Part 4

I, Sappho, shall be one with all these things, With all high things forever; and my face Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place, Cleave to men’s lives, and waste the days thereof With gladness and much sadness and long love.

III

The little coterie that wrote and talked and worked in the direction of finer ideals of life and manners, under the influence of the first woman poet of the world, has made the island of Lesbos, with its varying charm of sea and sky, and beautiful gardens, and singing birds, and sparkling fountains, and white cliffs outlined like sculpture in the crystalline air, luminous for all time. Of its four more or less famous poets, three were women, but Sappho has overshadowed all the rest. The very atmosphere woke the imagination, and made their hearts sing aloud with love and joy, varied by an occasional note of sorrow and pain. They came from all lands, these gifted maidens, to sit at the feet of Sappho, and to carry back to their distant homes the spirit of poesy and song which inspired so many Hellenic women to brave deeds as well as to tender and heroic words. But the passion of southern seas became a religious enthusiasm in the sheltered and somber plains of Bœotia, where the lives of women had been so bare and hard, and Hesiod with his fellow-poets had given them such cold consolation. The songs of love were turned to processional hymns chanted by white-robed virgins as they brought offerings to the shrines of their gods.

It may have been the fame of Sappho that fired the genius of Myrtis and Corinna. Possibly some dark-eyed maiden had come back from Lesbos to spread the cult of knowledge and beauty, to found other esthetic clubs which should give a new impulse to women’s lives. But when we try to give a living form to these famous poets, we grasp at shadows. We simply know that they lived and sang and had their little day of glory, with grand tombs at the end, and statues in various parts of Greece. They were teachers of Pindar, and Corinna is said to have defeated him five times in poetic contests at Thebes. Several centuries later there was still at Tanagra a picture representing her in the act of binding a fillet about her beautiful head, probably in token of these victories. Five crowns on her tomb also told the story. She was the friend and critic of the great lyric poet, but he said some unkind things of his successful rival, and insisted that the prize was due to her beauty rather than her genius. In spite of this, he went to her for counsel. She had advised him to use the Greek myths in his poems, and he did it so lavishly that she wittily told him to “sow with the hand and not pour out of a sack.” She was not quite generous, however, to her other friend, who also won a prize in the same manner. She says, “I blame the clear-toned Myrtis that she, a woman born, should enter the lists with Pindar.” Why it was not proper for a sister poet who had taught both of them to do what she did herself, is not clear. She was called the first of the nine lyrical muses, who were the earthly counterparts of the “celestial nine.” Myrtis was another. As the immortal Maids who dwelt on the slopes of Helicon were apt to visit their rivals with summary vengeance of much more serious character, perhaps their mortal representatives ought to be forgiven for a shade of jealousy so delicately implied.

Corinna left five books of poems, but small trace of them remains. Many of her verses were sung by maidens at religious festivals. Her modest niche in the temple of fame she owes mainly to her victories over Pindar, though she was second only to Sappho. Why her work, which was crowned with so many laurels, has not lived beside his, is one of the mysteries of buried ages. Perhaps it was because she made use of purely local legends and the local dialect, to which many thought she owed her success in her own day.

This wave of feminine genius that passed over the hills and valleys of Greece spent itself in little more than a century on Doric soil. The last of the lyrical muses were Praxilla and Telesilla. We have a faint glimpse of the first at Sicyon, where she lived, and ancient critics gave her a place by the side of Anacreon. She drew her inspiration largely from mythology, and sang successfully on that favorite theme of poetic maidens, the death of Adonis. In the most critical age of Greece she was honored with a statue by Lysippus, which may be taken as sufficient proof that she was much more than a writer of sentimental verses.

More noted was Telesilla, the poet and heroine of Argos, an antique Joan of Arc, whose exaltation took a poetic form instead of a religious one. A curious little story, mythical or otherwise, is related of her. She was very ill and consulted the oracle, which told her to devote herself to the Muses. This species of mind-cure proved more effective than medicine, and she recovered under the magic of music and poetry. But she had the spirit of an Amazon as well as the genius of a poet. At a crisis in the war with Sparta, she armed the women, and manned the walls with slaves too young or too old to fight. The Spartans thought it discreditable to kill the women, and disgraceful to be beaten by them, so they retreated. The event was commemorated by an annual festival at which men appeared in feminine attire. Many centuries afterward a statue of Telesilla was still standing on a pillar in front of the temple of Aphrodite at Argos. She held in her hand a helmet which she was about to put on her head, and several volumes of poetry were lying at her feet. Among her themes were the fated daughters of the weeping Niobe; she also wrote famous hymns to Artemis and Apollo. In spite of her allegiance to the Muses, she was more conspicuous for her service to Ares, who was henceforth worshiped at Argos as the patron deity of women.

The poetry of the Æolians was largely inspired by love, or a religion of beauty. But the Doric genius was not a lyrical one, and the passionate personal note which made the charm of Sappho and her contemporaries was lost in stirring martial strains. Women ceased to write or to be known at all in literature until a later time, when they dipped into philosophy a little, especially in the Dorian colonies, where they were educated and held in great consideration. Pythagoras had many feminine followers, and his school at Crotona was continued after his death by his wife Theano and a daughter who had assisted him. But most of them live, if at all, only as names, or in the reflected light of famous men whose disciples they were.

IV

At no other time in the history of the world has the poetry of women reached the height or the honor it attained in this first flowering of their intellect and imagination. One may doubtless take with a shade of reservation the “female Homers,” like Anyta, of whom we have only a few epigrams, but there is a dim and rather vague tradition of seventy-six women poets in a scattered and by no means large population. In the revival of poetry during the Renaissance, there were about sixty, and none of them had the same quality of perfection which we find in Sappho. No one claims that we have equaled her to-day on her own ground, however superior our achievements may be in other directions.

That the Æolian women did so much with so little, and in spite of their limited advantages, is the best proof of their inborn gifts. Mediocre talents do not thrive in so adverse a soil, though this outburst of mental vigor belongs to a time when women had a degree of freedom and honor which for some reason they lost in the golden age of Athens. But the books they wrote were not printed, the manuscript copies were limited, most of them were lost with other classic works, and the few that escaped the pitiless fingers of time were destroyed by fanatics and iconoclasts. Yet one woman shines across twenty-five centuries as a star of the first magnitude, and we have fading glimpses of others who received honors due only to genius, or to talent of the first order. They were not judged apart as women, for they have come down to us as peers of great men. The divine gift of genius was rare then, as now and always, but even in women it did not lack recognition. To prove the gift and exact the homage, perhaps in any age, we have simply to show the fruit, except in a decadence, when the finest fruit loses its savor for corrupted tastes. If the number who wrote for immortality was small, it must be remembered that probably there were not enough people in all Greece to make a good-sized modern city.

The statues that were reared to these women have long since vanished from the classic hills they graced, and their voices are heard only in the faintest of musical echoes. Most of them have fallen into eternal silence. That there were many others devoted to things of the intellect, but unknown to fame, it is fair to presume, as we see only those who look back upon us from the shining peaks of that far past, while the dark waters of oblivion have settled over the possible treasures of its sunny slopes and fragrant valleys. How many of our own women, with their myriads of books, lectures, and clubs, their university courses, their versatile intellects, and their unlimited freedom, are likely to be quoted two or three thousand years hence, and set in the firmament to live forever?

To be sure, we stand upon a higher moral and social level, we have more knowledge, our field of action is broader, our ideals of virtue are higher, and we have privileges and pleasures of which they never dreamed. It is quite impossible to put ourselves on the simple plane of these women. The world has grown old and sophisticated; we have learned to classify ourselves, to choose our fields of knowledge, to consecrate our talents to what we call larger uses. Perhaps we never again can reach the lyrical heights of these children of passion, imagination, and song. Our triumphs are of another sort. But whatever intellectual distinctions we may attain, it is to this youth of the world that we must look for the apotheosis of love and beauty.

It is needless to ask why we can point to no second Sappho. There is but one Parthenon. Broken and crumbling, it stands in its white majesty forever alone. The Hellenic spirit is as dead as the gods of Olympus.

GLIMPSES OF THE SPARTAN WOMAN

· Homeric and Spartan Types Compared · · Training of the Spartan Woman · · Her Education Superior to that of Men · · Her Executive Talent · · Her Heroism · · Agesistrata Cratesiclea Chelonis · · The Puritans of the Classic World ·

The strength and vigor of the Homeric types reappear in the Spartan woman, but without their sweetness and charm. Was this charm the subtle touch of the poet’s imagination, or was it due in part to the setting that brought into relief their most lovable qualities? Their central point of character was a domestic one, and round this clustered all the gentler virtues. The central trait of the Spartan woman was patriotism, and to this even the tenderest affections were subordinate. The colder light of history shows them in outlines that are hard and stern. The fine symmetry of an ideal womanhood was lost in the excess of a single virtue that overshadowed all the others. Some one tells a mother who is waiting for tidings of a battle that her five sons have perished. “You contemptible slave,” she replies, “that is not what I wish to know. How fares my country?” On learning that it was victorious, she says, “Willingly then do I hear of the death of my sons.” “A glorious fate!” exclaims another, to a friend who offered her sympathy for the loss of her boy in war. “Did I not bear him that he might die for Sparta?” Here lay the first and last duty of these women. Natural affection, private interest, inclination, everything we deem sacred, even to life, was at the bidding of the State, which strangled itself and its citizens with petty tyrannies in the name of liberty. They were dedicated to the State, ordered to rear men for the State, sacrificed to the State. This destiny they accepted without a murmur, finding in it their glory and their pride.

Even as children the Spartan women caught the spirit of civic devotion, which was to be the dominant one in their lives. An anecdote in point is told of the little Gorgo, who was afterward the wife of the brave Leonidas. When a child of eight years, she happened to be in the room one day while a messenger was trying to bribe her father to aid the Persians. He offered ten talents at first, and gradually raised the sum until the child, suspecting danger, said: “Go away, father; this stranger will corrupt you.” It is pleasant to record that her advice was laughingly taken. When she was grown to womanhood, she rendered great service to her country, and proved her own sagacity, by finding a message of vital concern so concealed in a wax tablet that no one had suspected it. “You Lacedæmonians are the only women in the world to rule men,” said a foreigner to her. “We are the only women who bring forth men,” was the ready reply. When her distinguished husband went away to his last battle, with forebodings of his fate, he could find no better parting words than these: “Marry nobly and bear brave sons.” We might regard the consolation as questionable, but it shows the inexorable tyranny of a single idea.

It was from Sparta that the beautiful Helen sailed away on that fateful day which changed the face of the primitive world, and the tradition of her loveliness was not lost. The Spartan women were still noted for beauty of a healthy, vigorous, luxuriant sort, but it seems to have lacked the distinctly feminine and magical quality that raised Helen to the ranks of the goddesses. They were of firmer mold and less sensuous type. Aphrodite fared badly among the sturdy people in the valley of the Eurotas. She had but one temple, and even there she sat armed with a sword and veiled, with ignominious fetters on her feet. Artemis, active, fleet of foot, and strong, held the place of honor. Delicacy and tenderness were marks of inferiority which Spartan training tended to efface. These brave, decided, clear-headed, and efficient women had abundant heroism, but little of the warm, sympathetic temperament which we call womanly and they called weak. This goes far to prove that, within certain limits, the accepted standard of what is womanly, and what is not, depends largely upon custom, or fashion, or expediency, and suggests some unpleasant possibilities if the race of women should be fully educated to the hard uses and material ideals of a purely industrial or commercial life, as outlined in the brains of many modern social reformers. Such uses may be a present necessity rather than a choice, but whether the gain in strength and independence will compensate for the inevitable loss of many gentler qualities is one of the problems for the future to solve. In any case, the old theory of a divine law that has fixed the nature as well as the status of women in the economy of creation, is likely to be seriously disturbed, as it was in the Sparta of old. In the martial chorus that called itself the song of liberty, the musical, love-inspired voices of women were lost. It celebrated the apotheosis of force, which has always been fatal to the finer and more spiritual gifts of the less militant sex. But for once it served them indirectly a good turn, in spite of certain hardening effects upon the character and manners. This is quite evident when we compare the Doric woman with the secluded Athenian of softer ways but with no outlet for her intelligence, and apparently no influence.

Fortunately the supreme aim of the founders of Sparta was one which they were wise enough to know could not be attained without a larger freedom and development for women. It was a one-sided training that was given them, and the freedom was not altogether satisfactory from our point of view, if indeed we should call it freedom at all. But as an important factor in the State they were duly honored. It was an accepted theory that brave and vigorous men must spring from brave and vigorous women, so the aim of all their discipline was to make strong and healthy mothers. No delicate girl was allowed to marry, for the same reason that no sickly child was allowed to live. To insure the vitality of the race and the consequent glory of the State, girls were trained with boys in athletic exercises. They ran, wrestled, and boxed with them in public,--sometimes with no veil but their modesty,--danced with them at festivals, and marched freely with them in religious processions. All this naturally gave them masculine manners, and inevitably led to a spirit of independence and a virile character. The more refined Athenians criticized them and looked upon them much as the conventional Parisian of to-day, who will not send a daughter across the street without a chaperon, looks upon the irrepressible American girl of the frontier. Contrary also to the usual fashion, it was the maidens who had the privilege of living in the public view. They did not even veil their faces, as the married women did.

With all their mannish tendencies, the Spartan women are said to have been noted for purity of character. It is safe perhaps to take with a degree of reservation the assertion that immorality according to their standards was practically unknown. We might at least justly find fault with the standards, and object to the material view taken of relations which we are in the habit of investing with a delicate halo of romance. It was an affair of the State, however, rather than of the individual, and it is a nice point to decide as to the morality of women who accepted from necessity certain prescribed modes of living in which they had no choice. So peculiar were the general notions of decorum that it was considered disgraceful for a bridegroom to be seen in the company of his wife; yet he could exchange her at will or at the command of the rulers, and jealousy was laughed at as a “vain and womanish passion.” But it was the pride of the Spartans that no invasion of the sanctity of the home was ever heard of! They excused themselves for what we should call moral delinquencies of the worst sort--if indeed they thought any excuse needed, which is not probable--by the convenient maxim that the end justifies the means. The interests of the State were above any moral law whatever. No doubt the arbitrary manner in which women were often disposed of for the public good, or at the caprice of their lords, seemed to them a better sort of fate than living in seclusion, as their Attic sisters did, under the roof of a man who gave them no liberty, and no society, not even his own. They certainly were not troubled with an excess of sentiment; but marriages were, on the whole, happy, and love was often a factor in them, which was rarely the case among their more civilized neighbors. It was not in the nature of these practical people to look at things from an esthetic point of view. Their notions were confessedly utilitarian. To-day we should call many of them scientific. Happily, modern science has not yet meddled quite so far with the rights of the individual, though clearly headed in that direction.

If the Spartan woman did not relish such cavalier treatment, she had the small comfort of knowing that men were not free themselves, and that really, on the whole, she had the best of it. “The door of his court is the boundary of every man’s freedom,” was a Lacedæmonian maxim. Outside of it, all of his movements were controlled by the State. In this paradise of socialism, he was punished for not marrying, for waiting too long, and for marrying the wrong woman, that is, one who was too old, or too young, or too rich, or too far above or below him in station. Archidamus, one of their rulers, was fined for marrying a little woman, because she would “bring them a race of pygmies instead of kings.” There were special penalties for those who sought money instead of merit and suitability. The fortune-hunter fared badly in Sparta. We have grown civilized and changed all that. A man suffered his penalty for remaining single, even if he were a coward whom no one was permitted to marry, which seems doubly hard. The poor bachelors who would not or could not take a wife, were stripped and marched in a procession about the market-place on a cold day once a year, as a fit target for ridicule and contempt, not to say more tangible missiles. If any woman had a private grudge, she might vent it with impunity, even to blows, while the unfortunate victim was forced to chant his own miserere. Maiden ladies of mature age were rare among the hills of Lacedæmon.

Notwithstanding the low ideals which would seem to have reduced the women of Sparta to the position of useful animals, valued solely for their physical vigor and fitness to be mothers of a hardy race, they evidently constituted a leisure class which had a monopoly of whatever learning and refinement were to be found there. They lived in such comfort as they could command, while their husbands slept on cold beds of reeds, dined on black bread and coarse rations at the public table, and practised every form of asceticism to fit themselves for war. Their sons were taken from them at seven, to be put under the training of men and subjected to the same stern discipline. The spinning, weaving, and other work of the family was given to slaves, so that the privileges of luxury and idleness fell to the women alone. They came and went as they chose, and were even thought to have intellects worth cultivating. Men looked upon literary and artistic pursuits as effeminate. A Spartan king replied to some one who brought to his notice the greatest musician of his time, by pointing to his cook as the best maker of black broth. This social Utopia in which the individual was lost in the mass, and no one could safely be superior to his neighbor, was the blessed haven of mediocrity and what we should call indolence. War was the only honorable business; even trade and the mechanic arts were left to slaves. A Spartan visiting Athens was much disturbed on hearing that a man had been fined for idleness, and naïvely asked to see one who was punished for keeping up his dignity. Life was materialized, and all fine ideals were destroyed save the single one of national glory, for which they willingly stifled personal feeling and personal talent. Things of the intellect and spirit were quite ignored.

But the Doric women had to some extent the tastes of the Æolians, and were as a rule far better educated than their husbands. We hear of clubs or associations of women for the cultivation of the mind, and for teaching girls after the fashion of the time. In music they excelled. Aristophanes introduces in “Lysistrata” choruses of Spartan and Athenian maidens who sing in friendly rivalry. Many of the _parthenia_, or processional hymns, were written by foreign poets for these young girls, whose spiritual aspirations found vent in that way. They did not give voice to personal emotions, but to great religious or patriotic enthusiasms.

Whatever education may have been given to women, it is not likely that their intellectual standards were very broad or very high; at least, we have no visible evidence of it, as we find no living trace of their talents for some centuries after the brief poetic flowering that followed Sappho, and even then not in Sparta. It was among the Dorians of a later time, and mainly in the colonies, that the feminine taste for literature revived, but it took a didactic or philosophical form, and they wrote in prose.