Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/195

173 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 173 some ancient writers, who have attempted to distinguish a courtesan of Eresos named Sappho from the poetess. A more probable cause of this false imputation seems to be, that later generations, and especially the re- fined Athenians, were incapable of conceiving- and appreciating the frank simplicity with which Sappho pours forth her feelings, and therefore confounded them with the unblushing immodesty of a courtesan. In Sappho's time, there still existed among the Greeks much of that pri- mitive simplicity which appears in the wish of Nausicaa in Homer that she had such a husband as Ulysses. That complete separation between sensual and sentimental love had not yet taken place which we find in the writings of later times, especially in those of the Attic comic poets. Moreover the life of women in Lesbos was doubtless very different from the life of women at Athens and among the Ionians. In the Ionian States the female sex lived in the greatest retirement, and were exclu- sively employed in household concerns. Hence, while the men of Athens were distinguished by their perfection in every branch of art, none of their women emerged from the obscurity of domestic life. The secluded and depressed condition of the female sex among the Ionians of Asia Minor, originating in circumstances connected with the history of their race, had also become universal in Athens, where the principle on which the education of women rested was that just so much mental culture was expedient for women as would enable them to manage the household, provide for the bodily wants of the children, and overlook the female slaves ; for the rest, says Pericles in Thucydides *, " that woman is the best of whom the least is said among men, whether for evil or for good." But the ^Eolians had in some degree preserved the ancient Greek manners, such as we find them depicted in their epic poetry and mythology, where the women are represented as taking an active share not only in social domestic life, but in public amusements; and they thus enjoyed a distinct individual existence and moral character. There can be no doubt that they, as well as the women of the Dorian states of Peloponnesus and Magna Grecia, shared in the advantages of the general high state of civilization, which not only fostered poetical talents of a high order among women, but, as'in the time of the Pytha- gorean league, even produced in them a turn for philosophical reflec- tions on human life. But as such a state of the education and intellect of women was utterly inconsistent with Athenian manners, it is natural that women should be the objects of scurrilous jests and slanderous imputations. We cannot therefore wonder that women who had in any degree overstepped the bounds prescribed to their sex by the manners of Athens, should be represented by the licentious pen of the Athenian comic writers, as lost to every sentiment of shame or decency f. f There were Attic comedies with the title of " Sappho," by Amphis, Antiphanes, Ephippus, Timocles and Diphilus; and a comedy by Plato entitled "Phaon."
 * II. 45.