Chapter 19
The ill-deserved reputation of being a misogynist which attaches to Euripides is due, not to his own plays, but to the satire and drollery of his rival, the comedian Aristophanes, who, in B. C. 411 or 410, produced the _Thesmophoriazusae_, a play so cleverly constructed that, while it seemed to defend the female sex against the charges of Euripides, really presented them in a more disgusting light. Aristophanes represents the world of women as thrown into consternation and revolt through the production of the tragedies of Euripides, such as the _Hippolytus_, wherein the female sex is so severely arraigned. Unable to endure his accusations, an assembly of women is called at the Thesmophoria to plan the destruction of their arch enemy. Euripides, however, hears of the assembly, and prevails on his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, to disguise himself as a woman and seek admittance, that he may plead the cause of the tragedian. The humor of the debate lies in the fact that, after several women have roundly abused Euripides for slandering their sex, Mnesilochus, attired in rustic female garb, eloquently reminds them of the truths which Euripides might have divulged had he chosen to do so. One sin after another is glibly and facetiously piled up against the feminine record, until the few calumnies attributed to Euripides seem insignificant beside the mountain of crimes and foibles the supposed matron heaps up against her sisters. The picture which Aristophanes, in his clever bit of satire, presents of the women of his day is an exceedingly repulsive one. They are represented as profligate, licentious, stupid, fond of drink, thieves and liars. No other Greek writer has given them so base a character. But we must remember that we are reading comedy. "The point of the _Thesmophoriazusae_, so far as the women are concerned, is that, while Aristophanes pretends to pillory Euripides for his abuse of them, his own satire is far more searching and penetrates more deeply into the secrets of domestic life."
The grotesque distortion by Aristophanes of the character of the philosopher Socrates is sufficiently well known; the contrast between the sentiments which he attributes to Euripides and the tragic poet's own views as presented in his plays is very striking; hence the pictures that he draws of the life and manners of women must not be accepted without important allowances. Aristophanes was writing to make people laugh, not to reveal the secrets of the household, and his plays were exclusively for an audience of men. Hence coarseness and buffoonery, as elements of comic effect, are continually availed of, and Aristophanes considered that he was witty in maligning the female sex. It would clearly be unfair and even absurd to regard Aristophanes as an accurate expositor of feminine life in Athens. But it is a noticeable fact that, from B. C. 411 onward, there is, as seen in the extant plays of Aristophanes, a marked prominence given to the female sex. Women, who heretofore have played but a subordinate role in comedy, now frequently have the principal parts. Comedy, more truly than any other department of literature, reflects the current thought; and while the characters of comedy play a role that is the reverse of actuality, comic invention deals with real movements, and this intentional prominence of the usually neglected sex can have but one interpretation: the Woman Question had become a problem which profoundly engaged the attention of the society of the time.
It is a difficult task to attempt to trace in the comedies of Aristophanes the thread of a social movement. He utilized the events and opinions of the day for fun making, and did not greatly concern himself with the serious aspects of social problems. He was an ultra-conservative, and desired to bring the new thought of the day into disrepute by exhibiting its ludicrous side. Hence he makes use of the woman's rights movement to give free rein to his fancy, and to delight the public with obscene jokes on the vices and weaknesses of women and with clever caricatures of their leaders. Yet the attentive reader can get glimpses here and there into the more serious aspects of the question, and can recognize behind some of the distorted, caricatured figures types which are not in themselves comic.
The other two plays of Aristophanes in which women figure prominently are the _Lysistrata_ and the _Ecclesiazusae_. In each of these the company of women is directed by a leader who in talents and aggressiveness is far superior to her fellows. These two have not the many small weaknesses of the other dames; they have the collective interest of their sex at heart; and they know how to form a plan and how to carry it through. The other women, in spite of their thoughtlessness and weakness of character, are dominated by the strong personalities of their self-appointed leaders. Hence, by a study of the controlling spirit of each play, in spite of the caricature in the poet's delineation, we may be able to form some conception of the currents of thought of the day as they affected women.
Lysistrata is the wife of an Athenian magistrate, and has been strongly affected by the ill success of the Peloponnesian War. She has meditated long over the experiences of the female sex in general during the last decade of the war. During the first ten years, the Grecian women had borne in silence and without forming any opinions, in the narrow confines of the home, the mistakes of their husbands; but gradually they had observed how politics, in the hands of the men, was going from bad to worse, and how want was increasing year by year. They began to ask questions, to find fault in a mild way, though only with the result that the men sent them back to their domestic duties with the brusque answer: "War shall be a care to men." That which finally roused the women to action was the realization that the men, in the face of events, had unanimously recognized their own helplessness. Lysistrata therefore, in Aristophanes's play, counsels the women to break their chains, seize the reins of government, and bring the dreadful war to an end. She tells the assembled women that they have carried a double burden in the war. As mothers, they have borne sons whom they have been compelled to send forth to death; while as wives, they have been deprived of their husbands; even the maidens have grown old in single blessedness, on account of the absence of men available as husbands. With such words as these she arouses the spirit of her comrades. They, in turn, speak of their virtues, their natural gifts, and their love for their native country, to which they are so much indebted, and in duty to it they are ready to turn their attention to things of war; for, say they: "The Attic woman is no slave, and has sufficient courage to take up arms in her country's cause: now, war shall be a care to women."
These reflections have a decided importance in a consideration of the social history of the times by suggesting how the female sex developed under the trying conditions of war.
In the poet's delineation of Lysistrata, the scene in which she describes to the assembled Athenian and Laconian deputies their political sins gains special importance. She possesses historical insight. By recounting historical facts, she reminds them of what the Laconians have done for the Athenians, and what the latter for the Laconians, and awakens them to general Pan-Hellenic interests, for which they should labor in common instead of weakening their power in fratricidal war. In this address she characterizes herself as follows: "I am a woman, it is true; but I have understanding; and of myself I am not badly off in respect of intellect. By having often heard the remarks of my father and my elders, I have not been ill educated."
We have then in the _Lysistrata_ the women of the day led on in a great patriotic movement by an educated and eloquent woman. The play exhibits a constant battle of words between men and women, each grouped in a chorus. The women seize the Acropolis and make themselves experts in the science of war. Their plans succeed; and the husbands are reduced to a terrible plight by the novel resolution adopted by their wives to bring them to terms. Envoys at length come from the belligerent parties, and peace is concluded under the direction of the clever Lysistrata.
If from the unbridled drollery and serious moral of the drama we endeavor to reach conclusions regarding the Woman Question, they will be found to be about as follows. There were at this time certain prominent women who were endeavoring to have the natural capabilities of the female sex more justly esteemed, and energetic voices were being raised against the humble status of woman in society and in public affairs. This movement was quickened in the latter part of the century, owing to the mistakes of the Peloponnesian War, but the efforts of women to assert their rights were met by the violent opposition of the conservative party. The leader in the _Lysistrata_, in her gift of speech and breadth of understanding, typifies some historical women who took a prominent part in the movement, and these were, probably, some aristocratic ladies who had been influenced by Aspasia.
The unique importance of the _Lysistrata_ consists in its portraiture of the leaders of the woman's rights movement and in its suggestion of the ambitious projects they were prepared to undertake. The _Ecclesiazusae_ is, like the _Lysistrata_, a picture of woman's ascendency, but it goes further in satirizing some of the schemes which in daily conversation and in the works of the philosophers were being presented for bettering the conditions of society and improving the status of women. The success of such a play presupposes that the minds of the audience were prepared for it by the informal discussion of such questions in everyday life. The Athenian ladies, in the _Ecdesiazusae_, under the leadership of Praxagora,--who is endowed with much the same gifts as Lysistrata, and is, in fact, a replica of that clever woman,--disguise themselves as men and crowd the public assembly; by means of the majority of votes which they have thus fraudulently obtained, they overturn the government of the men and proclaim the supremacy of the women in the State. Praxagora, the leading agitator, is chosen _strategis_, and she immediately proclaims, as the fundamental principles of the new State, community of property and free trade between the sexes--ideas which were prominent in the ideal _Republic_ of Plato and had been earlier projected by Protagoras. "The point of the satire consists in this: that the arguments by which the women get the upper hand all turn on their avowed conservatism; men change and shift, women preserve their old customs and will maintain the _ethos_ of the State; but no sooner have they got authority than they show themselves more democratic than the demagogues, more new-fangled in their political notions than the philosophers. They upset time-honored institutions and make new ones to suit their own caprices, squaring the laws according to the logic of feminine instinct. Of course, speculations like those of Plato's _Republic_ are satirized in the farcical scenes which illustrate the consequences of this female revolution. But perhaps the finest point about the comedy is its harmonious insight into the workings of women's minds--a clear sense of what a topsy-turvy world we should have to live in if women were the lawgivers and governors."
We have thus briefly sketched the indications of the prevalence of the Woman Question in Athens, as presented in the plays of Aristophanes. This writer furthermore affords us many ludicrous pictures of woman in private life, which indicate that the fair sex were not always as weak as men would have them. The chorus of the _Thesmophoriazusae_ resent the many ill things said of the race of women,--"that we are an utter evil to men, and that all evils spring from us, strifes, quarrels, seditions, painful grief, and war. Come, now, if we are an evil, why do you marry us, if indeed we are really an evil, and forbid any of us either to go out, or to be caught peeping out, but wish to guard the evil thing with so great diligence? And if the wife should go out any whither, and you then should discover her to be out of doors, you rage with madness, who ought to offer libations and rejoice, if indeed you really find the evil thing to be gone away from the house and do not find it at home. And if we sleep in other peoples' houses, when we play and when we are tired, everyone searches for this evil thing, going round about the beds. And if we peep out of a window, everyone seeks to get a sight of the evil thing. And if we retire again, being ashamed, so much the more does everyone desire to see the evil thing peep out again. So manifestly are we much better than you." As portrayed by Aristophanes, the women of his day manifestly knew how to assert their equality. Feminine foibles and weaknesses do not escape his satiric pen. Women are overfond of dress, and no brilliant or prudent action can be expected of them,
"Who sit deck'd out with flowers, and bearing robes Of saffron hue, and richly border'd o'er With loose Cimmerian vests and circling sandals."
Furthermore, they are fond of drink, and this vice is mercilessly satirized. The inexorable oath administered by Lysistrata to her comrades, in entering upon their crusade to bring about peace, is one which no Athenian woman would incur the penalty of breaking: "If I violate my pledge, may the cup be filled with water!"
Occasionally a man found he had married a wife who set aside his conjugal authority and ruled the household. Thus Strepsiades, the country gentleman of Aristophanes's _Clouds_, quarrelled with his luxurious, city-bred wife, of the aristocratic house of Megacles, over the naming of their son, which was the father's right, and, woman-like, she carried her point; and this son she brought up to despise his father's country ways and to squander his father's substance in horse racing.
Aristophanes was not the only comic poet who indulged in gibes at the female sex, for the object of comedy was to amuse, and the Athenian audience of men ever found delight in the portrayal of the weaknesses and foibles of the opposite sex. Even his predecessor Susarion, who was the first to compose comedy in verse, and is usually called the inventor of comedy, gave expression to the current abuse: "Hear, O ye people! Susarion says this, the son of Philinus, the Megarian, of Tripodiscus: women are an evil; and yet, my countrymen, one cannot set up house without evil; for to be married or not to be married is alike bad." It is unfortunate for our purpose that so little survives of the numberless plays of the Middle and New Comedy, especially the latter, for this comedy of manners presented a close and faithful picture of domestic life and would have been an almost inexhaustible mine of information on Attic life in general, full as it was of illustrations of the manners, feelings, prejudices, and ways of thinking of the Ancient Greeks.
The fragments preserved to us are sufficient, however, to give us glimpses of the manner in which woman was treated on the stage; and, while there was much harsh criticism, it is gratifying to note that her good qualities were at times recognized. Says the poet Antiphanes:
"What! when you court concealment, will you tell The matter to a woman? Just as well Tell all the criers in the public squares I 'Tis hard to say which of them louder blares."
"Great Zeus," says another poet, "may I perish, if I ever spoke against woman, the most precious of all acquisitions. For if Medea was an objectionable person, surely Penelope was an excellent creature. Does anyone abuse Clytemnestra? I oppose the admirable Alcestis. But perhaps someone may abuse Phaedra; then I say, by Zeus! what a capital person was.... Oh, dear! the catalogue of good women is already exhausted, while there remains a crowd of bad ones that might be mentioned." "Woman's a necessary and undying evil," says Philemon; and in another fragment:
"A good wife's duty 'tis, Nicostratus, Not to command, but to obey her spouse; Most mischievous a wife who rules her husband."
Menander, the greatest representative of the New Comedy, has been compared to a mirror, so clear were the images he presented of human life. His epigrammatic sayings are justly famous, and many of them refer to woman. "Manner, not money, makes a woman's charm," says he in one passage; and in another:
"When thou fair woman seest, marvel not; Great beauty's oft to countless faults allied."
"Where women are, there every ill is found," is still another disparaging sentiment, as is his repetition of the frequent gibe at marriage:
"Marriage, if truth be told (of this be sure), An evil is--but one we must endure."
Yet the poet was also appreciative of the good qualities in woman, as is seen in the sentiment: "A good woman is the rudder of her household;" with which we may compare the words of another poet:
"A sympathetic wife is man's chiefest treasure;"
and at times Menander notes how even a woman of serious faults may prove to be the greatest blessing:
"How burdensome a wife extravagant; Not as he would may he who's ta'en her live. Yet this of good she has: she bears him children; She watches o'er his couch, if he be sick, With tender care; she's ever by his side When fortune frowns; and should he chance to die, The last sad rites with honor due she pays."
Surely a touching portraiture of woman's gentle ministry, and worthy to be compared with Scott's famous lines! In spite of the numerous complaints against woman, the plays of the New Comedy usually ended in a happy marriage--the wild youth falls in love with the penniless maiden, reforms, discovers her to be wellborn, and wins over the angry parent; then follow joyous wedding festivities, and happiness ever afterward. Such is the usual course of the plot. Satirical reflections on woman, especially when made in poetry, must not be taken too seriously; and where romantic love is also the theme for song, we may be sure that woman, though much abused, is yet tenderly regarded and highly esteemed among men.
A social movement for the emancipation of woman, which had occupied the attention of thinking men and women of Athens in the latter half of the fifth century before Christ, which had been started by Aspasia in her salon, which had been discussed by Socrates and the Socratics, especially AEschines, and which had brought about a battle royal between the dramatists Euripides and Aristophanes, naturally called for scientific treatment at the hands of the philosophers. The works of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon accordingly devote much space to the consideration of the Woman Question. The female sex, hitherto "accustomed to live cowed and in obscurity,"--as Plato puts it,--justly claimed more favorable conditions; and the philosophers who endeavored to bring about a better social status asserted that woman deserved proper recognition at the hands of men.
Plato had taken seriously to heart the lessons of the Peloponnesian War. He was keenly sensitive to the evils of democracy as then existent, and recognized the need of governmental and social reform. He felt that in the disregard of women at least half the citizen population had been neglected, and we have in his works the strongest assertion of the equality of the sexes.
"And so," he says, in one of his dialogues, "in the administration of a State, neither a woman as a woman nor a man as a man has any special function, but the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, and in all of these woman is only a lesser man." "Very true." "Then are we to impose all our enactments on men and none on women?" "That will never do." "One woman has a gift of healing, another not; one is a musician, another is not." "Very true." "And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military exercises, while another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics." "Beyond question." "And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy of philosophy; one has spirit, and another is without spirit." "This is also true."
From these premises, recognizing the diversity of gifts among women and the correspondence of their talents with those of men, though less in degree, Plato affirms that women should receive a training similar to that accorded to men; to them should be given the same education and assigned the same duties, though the lighter tasks should fall to them as being less strong physically.
"There shall be compulsory education," says Plato, in his Laws, "for females as well as males; they shall both go through the same exercises. I assert, without fear of contradiction, that gymnastic exercises and horsemanship are as suitable to women as to men. I further affirm that nothing can be more absurd than the practice which prevails in our country, of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strength and with one mind, for thus the State, instead of being a whole, is reduced to a half."
The view of Plato, as stated in his _Republic_, which aroused the most hostile criticism was his theory of the community of women as well as of property. But this grew out of the fundamental thesis in his theory of government: that the State must be developed into a perfect unity. The family as a private possession disturbed this unity, and must therefore be dispensed with.
This theory, however, proved too extreme, even for Plato himself, and in his Laws he returns to the idea of marriage, but he follows the Spartan system by putting marriage under the constant surveillance of legislation. He wishes every man to contract that marriage which is most beneficial to the State, not that which is most pleasing to himself. He urges that people of opposing temperaments and of different conditions in life should wed,--the stronger with the weaker, the richer with the poorer,--"perceiving that the city ought to be well mingled, like a cup in which the maddening wine is hot and fiery, but, when chastened by a soberer god, receives a fair associate and becomes an excellent and temperate drink." By such arguments he endeavors to beguile the spirits of men into believing that the equability of their children's disposition is of more importance than equality when they marry.
The philosopher does not seem to see the humor in his proposal to bring together contrary natures, nor the pain he would inflict on the parties most concerned. With him the interest of the State is supreme, and to that everything must yield.
However, even amid such extreme doctrines we find wise counsel, inspired by a more practical and humane spirit. Plato finds fault with the prevailing custom of not giving young people an opportunity to become acquainted with each other before marriage; and he recognizes, from the excellent influence of the wife's activity in the home, how much she might contribute to the well-being of the State if she were taken out of seclusion and intimately associated with the life of her husband.
The woman's rights movement reached its high-water mark in the works of Plato. Thenceforth there were a gradual decline in the conception of woman's capacities and a lessening of the demands for her emancipation.