SECT. IX. Woman in the Homeric age.

No view of a peculiar civilization can on its ethical side be satisfactory, unless it include a distinct consideration of the place held in it by woman. And, besides, the position of the Greek woman of the heroic age is in itself so remarkable, as even on special grounds to require separate and detailed notice. It is likewise so elevated, both absolutely and in comparison with what it became in the historic ages of Greece and Rome amidst their elaborate civilization, as to form in itself a sufficient confutation of the theories of those writers who can see in the history of mankind only the development of a law of continual progress from intellectual darkness into light, and from moral degradation up to virtue.

The idea and place of woman have been slowly and laboriously elevated by the Gospel: and their full development has constituted the purest and most perfect protest, that the world has ever seen, against the sovereignty of force. For it is not alone against merely physical, but also against merely intellectual strength, that this protest has been lodged. To the very highest range of intellectual strength known among the children of Adam, woman seems never to have ascended, but in every or almost every case to have fallen somewhat short of it. But when we look to the virtues, it seems probable both that her average is higher, and that she also attains in the highest instances to loftier summits. Certainly there is no proof here of her inferiority to man. Now it is nowhere written in Holy Scripture that God is knowledge, or that God is power; while it is written that God is love: words which appear to set forth love as the central essence, and all besides as attributes. Woman then holds of God, and finds her own principal development in that which is most God-like. Thus, therefore, when Christianity wrought out for woman, not a social identity, but a social equality, not a rivalry with the function of man, but an elevation in her own function reaching as high as his, it made the world and human life in this respect also a true image of the Godhead.

Within the pale of that civilization which has grown up under the combined influence of the Christian religion as paramount, and of what may be called the Teutonic manners as secondary, we find the idea of woman and her social position raised to a point even higher than in the poems of Homer. But it would be hard to discover any period of history or country of the world, not being Christian, in which they stood so high as with the Greeks of the heroic age.

There are various heads under which we may inquire into the subject before us.

One is the law of marriage in the heroic age, and the state of the specific relation between the sexes.

A second is the employments assigned to women; how high did they reach, and how low did they descend?

A third is the social footing on which they stood, as tested by manners.

A fourth is the general outline of the woman’s character, as it is to be estimated from the varied specimens which Homer has set before us.

Law and custom of marriage.

Firstly; a main criterion of the general condition of woman in a given state of society is to be found in the view which it may exhibit of the great institution of marriage. In proportion as that institution is purified and elevated by just restraint, the condition of woman is honourable, free, and happy. In proportion as it is relaxed, in accommodation to human infirmity or appetite, the condition of woman is degraded and servile; for where desire is the law, strength is its appropriate and only sanction, and the cause of the weaker fails. Just as a strict and efficient police is most important to the unprotected, so a strict law of marriage is most for the interest of the woman.

The general position of womankind in the Homeric age is high on both sides of the Archipelago; but, as respects marriage, its chiefest pillar, it is perceptibly even higher among the Greeks than among the Trojans. Among the multitude of cases, that either directly or incidentally come before us in the poems, there is nothing that at all resembles the Asiatic household of Priam, or that seems to favour polygamy. Nor have we any instance where a wife is divorced or taken away from her husband, and then made the wife of another man during his lifetime. The froward Suitors, who urge Penelope to choose a new husband from among them, do it upon the plea that Ulysses must be dead, and that there is no hope of his return: a plea not irrational, if we presume that the real term of his absence came to even half the number of years which Homer has assigned to it. The ancient law of England, while it repudiated the principle of divorce, recognised the presumption of the husband’s death, when brought near to certainty by a long term of absence, as equivalent to death itself for the purpose of exempting the wife from civil penalty in case of her marriage. Ægisthus, again, finds it extremely difficult to corrupt Clytemnestra: and his success in inducing her to marry him entails, as if a matter of course, the murder of her former husband. The crime is mentioned by Jupiter, in the Olympian Court, as consisting of the two parts, of which he by no means specifies the latter as the more atrocious[908];

The law of marriage differs from most other human laws in a very important particular. It is their excellence to impose the minimum of restraint, which will satisfy the absolute wants of society: but the aim and the criterion of a good law of marriage is to impose the maximum of restraint that human nature can be induced bonâ fide to accept. Doubtless there is here also a conceivable excess: but it would be and has been indicated by the general withholding of submission, or evasion of obedience. Up to that point, the restrictions of the marriage law are not evils to be endured for the sake of a greater good, but are good in themselves.

In order that this great institution may thoroughly fulfil its ends, it is especially requisite,

1. That it should not be contracted between more than one man and one woman.

2. That it should on both sides be, in the main and as a general rule, deliberate and spontaneous.

3. That the contract, once made, should not be dissolved.

And closely allied to these there is yet a fourth negative:

4. That nuptials should not be contracted between persons who stand within certain near degrees of relationship.

5. It is always requisite that this engagement should exclude not only the possibility of marriage for either partner with a third person, but also any other fleshly connection without marriage.

Of these propositions, the first, third, and fourth, are heads of restraint on marriage. Every one of the three was acknowledged by the Greeks of the heroic age.

Marriage always single.

The rule of conjugal fidelity was admitted, though not wholly without relaxation, to be as applicable to men as to their wives. This, and all the other restrictions, were applied to women with undeviating strictness.

1. As regards the first, it is plain, from a mass of evidence so large as to amount, in spite of its being negative, to demonstration, that the uniform practice of the Greeks required the marriage union to be single. This, however, of itself, is saying little; but it imports much besides what is on the surface: it implies, that, with due allowances, the spirit of the marriage contract is a spirit of equity and of well adjusted rights, as between those who enter into it.

2. This relation was also conceived by the Greeks in a spirit of freedom.

It held a central place in life thoroughly European, as opposed to the Oriental ideas. Nay, it approximated very much to the ideas prevailing in our own country as well as age. We do not find in the poems any instance of a marriage enforced against the will of a young maiden, or contracted when she was of years too tender to exercise a judgment. Nausicaa fears that if she is seen with Ulysses, censorious tongues will immediately put it about that she is going to be married to him. They will say, ‘Who is this tall and handsome stranger with Nausicaa?’[909] Surely she is going to become his bride. Truly she has picked up some gallant from afar, who has strayed from his ship: or some god has come down to wed her. Better it were if she found a husband from abroad, since, forsooth, she looks down upon her Phæacian suitors, though they are many and noble. Then continues this model of maidens; ‘Thus I shall come into disgrace; and indeed I myself should be indignant with any one who should so act, and who, against the will of her parents, frequented the company of men before being publicly married.’ In this remarkable passage we have such an exhibition of woman’s freedom, as scarcely any age has exceeded. For it clearly shows that the marriage of a damsel was her own affair, and that, subject to a due regard freely rendered to authority and opinion, she had, when of due age, a main share in determining it. That is to say, to the extent of choosing a mate among the competitors. The expression of giving away or promising a daughter, by parents, is often used[910], but we perceive the limits of its meaning from the passage just quoted. The more so, because similar expressions as to the proceedings of parents are applied in Homer to the marriages of sons[911]. I do not suppose it would have been open to any maiden to remain single. That all should marry, that there should be no class living in celibacy, was a kind of law for society in its infant state, even as now it may be said to be almost a law for the most numerous classes of society. Above all I suppose it to be clear that a marriageable widow could not ordinarily remain in widowhood. No reproach arises to Helen, on account of the renewal of her irregular union with Deiphobus; and when Penelope, or others in her behalf, contemplate the death of Ulysses, and her consequent release from the marriage state, that change is always treated as the immediate preface to another crisis, namely, the choice of a second husband.

Although social intercourse with man might not, as Nausicaa says, be sought by damsels, it might innocently come on occasions such as those afforded by public festivities, or by an ordinary calling[912].

Freedom of the woman.

But again, the persecution of Penelope by the Suitors bears emphatic testimony to the freedom of woman within the limits I have described. The utmost of their aim is to coerce her into marrying some one; even as their sin lies in bringing this pressure to bear upon her before the death of Ulysses has been ascertained. On the other hand, the pressure is a moral one: her violent removal is never thought of; and the absolute silence of the poem on the subject proves that it would have been at variance with the prevailing manners, had any cabal been formed, in order even to constrain her choice towards a particular person. The very presents, by which the profligate Suitors endeavoured to ingratiate themselves with the women of the household of Ulysses, speak favourably of the free condition of the sex, and seem to show, that it descended even into lower stations.

For the Greek in the heroic age, marriage was the pivot of life. It took place in the bloom of age: hence[913] the beautiful expression, θαλερὸς γάμος, Od. vi. 66, xx. 74. It even marks of itself the age of persons; Alcinous has five sons, three ἠΐθεοι, and two ὀπυίοντες, (Od. vi. 63): three youths or bachelors, and two married.

Presents were usually brought by the bridegroom, and dowries sometimes given with the bride. Where the two concurred, the presents may have been either in the nature of compliments, or intended to meet the expense of the wedding festivities. The absence of the former, and the occurrence of the latter, seem each to be more or less in the nature of an exception. With a wife returning to her parents, the dowry returned also[914]. On the other hand, to judge from the story of Vulcan and Venus, wherever adultery was committed, the guilty man was bound to pay a fine[915]. The poems give us several instances where personal gifts and energy served instead of wealth, as recommendations in suing for a wife[916]. The drawing of the Bow affords a conspicuous example of the prevailing ideas.

Upon the whole, then, in all that related to forming engagements by marriage, there seems to have been preserved a large regard to the freedom and dignity of woman[917]. War was doubtless in this respect her great enemy; she then became the prey of the strongest, and it is probable that this may have been the most powerful instrument in promoting the extensive introduction of concubinage into Greece.

With respect to the ceremonial of marriage, and the nature of its formal engagement, the Homeric poems furnish us with scanty evidence. There is no mention, in fact, of any promise or vow attending it. The expression δαινύναι γάμον, in Od. iv. 3, seems to contain all that would be included by us when we speak of celebrating marriage. Not that it was the mere banquet that created the conjugal relation: it was doubtless the ἀμφάδιος γάμος, the solemn public acknowledgment, to which relatives and friends, and, in such a case as that of Hermione, the public or people of the state, thus became witnesses. This subject will be further considered in connection with the case of Briseis.

Perpetuity of the tie of marriage.

3. If the mode of entry into the obligations of married life was as simple and indeterminate as we have supposed, such a want of formalities greatly enhances the strength of the testimony borne by the facts of the heroic age to what may be called the natural perpetuity of the marriage contract.

It is a very remarkable circumstance, that, of the two great poems of Homer, each should in its own way bear emphatic testimony to this great, and, for all countries that can bear it, this most precious law.

Neither poem presents us with any case of a divorced wife; of a couple between whom the marriage tie, after having once been duly formed, had ceased to subsist. And each poem in its own way raises this negative evidence to a form of the greatest cogency, from its happening to present the very circumstances under which, if under any, the dissolution of the bond would have been acknowledged.

In the Iliad, the wife of Menelaus, his κουριδίη ἄλοχος, has been living for many years in de facto adultery with Paris. The line between marriage on the one hand, and continued cohabitation together with public recognition on the other, being faintly drawn, Helen is familiarly known in Troy as the wife of Paris; so she is called by the Poet, and so she calls herself[918]. Menelaus, too, is described as her former husband[919]. Whether this was a mere acquiescence in a certain state of facts, or the regular result of more relaxed usages respecting marriage in Troy, may be doubtful. But it is clear that the view of the Greeks was directly opposite. They never speak of Paris as the husband of Helen. In their estimation, all the rights of Menelaus remained entire; and, as we shall see, it appears that, even while the possession of them was withheld from him, he acknowledged the reciprocal obligations. Nay, Hector himself seems to describe Helen as still the wife of Menelaus; γνοίης χ’ οἵου φωτὸς ἔχεις θαλερὴν παράκοιτιν[920]. The war was (so to speak) juridically founded on the fact, that the lawful marriage was not dissolved by adultery, even with the addition of all that followed: that the relation of Helen to her ancient husband was unchanged. Accordingly, Agamemnon recollects with pain, that if his brother should die, he will no longer be in a condition to demand her restoration, and to enforce it by arms, for his soldiers will forthwith return home[921].

The result is in full conformity with this view. When the war ends, Helen resumes her place as a matter of course in the house of Menelaus. She bears it with unconstrained and perfect dignity; and her relations to her husband carry no mark of the woful interval, except that its traces indelibly remain in her own penitential shame.

It is plain that the Greeks heartily detested the crime of adultery: for one of the three great chapters of accusation against the Suitors is, that they wooed the wife of Ulysses in his lifetime[922]. But it is not less plain that they knew nothing of the idea, that by that crime it was placed in the power of any person to obtain or to confer a release from the obligations of marriage.

Next to adultery, desertion or prolonged absence has afforded the most favoured plea for the destruction, so far as human law can destroy it, of the marriage bond. And indeed it is hardly possible to push the opposite doctrine to its extreme, and to say that no married person may remarry, except with demonstrative evidence of the death of the original husband or wife respectively. Probably, however, no period of the world has exhibited a more stringent application of the doctrine of indissolubility to the case of desertion, than that on which the plot of the Odyssey is founded; where, after an absence of the husband prolonged to the twentieth year, Penelope still waits his return; prays that death may relieve her from the dread necessity of making a new choice; and, thus directed by her own conscience and right feeling, likewise apprehends condemnation by the public judgment in the event of her proceeding to contract a new engagement[923].

The Heroic age has left no more comely monument, than its informal, but instinctive, and most emphatic sense, thus recorded for our benefit, of the sanctity of marriage, of the closeness of the union it creates, and of the necessity of perpetuity as an element of its capacity to attain its chief ends, and to administer a real discipline to the human character.

Greek ideas of incest.

4. A further proof of the elevated estimate of marriage among the Greeks is afforded by their views, so far as they can be traced, of the offence termed incest.

The Homeric deities, indeed, were released in this respect, as in others, from all restraint. Eris, or Enuo[924], was both the sister and the concubine of Mars: Juno, the sister and the wife of Jupiter. Æolus[925], though called φίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν, must have been more than man; because Jupiter had made him warden of the Winds, which it was his prerogative to confine or to let loose[926]. And in virtue, I suppose, of belonging to the class of superior beings, his six daughters were, without any consciousness of offence, the wives, the αἰδοῖαι ἄλοχοι, of his six sons[927].

In Troy, Helen apparently becomes the wife of two brothers in succession. We must not overrate the force of merely negative evidence, but it will be observed that Homer does not furnish us with any trace of this usage among the Greeks. The story of Phœnix probably implies, that the connection of the same woman with a father and a son was incestuous; for the full efficacy of the remedy proposed by his mother turns on the supposition, that there would remain to his father no alternative but incest after Phœnix had gained his object, and that such an alternative would at once deter him from the love of the stranger.

In Scheria, Alcinous is married to Arete, the daughter of his elder brother Rhexenor[928]. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, and was apparently also his niece[929]. Again, we appear to find in the Iliad an example of a marriage, by one shade yet less desirable, that of a man with his aunt. Tydeus, the father of Diomed, was married to a daughter of Adrastus: and Ægialeia the wife of Diomed, as she is called Ἀδρηστίνη, was probably his aunt likewise[930].

We have also among the Trojans an example of a man’s marriage with his aunt. Iphidamas, son of Antenor[931], was brought up in the house of Cisses his maternal grandfather; and he contracted a marriage with his mother’s sister just before proceeding to the war.

At the same time, the law of incest is clearly a progressive one from the infancy of mankind onwards, and what we have to consider is not so much its precise extent, as the degree of genuine aversion with which the violation of it is regarded. Upon this subject there can be no doubt, when we read the passage in the Eleventh Odyssey respecting the μέγα ἔργον of Œdipus and Epicaste, and the fearful consequences which, though it was done in ignorance, it entailed upon them[932]. In principle, then, that restriction of the field of choice, which adds so greatly to the intimacy and firmness of the marriage tie, was fully recognised in Greece.

Neither do we want traces in Homer of that remarkable effect of the unifying power of marriage, which confers upon each partner in the union an equal and common relation to the family of the other, by a convention which has so much of the moral strength of fact. The most remarkable of all the indications upon this subject in the poems is that, which relates to the future life of Menelaus. He is said to be elected to the honour of a place in the region of Elysium after this life, not in virtue of his own merits, but as being, through his marriage with Helen, the son-in-law of Jupiter.

The recognition of relationships through the wife or husband to the husband or wife respectively, and the existence of names to describe them, is a sign of the completeness of the union effected by the marriage tie. That these terms were not merely formal and ceremonious, we may judge from the speech of Alcinous:

Now of these words we have the following;

πηὸς, for any relative by affinity;

ἐκυρὸς, πενθερὸς, father-in-law;

ἐκυρὴ, mother-in-law;

δαὴρ, brother-in-law;

γαλοὼς, sister-in-law;

γαμβρὸς, son-in-law;

νυὸς, daughter-in-law;

μητρυίη, stepmother; or the lawful wife, in relation to a spurious son. There is but one real example, Eeribœa, of a stepmother in Homer (Il. v. 389).

And, lastly, we have εἰνατεὶρ, husband’s sister-in-law, a relationship not expressed by any word in the English and many other languages. The εἰνατέρες are always separate from the γαλόῳ.

The formation of this large circle of relationships by affinity is the correlative to a well-defined strictness in the marriage law. For these relationships would mean nothing, but would simply betoken and even breed confusion, unless marriage were perpetual and incest eschewed.

Friedreich[934] truly observes, that the law of incest, instead of being tightened, was relaxed at a later period in Greece; a very decided mark of moral retrogression, which cannot be cancelled by all the splendours of her history.

Fidelity in married life.

5. We come now to the remaining question; how was this great obligation practically observed in the Greece of the heroic age?

Part, at least, of the answer is easy to give. By women it was observed admirably. Except only in the case of Anteia, two generations old, there is no instance in Homer of a woman who seeks the breach of it. The forcible or half forcible seduction[935], and progressive contamination, of a part of the unmarried women who belong to the household of Ulysses, is one of the three great crimes which draw down from Heaven such fearful vengeance upon the Suitors. Of the παλλακὶς, we hear but twice in the poems; nor can we say that this word meant more than a concubine[936]. Among the Greek chieftains, cases of homicide are more frequent than those of bastardy. And when such instances are mentioned, it is not in the hardened manner of later times.

It is something at least that, in such matters, a nation should be alive to shame. We have various signs that this was so in Greece. One of them is the tender expression[937]:

It must be remembered, when we touch upon these morbid parts in human life and nature, that the society of that period did not avail itself of the expedient of the professional corruption of a part of womankind in order to relieve the virtue of the residue from assault.

Among the Greek chieftains and their families, Polydore, a sister of Achilles, had a spurious son[938]. Nestor[939] sprang from a father of spurious birth. Each Ajax had a spurious brother. Only Menelaus of all the chiefs is mentioned as having himself had an illegitimate son. This son, who has the touching name of Megapenthes, was born to him by a slave, evidently after the rape of Helen; he was apparently recognised in part; his marriage was celebrated at the same time with that of his legitimate sister Hermione, but it was contracted with a person of lower station. He was τηλύγετος, the last as well as the first; though Helen, owing, as the Poet intimates, to a divine decree, had no more children, with whom to console her husband, after her return from the abduction.

The superior rank conferred by lawful birth is in every case strongly marked; and this perhaps is the reason why we never find the succession to sovereignty in Greece disturbed by illegitimate offspring.

The great majority of illegitimate births in Homer are those ascribed to the paternity of deities. It is probable that this extraction may be pleaded to cover sometimes marriages which were conceived to be beneath the station of the woman; sometimes instances like that of Astyoche[940], when war had both excited passion, and provided opportunities and victims for its gratification[941]. Setting these cases aside, the cases of illegitimacy in heroic Greece appear to be rare.

At the same time, instances are found[942] in which a spurious child (only, however, I think in the case of a son) is brought up in a manner approaching to that of the legitimate offspring: and a certain relationship is acknowledged to exist, for the wife is said to be μητρυίη, or step-mother, to the illegitimate son. In the case of Pedæus, it was Theano, Antenor’s wife, who herself educated the bastard: but it is plain that in Troas concubinage was far more fully recognised, than in Greece.

Agamemnon in the First Iliad, as we have seen, when announcing his attention to make Chryseis a partner of his bed, by no means treats this concubinage as being what it would have been with Priam, a matter of course and requiring no apology, but founds it upon his preferring her to his wife Clytemnestra[943].

In the camp before the walls of Troy it certainly appears as if by the use of the word γέρας, prize, Homer might, as it is commonly assumed, mean to indicate, for most of the principal chiefs, that they had captives taken in war for concubines. But the point is far from clear; and at any rate Menelaus, as is observed by Athenæus, forms an exception[944]. This circumstance affords rather a marked proof of Greek ideas with respect to the durability of the marriage tie; for that author is probably right in ascribing it to his being, as it were, in the presence of his wife Helen. This concubinage, however, appears to have been single in each case where it prevailed; or, if it was otherwise, Homer has at least deemed the circumstance unfit to be recorded. There is no sign that the seven Lesbian damsels of Il. ix. 128 were concubines.

Achilles, after the removal of Briseis, had Diomede[945] for the companion of his couch. But Briseis appears to have had his attachment in a peculiar degree. He calls her his ἄλοχον θυμάρεα[946]. It is said that the word ἄλοχος may mean a concubine[947]. I do not find any passage in Homer, except this of Il. ix., where it may not with the most obvious propriety be translated ‘wife.’ It has its highest force, no doubt, in such expressions as μνηστὴ ἄλοχος and κουριδίη ἄλοχος: even as we say intensively ‘wedded wife.’ But the term is the standing phrase for wife, as much as τέκνα for children; and it is impossible, consistently with what we see of the usages of marriage among the Greeks, to suppose that the same term was alike applicable to wives and concubines. Nor is it necessary to draw such a conclusion from this passage. We might be tempted to suppose, that Achilles here puts a strain as it were upon the use of the word, and for the moment calls Briseis his wife, in order to prepare the way for the tremendous and piercing sarcasm which immediately follows[948]:

But we may, I think, more justly, and without any resort to figure, observe, that the whole argument of this passage turns upon and requires us to suppose his having treated Briseis as he would have treated a wife. So likewise his declaration, that every good man loves and cares for his wife, becomes insipid, and the whole comparison with the case of Menelaus senseless, unless we are to give the force of wife to the name ἄλοχος.

Probably the explanation may be, that she was designated for marriage with him; for in the Nineteenth Book, where she utters a lamentation over Patroclus, she declares how that chief kindly encouraged her to bear up in her widowhood and captivity, promising that she should be the wife of Achilles, and that the banquets, which, with their attendant sacrifices, seem to have constituted for the Homeric Greeks the ceremonial of marriage, should be celebrated on their return to Phthia[949]. I should therefore suppose that we might with strict justice render ἄλοχος, in Il. ix. 336, ‘my bride;’ always remembering that we are dealing with a relation that was not governed by rules, and that might virtually inure by usage only.

The subsequent passage[950], in which the hero speaks of marrying some damsel of Hellas or Phthia, is quite consistent with this construction, for, as it is plain that no actual marriage had been concluded between them, his relation to Briseis terminated with her removal de facto. The same passage, as well as the custom of Greece, makes it reasonable to understand that the mother of Neoptolemus, whoever she may have been, was now dead.

Mode of contracting marriage.

Indeed it is to be remembered all along, that we are speaking of a state, rather than an act. We know nothing of a ceremonial of Homeric marriage beyond the exchange of gifts and the celebration of festivities in connection with the domicile, neither of which could ordinarily have place in the case of a captive while continuing such. She would grow into a wife in virtue of intention on the part of her lord, confirmed by habit, and sealed by a full recognition when the circumstances, that would alone admit of it, should have arrived.

The concubinage of the Greek chiefs, practised as it was during a long absence from home, bears an entirely different domestic and social character from that of Priam. It clearly constitutes, especially if the connections were single, the mildest and least licentious of all the forms in which the obligations of the marriage tie could be relaxed.

The presence of a concubine within the precinct of the family seems to have been differently viewed by the Greeks; for here, and here only, do we find the disparaging word παλλακὶς (whence the Latin pellex) applied to a person in that position. The two cases of it are as follows. In one of them Ulysses feigns a story of his having been a son of the Cretan Castor, born of a παλλακὶς, but (which he mentions as a departure from the general rule) regarded by his father as much as were his legitimate children[951]. The other is the instance of Phœnix in the Ninth Iliad. Amyntor his father had an intended or actual concubine; and, bestowing his affections on her, slighted the mother of his child. She, in resentment or self-defence, entreated her son Phœnix to cross or anticipate his father[952], and win the woman to his own embraces[953]. He complied; and thus drew down upon himself the dire wrath and curses of his father, which kindled his own anger in return; but he restrained himself from the act of parricide, and became a fugitive instead. This legend is somewhat obscure; but it appears to indicate plainly that concubinage was not a recognised institution among the Greeks, as it seems to have been among the Trojans.

So again, when Laertes had purchased Euryclea[954], we are told that he never attempted to make her his concubine, anticipating the resentment of his wife. It is plain, therefore, that this would have been an admitted offence on his part; and accordingly, that concubinage was contrary to the ideas of Greece respecting conjugal obligation.

Dignity of conjugal manners.

Within the precinct of the Greek marriages, which was secured and fenced in the manner we have seen, there prevailed that tenderness, freedom, and elevation of manners, which was the natural offspring of a system in the main so sound and strict. The general tone of the relations of husband and wife in the Homeric poems is thoroughly natural; it is full of dignity and warmth; a sort of noble deference, reciprocally adjusted according to the position of the giver and the receiver, prevails on either side. I will venture to add, it is full also of delicacy, though we must be content to distinguish, in considering this point, between what is essential and what is conventional, and must make some allowance for the directness and simplicity of expression that characterized an artless age[955].

With this delicacy was combined a not less remarkable freedom in the Greek manners with respect to women. We find Penelope appearing in her palace at will, on all ordinary occasions, before the Suitors; although, on the other hand, no woman would be present where any thing like license was to be exhibited, as we may judge from the case of the lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey. The general freedom of woman is however most fully exhibited in the case of Nausicaa. She goes forth into the country with her maidens unattended. When Ulysses appears there is no fear of him as a man, or even as a stranger, but only from his condition at the moment. This difficulty she surmounts with a dignity which she could not have possessed by virtue of her personal character only, nor except in a case where great liberty was habitually and traditionally enjoyed by women.

Her arrangement of the manner in which he is to enter the city apart from her, and her regard in this matter to opinion, both rest upon the same presumption of her freedom from petty control, as does her playful demand upon Ulysses for ζωάγρια, or salvage.

Again, how remarkable it is that Alcinous, far from being surprised that his maiden daughter should have entered into conversation with a stranger, is actually on the point of finding fault with her for not having shown a greater forwardness, and brought him home in her own company: a reproach, from which Ulysses saves her by his intercession[956].

Social position of the wife.

It is not only from this or that particular, but it is from the whole tone of the intercourse maintained between men and women, that we are really to judge what is the social position of the latter.

And this tone it is which supplies such conclusive evidence with respect to the age of Homer. Achilles observes, that love and care[957] towards a wife are a matter of course with every right-minded man. Love and care, indeed, may be shown to a pet animal. It is not on the mere words, therefore, that we must rest our conclusions; but upon the spirit in which they are spoken, and the whole circle of signs with which they are associated. It is on the reciprocity of all those sentiments between man and wife, father and daughter, son and mother, which are connected with the moral dignity of the human being. It is on the confidence exchanged between them, and the loving liberty of advice and exhortation from the one to the other. The social equality of man and woman is of course to be understood with reserves, as is that other equality, which nevertheless indicates a political truth of the utmost importance, the equality of all classes in the eye of the law. There are differences in the nature and constitution of the two great divisions of the race, to be met by adaptations of treatment and of occupation; without such adaptations, the seeming equality would be partiality alike dangerous and irrational. But, subject to those reserves, we find in Homer the fulness of moral and intelligent being alike consummate, alike acknowledged, on the one side and on the other. The conversation of Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Iliad, of Ulysses and Penelope in the Twenty-third Odyssey, the position of Arete at the court of Alcinous, and that of Helen in the palace of Menelaus, all tell one and the same tale. Ulysses, for example, where he wishes to convey his supplication in Scheria to the King, does it by falling at the Queen’s feet: but she does not supplicate her husband: the address to her seems to have sufficed. And Helen appears, in the palace of Menelaus, on such a footing relatively to her husband, as would perfectly befit the present relations of man and woman. Nay, we may take the speech of Helen in the Sixth Iliad, addressed to Hector, where she touches on the character of Paris, as equal to any of them by way of social indication. What we there read is not the sagacity or intelligence of the speaker, but it is the right of the wife (so to call her) to speak about the character of her husband and its failings, her acknowledged possession of the standing ground from which she can so speak, and speak with firmness, nay, even with an authority of her own.

When we see Briseis, the widow of a prince, sharing the bed of Achilles, and delivered over as a slave into the hands of Agamemnon, when we find Hector anticipating that Andromache might be required to perform menial offices for a Greek mistress, and Nestor encouraging the army not to quit Troy until they had forced the Trojan matrons into their embraces, we are struck with pity and horror. But we must separate between the danger and suffering which uniformly dogs the weak in times of violence, most of all, too, after the sack of a city, and what belongs to the age of Homer in particular. After this separation has been effected, there remains nothing which ought to depress our views of the position of woman in the heroic age. The sons of Priam, princes of Troy, were sold into captivity by Achilles as he took them[958]: of course the purchasers put them to menial employments. Not only so, but Eumæus, the faithful swineherd and slave of Ulysses, was by birth royal: his father Ctesios was king of two wealthy and happy cities[959]. From the name Εὐρυμέδουσα, it would appear probable that she also, the chamber-woman of the palace of Alcinous, though a captive, was of noble birth[960].

There is not in the whole of the poems an instance of rude or abusive manners towards woman as such, or of liberties taken with them in the course of daily life. If Melantho gets hard words, it is not as a woman, but for her vice and insolence. The conduct of the Ithacan Suitors to Penelope, as it is represented in the Odyssey, affords the strongest evidence of the respect in which women were held. Her son had been a child: there was no strong party of adherents to the family; yet the highflown insolence of the Suitors, demanding that she should marry again, is kept at bay for years, and never proceeds to violence.

Force of conjugal attachments.

We find throughout the poems those signs of the overpowering force of conjugal attachments which, from all that has preceded, we might expect. While admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an Immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is pining every day for Penelope[961]. It is the highest honour of a hero to die fighting on behalf of his wife and children. The continuance of domestic happiness, and the concord of man and wife, is a blessing so great, that it excites the envy of the gods, and they interrupt it by some adverse dispensation[962]. And no wonder; for nothing has earth to offer better, than when man and wife dwell together in unity of spirit: their friends rejoice, their foes repine: the human heart has nothing more to desire[963]. There is here apparently involved that great and characteristic idea of the conjugal relation, that it includes and concentrates in itself all other loves. And this very idea is expressed by Andromache, where, after relating the slaughter of her family by Achilles, she tells Hector, ‘Hector, nay but thou art for me a father, and a mother, and a brother, as well as the husband of my youth[964].’ To which he in the same spirit of enlarged attachment replies, by saying that neither the fate of Troy, which he sees approaching, nor of Hecuba, nor of Priam, nor of his brothers, can move his soul like the thought, that Andromache will as a captive weave the web, and bear the pitcher, for some dame of Messe or of Hypereia[965].

Woman-characters of Homer.

With the pictures which we thus find largely scattered over the poems, of the relations of woman to others, the characters which Homer has given us of woman herself are in thorough harmony. Among his living characters we do not find the viragos, the termagants, the incarnate fiends, of the later legends. Nay, the woman of Homer never dreams of using violence, even as a protection against wrong. It must be admitted, that he does not even present to us the heroine in any more pronounced form, than that of the moral endurance of Penelope. The heroine proper, the Joan of Arc, is certainly a noble creation: but yet one perhaps implying a state of things more abnormal, than that which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric age. The pictures of women, which Homer presents to us, are perfect pictures; but they are pictures simply of mothers, matrons, sisters, daughters, maidens, wives. The description which the Poet has given us of the violence and depravity of Clytemnestra, is the genuine counterpart of his high conception of the nature of woman[966]:

For, in proportion as that nature is elevated and pure, does it become more shameful and degraded when, by a total suppression of its better instincts, it has been given over to wickedness.

Of the minor infirmities of our nature, as well as of its grosser faults, the women of Homer betray much less than the men. Nowhere has he introduced into a prominent position the character of a vicious woman. The only instance of the kind is among a portion of the female attendants in the palace of Ulysses, where, out of fifty, no more than twelve were at last the willing tools, having at first[967] been the reluctant victims, of the lust of the proud and rapacious band of Suitors. Clytemnestra, indeed, appears as a lofty criminal in the perspective of the poem, but her wickedness, too, is wholly derivative. Ægisthus corrupts her by a long course of effort, for, as Homer informs us, she had been a right-minded person; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσι[968]. On the one side we have only to place her and the saucy slut Melantho; on the other, we have Andromache, Hecuba, and Briseis in the Iliad; in the Odyssey, Penelope and Euryclea, Arete and Nausicaa; the slightly drawn figures, such as that of the mother of Ulysses in the Eleventh Odyssey, are in the same spirit as the more full delineations. There is not a single case in the poems to qualify the observation, first, that the woman of Homer is profoundly feminine: secondly, that she is commonly the prop of virtue, rarely the instrument, and (in this reversing the order of the first temptation) never the source, of corruption.

In company with all that we have seen, we likewise find that the limits of the position of woman are carefully marked, and that she fully comprehends them. There is nowhere throughout the poems a single effort at self-assertion: the ground that she holds, she holds without dispute. If at any point a stumblingblock could be likely to be found, it would be between a mother just parting with her authority, and a son newly come of age. Yet Penelope and Telemachus never clash, and thoroughly understand one another. Again, the Homeric man, even the Homeric good man, is sometimes the subject of hasty, vehement, and tumultuous passions; the woman never. She finds her power in gentleness; she rules with a silken thread; she is eminent for the uniformity of her self-command, and for the observance of measure in all the relations of life. The misogynism which marked Euripides and other later writers has, and could have, no place in Homer: the moral standard of his women is higher than that of his men; their office, which they perform without fault, is to love and to minister, and their reward to lean on those whom they serve.

The lower aspect of the relation between the two sexes is in the poems wholly secondary. All that tends to sensualize it is commonly repelled or hidden, and, when brought into mention at all, is yet carefully and anxiously depressed. Even the cases of exception, which lie beyond the pale of marriage, are kept in a certain analogy with it, and are as far as possible removed from the promiscuous and brutal indulgence, which marked the later Pagan ages, including those of the greatest pride and splendour, and which still so deeply taints the societies of Christendom.

We may find, if it be needed, some further evidence of the high position of woman upon earth in the relation subsisting between the Homeric gods and goddesses respectively. For that relation approaches as nearly as may be to equality in force and intelligence, while in purity the latter are on the whole superior. After Jupiter, the deities most elevated in Homer are, Juno and Minerva, Neptune and Apollo; and of all these, I think, we must consider Minerva to have stood first in his estimation. This arrangement could not but harmonize with, while it also serves to measure, his ideas of the earthly place and character of woman.

A similar inference is suggested by the tendency of the Greeks to enshrine many ideas, sometimes great, and occasionally both great and good, in feminine impersonations.

We will, lastly, inquire into the employments of women in the heroic age; both to ascertain how nearly they could approach to the summits of society, and also what was their general share in the division of occupations.

Women were admitted to sovereignty.

Among nations where war, homicide, and piracy so extensively prevailed, it is certainly deserving of peculiar consideration, that we should find any traces of the exercise of sovereignty by a woman. There are however three cases in the poems, which in a greater or less degree serve to imply that it was neither unknown nor wholly unfamiliar.

1. Andromache states, that her mother was queen in Hypoplacian Thebes. The word is βασίλευεν[969]. It implies more than being the mere wife of a king; though, as it was during the life time of her husband Eetion, we cannot justly infer from it that there was here any exercise of independent sovereign power. It is the only instance in the Iliad, where we have any word, that has βασιλεὺς for its basis, applied to a woman.

2. The common tradition is, that Jason acquired possession of Lemnos by marriage with Hypsipyle its queen. This is so far supported by Homer that, while Jason clearly appears in the poems as a Greek, we notwithstanding find his son sovereign of Lemnos, without any indication of a conquest or regular migration, and Hypsipyle is mentioned as his mother. The simple fact that the mother, contrary to Homer’s usual practice, is in this case named as well as the father, raises a presumption that it is because she had reigned in the island[970].

In the Eleventh Odyssey we are told that Neleus, the younger of the two illegitimate sons of Tyro, came to dwell in Pylos, and that he married Chloris, the youngest daughter of Amphion an Iasid, giving large presents to obtain her hand[971]. The text proceeds,

This may mean that she became his queen when he was king of Pylos: or it may mean that he became her husband when she was already queen there.

The Odyssey discloses to us the manner in which, under circumstances like those of the Trojan war, sovereign power would naturally pass into female hands otherwise than by inheritance.

It would appear that, when Agamemnon set sail for Troy, he left Clytemnestra in charge of his affairs as well as of his young son Orestes, only taking the precaution to provide her with a trustworthy counsellor in the person of his Bard[972]. As it was by inveigling Clytemnestra that Ægisthus obtained the sovereign power, she must evidently have been its depository.

In like manner it would appear, that Penelope was left in charge of Telemachus by Ulysses when he went to Troy, and that Mentor was appointed to perform for her some such friendly office, as that which the Bard undertook for Clytemnestra. The statement here is, that Ulysses committed to him authority over his whole household[973]. But it is plain that Penelope had the indoor management; since Telemachus speaks of the mode in which she regulated the reception of strangers[974], and we hear of her rule in other matters[975]. Here we see openings for the natural formation of the word βασίλισσα, which seems originally to have meant, not a king’s wife merely, but a woman in the actual exercise of royal authority; and which first appears in the Odyssey.

The ordinary occupation of women of the highest rank in the poems is undoubtedly to sit engaged, along with their maidens of the household, in spinning, weaving, or embroidery. Thus we find it with Helen, Penelope, and Andromache. But when Hector bids Andromache retire to these duties, he speaks of them in contradistinction not to all other duties, but to war, which, as he says, is the affair of men. Even this rule, however, was subject to exception. The Bellerophon of Homer fights with the Amazons[976]; and the part taken by the goddesses in the Theomachy shows, that the idea of women-soldiers was not wholly strange to his mind; as it is in fact to this day, I believe, less attractively exemplified in the African kingdom of Dahomey. But manual employments, taken alone, would not afford a just criterion. The dialogues of the speeches clearly show that then, as now, the woman was concerned in all that concerned her husband.

And to the service of the gods.

Next to political supremacy, we may naturally inquire how far women were qualified for the service of the gods.

We have various signs, more or less clear, of their sharing in it. The reference to the Nurses of Dionysus cannot be wholly without force in this direction. The abstraction of Alcyone by Apollo has probably a more positive connection with female ministry. But we are provided, as far as Troy at least is concerned, with one clear and conclusive instance. The Sixth Iliad affords us a glimpse of a female priesthood, and a worship confined to women, that subsisted among the Trojans. Helenus, alarmed at the feats of Diomed, urges Hector to desire Hecuba to collect the aged women for a procession to the temple of Athene, with a robe for a gift, and with the promise of a hecatomb (Il. vi. 75–101). Hector then acquaints the troops, that he was going to desire the old counsellors and the matrons of the city to supplicate the deities, and to promise hecatombs (iii. 15). There seems to be something of policy in the way in which he thus generalizes, for the army, his account of the design: perhaps afraid of the effect that might be produced by its peculiar character. When he finds Hecuba, he lays upon her precisely the injunction that Helenus had recommended. She sends her female servants to collect the aged women through the city (286, 7). She leads them to the temple of Athene in the citadel. They are there received by Theano, who had been appointed, apparently by the Trojan public[977], priestess to that deity. Theano takes the robe from Hecuba, and herself offers it and prays. Her prayer is for the city, and not for the men by name, but for the wives and infants: and her promise is, we will sacrifice, ἱερεύσομεν, twelve, not oxen, but heifers, yearlings, untouched by the goad (Il. vi. 296–310). Thus the feminine element runs apart through the whole.

We have no reason to conclude that this order of things was exceptional; for though the time was one of peculiar danger and emergency, the temple, the worship, and the priesthood stand before us as belonging to the regular institutions of Troy.

We have no case like that of Theano among the Greeks. It could, indeed, hardly be expected; as priesthood had not yet grown to be an Hellenic institution. Yet, while the direct force of the narrative speaks for Troy alone, we are justified in giving it a more general significance, because the Greek woman is apparently rather before than behind the Trojan one in influence, and in the substantiveness of her position.

In the Trojan genealogy[978] no notice is taken of women; nor have we any means of judging whether they were regarded as capable of succession to the throne, or what was their political and historical importance. But among the Greek races this was clearly great. The large number of women whom Homer has introduced in the realm of Aides, and the parts assigned to them, are plain indications of their important share in the movement of Greek history.

Their household employments.

The apportionment of the ordinary employments of women appears to have been managed in general accordance with the suppositions, towards which all the foregoing facts would lead us.

We have them indicated in a great variety of passages of the poems, from among which we may select two in particular.

The first relates to Circe and her attendant Nymphs; but we may take it as an exact copy of the arrangements of a prince’s household.

Circe has four female servants, who are called δρήστειραι. The first provides the seats with the proper coverings; the second prepares and lays the tables; the third mixes the wine and brings the goblets; the fourth carries water, and lights the fire to boil it[979].

The second passage exhibits to us the household of Ulysses at the break of day, when the in-door and out-door servants are setting about their morning duties.

There were fifty women servants. Of these twelve were employed as flour-grinders (ἀλετρίες); and this appears to have been the most laborious employment among all those assigned to women. Eleven of the twelve have finished their task and retired to rest; the twelfth remains till the morning at her work, and curses the Suitors who cause her such fatigue[980].

It is now dawn[981]. Part of the maid-servants are lighting the fire. The old but active Euryclea is up betimes, and has[982] the place of housekeeper. She desires a part of them to set smartly about sweeping the house, and putting the proper covers on the furniture; another part are to wipe the tables and the cups; a third bevy, no fewer than twenty in number, are dispatched for water[983].

Meantime the men-servants (δρηστῆρες or θεράποντες)[984] of the Suitors have made their appearance, and they set about preparing logs for the fire. Then come in from the country the swineherd with his swine, the goatherd with his goats; and, from over the water, the cowherd with his cow, and with more goats.

Taking the general evidence of the poems, it stands thus. Of agricultural operations, we find women sharing only in the lighter labours of the vintage[985]; or perhaps acting as shepherdesses[986]. The men plough, sow, reap, tend cattle and live stock generally; they hunt and they fish; and they carry to the farm the manure that is accumulated about the house[987].

Within doors, the women seem to have the whole duty in their hands, except the preparation of firewood and of animal food. The men kill, cut up, dress, and carve the animals that are to be eaten. The women, on the other hand, spin, weave, wash the clothes, clean the house, grind the corn, bake the bread and serve it[988], with all the vegetable or mixed food, or what may be called made dishes[989] (εἴδατα πολλά). They also prepare the table, and hand the ewer with the basin for washing. And a portion of them act as immediate attendants to the mistress of the palace, Andromache, Penelope, or Helen.

Their service about the bath.

Thus far all is easy and becoming; but an apparent difficulty confronts us when we find, that it was the usage for women to undertake certain duties connected with the bathing of men. Sometimes this was done by servants; thus it was managed for Telemachus and Pisistratus in the palace of Menelaus, and for Ulysses in that of the Phæacian king. On the other hand, it was sometimes an office of hospitality rendered by women, and even by young damsels, of the highest rank, to distinguished strangers of their own age or otherwise. Polycaste, the young and fair daughter of Nestor, (as the text is commonly interpreted,) bathed and anointed Telemachus, and put on him a cloak and vest[990]. Helen herself, when she was living in Troy, performed the like offices for Ulysses, on the occasion of his mission thither in the disguise of a beggar[991]:

And lastly, the goddess Circe discharged the very same function, with some addition to the description, on behalf of Ulysses her visitor. For here it is explicitly stated, that she poured water over his head and shoulders[992]:

This usage has given occasion, as was perhaps to be expected, to much criticism[993] upon the immodest habits of Homer and his age. Pains have also been taken in their defence[994]. And certainly, if there be need of a defence, Eustathius does not supply one by pleading, that it was the custom of the time, and that the Pylian princess doubtless acted by the command of her father[995]. What is wanted appears to me not to be defence, but simply the clearing away of misapprehensions as to the facts.

It would assuredly be strange, were we to detect real immodesty among such women of the heroic age as Homer has described to us; or even among such men. At a period when the exposure, among men only, of the person of a man constituted the last extremity of shameful punishment[996], and when even in circumstances of the utmost necessity Ulysses exhibited so much care to avoid anything of the kind[997], it is almost of itself incredible that habitually, among persons of the highest rank and character, and without any necessity at all, such things should take place. And, as it is not credible, so neither, I think, is it true.

It may be observed, that there is no case of ablution thus performed in the Iliad. But this appears to be only for the same reason, as that which makes the meals of the camp more simple, than those which were served in the tranquillity of peace and home.

Explanations of the presumed difficulty.

The words commonly employed by Homer in this matter refer to two separate parts of the operation: first, the bathing and anointing, then the dressing. They are commonly for the first λούω and χρίω: for the second βάλλω, with the names of the proper vestments added (Od. iii. 467);

But the whole question, in my view, really depends upon this: whether the verbs used mean the performance of a particular operation, or the giving to the person concerned the means of doing it for himself. Just as by feeding the poor, we mean giving them wherewithal to feed themselves. This is the suggestion of Wakefield[999], and I believe it to be the satisfactory and conclusive solution of the whole question. We might be prevailed upon to travel a good way in company with Heroic simplicity, and yet not quite be able to reach the point which the opposite interpretation would require.

I think that the construction, which I have indicated as the proper one, is conclusively made good, first by the general rules for the sense of the words λούω, λούομαι, and kindred words in Homer: and secondly, by the detailed evidence of facts.

When the guests at a feast wash their hands, the standard expression is in the middle voice, χερνίψαντο δ’ ἔπειτα. When Ulysses and Diomed washed in the sea, the expression is ἱδρῶ ἀπενίζοντο: when they afterwards bathed and anointed themselves, it is λούσαντο, λοεσσαμένω, ἀλειψαμένω[1000]. To smear arrows with poison is ἰοὺς χρίεσθαι χαλκήρεας[1001]. For the maidens of Nausicaa, when they bathe and are anointed, we have λοεσσάμεναι and χρισάμεναι[1002]. In fact the usage is general.

The case stands rather differently with βάλλω. Here the active usage is, I believe, the common one. But there is ample authority for the converse or active use of the middle voice, which corresponds with the middle use of the active. As for instance,

There can therefore surely be no reason to doubt that βάλλειν in this place follows the inclination of the leading words of the passages, and signifies, that as the water and the oil, so likewise the fresh clothing to put on, were given by the damsel for the purpose, but by no means that the operations, or any of them, were actually performed by her.

If the word βάλλειν meant ‘to put on,’ there would be, as Eustathius[1004] observes, an ὑστερολογία, for the χίτων was as a matter of course put on before the φᾶρος. But if it means ‘to give for the purpose of putting on,’ then there is no solecism in the mode of expression.

We must not, however, pass by the case of Circe in the Tenth Odyssey, where, as we have seen, it is stated that the water was actually poured by the Sorceress over the head and shoulders of Ulysses. It is also true that the old word λοέω, equivalent to λούω, is used there in the active voice.

Upon this I observe three things:

1. The statement that the water was poured over his head and shoulders, as he sat in the bath, evidently implies that what may be called essential decency was preserved.

2. Even if it were not so, we could not in this point argue from the manners or morals of a Phœnician goddess to those of a Greek damsel.

3. The meaning probably of λοέω is middle, in this as well as in the other cases: she gave him water to wash with, pouring it over his head and shoulders, and then leaving to him the substance of the operation, which was not completed by this mere act of affusion.

Case of Ulysses landed in Scheria.

Finally, let us consider the evidence from the case of Ulysses in Scheria, which appears of itself conclusive.

1. In Od. vii. 296. Ulysses says that Nausicaa (according to the popular construction of the term) bathed him: καὶ λοῦσ’ ἐν ποταμῷ.

2. But from Od. vi. 210, we find that what she did was not to bathe him, but to give orders to her attendants that he should be bathed,—that is, should be provided with the requisites for bathing. Her words were, λούσατέ τ’ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθ’ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστ’ ἀνέμοιο.

3. Upon this they took him to a recess, gave him clothing and oil, and bid him bathe himself, ἤνωγον δ’ ἄρα μιν λοῦσθαι: upon which he requested them to stand off, as otherwise he could not proceed: ἄντην δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐγώγε λοέσσομαι (ibid. 218–22).

It would appear therefore, that the statements of Homer give no ground whatever for sinister or disparaging imputation. His pictures do not entirely correspond with modern ideas: but they may well leave on our minds the impression that, in the period he described, if the standard of appearances in this department was lower, that of positive thought and action was higher, as well as simpler, than in our own day.

We have now concluded what it seemed needful to say on the employments of women.

Subsequent declension of the place of woman.

It was, however, little likely that a state of things, such as has been described, should last.

The idea of marriage was in aftertimes greatly lowered, together with the moral tone in general; and the very name of γάμος, with its kindred words, underwent a change of sense, and was made applicable to such a relation as that established between the Greek chieftains in the war of Troy and their captives in cases where they had wives already[1005].

Thus, in the Hecuba of Euripides, as the mother of Cassandra, she intercedes with Agamemnon to avenge the murder of her son Polydorus, on the ground that the youth had become a κηδεστὴς, or relation by affinity to Agamemnon, who had a wife already[1006]:

And, in the Troades, Cassandra has with Agamemnon certain σκότια νυμφευτήρια (258); and again,

Similar language is used in the case of Andromache[1008]. The ideas of the heroic age would have admitted no such depravation of marriage.

In truth it would seem not only as if, before Christianity appeared, notwithstanding the advance of civilization, the idea and place of woman were below what they should have been, but actually as if, with respect to all that was most essential, they sank with the lapse of time.

The contrast between the views of the marriage state entertained in the heroic age, and at the period which we regard as the acmè of the Greek civilization, will, perhaps, be best conceived by referring to the passage ascribed to Demosthenes, as it is quoted by Athenæus, which explains succinctly the several uses of prostitutes, concubines, and wives, apparently as classes all alike recognised, and without any note of a moral difference in their social position and repute respectively. The first are for pleasure, the second for daily use, the last for legitimate offspring, and for good housekeeping[1009].

And yet it continued to be, in the time of Aristotle, a favourable distinction of Greece as compared with the barbarians, that the woman was not with them equivalent to the slave. Throughout their history they continued to be a nation of monogamists, except where they became locally tainted with oriental manners[1010].

Again, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, taking a general survey of the relation between man and wife, describes it as a government indeed, but as analogous to that natural and perfect form of government which he terms aristocracy. It is founded on merit and fitness. The man leaves to the woman all for which she is best suited, and each kind contributes its particular gifts to make up the common stock.

There was much, then, of solidity, and permanence in the ground secured for the Greek woman by the heroic age. But the philosopher, sagacious and dispassionate as he is, had still a much less elevated view of her position than Homer had exhibited.

There may[1011], he says, be in a tragedy a good or bad woman, a good or a bad slave; there is room for variety even in these; καί τοίγε ἴσως τούτων τὸ μὲν χεῖρον τὸ δὲ ὅλως φαῦλόν ἐστι. No such classification, no such comparison, could have found place in the heroic age. Yet more remarkable is the little postscript assigned to the widows of the dead in the funeral oration assigned by Thucydides to Pericles: “If I must also say a few words, for you that are now widows, concerning what constitutes the merit of a woman, I will sum up all in one short admonition. It will be much for your character not to sink beneath your own actual nature (τῆς ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γένεσθαι); and to be as little talked about as possible among men, whether for praise or for dispraise[1012].”