Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/136

100 Jovinianus, quotes Theophrastus, where the question is: "Ought a wise man to marry?" The preliminary answer is: "Yes, if the woman is pretty, of good morals and breeding, and of honest parents, and if the man is in good health and rich. These conditions are rarely all fulfilled. Hence the wise man will not marry." The author proceeds to justify this opinion by very derogatory assertions about women: "Whatever defect she has, you do not know it until after the marriage. Nothing else do you buy without a trial. A wife is not shown until she is given to you, lest she may not suit you." "Women are frivolous, vicious, intriguing, exacting, and selfish. None of the reasons given for marriage will bear examination." None of these philosophers had any influence to make the sex mores better; they had no criticism of the existing mores, no conception of the evils, no plan of reform. At most the contrast with Sparta suggested some reflections.

We may gather together the features of these mores into a distinct picture as follows. Women were valued to procreate children for their husbands and the state; also to serve the pleasure of men. They were "by nature" inferior. They had no schools and their education depended on chances at home, while they lacked the stimulus of social intercourse with men. Wives and courtesans were both injured by their juxtaposition and competition and by pæderasty, which was not recognized as a vice. Beloch says that it is an unfounded prejudice that Greek women, in the classical period, had an unworthy position, or that their status had fallen since the Homeric period; but he lays too much stress on purchase in Homer. He further argues that the hetæræ gave back to Greek women