Chapter 15
"What an age it was, truly, when, as the companions of Pericles, there were assembled in one city Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides, Meton and Hippocrates, Aristophanes and Phidias, Socrates and Anaxagoras, Appollodorus and Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Parrhasius;--in a city which had but lately lost AEschylus, and was soon to possess Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle; a city which, moreover, to make the illustrious dead its own, erected statues to their memory!"
"What should we expect the pupils of such masters to be? What they were,--the masters of Greece. Thucydides says that Athens was at this time the instructress of Greece, as she was the source of its supplies. Behold this fine democracy going from the theatre of Sophocles to the Parthenon of Phidias, or to the Bema where Pericles speaks to them in the language of the gods; listening to Herodotus, who recounts the great collision between Europe and Asia; Hippocrates of Cos, and the Athenian Meton, of whom one founded the science of medicine, and the other, mathematical astronomy; Anaxagoras, who eliminates the idea of God as distinct from matter; Socrates, who establishes the principles of morals! What lessons were these! Art, history, poetry, philosophy--all take a sublime flight. There is no place for second-rate talent here. The art that Athens honors most is the greatest of all arts--architecture; her poetry is the drama--the highest expression of poetic genius, for it unites all forms in itself, as architecture calls all the other arts to its service. At this fortunate moment all is great, the power of Athens as well as the genius of the eminent men who guide the city and do it honor."
Such, in brief, is the picture of Athens in her greatest days, as drawn by an eminent historian. The splendor and supremacy of the city in this epoch were largely due to the constructive genius of one man--Pericles; and if we study his private life to the end that we may discover the formative influences which contributed to his greatness, we find that the chief source of his inspiration was a woman--the Milesian Aspasia, the most brilliant and cultured woman of classic times.
Aspasia ranks as one of the most remarkable women of all antiquity; and her ascendency as one of the foremost of her sex is due to the fact that she is the only woman whose name appears in the brilliant galaxy of the Periclean age and that the greatest leaders in that coterie of great men were glad to acknowledge their indebtedness to her for Instruction and inspiration. She is the only woman prominent in the life of Athens of whom much is known to us, and she has won for herself a place altogether unique in the history of Greek womanhood.
She was the daughter of one Axiochus, and was born and reared in Miletus, the most pleasure-loving and artistic of the cities of Asia Minor. The story of her childhood and youth is a closed book, but we know that she was carefully trained in rhetoric, music, and the fine arts, and became the possessor of every feminine accomplishment. Her preceptress is said to have been the celebrated Thargelia, also of Miletus, who exerted her power for the Great King during the Persian War and finally married one of the kings in Thessaly. How Aspasia was drawn to Athens is not known, but the most probable theory is that she settled there as a young and brilliant teacher of rhetoric, following the precedent established by Anaxagoras in philosophy and by Protagoras and other men in rhetoric, who found in Athens the most profitable field for the exercise of their talents. Here Aspasia gathered about her all the learned and accomplished men of Athens. She was no mere creature of pleasure, who ministered to luxury and lust; but by her beauty and culture she sought to draw to her the first men of the town, that she might learn of them as they of her. "Nor was it long before it was recognized that she enchained the souls of men by no mere arts of deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians, even such men as Socrates, sought her out in order to listen to her conversation."
There could be nothing more natural than that when Pericles and Aspasia met the soul of each should discover in the other its affinity, Pericles was married to an Athenian kinswoman, but they did not find conjugal life altogether congenial, and by mutual agreement their marriage ties were dissolved and Pericles found for his wife another husband. He then took Aspasia to his home and called her his wife. They could not wed, for she was a foreigner, and their union in consequence lacked civil sanction; yet it was a real marriage in all but in name, based on the truest and tenderest affection, and dissolved only by death.
So remarkable was Pericles's devotion to Aspasia, that Plutarch records, as an indication of its sincerity, that the great Athenian kissed Aspasia upon going out in the morning and upon his return home--clearly an unusual occurrence in Athenian homes, or it would not have seemed worthy of mention. The possession of so rare a woman was doubtless in many respects invaluable to the great statesman. Plutarch states that the latter was first attracted to the Milesian by her wisdom and political sagacity. Socrates, who confessed also his own indebtedness to Aspasia, states that she was Pericles's teacher in the art of rhetoric, and could even write his speeches. Pericles was a reserved man, who devoted himself strictly to his official cares and refrained from social intercourse with those about him. Hence he found in Aspasia not only the delight of his leisure moments and a sympathizing friend and counsellor hi his perplexities, but also the link that connected him with the daily life about him. She knew how to be at ease in every kind of society; how to keep informed of everything that took place in the city that Pericles should know; how to keep in touch with the great movements throughout Hellas and to make them contribute to the glory of Athens: and in all these, and in many other respects, she proved of use to him in his political life.
It is probable that Aspasia was still in her twenties when Pericles first met her, while he himself was much older. She must have possessed a fascinating personality which at once captivated the great statesman; but, aside from her intellectual gifts, it is difficult in this day to analyze her charm. There is no positive evidence that she was beautiful, according to Greek standards, though this is the natural inference. Ancient writers call her the good, the wise, the eloquent; they speak of her "honey-colored" or golden hair, of her "silvery voice," of her "small, high-arched foot," but no writer of the time has expressly said that she was beautiful. In the museums of Europe, there are various busts on which her name is inscribed, but they impress us rather by the expression of earnest and deep thought, by the delicacy and distinction of the features, than by mere beauty. Her charm lay, no doubt, rather in her wisdom, her vivacity, her sweetness of utterance, than in perfection of form and feature. Aspasia made the home of Pericles the first salon that history has made known to us; and what woman ever gathered about her a more brilliant coterie of friends? With Phidias and his group of eminent artists, she talked of the embellishment of the Acropolis with beautiful temples and statues; with Anaxagoras and Socrates, she discussed the problems of philosophy and the narrow conservatism of the Athenians; with Sophocles and Euripides, she conversed concerning the works of the dramatists and the ideal women presented in their plays. Herodotus, perhaps, was the inimitable story teller of this learned circle, and the melancholy Thucydides dwelt on the dark tragedy underlying human events; no doubt the satirical Aristophanes sometimes attended, for the Platonic dialogues show us the social side of his nature, and, while in his plays he scorns the philosophical set, he found among them intellectual companionship; and the young and gay Alcibiades was doubtless frequently present, talking with the hostess of the latest events in the high life of the city, of betrothals and marriages, of scandals and escapades.
One of the sons of Pericles scoffed at this circle of intellectual lights, and made fun of their metaphysical speculations and learned talk; but this merely indicates that such a salon was an innovation in Athens, and, therefore, led to harsh criticism and unseemly gossip on the part of those who could not appreciate its privileges. Music, poetry, and wit relieved the serious discussion of politics, philosophy, and literature. The salon of Aspasia must have been altogether decorous, for many men broke the traditions of their fathers and brought their wives to converse about wifely duties with the famous hetaera. She seems to have thought earnestly and deeply on the duties and destiny of woman, to have realized how contracted were the lives of Athenian women, and to have wished to better their condition, AEschines, in one of his dialogues, gives us in her conversation with Xenophon and his wife Philesia a glimpse of her method.
"Tell me, Philesia," said Aspasia, "whether if your neighbor had a piece of gold of more value than your own, you would not choose it before your own?" "Yes," answered Philesia. "If she had a gown, or any of the female ornaments, better than yours, would not you choose them rather than your own?" "Yes," answered she. "But," said Aspasia, "if she had a husband of more merit than your own, would not you choose the former?" Upon this, Philesia blushed. Aspasia then addressed herself to Xenophon. "If your neighbor, Xenophon, had a horse better than your own, would you not choose him preferably to your own?" "Yes," answered he. "If he had an estate or a farm of more value than your own, which would you choose?" "The former," answered he; "that is, that which is of more value." "But if his wife were better than your own, would not you choose your neighbor's?" Xenophon was silent upon this question. Aspasia therefore proceeded thus: "Since both of you, then, have refused to answer me in that point only which I wanted you to satisfy me in, I will tell you myself what you both think: you, Philesia, would have the best of husbands, and you, Xenophon, the best of wives. And, therefore, if you do not endeavor that there be not a better husband and wife in the world than yourselves, you will always be wishing for that which you shall think best: you, Xenophon, will wish you might be married to the best of wives, and Philesia, that she might have the best of husbands."
Thus this brilliant and withal domestic woman would counsel women to be the best of wives, and men the most considerate of husbands, that each might find in the joys of home and in conjugal harmony their greatest felicity. Doubtless many a wife went away from her with higher conceptions of wifely duty than custom had taught her, and sought to make her home a more congenial retreat for her husband. Many, however, looked askance at these gatherings of men and women and could see nothing but evil in their violations of custom. Husbands, too, saw in these novel proceedings dangerous tendencies; for if their wives became emancipated, there would be a limit to their own pleasant indulgences. It was Aspasia who preeminently labored to this end. The status of woman at Athens was far from ideal, and the need tor reform was great; and if we endeavor to discover who was chiefly responsible for the agitation which had for its purpose the emancipation of woman from the thraldom in which she was held, we find that it was the wise and far-seeing Aspasia.
Owing to the intellectual awakening at Athens during the Periclean Age and the influx of new ideas from the various Hellenic countries, a liberal party had arisen in the city, chiefly under the leadership of Pericles and Anaxagoras--a radical party, headed by men of culture and science, who taught that knowledge was power, who despised the established religion, and who set at naught the domestic manners of the day by seeking to elevate woman. Socrates, also, was heartily in sympathy with the objects of this party, as was the dramatist Euripides. On the other side were the ultra-conservatives, of whom Cimon and Aristophanes were representatives. The latter frequently made Pericles, Aspasia, Socrates, and Euripides the subjects of his satire. These Tories of the day saw in the tenets of the new party the subversion of all the principles of the old democracy, and they fought most bitterly to preserve established institutions. Toward the close of Xenophon's treatise on _Domestic Economy_, Critobulus, who has been impressed by the story of Ischomachus, wishes to learn how he too, may educate his young wife, and Socrates advises him to consult with Aspasia. The profound deference in which she was held by all the philosophers is a further indication that from her they had derived many of their advanced ideas regarding the relations of the sexes. Hence while positive evidence is lacking, incidental touches and sidelights on the Woman Question point unerringly to the one great woman of ancient Athens as the originator of the first movement for the emancipation of woman recorded in history.
As Aspasia, through her intercourse with the great, had attained unbounded influence in the State, and as her circle was the exponent of the ideas which offended the conventional spirit, it was natural that she should be involved in the storm of criticism that befell the leaders of thought. As a woman who had stepped out of the beaten track of womanhood, she was made the subject of the coarsest slanders. She was called the Hera to this Zeus, Pericles, the Omphale, the Deianira of the Heracles of the day; her girl friends and pupils, who enjoyed the same liberty she claimed for herself, were most violently defamed; she was said to have induced, for the basest of reasons, Pericles to bring on the Peloponnesian and Samian wars. The comic poets, as the chief organs of the opposition, engaged in this most merciless and unjust tirade against the party of the philosophers. None of their charges, however, can be said to have had any basis in fact, and all may easily be accounted for when the envy and hatred of the ignorant toward the beautiful and accomplished and independent woman is taken into consideration. In the Athens of the fifth century before our era, when people were just beginning to break away from the narrow conservatism of centuries, a woman who enjoyed an unheard-of degree of liberty, and because of her talents was regarded with admiration by the greatest men of the city, might well be the target for the grossest abuse. A vicious woman would be the last to undertake, as did Aspasia, the study of philosophy, which, with Socrates, was the study of virtue.
The party of the philosophers suffered for their opinions, Phidias was accused of theft, and died in prison; Anaxagoras, to escape the charges against him, went into voluntary exile; and Aspasia was brought to trial on a charge of impiety, which merely meant that she, as others of her circle, set at naught the polytheism of the multitude, and recognized but one creative mind in the government of the universe, an accusation under which Socrates later suffered martyrdom. She was brought before the judges, and Pericles pleaded her cause. Plutarch says that he pleaded with tears; and as the people could not resist the emotion of their great leader, she was acquitted.
Perides's last days were passed in the gloom of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, of the plague that depopulated the city, and of the discontent of his beloved people. No brilliant sun ever had a more gloomy setting. Yet in his last moments his thoughts were of the two beloved objects that had absorbed his tenderest affections. "Athens has intrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," Pericles said, when dying; and there could be no stronger testimony to the purity of Aspasia's character, to the influence of her life on his, to the role she had played in that Golden Age of Athens.
Athens and Aspasia--these were linked in the thoughts of the dying statesman; and as he made the one great, so he made the other immortal. Had his life not been blessed with union with hers, had his temperament not been sweetened by her companionship, had his policy not been moulded partly by her counsel and her wisdom, had his taste not been made so subtle and refined by communion with her artistic temperament, Athens would not have been embellished by the works of art which have made that city the unapproachable ruler in the domain of the spirit. Woman's influence, where it has counted most, has always been a silent one, and has worked through man. Is not Aspasia worthy of the laurel wreath for the results of her life on "the city of the violet crown"?
X
APHRODITE PANDEMUS
For the proper understanding of the status of woman among the Greeks of ancient times, it becomes necessary for the historian of Greek womanhood to call attention to a conspicuous social phenomenon pervading the life of all the nations of antiquity, but nowhere else so marked a feature of the higher life as in the lands of Hellas--a phenomenon bringing about social conditions that divided the female population of Greece into two sharply distinguished classes: the citizen-woman and the courtesan or mistress.
This notable aspect of Greek life is due to the fact that the ancient Hellene, as a rule, sought recreation and pleasure, not at the domestic hearth, but in the society of clever women, who had not only cultivated their physical charms, but had also trained their intellects and sensibilities so as to become _virtuosi_ in all the arts of pleasure. Their pleasing forms of intercourse, their light and vivacious conversation, lent to association with them a peculiar seductiveness and fascination.
To designate this class of women in a manner which would distinguish them from the citizen-women on the one hand and the debased prostitute on the other, they were euphemistically called "hetaerae," or companions. The term _hetaerae_ had been originally a most honorable one, and Sappho had used it, in the highest and best sense, of her girl friends as implying companions of like rank and interests. It is not known when it was first used with sinister suggestion, but, like our word _mistress_, it fell from its honorable estate and became the usual term to describe these women of pleasure.
The causes of the extent of hetairism among the Greeks are to be found in their religious conceptions, their political institutions, and the innate sensualism of the Greek peoples.
The Greeks were worshippers of the productive forces of nature as manifested in animal and plant life. Aphrodite is the female and Dionysius the male personification of the generative principles, and in consequence the religious ceremonials of these two deities assumed at times a most licentious aspect. In course of time, a distinction arose in the conception of Aphrodite, expressed by the surname applied to her. Thus Aphrodite Urania came to be generally regarded as the goddess of the highest love, especially of wedded love and fruitfulness, in contrast to Aphrodite Pandemus, the goddess of sensual lust and the patron deity of courtesans.
We could hardly expect high moral ideas in regard to sexual relations among the Greeks, whose deities were so lax. Zeus himself was given to illicit intercourse with mortal maidens and was continually arousing the jealousy of his prudent wife, the Lady Hera. Aphrodite was not faithful to her liege lord, Hephaestus, but was given to escapades with the warlike Ares. Apollo had his mortal loves, and Hades abducted the beautiful Proserpina. A people who from their childhood were taught such stories could hardly be expected to be more moral than their deities.
As has been shown in a previous chapter, the Greek conception of the city-state lay at the basis of laws and customs which repressed the citizen-woman and prevented proper attention to her education and to the full and well-rounded cultivation of womanly graces. The State hedged itself about with the most rigid safeguards to preserve the purity of the citizen blood. Stringent laws were passed prohibiting any citizen-man from marrying a stranger-woman, or any stranger-man from marrying a citizen-woman. To enforce these laws, it was necessary to keep the wives and daughters of the State within the narrow bounds of the gynaeceum; and they were forbidden a knowledge of public affairs, which would make them more interesting to men. Hence the limitations of their culture made it impossible for them to be in every sense the companions of their husbands. But it is not natural for men to be deprived of the sympathy and inspiration that is found in association with cultivated women; hence there was, especially in Athens, a peculiar sphere for the cultivated hetaera. The men of the city recognized the need of feminine society in their recreations, in their political life, and on military expeditions. The hetaera entered this sphere, from which the citizen-woman was excluded.
A further reason for the predominance of hetairism is seen in the artistic impulses of the Greek people. These courtesans made an art of the life of pleasure. Cultivating every feminine grace, carefully attentive to all the little niceties of social intercourse, studying in every way how to be agreeable to the men, adepts in conversation, devotees of the Muses and the Graces, they knew how to make their relations with men answer to all the impulses of a beauty-loving people. And as the Greeks found aesthetic satisfaction in their masterpieces of prose and poetry, in their works of architecture and sculpture and painting, so they found it in their association with the hetaerae.
Owing to such conditions, there arose a most unnatural division of the admitted functions of woman in the world-order. Says the great orator Demosthenes: "We take a hetaera for our pleasure, a concubine for daily attention to our physical wants, a wife to give us legitimate children and a respected house"--an utterance narrowly defining the status of the hetaera as contrasted with that of the honorable wife. The latter was the housewife and mother, nothing more, though surrounded by all the dignities and privileges of her high station; the former was the companion, the comrade in whose society were found recreation and sympathy and intellectual delight, but she was outside the pale of society, not respected, yet not altogether despised.
It is difficult to ascertain the beginnings of hetairism among the Greeks. There is a noteworthy absence of it in the Homeric poems, though the Greek chieftains frequently had concubines, who were slaves captured in war.
Allusions in the lyric poets show that as early as the sixth century before our era the hetaera had made her appearance. The earliest reference to the social evil in the history of Athens is found in the administration of the lawgiver Solon, who was the first to legalize prostitution. With the avowed purpose of forestalling the seduction of virgins and wives, he bought slave girls in the markets of Asia Minor and placed them in public houses in Athens. This regulation for the protection of the home was generally regarded as deserving of praise. Thus speaks the comic poet Philemon: