Part 29

Athens was finally chosen as the seat of the new Greek government; and in 1837 the Bavarian king Otho and his lovely bride, the princess Amalia, entered Athens in triumph, and the kingdom of Hellas was fairly launched. Within the memory of living men the dynasty of Otho fell, and a scion of the royal house of Denmark, King George, with his Russian consort, Queen Olga, now holds sway in Athens.

The modern Greek woman of the higher classes has become so thoroughly cosmopolitan in her culture that she has lost in large measure her distinctive traits. Her sympathy is rather with Parisian life than with English, though her deportment is marked by a sobriety of manner partaking rather of Greek repose than of French effusion. Many faces seen in Greek lands exhibit, in profile especially, the Greek type of beauty.

The women of the lower classes, no doubt, preserve many of the characteristics of the race in all ages, in spite of the intermingling with foreign peoples and the results of centuries of Turkish oppression, which time alone can eradicate. Domestic fidelity, maternal affection, devotion to religious observances, the cheerful discharge of the duties and responsibilities of wedded life, are nowhere more beautifully illustrated than among the Greek women of to-day.

It is the Christian religion which makes the life of Greek women under King George superior to that of their sisters under the dominion of the Sultan, and we may hope that in the fulness of time the Greek women of Europe and Asia outside of the Hellenic kingdom may enjoy, untrammelled by Turkish authority, the rights and privileges of that religion which has elevated the sex, and that the Greek woman of the future may combine the personal graces of her sister in antiquity with the cultivation of the soul and the enlargement of spirit which comes to women with the inculcation of Christianity.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

PART FIRST

I WOMEN OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVE II WOMEN OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE III THE ERA OF PERSECUTION IV SAINT HELENA AND THE TIME OF CONSTANTINE V POST-NICENE MOTHERS VI THE NUNS OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH VII WOMEN WHO WITNESSED THE FALL OF ROME VIII WOMEN OF THE FRANKISH CHURCH

PART SECOND

IX THE EMPRESS EUDOXIA X THE RIVAL EMPRESSES--PULCHERIA AND EUDOCIA XI THE EMPRESS THEODORA XII OTHER SELF-ASSERTING AUGUSTÆ--VERINA, ARIADNE. SOPHIA, MARTINA. IRENE XIII BYZANTINE EMPRESSES--THEODORA II. THEOPHANO. ZOE. THEODORA III. XIV THE PRINCESSES OF THE COMNENI XV WOMANHOOD OF THE BYZANTINE DECADENCE

List of Illustrations

SUBJECT ARTIST

Seeking shelter _Luc Oliver Merson_ Christ and the daughter of Jairus _Albert Keller_ Christians in the arena _L.P.de Laubadère_ Famine and pestilence _A. Hirschl_ The legend of the roses _J. Nogales_ Byzantine interior, ninth century _S. Baron_