3.—Legitimate Wives and Courtesans in Athens.

Just as the transition from the matriarchate to the patriarchate was accomplished in Athens, it was accomplished elsewhere as soon as a similar degree of development had been attained. Woman was restricted to her home and isolated in special rooms, known as “gynacontis,” in which she dwelt. She even was excluded from social intercourse with the men who visited the house; in fact, this was the special object of her isolation. In the Odyssee we find this change in customs expressed. Thus Telemachus forbids his mother to be present among her suitors, and utters this command:

This was the prevailing conception in Greece at the time. Even widows were subjected to the rulership of their nearest male relatives, and were not even free to choose a husband. Weary of the long waiting imposed upon them by the clever Penelope, the suitors send to Telemachus their spokesman, Antonioos, who thus voices their demand:

At this period woman’s freedom has come to an end. When she leaves the house she must veil her face—not to waken the desires of some other man. In the Oriental countries where sexual passions are stronger, as a result of the hot climate, this method of isolation is still carried to the extreme. Among the ancients, Athens served as a pattern of the new order. The woman shares the man’s bed, but not his table. She does not address him by his name, but calls him master; she is his servant. She was not allowed to appear in public anywhere, and when walking upon the streets was always veiled and plainly dressed. When she committed adultery she was, according to Solon’s law, condemned to pay for her sin either with her life, or with her liberty. Her husband was entitled to sell her as a slave.

The position of Greek women of those days is powerfully expressed in Medea’s lamentation:

Very different was the man’s lot. While the man compelled the woman to abstain absolutely from relations with other men, for the purpose of insuring the legitimacy of his heirs, he was not inclined to abstain from relations with other women. Courtesanship developed. Women noted for their beauty and intellect, usually foreigners, preferred a free life in the most intimate association with men to the slavery of marriage. Nor was their life deemed a loathsome one. The name and the fame of these courtesans who associated with the foremost men of Greece and took part in their intellectual discussions and in their banquets, have come down to us through history, while the names of the legitimate wives are lost and forgotten. One of these was Aspasia, the friend of the famous Pericles, who later made her his wife. Phryne had intimate relations with Hyperides, and served Praxiteles, one of the foremost sculptors of Greece, as a model for his statue of Venus. Danae was the mistress of Epicure, Archæanassa was Plato’s. Lais of Corynth, Gnethanea and others were equally famous courtesans. Every one of the famous Greeks had intercourse with these courtesans. It was part and parcel of their life. The great orator Demosthenes in his oration against Neaera thus characterized the sexual relations of Athenian men: “We marry women to have legitimate children and to have faithful guardians of our homes, we maintain concubines for our daily service and comfort, and courtesans for the enjoyment of love.” The wife was only destined to bear offspring and, like a faithful dog, to guard her master’s house. But the master himself lived to suit his pleasure. In many cases it is so still.

To satisfy the demand for mercenary women, especially among the younger men, prostitution developed, an institution that had not been known during the dominance of the matriarchate. Prostitution differs from free sexual intercourse by the fact that the woman yields her body in return for material gain, be it to one man or to a number of men. Prostitution exists wherever a woman makes the selling of her charms a trade. Solon, who formulated the new laws for Athens and is famed as the founder of these laws, introduced the public brothel, the “deikterion.” He decreed that the price should be the same to all visitors. According to Philemon this was one obolus, about 6 cents in American money. The “deikterion” was a place of absolute safety, like the temples in Greece and Rome and the Christian churches in the middle ages. It was under the immediate protection of the public authorities. Until about 150 B. C. the temple in Jerusalem was the general rallying-point of the prostitutes.

For the boon bestowed upon Athenian men by his founding of the “deikterion,” one of Solon’s contemporaries thus sings his praise: “Solon, be praised! For thou didst purchase public women for the welfare of the city, to preserve the morals of the city that is full of strong, young men, who, without thy wise institution, would indulge in the annoying pursuit of the better class women.” We will see that in our own day exactly the same arguments are being advanced to justify the existence of prostitution and its maintenance as an institution sanctioned by the state. Thus the state laws approved of deeds committed by men as being their natural right, while the same deeds were branded as criminal and despicable when committed by women. It is a well-known fact that even to-day there are a great many men who prefer the company of a pretty offendress to the company of their wife and who, nevertheless, enjoy the reputation of being “pillars of society” and guardians of those sacred institutions, the family and the home. To be sure, the Greek women frequently seem to have taken vengeance upon their husbands for their oppression. If prostitution is the complement of monogamic marriage on the one hand, adultery of wives and cuckoldom of husbands are its complements on the other. Among the Greek dramatists, Euripides seems to have been the most pronounced woman-hater, since in his dramas he preferably holds up the women to ridicule and scorn. What accusations he hurls at them can best be seen from a passage in “The Thesmophoria” by Aristophanes,[13] where a Greek woman assails him in the following manner:

It is not surprising that the eloquent Greek woman thus serves the defamer of her sex. But Euripides could hardly have made such accusations nor would they have found belief among the men, had it not been well known that they were justified. Judging by the final sentences of the above quoted harangue it seems that the custom, well known in Germany and other countries, whereby the master of the house honors his guest by placing his own wife or daughter at the guest’s disposal, did not prevail in Greece. Of this custom, that was still observed in Holland in the fifteenth century, Murner says: “It is the custom in the Netherlands that whosoever hath a dear guest, unto him he giveth his wife in good faith.”[15]

The increasing class struggle in the Greek states and the deplorable conditions that existed in many of these small communities led Plato to an investigation of the best constitution of the state and its institutions. In his “State,” that he conceives as an ideal one, he demands that among the highest class of citizens, the guardians, women should hold a position of absolute equality. Like the men, they should take part in military exercises and should perform all civic duties, only should the lighter tasks be alloted to them on account of the weakness of their sex. He holds that the natural abilities are the same with both sexes, that woman is only weaker than man. He further demands that the women should belong to all the men in common as should also the children, so that no father might know his child nor a child its father.[16]

The views of Aristoteles are more in keeping with the bourgeois conceptions. According to his “Politics,” every woman should have the right of freely choosing her husband. She should be subservient to him, yet she should have the privilege of giving him good advice. Thucydides expresses a view that meets with the approval of all Philistines. He says: “To that wife is due the highest praise of whom one speaks neither well nor ill outside of her home.”

While such views prevailed women were bound to sink lower and lower in the esteem of men. A fear of excess of population even led men to avoid intimate intercourse with women. An unnatural satisfaction of sexual desires was the result. The Greek states consisted mainly of cities having very limited landed property, and it therefore was impossible to maintain the population at their accustomed nourishment beyond a given number. This fear of excess of population caused Aristotle to advice the men to shun their wives and to indulge in sodomy instead. Before him Socrates had already extolled sodomy as a mark of superior culture. Finally the foremost men of Greece indulged in this unnatural passion. The esteem of woman sank to its lowest level. Bawdy houses containing male prostitutes were maintained, beside those containing female prostitutes. It was in such a social atmosphere that Thucydides could say of woman that she was worse than the sea raging in storm, worse than the fire’s fierce glow and the mountain torrent’s rushing stream. “If it is a god who invented woman, whoever he be, let him know that he is the nefarious originator of the greatest evil.”

While the men of Greece practiced sodomy, the women drifted into the opposite extreme, indulging in the love of their own sex. This was especially the case among the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos, wherefore this aberration was called Lesbian love and is still called so, since it is by no means extinct but continues to exist among us. The chief representative of this “love” was the celebrated poetess Sapho, “the Lesbian nightinggale,” who lived about 600 B. C. Her passion is fervently expressed in her Ode to Venus:

Still more passionate is the sensuality expressed in the ode to the beautiful Athis.

While in Athens and other Greek states the patriarchal system prevailed, in Sparta, Athens’ greatest rival, we still find the matriarchate, a condition which had become entirely foreign to most Greeks. Tradition has it that one day a Greek asked a Spartan how the crime of adultery was punished in Sparta; whereupon the Spartan replied: “Stranger, there are no adulterers in our midst.” “But if there should be one?” quoth the stranger. “Then,” said the Spartan mockingly, “his penalty would be to give an ox, so tall that he could stretch his neck across the Taygetus and drink from the Eurotas.” Upon the astonished query of the stranger how an ox could be so tall, the Spartan laughingly replied: “How can there be an adulterer in Sparta?!” The dignified self-consciousness of the Spartan women finds expression in the reply given to a stranger by the wife of Leonidas. The stranger said to her: “You Lacedemonian women are the only ones who rule over men.” To this she replied: “And we are the only women who bring forth men.”

The freedom enjoyed by women during the matriarchate heightened their beauty and increased their pride, their dignity and their self-reliance. There is a uniformity of opinion among ancient writers that these attributes were highly developed in women during the matriarchal period. The condition of servitude that followed naturally had a deteriorating influence. The change is manifested even in the difference of dress that marks the two periods. The dress of the Doric woman hung loosely from her shoulders, leaving her arms and the lower part of her legs uncovered. It is the dress worn by Diana as she is represented in our museums, a free and daring figure. But the Ionic dress covers the figure completely and restrains the motions. The manner in which women dress was and is to this day a proof of their dependence and a cause of their helplessness to a far greater extent than is generally assumed. The style of dress worn by women to this day makes them clumsy and gives them a feeling of weakness that is expressed in their carriage and their character. The Spartan custom of permitting girls to go about naked until maturity—a custom that was made possible by the climate of the country—had the effect, so an ancient writer tells us, of teaching them simplicity of taste and regard for the care of their bodies. According to the views of the time, this custom did not shock the sense of decency or arouse physical passions. The girls also took part in all physical exercises just like the boys. Thus a strong, self-respecting race was reared, conscious of their worth, as is shown in the reply given to the stranger by the wife of Leonidas.