Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/239

 214

Athenian law enacted that if a citizen married a foreign woman he was liable to be fined a thousand drachmae, and she to be sold as a slave. Such marriages were unlawful in Sparta, also. In the Homeric age women had almost no rights : they were entirely under the power of men, and they lived in continual uncertainty as to what their fate might be. One might be a princess, living in a wealthy, happy home to-day; carried away and a slave in a stranger's house to-morrow. So they were of all women most meek. In the Homeric poems we have glimpses of feminine loveliness and conjugal tenderness and fidel ity as beautiful and as touching as any presented to. us in the most polished ages. We find her not the mere plaything of man, desired as adding to his wealth, splendor or luxury, or as subject to his fierce passions, but we see her as his companion in effort, his solace in misfortune, and his inspirer to noble achievements. She was subjected to a sway as gentle and as respectful as any we meet in the whole range of literature. Physical force was kept in the background, and we see nothing but affection, regard and even deference. The men appear never to have found fault with the women. It was natural for a woman to love; if a wife loved a man not her husband, it was not she, but a man or a god who was to blame. Helen was not blamed : how could she help falling in love with Paris, or Paris falling in love with her? In Homer there is no love-mak ing, flirtation is unknown. If there was either, it was kept from Mrs. Grundy, the blind poet. The man who wished to marry gave the father a handsome gift for his daughter, or undertook a heavy task to win her. And when she went to him she strove her utmost to please him, and generally succeeded. The Greeks of Homer are monogamists, and peace and happiness reigned in their homes; only in the halls of Olympus did wife quarrel with husband. Yet husband and wife did not swear eternal

devotion to one another. With them widow hood and death were not synonymous. If either died it was incumbent on the other to look out for a new mate; even when the husband was on his travels and absent long from his wife, it was not expected that he should endure the troubles of life without the comforts and assistance of woman's society. The freedom of women was great, they might do what they liked and go where they liked; the only danger was their being carried off into slavery. There was a free and easy intercourse between the sexes, and yet there is no vicious woman either in the Iliad or the Odyssey. An Homeric woman remained beautiful for a generation or two. Helen, at forty or fifty was deemed as beauti ful as at twenty, and probably as attractive, if not more so. Unfortunately this sweet and conjugal life was not so bright and pure in subsequent historic ages in Greece. Either from a retrograde movement in society, or because of closer contact with Oriental manners, the moral condition of women markedly deteri orated, though her legal state was somewhat improved. In Athens, when a woman married the limits of her prison widened. The street door was now the terminus of her wanderings, not the door of the gynaeconitis, though on the arrival of strangers she doubtless retired to her own apartments. Her life, if secluded, was not idle, for she was both housekeeper and nursemaid. It was not an improper thing, though it was rare, for women to go abroad (if accompanied by slaves), to visit friends, to worship in a temple, or to attend the performance of some tragic plays (she was forbidden to go to a comedy). Any underhand or suspicious absences from home gave opportunities and excuses for a divorce. Hyperides says, " The woman who goes out of her own house ought to be at that time of life when the men who meet her will ask, not, 'Whose wife is she? but 'Whose mother