According to Wilford, the Greeks were the descendants of the Yavanas of India. This writer observes that the Pandits insist that the words Yavana and Yoni are derived from the same root, Yu, and that when the Ionians emigrated they adopted this name to distinguish themselves as adorers of the female, in opposition to a strong sect of male worshippers which had been driven from the mother country.224 Under the constantly increasing importance of the male, however, both in human affairs and in the god-idea, they subsequently became ashamed of their religious title and sought to abandon it. Of the aversion felt in Greece for this name Herodotus says:
The Athenians and most of the Ionic states over the world went so far in their dislike of the name as actually to lay it aside; and even at the present day the greater number of them seems to me to be ashamed of it.225
Whenever in early historic times a country was subjugated, the conquerors either murdered or enslaved the men, and utilized the women for wives, or sexual slaves. The Ionians who, according to Herodotus, sailed from Attica, without women, took for wives native Carians whose fathers they had slain; hence these captives made a law, which they bound themselves by an oath to observe, and which they handed down to their daughters after them, that “none should ever sit at meat with her husband, or call him by his name; because the invaders slew their fathers, their husbands, and their sons, and then forced them to become their wives.”226 The terms of the oaths sworn by them at the time of the capture seem, subsequently, to have been enforced by their imperious masters.
As these women were foreigners they were entitled to little or no respect from their captors. However, as they were to become the mothers of Greek citizens, they must necessarily be “protected,” or, in other words, they must be kept in seclusion. In the time of Solon, rape committed on a free-born woman was punishable by fine.227
From that stage in the history of Greek tribes, at which through capture and appropriation of the soil by individuals women began to lose that influence which they had exercised under matriarchal usages, to the time of Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, when they had finally descended to the lowest level of misery and sexual degradation, may be observed a corresponding tendency gradually developing itself among the people towards selfishness, usurpation of power, and the slavery of the masses. In the age of Solon the limit of human wretchedness seems to have been reached, and as the human race is never at a standstill, it must at this time have either become extinct, or have begun gradually to lift itself from the condition of disgrace and ruin into which it had fallen.
The character of Solon, as gathered from the facts at hand regarding him, reflects in a measure the true condition of society at that time. Although vain and morally weak, he was in a certain sense humane; his humanity, however, extended only to those of his own sex. A large proportion of the women of Athens were imported foreigners, and were therefore so degraded that they had no rights which any one, even a lawgiver, was bound to protect. After his appointment to the archonship, Solon’s first act was to cancel the debts against the lands and persons of the Athenians, and to establish a law that in future no man should accept the body of his debtor for security.228 Many who had been previously banished or driven out of the country for debt, and had remained so long from their native land as to forget their Attic dialect, were recalled as freemen, while others, who at home had suffered slavery, were released and given their freedom.
Perhaps, however, in no position in life will a vain, morally weak man display to better advantage the defects in his character than in his attempts to legislate for women; and under no circumstances will his true inwardness of purpose stand more truly revealed than in his efforts to “regulate” the relations of the sexes. A brief notice of Solon’s laws concerning women proves him to have been no exception to the generally observed rule. It is recorded of him that in his extreme solicitude lest their movements should not comport with his ideas of female propriety and decorum, he regulated their journeyings, and laid down rules respecting their mournings, sacrifices, and the number of gowns which they were to take with them when they went out of town. The provision for their journey and even the size of the basket in which it was to be conveyed were subjects not unworthy the attention of the great Athenian lawgiver. Women’s mode of travel by night was also prescribed as was also their conduct at funerals and various places of amusement. In fact all their actions were subjected to that meddlesome espionage and control which characterize a weak and sensuous age. Indeed, we have something more than a hint of the degraded position occupied by women, in the fact that a man might not be allowed to sell a daughter or a sister “unless she were taken in an act of dishonour before marriage,” in which case her accuser might sell her person for individual gain; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that he, as well as nearly every other man in Athens, was steeped in infamy.
The measure adopted by Solon for the regulation of prostitution, and his division of women into classes for the convenience of all conditions of men, indicate clearly the disgrace and shamelessness which characterized the Athenians at this stage of their career, and depict with unerring fidelity the depth of horror into which womanhood had been dragged.
The condition of public morals during the three hundred years following the age of Solon is plainly indicated not only in the laws but in the mythologies of Greece and Rome. Prostitution was enjoined by religion and when Draco, suddenly shocked by the degeneracy of his time, affixed the penalty of death to rape, seduction, and adultery, it has been said that by the performance of the prescribed religious rites within the temple, the “rigour of his edicts was considerably softened.”
The restraint imposed upon the Athenians by the Draconian regulations was, however, of short duration; for when Solon, the successor of Draco, assumed the position of archon, he at once legally established a sufficient number of houses of prostitution at Athens to supply the demand, filling them with female slaves who had been taken captives in war, or who had been otherwise provided by the munificence of the government.
By this time, so degraded had womanhood become, that the traffic in female captives for sexual purposes was regarded as a legitimate business, and the revenue accruing from their services was considered a lawful source of gain to the state, its use being devoted to the rearing of temples and to the carrying out of the various projects connected with religious worship.
That the Athenians of this period were wholly given over to luxury and licentiousness is shown by the fact that at their bacchanalian feasts, the troops of women who were in attendance and who had been provided for the occasion by the generosity of the state, performed all their duties under direct and explicit instruction of the government “to disobey no order of a guest”; for which wise regulations Solon received the praise and commendation of Athenian men.
In a former portion of this work the fact has been noted that until well into the Latter Status of barbarism all women were protected; that among the Kaffirs, the Fiji Islanders, and various other peoples occupying a lower stage in the order of growth, women, although divested of their former influence, are still jealously guarded by the gens to which they belong; and that when maidens are bereft of home and near relatives, they are adopted into some other gens within the tribe where they are invested with the same rights as are its own members. Therefore when contemplating the social condition of the Athenians five or six hundred years B.C., we are naturally led to inquire: What were the causes which during one ethnical period had produced so marked a change in the position of the female sex? For an answer to our question we must recall the facts set forth in this volume relative to the capture of wives, together with the feeling of hatred entertained by early society for alien women.
In the time of Pericles, an age when Athens was at the height of its prosperity, the women of the city were divided into five classes as regarded their duties and uses. The first of these consisted of wives, who, for the most part, were kept in seclusion and allowed to exist solely for the purpose of propagating Greek citizens. These women were without influence, possessing no rights or privileges beyond the will of their “lords”; while to such an extent were they considered merely in the light of household furniture that they were not permitted to appear in public, nor to sit at table with their masters.
The following dialogue between Socrates and Ischomachus, a man who had managed his household in such a manner as to be “pointed out as a model for all Athens,” perhaps serves as a correct picture of the relations existing between husband and wife in the Periclean age. “I should like to know this particular from you,” said Socrates, “whether you yourself educated your wife so as to make her what she ought to be, or whether you received her from her parents with a knowledge of her duties?”—“And how could I have received her so educated, Socrates, when she came to me not fifteen years old, and had lived up to that time under the strictest surveillance that she might see as little as possible, and hear as little as possible, and inquire as little as possible?”
Of the five classes to which reference has been made, wives only were native-born, and as this particular class had specific duties to perform, severe penalties were attached to the crimes of seduction and rape when committed upon Athenian women. The remaining four classes were arranged according to the dignity of their associates, the highest in rank and repute being the hetairai, the members of which comprised the only free women in Athens. Themselves philosophers and stateswomen, their associates among males were of the same rank or station. They constituted a highly intellectual class, and as such were able to control not only their own movements, but to exercise a remarkable influence upon literature, art, and the affairs of state. Because of the important position occupied by these women, they will be referred to later in this work.
The next in rank were the auletrides, or flute-players. Many of the most fashionable of these were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators. We are informed that female musicians were a usual accompaniment to an Athenian banquet, and that flute-playing became an essential feature in the worship of several of their deities; hence, the services of this particular class were in demand, not only to heighten the enjoyment of social intercourse, but to stimulate and encourage religious enthusiasm. At public gatherings, after the dinner was over, and while the wine was flowing freely, these women made their appearance in a semi-nude condition, dancing and keeping time to the music by the graceful motion of their beautifully moulded figures. While the enthusiasm was at its height they were sold to the highest bidder. Fist fights, or hand-to-hand encounters for the possession of these female flute-players, were not uncommon occurrences in the best society in Athens.230
These scenes were performed under the sanction of religion and law; they therefore serve to reveal the true inwardness of the Greek character at this stage of development. It is reported that the finest houses in Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek auletrides. Of all the flute-players of Greece, Lamia is said to have been the most successful. For fifteen or twenty years she was the delight of the entire city of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy. Finally, when the city was taken by Demetrius of Macedon, Lamia was taken also. When she demanded that an immense tax be levied on the city of Athens for her benefit, it is recorded that although the people murmured at the amount, they nevertheless found it to their interest to deify her and erect a temple in her honour. According to the testimony of Plutarch, Lamia raised money on her own authority to provide an entertainment for the king.231
The fourth class consisted of concubines, or purchased slaves who were in the service of Athenian gentlemen (?). This appendage to the Greek family was a member of the household of her master where she was kept with the full knowledge of the wife, the latter occupying a position little if any superior to that of her rival. Indeed, as the purchased slave could be disposed of whenever the fancy or caprice of her master so dictated, and another installed in her place, it is reasonable to suppose that so long as she did remain, she was the object of quite as much attention as was the wife.
The lowest class, or those who were allowed the least freedom of action, were those known as the dicteriades. They were compelled to reside at a designated place, and were forbidden to be seen upon the streets by day. Nothing of a personal nature was allowed to interfere with the duties which were imposed upon them by their imperious masters. Their only duty was to obey.
By this time we are prepared to appreciate, to a certain extent, the moral aspect of Greek society during the years intervening between the age of Solon and that of Pericles, a period of about a century and a half. That all women, wives and concubines, native-born and foreign, had been dragged to the lowest depths of disgrace and shame and that they were classified and arranged to meet the demands of those who through the unchecked tendencies inherent in the male nature had reached the lowest level of infamy to which it is possible for living creatures to descend, are facts which are only too plainly shown by those whose duty it has been to record the events connected with the history of the Greeks.
Although under Draco, the predecessor of Solon, the political degradation of the citizens of Greece may be said to have reached its height, and although the uprising of the masses against the usurpation of power by the few marks an era in the history of the Greeks, it was not until the dawn of the Periclean age that women had gained sufficient freedom to enable them to exercise any direct influence on thought, or on the principles underlying human conduct.
We must bear in mind the fact that for five or six centuries the inferiority of women had been systematically and religiously taught. Ever since the rule of Cecrops, at which time doubtless the manner of reckoning descent began to be changed from the female to the male line, woman’s influence in Athens had gradually declined. The religio-physiological doctrine that in the office of reproduction the mother plays only an insignificant part had not only been proclaimed by Apollo but had been sanctioned also by Athene. It is recorded of Cecrops that “he instituted marriage and established a new religion.”
Just here may be observed the key to the gradually declining position of the female element in the deity, and to the finally accepted dogma that the female is inferior to the male. Through the private ownership of land and the consequent dependency of women upon men, the way had been paved for this assumption—an assumption which had the effect to create in Ionian men the supreme and lofty contempt for women which is observed throughout their literature and laws. From the age of Solon to that of Pericles, the overwhelming degree of superiority assumed by Athenian men over women had uprooted in the former every vestige of restraint, at the same time that it had deprived them of the last trace of that respect for womanhood which under earlier and more natural conditions had been entertained.
It has been frequently remarked that women took little or no part in the intellectual development of Greece; that during the most rapid progress of Greek men, there was no corresponding improvement in the position occupied by Greek women.
From what is recorded relative to Athenian women from the time of Cecrops to that of Solon, one would scarcely expect to find them competing with men for the prizes of life. Later, however, that a considerable number of them did assert their independence, and that, defying the customs and traditions by which they were bound, did prove themselves the equals of men, may not be doubted.
There probably has never been a time since the dominion of man began when the more sensitive and better endowed among women have not secretly rebelled against the tyranny exercised over them, and, throughout the ages, whenever an opportunity has been offered, large numbers of these women, have never failed to make known their discontent. Greek women were no exception to this rule. Their first step toward liberty was to free themselves from the galling chain imposed upon them by marriage, a position in which, as has been shown, wives were simply household slaves, tools of their imperious and degenerate masters. Greek women, in the Periclean age, simply assumed the control of their persons and by so doing provoked the maledictions of future ages, ages in which sensualism still reigned supreme.
For reasons which have already been explained, the foremost women in Greece, and in fact all women who during the Periclean age were engaged in art, literature, philosophy, and statesmanship, belonged to the class known as the hetairai, a term which, through the excessive growth or sensuality and superstition, subsequently became a term of reproach. Whatever may have been the importance of the services rendered by these women to society, such services would have been ignored, or, if not altogether ignored, would have been reflected upon, or appropriated by, the opposite sex.
To say that the hetairai were free is equal to saying that they have been misunderstood, hence the calumnies which for more than two thousand years have been heaped upon them. That the hetairai of Greece in the Periclean age included a class of women who were the intellectual compeers of the ablest statesmen and philosophers is a fact which may not by those who have paid close attention to this subject be denied. That they taught rhetoric and elocution, that they lectured publicly and established schools of philosophy at the same time that they wielded a powerful influence on the state and on the drift of current thought are facts which mediæval scholasticism has not been able to conceal.
I think one may not investigate the various schools of philosophy which arose during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., without noting the peculiarly altruistic principles involved in them, and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that, hitherto, extreme selfishness or egoism had constituted the prevailing character observed in Athenian society.
According to the principles of the Cyrenaics, the virtuous man is not necessarily he who is in the possession of pleasure but he who is able to proceed rightly in quest of pleasure. “Virtue is the only possible and sane way to happiness.” The most eminent members of the Cyrenaics were Arete the daughter of Aristippus and her son Aristippus the younger, surnamed the mother-taught.232 The fundamental doctrine of the Cyrenes seems to have been that right-living or virtue constitutes the only good. “The essence of virtue lies in self-control. Enjoyment sought as an end is evil.”
“Virtue is capable of being taught, and when once acquired cannot be lost. What is good is honourable, and what is bad is disgraceful.” On examination it is found that one of the most eminent members of this school is Hipparchia. That she is not a mere listener, imbibing the ideas of others, is shown in the fact that she lectured publicly and argued strongly before the philosophers of Athens. The founder of the Cynic school of philosophy is said to have been Antisthenes, the son of a Thracian mother. One of the sayings of this philosopher is, that “virtue is the same in a man as in a woman.”233
That the question of the position of women was a theme for discussion in the age under consideration is shown in a “sophism” proposed by Hipparchia to Theodorus. Once when she went to sup with Lysimachus, she said to Theodorus: “What Theodorus could not be called wrong for doing, that same thing Hipparchia ought not to be called wrong for doing.”234
When we take into consideration the fact that Hipparchia was intimately associated with Crates, a man for whom she entertained the tenderest affection, and when we remember that they were both engaged in teaching a philosophy which “recognized virtue as the supreme end of life,” the conversation at the house of Lysimachus between Hipparchia and Theodorus, as set forth by Diogenes Laërtius will be seen to admit of a different interpretation than that which commonly prevails.
Of the Epicureans it has been observed that they were a sort of Pythagorean brotherhood, consisting of both men and women.
The scandalous tongue of antiquity was never more virulent than it was in the case of Epicurus, but, as far as we can judge, the life of the Garden joined to urbanity and refinement a simplicity which would have done no discredit to a Stoic; indeed, the Stoic Seneca continually refers to Epicurus not less as a model for conduct, than as a master of sententious wisdom.
Among the most distinguished members of this school were Themistia, to whom Cicero refers in his speech against Pisa as a “sort of female Solon,” and Leontium, who ventured to attack Theophrastus in an essay characterized, as we are assured, by much elegance of style.235
No school of philosophy arose in Athens with which there was not closely connected the name of one or another of the illustrious women of the time. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, was the pupil of Crates, the companion of Hipparchia.
Aspasia was the “clever preceptress of Socrates,”236 the sage who sat for the portrait of the Stoic philosophy. According to the Stoic philosophy, the supreme end of life is virtue, i. e., “a life conformed to nature.” The degree of self-restraint taught by Socrates is shown in the following lines:
Is it not the duty of every man to consider that temperance is the foundation of every virtue, and to establish the observance of it in his mind before all things? For who, without it, can either learn anything good, or sufficiently practice it? Who, that is a slave to pleasure, is not in an ill condition both as to his body and his mind? It appears to me, by Juno, that a free man ought to pray that he may never meet with a slave of such a character, and that he who is a slave to pleasure should pray to the gods that he may find well-disposed masters; for by such means only can a man of that sort be saved.237
When the ablest statesmen and the first philosophers of Greece united in sounding the praises of Alcibiades, the genius of Aspasia commanded equal recognition. Not only did Socrates and Pericles receive instruction and inspiration from this gifted woman, but we are assured that she lectured publicly and that her “acquaintances took their wives with them to hear her discourse.”238 Indeed “Pericles threw all Greece into confusion on account of Aspasia, not the young one, but that one who associated with the wise Socrates.”239
It is not to be imagined that Aspasia excelled in light and amorous discourses. Her discourses, on the contrary, were not more brilliant than solid. It was believed by the most intelligent Athenians, and amongst them Socrates himself, that she composed the celebrated funeral oration pronounced by Pericles in honour of those that were slain in the Samian War.240
It is recorded of her that many Athenians resorted to her lecture-room on account of her skill in the art of speaking. Not only did she teach rhetoric, philosophy, and the proper relations of the sexes, but so renowned was she for statesmanship that Pericles is said to have surrendered to her the government of Athens then at the height of its glory and renown. On this subject Plutarch remarks: “Some, indeed, say that Pericles made his court to Aspasia only on account of her wisdom and political abilities.”
It has been said that the expedition against the Samians was merely to gratify Aspasia. The Milesians and Samians who had been at war were ordered to lay down their arms. When they refused to obey, Pericles, in company with Aspasia, sailed with a fleet to Samos and abolished the oligarchical form of government. Although he was offered large sums of money, he “treated the Samians in the manner he had resolved on; and having established a popular government in the island, he returned to Athens.”241
Plutarch, quoting from Æschines, says that Lysicles, who was “of a mean, ungenerous disposition, by his intercourse with Aspasia after the death of Pericles, became the most considerable man in Athens.”242 Notwithstanding the scandalous reports which have come down to us of this woman’s character, in view of the facts which it has been impossible for sex-prejudice to conceal, we are constrained to ask: “What manner of woman was this who was able to control statesmen, impart instruction to world-renowned philosophers, and leave a name which even bigotry, envy, and malice may not efface from the history of human events?”
In seeking for an explanation of the exalted character of Aspasia, we have something more than a hint in the fact that she is reported to have “trod in the steps of Thargelia,” a woman who by her exceeding brilliancy had gained the sovereignty of Thessaly. Indeed, we have found a key to the entire situation when we learn that this Thargelia, in whose steps Aspasia trod, “was descended from the ancient Ionians,”243 a people who, originally worshipped the female principle, and who still preserved the customs peculiar to the matriarchal system, under which it will be remembered women, as aliens, did not follow the fathers of their children to their homes. So soon as these facts are understood, we are not in the least surprised to learn that Aspasia discountenanced the institution of marriage as it existed in Athens. Neither is it remarkable, when we remember that the underlying principles involved in the philosophy which she taught were justice and equity, that she should be found using her great influence, as in the case of the Milesians and Samians, in substituting democracies in the place of oligarchies; nor that, in an age when women had come to be regarded simply as the tools and slaves of men, she should be found teaching the dignity of womanhood to her own sex, and the principles of equality to males.
According to Xenophon, Aspasia’s efforts were to a great extent directed to the duties of husbands and wives; indeed, her foremost object seems to have been to educate Athenian women. During the Periclean age the position of women was one of the leading topics discussed in Athens. Socrates says to his companions that he has been of the opinion “of a long time that the female sex are nothing inferior to ours, excepting only in strength of body or perhaps steadiness of judgment.”244 The coarse picture painted by Aristophanes, of women with beards going in male attire to the agora, “to seize the administration of the state so as to do the state some good,”245 although a vulgar attempt to ridicule the female philosophers of Athens, furnishes something more than a hint of the fact that the ideas subsequently set forth in Plato’s Republic had been openly discussed by the philosophers of the Periclean age.
That the word hetairai was originally employed in no mean or compromising sense is plain, since Sappho uses it in the sense of “female companion (ἑταίρα) of the same rank and the same interests.” We are assured that these women were able to preserve a friendship “free from trickery.” Of them even “Cynulcus does not venture to speak ill.”246 They “of all women are the only ones who have derived their name from friendship or from that goddess who is named by the Athenians Venus Hetæra.”247
“Accordingly, even to this day,” observes Athenæus, “free-born women and maidens call their associates and friends their ἑταίρα; as Sappho does where she says:
And in another place she says:
That mediæval scholasticism has not been able wholly to obscure the greatness of the Greek hetairai is shown by the declaration of a renowned writer of modern times who says: “Of all the poets who have appeared on the earth Sappho was undoubtedly the greatest.”
Notwithstanding the aspersions which have been cast upon the name and fame of the hetairai of Greece, it is doubtful if the intelligent women of the present age who carefully examine the shreds and remnants concerning them which have withstood the envy of mediocrity, and the bigotry of scholasticism, will be brought to believe that the excesses which are foreign to the female nature, and which belong to ruder and less highly developed structures, were practised by these gifted women. We must bear in mind that the hetairai were free, and therefore that they were able to direct their movements according to the natural characters developed within the female,—characters which it will be remembered are correlated with the maternal instinct.
The licentiousness, not only of Greek and Roman women, but of those in certain portions of Asia as well, has been the favourite theme of many writers of past ages; more especially has the lewdness of Lydian and Babylonian women been noted and commented upon. After referring to the annual sale of women in Babylonia, Herodotus says that the people
have lately hit upon a very different plan to save their maidens from violence, and prevent their being torn from them and carried to distant cities, which is to bring up their daughters to be courtesans. This is now done by all the poorer of the common people, who since the conquest have been maltreated by their lords, and have had ruin brought upon their families.249
It is recorded that the various classes of “kept women” in Greece were foreigners, that they were either bought or captured from surrounding countries. As in the case of the Lydians and Babylonians, they were doubtless carried from their homes at a tender age after having been reared to their profession. Many of the maidens thus taken to Greece subsequently became philosophers, statesmen, and scholars, whereupon they abandoned their former calling. Lysias mentions the fact that Philyra gave up her former course when she was still quite young, “and so did Scione, and Hippaphesis, and Theoclea, and Psamathe, and Lagisca, and Anthea.”250
As special mention is made of a woman who “did not cease to live a prostitute when she began to learn philosophy,”251 we may reasonably infer that it was usual for these women to abandon the calling to which they had been born and bred, so soon as from such teachers as Aspasia and Hipparchia they began to imbibe principles of self-respect and womanly independence.
From the position occupied by the hetairai it is evident that by the philosophers of Greece, they were regarded with that respect which is ever due to cultured womanhood; indeed, from the evidence at hand we may believe that they were the most highly honoured citizens in Athens.
All women in Greece who prostituted themselves were forbidden to take sacred names; yet of Nemeas, Athenæus says: “And we may wonder how it was that the Athenians permitted a courtesan to have such a name, which was that of a most honourable and solemn festival.”252
Of Glycera it is related that Harpalus issued an edict that no one should present him with a crown, unless the donor at the same time presented one to her. He erected a statue to her and permitted her to dwell in the palace of Tarsus where he allowed her “to receive adoration from the people”; he permitted her also to bear the title of Queen, and “to be complimented with other presents which are only fit for your own mother and your own wife.”253
Timotheus, who was a general of very high repute in the Athenian army, was the son of a courtesan; we are informed, however, that she was “a courtesan of very excellent character.”254 The great Themistocles is said to have been the son of Abrotonum, a “courtesan.”
It is recorded that in response to an order issued by the people, Praxiteles made a solid gold statue of one of the hetairai, which was consecrated in the temple of Delphi. Certainly the deathless models of Greek art formed by Praxiteles and Phidias are not representations of coarse and sensualized womanhood.
That these women were a power in Athens during the Periclean age may not, in view of the facts recorded in relation to them, be disputed. Of them it has been said:
None but they could gather round them of an evening the choicest spirits of the day, and elicit, in the freedom of unrestrained intercourse, wit and wisdom, flashing fancy and burning eloquence. What wonder that the hetairai should have filled so prominent a part in Greek society! And how small a compensation to virtuous women to know their rivals could not stand at the altar when sacrifice was offered, could not give birth to a citizen.
In this acknowledgment of the exalted position occupied by the Greek hetairai the author, like most writers upon the subject of the sexual relations, measures virtue not by its antithesis to vice, but by the established masculine standards which have been set up for women to conform to. A Greek wife’s life may have been one continuous scene of subjection to the lowest appetites of a master for whom she may have had not the least degree of respect or affection, and who regarded her only in the light of an instrument for his convenience and pleasure; still such an one would doubtless be accounted as a “virtuous” woman in contradistinction to one of the hetairai whose position enabled her to control her own person and who was able to exercise her own will-power in protecting it against the excesses of Greek men. It is evident that this class of women more than any other in Greece was able to direct its movements and manage its activities, and, therefore, if we bear in mind the characters correlated in the female constitution with the maternal instinct, we may be assured that among the entire population of Athens, the lives of these women were the most pure and the least addicted to excesses.
Aspasia, the philosopher and statesman; Hipparchia, practical professor of Cynic philosophy and one of the most voluminous and esteemed writers of her time; Thargelia, the Milesian, whom Xerxes employed at the court of Thessaly, and many others scarcely less renowned, prove that through the exercise of that personal freedom enjoyed by the hetairai, women had at length risen to that position in which they were able to exert a powerful influence, not only on the affairs of state, but upon the intellectual development of the Athenians and the entire world. To say that these women have been written about in an age in which male power and male influence have been in the ascendency, is to say that they have been misunderstood and their movements misinterpreted.
Because of the efforts put forth by scholastics for two thousand years to belittle or annul the importance of the services rendered by the hetairai, they will doubtless for some time continue to be judged not by their intellectual vigour nor by what they accomplished, but by the social position into which, through the exigencies of masculine domination, they had been jostled. The fact has been observed that less than two centuries prior to the age of Aspasia and Socrates, Solon had given to the calling of prostitution the sanction of religion and law; that he had purchased a sufficient number of young slaves from surrounding countries to satisfy the demands of the men of Greece; and that he had made the calling of these girls a source of public revenue for which services he had received the title of “Saviour of the State.” We would scarcely expect, therefore, to find chastity among the prominent virtues of the Periclean age. I wish to emphasize the fact that by the conditions of society at that time, the class designated as hetairai, although they were in a certain sense free, were practically prevented, no matter what may have been their natural inclinations or aspirations, from rising to a higher plane of moral action, and furthermore that the existing conditions were wholly the result of the supremacy gained by the lower propensities over the higher forces developed in human nature. Had these gifted women accepted the position of wife, ignorance and seclusion would have been their portion, while their sexual degradation would have been none the less complete or perfect; indeed it would have been all the more intolerable, for the reason that the degradation of their persons, which in the position of hetairai was sued for as a privilege, in the position of wife would have been claimed as a right.
By most writers upon this subject the fact seems to have been overlooked, or, if observed, has not been acknowledged, that licentiousness among women during a certain period of Greek life, about which so much has been written, was governed wholly by the demands of their masters; in fact, throughout the history of mankind since the ascendency of the male over the female has been gained, the class which has controlled the means of support, and within which has resided all the power to direct the activities of women, has ever regulated the supply of victims to be offered upon the altar of lust; and in all these regulations may be observed such an adjustment of women’s “duties” to the “necessities” of the male nature, that no alternative has been left them but submission.