestion of the ambitious projects they were prepared to undertake. The _Ecclesiazusae_ is, like the _Lysistrata_, a picture of woman's ascendency, but it goes further in satirizing some of the schemes which in daily conversation and in the works of the philosophers were being presented for bettering the conditions of society and improving the status of women. The success of such a play presupposes that the minds of the audience were prepared for it by the informal discussion of such questions in everyday life.

The Athenian ladies, in the _Ecdesiazusae_, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Praxagora,--who is endowed with much the same gifts as Lysistrata, and is, in fact, a replica of that clever woman,--disguise themselves as men and crowd the public a.s.sembly; by means of the majority of votes which they have thus fraudulently obtained, they overturn the government of the men and proclaim the supremacy of the women in the State.

Praxagora, the leading agitator, is chosen _strategis_, and she immediately proclaims, as the fundamental principles of the new State, community of property and free trade between the s.e.xes--ideas which were prominent in the ideal _Republic_ of Plato and had been earlier projected by Protagoras. "The point of the satire consists in this: that the arguments by which the women get the upper hand all turn on their avowed conservatism; men change and s.h.i.+ft, women preserve their old customs and will maintain the _ethos_ of the State; but no sooner have they got authority than they show themselves more democratic than the demagogues, more new-fangled in their political notions than the philosophers. They upset time-honored inst.i.tutions and make new ones to suit their own caprices, squaring the laws according to the logic of feminine instinct. Of course, speculations like those of Plato's _Republic_ are satirized in the farcical scenes which ill.u.s.trate the consequences of this female revolution. But perhaps the finest point about the comedy is its harmonious insight into the workings of women's minds--a clear sense of what a topsy-turvy world we should have to live in if women were the lawgivers and governors."

We have thus briefly sketched the indications of the prevalence of the Woman Question in Athens, as presented in the plays of Aristophanes.

This writer furthermore affords us many ludicrous pictures of woman in private life, which indicate that the fair s.e.x were not always as weak as men would have them. The chorus of the _Thesmophoriazusae_ resent the many ill things said of the race of women,--"that we are an utter evil to men, and that all evils spring from us, strifes, quarrels, seditions, painful grief, and war. Come, now, if we are an evil, why do you marry us, if indeed we are really an evil, and forbid any of us either to go out, or to be caught peeping out, but wish to guard the evil thing with so great diligence? And if the wife should go out any whither, and you then should discover her to be out of doors, you rage with madness, who ought to offer libations and rejoice, if indeed you really find the evil thing to be gone away from the house and do not find it at home. And if we sleep in other peoples' houses, when we play and when we are tired, everyone searches for this evil thing, going round about the beds. And if we peep out of a window, everyone seeks to get a sight of the evil thing. And if we retire again, being ashamed, so much the more does everyone desire to see the evil thing peep out again. So manifestly are we much better than you." As portrayed by Aristophanes, the women of his day manifestly knew how to a.s.sert their equality. Feminine foibles and weaknesses do not escape his satiric pen. Women are overfond of dress, and no brilliant or prudent action can be expected of them,

"Who sit deck'd out with flowers, and bearing robes Of saffron hue, and richly border'd o'er With loose Cimmerian vests and circling sandals."

Furthermore, they are fond of drink, and this vice is mercilessly satirized. The inexorable oath administered by Lysistrata to her comrades, in entering upon their crusade to bring about peace, is one which no Athenian woman would incur the penalty of breaking: "If I violate my pledge, may the cup be filled with water!"

Occasionally a man found he had married a wife who set aside his conjugal authority and ruled the household. Thus Strepsiades, the country gentleman of Aristophanes's _Clouds_, quarrelled with his luxurious, city-bred wife, of the aristocratic house of Megacles, over the naming of their son, which was the father's right, and, woman-like, she carried her point; and this son she brought up to despise his father's country ways and to squander his father's substance in horse racing.

Aristophanes was not the only comic poet who indulged in gibes at the female s.e.x, for the object of comedy was to amuse, and the Athenian audience of men ever found delight in the portrayal of the weaknesses and foibles of the opposite s.e.x. Even his predecessor Susarion, who was the first to compose comedy in verse, and is usually called the inventor of comedy, gave expression to the current abuse: "Hear, O ye people!

Susarion says this, the son of Philinus, the Megarian, of Tripodiscus: women are an evil; and yet, my countrymen, one cannot set up house without evil; for to be married or not to be married is alike bad." It is unfortunate for our purpose that so little survives of the numberless plays of the Middle and New Comedy, especially the latter, for this comedy of manners presented a close and faithful picture of domestic life and would have been an almost inexhaustible mine of information on Attic life in general, full as it was of ill.u.s.trations of the manners, feelings, prejudices, and ways of thinking of the Ancient Greeks.

The fragments preserved to us are sufficient, however, to give us glimpses of the manner in which woman was treated on the stage; and, while there was much harsh criticism, it is gratifying to note that her good qualities were at times recognized. Says the poet Antiphanes:

"What! when you court concealment, will you tell The matter to a woman? Just as well Tell all the criers in the public squares I 'Tis hard to say which of them louder blares."

"Great Zeus," says another poet, "may I perish, if I ever spoke against woman, the most precious of all acquisitions. For if Medea was an objectionable person, surely Penelope was an excellent creature. Does anyone abuse Clytemnestra? I oppose the admirable Alcestis. But perhaps someone may abuse Phaedra; then I say, by Zeus! what a capital person was.... Oh, dear! the catalogue of good women is already exhausted, while there remains a crowd of bad ones that might be mentioned."

"Woman's a necessary and undying evil," says Philemon; and in another fragment: