WOMAN’S POSITION IN THE GREAT CIVILISATIONS OF ANTIQUITY
I.-In Egypt
“If we consider the status of
woman in the great empires of antiquity, we find
on the whole that in their early stage, the stage
of growth, as well as in their final stage, the stage
of fruition, women tend to occupy a favourable
position, while in their middle stage, usually
the stage of predominating military organisation
on a patriarchal basis, women usually occupy a less
favourable position. This cyclic movement
seems to be almost a natural law of development
of great social groups.”-HAVELOCK
ELLIS.
The civilisations through which I
am now going to follow the history of woman, in so
far as they offer any special features of interest
to our inquiry into woman’s character and her
true place in the social order, belong to the great
civilisations of the ancient world, civilisations,
moreover, that have deeply influenced human culture.
It forms the second part of our historical investigation.
There can be no doubt of its interest to us, for if
we can prove that women have exercised unquestioned
and direct authority in the family and in the State,
not only among primitive peoples, but in stable civilisations
of vital culture, we shall be in a position to answer
those who wish to set limits to women’s present
activities.
It is necessary to enter into this
inquiry with caution: the difficulties before
me are very great. Again, it is not in any scarcity
of evidence, but in its superabundance that the trouble
rests. It is hard to condense the social habits
of peoples into a few dozen pages. Nothing would
be easier than from the mass of material available
to pile up facts in furnishing a picture of the high
status of woman that would unnerve any upholders of
female subordination. It is just possible, on
the other hand, to interpret these facts from a fixed
point of thought, and then to argue that, in spite
of her power, woman was still regarded as the inferior
of man. I wish to do neither. It is my purpose
to outline the domestic relationships and the family
law and customs as they existed in Egypt and in Babylon,
in Greece and in Rome; to touch the features of social
life only in so far as they illustrate this, and so
to discover to what extent the mother was still regarded
as the natural transmitter of property and head of
the household. The subject is an immensely complicated
and seductive one, so that I must keep strictly to
the path set by this inquiry.
Let us turn first to Egypt.
We have so rich a collection of the
remains of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, and
so careful and industrious a scholarship has been
given to interpret them, that we can with confidence
reconstruct in outline the legal status and proprietary
rights enjoyed by women, which gave them a position
more free and more honoured than they have in any
country of the world to-day. This is not an overestimate
of the facts. The security of her proprietary
rights made the Egyptian woman the legal head of the
household, she inherited equally with her brothers,
and had full control of her own property. She
was juridically the equal of man, having the same
rights, with the same freedom of action, and being
honoured in the same way.
The position of woman in Egypt is,
indeed, full of surprises to the modern believer in
woman’s subjection. Herodotus, who was a
keen observer, was the first to record his astonishment.
He writes-
“They have established laws and
customs opposite for the most part to those of
the rest of mankind. With them the women go to
market and traffic; the men stay at home and weave....
The men carry burdens on their heads, the women
on their shoulders.... The boys are never
forced to maintain their parents unless they wish
to do so, the girls are obliged to, even if they do
not wish it."
There is probably some exaggeration
in this account, but it is certain that the wide activities
of the free Egyptian women were never confined to
the home. An important part was taken by her in
industrial and commercial life. In these relations
and in social intercourse it is allowed on all hands
woman’s position was remarkably free. The
records of the monuments show her to have been as actively
concerned in all the affairs of her day, war alone
excepted, as her father, her husband, or her sons.
No restraint was placed upon her actions, she appears
eating and also drinking freely, and taking her part
in equal enjoyment with men in social scenes and religious
ceremonies. She was able to enter into commerce
in her own right and to make contracts for her own
benefit. She could bring actions, and even plead
in the courts. She practised the art of medicine.
As priestess she had authority in the temples.
Frequently as queen she was the highest in the land.
One of the greatest monarchs of Egypt was Hatschepsut,
B.C. 1550. “The mighty one!” “Conqueror
of all Lands!” Queen in her own right by the
will of her father, Thothmes I.
The material in proof of this high
status of Egyptian women is abundant. It consists
partly of the descriptions of Greek travellers, partly
of the numerous and interesting marriage contracts,
and partly of inscriptions and passages in the writings
of the moralists, all of which testify to the beautiful
and happy family relationships and usual honour in
which women were held, which is further illustrated
by incidents in the ancient stories. Of these
the marriage contracts are the most important for
our purpose.
The fullest information relates to
the latest period of independent Egyptian history,
when the position of women stood highest, but some
of the contracts reach back to the time of King Bocchoris,
and there are a few of an even earlier date.
I wish that I had space to quote some of these marriage
contracts in full: they are very instructive,
and open out many paths of new suggestion. I would
commend their study to all those who are questioning
the institution of marriage as it stands to-day on
the rights of the patriarchal family system, by which
the woman is considered the inferior, and submits herself
and is subordinate to the man as the ruler of the
family. The issue really rests at its root upon
this-is the mother or the father to be
regarded as the natural transmitter of property and
head of the family. Our decision here will affect
our outlook on the entire relation of the sexes.
The Egyptians decided on the right of the mother.
Their marriage contracts seem to have been entirely
in favour of women. There was no sale of the
bride by her parents, but the bride-price went to
her; her own property also remained in her own charge
and was at her own disposal. The husband stipulates
in the contracts how much he will give as a yearly
allowance for her support, and the entire property
of the husband is pledged as security for these payments,
whilst the wife is further protected by a dowry
or charge on the husband, to be paid to her in the
event of his sending her away.
It will readily be seen how advantageous
these proprietary rights must have been to the wife.
She was able to claim either the fidelity of her husband
or freedom for herself to leave him-and
in some cases for both together, her property being
secured to her and her children. In one contract
by which the husband gives his wife one-third of all
his property, present and to come, he values the movables
she brought with her, and promises her the equivalent
in silver. “If thou stayest, thou stayest
with them, if thou goest away, thou goest away with
them." The importance of this right of free separation
to women can hardly be over-estimated. Nietzold
says the wife has absolutely nothing to lose, even
when she is the guilty party. Some of the marriage
contracts are even more favourable to women; in these
the husband literally endows his wife with all his
worldly goods, “stipulating only that she is
to maintain him while living, and provide for his
burial when dead." M. Paturet distinguishes two
forms of marriage settlements, one which secures to
the wife an annual pension of specified amount-usually
one-third of the property of the husband-and
the other, probably the older custom, which established
a complete community of goods. The earlier contracts
are much less detailed, due probably to the fact that
the position of the established wife was then fixed
by custom; but there seems no doubt that the equal
lawful wife, she whose proper title is “lady
of the house,” was also joint ruler and mistress
of the family heritage. There is a very curious
early contract of the time of Darius I, in which the
usual stipulation of latter contracts are reversed,
the wife speaking of the man being established as
her husband, acknowledging the receipt of a sum of
money as dowry, and undertaking that if she deserts
or disposes of him, a third part of all her goods,
present and to come, shall be forfeited to him.
The high honour, freedom and proprietary
rights enjoyed by the Egyptian wife can only be explained
as being traceable to an early period of mother-right.
Here the ancient privileges of women have persisted,
not as an empty form, but would seem to have been adopted
because of their advantage in the family relationship,
and been incorporated with father-right. This
would account for the last-named contract. Its
very ancient date seems clearly to point to this.
It is unlikely that, if it were an exceptional form,
it should have chanced to be one of the very few early
contracts that have been preserved. It would
rather seem that property was originally entirely
in the hands of women, as is usual under the matriarchal
system. The Egyptian marriage law was simply a
development of this, enforcing by agreement what would
occur naturally under the earlier custom. The
interests of the children’s inheritance was the
chief object of the settlement of property on the
wife. In the earlier stage, the daughter inheriting
property from her parents, would marry-the
husband would then become its joint administrator,
but not its owner; it would pass by custom to the
children with the eldest as administrator, but if
the wife dismissed the husband, as under this system
she could and often did, she would of right retain
the family property in control for the children.
As society advanced this older custom would tend to
break up in favour of individual ownership, property
would come to belong to the husband and father, and
it would then be necessary to ensure the position
of the wife and children by contract. The Egyptian
marriage may thus be regarded as a development of
the individual relationship arising from father-right
modified to conform with the mother-right custom of
transmitting property through the woman. Under
the earlier system the inheritance of the husband
would pass to the children of his sister, and not to
his own children. The contract was, therefore,
made to prevent this. The husband’s property
was passed over to the wife (at first entirely and
later in part) to secure its inheritance by the children
of the marriage. Hence the formula common to
these contracts by which the husband declares to the
wife, “My eldest son, thy eldest son, shall be
the heir to all my property present and to come.”
The only difference to the earlier custom was the
prominence given to the eldest child (a son) in the
contract.
This gift by the husband of his property
to the wife, which made her a joint partner with him
in all the family transactions, while at the same
time she retained complete control over her own property,
clearly placed the woman and her children in the same
position of security as she had held during the mother-age;
and added to this she gained the individual protection
and support of the father in the family relationship.
Doubtless it was this freedom and right over property,
which explains the frequent cases in which the Egyptian
women conducted business transactions, and also their
active participation in the administration of the
social organisation. Equal partners with their
husbands in the administration of the home, they became
partners with men in the wider administration of the
State. It was in such wise way that the Egyptians
arranged the difficult problem of the fusion of mother-right
with father-right.
One result of these marriage contracts,
giving apparently great power to the wife, arose out
of the mortgage on the husband’s property as
security for the wife’s settlement; her consent
became necessary to all his acts. Thus it is
usual for the husband’s deeds to be endorsed
by the wife, while he did not endorse hers. In
some cases the wife’s consent seems to have
been necessary even in the case of the initial mortgage,
when the only possible explanation is that the wife
was regarded as co-proprietor with the husband, and
therefore had to be party to any act disposing of
the joint estate.
Such a custom was apparently so wholly
in favour of the wife, reversing the customary position
of the man and the woman in the marriage partnership,
that in the light of these contracts we understand
the statement of Diodorus, when he says that “among
the Egyptians the woman rules over the man”;
though plainly he has not understood their true significance,
when he goes on to say that “it is stipulated
between married couples, by the terms of the dowry-contract
that the man shall obey the woman."
If the view is accepted, as I think
it must be, that these contracts were made to add
the advantages of father-right to the natural privileges
of mother-right, and thus to secure the enjoyment of
the family property to all its members, it will become
evident that, however surprising such an agreement
might seem from the one-sided patriarchal view (which
always accepts the subjection of the woman), it was
entirely a wise and just arrangement. It was certainly
one that was entered into voluntarily by both partners
of the marriage; there was no compulsion of law.
All the evidence that has come down to us is witness
to the success in practice of these marriage contracts.
No other nation has yet developed a family relationship
so perfect in its working as the Egyptians. The
reason is not far to seek. It was based on the
equal freedom and responsibility of the mother with
the father. There was no question, it seems to
me, of one sex ruling or obeying the other, rather
it was the co-operation of the two for the welfare
of both and of the children.
So far we have dealt only with the
position of the established wife. All the written
marriage contracts refer to the “taking”
and “establishing” a wife as two distinct
steps, and in some cases the second stage, which seems
to have conveyed the proprietary rights, was not taken
until after the birth of children. There would
thus be wives not necessarily holding the position
of “lady of the house,” but capable of
being raised to such rank by later contract. It
is probable, as M. Revillout suggests, that “the
taking to wife” was a comparatively informal
matter, but needing ratification by contract for any
lasting establishment, which commonly would be done
after the birth of a child to ensure the rights of
the father’s inheritance, passing through the
mother to the children. All the evidence is in
favour of this wise arrangement. There are many
examples of contracts being entered into by the husband
for the benefit of a woman, who had been “with
him as a wife to him.” Relations between
the sexes of an even less binding character than this
were not ignored. It seems clear that little
regard was paid to pre-nuptial chastity for women,
and in no marriage contract is any stress laid on virginity,
which, as Havelock Ellis says, clearly indicates
the absence of any idea of women as property.
“It is the glory of Egyptian morality to have
been the first to express the dignity of woman."
M. Paturet takes the view that it
was not so much as the mother, but as woman, and being
the equal of man, that the Egyptians honoured their
women. Perhaps the truth rather is that there
was no separation between the woman and the mother.
This is the view that I would take; to me it is the
right and natural one. But be this as it may,
Egyptian morality placed first the rights of the mother.
No religious or moral superiority seems to have attached
to the established wife. Even when there had
been no betrothal, and no intention of marriage, law
or custom recognises the claim of any mother of children
to some kind of provision at their father’s
expense. “Nothing proves the high status
of woman so clearly as this: her child was never
illegitimate; illegitimacy was not recognised even
in the case of a slave woman’s child."
There is a curious deed of the Ptolemaic
period by which a man cedes to a woman a number of
slaves; and-in the same breath-recognises
her as his lawful wife, and declares her free not
to consider him as her husband. A byssus worker
at the factory of Amon promises to the wife he is
about to establish, one-third of all his acquisitions
thenceforward: “my eldest son, thy eldest
son, among the children born to thee previously
and those thou shalt bear to me in future shall be
master of all I possess now or shall hereafter acquire.”
Even when such arrangements were not entered into
voluntarily, public opinion seems always to have been
in favour of the woman. A case is recorded where
four villagers of the town of Arsinoee pledged themselves
to the priest, scribe, and mayor that a fellow villager
of theirs will become the friend of the woman who
has been as his wife, and will love her as a woman
ought to be loved.
Most significant of all is the well-known
precept of Petah Hotep, which refers to the expected
conduct of a man to a prostitute or outcast-
“If thou makest a woman ashamed,
wanton of heart, whom her fellow townspeople know
to be under two laws” (i.e. in an ambiguous
position), “be kind to her for a season, send
her not away, let her have food to eat. The
wantonness of her heart appreciateth guidance.”
I know of nothing finer than this
wide understanding of the ties of sex. It is
an essential part of morality, as I understand it,
that it accepts responsibility, not alone in the regular
and permanent relationships between one man and one
woman, but also in those that are temporary and are
even considered base. Only in this way can the
human passions be unified with love.
The freedom of the Egyptian marriage
made this possible. Law, at least as we understand
it, did not interfere with the domestic relationships;
there was no one fixed rule that must be followed.
Marriage was a matter of mutual agreement by contract.
All that was required (and this was enforced by custom
and by public opinion) was that the position of the
woman and the children was made secure. Each
party entered on the marriage without any constraint,
and each party could cancel the contract and thereby
the marriage. No legal judgment was required
for divorce. It is a significant fact that in
all the documents cancelling the marriage contracts
that have come down to us, no mention is made of the
reason which led to the annulling of the contract,
only in one case it is suggested that “some evil
daimon” may be at the bottom of it.
Polygamy was allowed in Egypt, though,
as in all polygamous countries, its practice was confined
to the rich. This has been thought by some to
exclude the idea of the woman’s power in the
family. But such an opinion seems to me to arise
from a want of understanding of the Egyptian conception
of the sexual tie. Under polygamy each wife had
a house, her proprietary rights and those of her children
were established, the husband visiting her there as
a privileged guest on equal footing. This is
very different from polygamy in a patriarchal society,
and would carry with it no social dishonour to the
woman. It would seem, too, in later Egyptian history
that polygamy, though legal in theory, in practice
died out, the fidelity of the husband, as we have
seen, being claimed by the wife in the conditions
of the marriage contract.
That the Egyptians had a high ideal
of the domestic relations-and had this,
let it be remembered, more than four thousand years
ago-is abundantly illustrated by their
inscriptions. In one epitaph of the Hykos period,
the speaker, who boasts a family of sixty children,
says of himself, “I loved my father, I honoured
my mother, my brothers and my sisters loved me."
The commonest formula, which continued in use as long
as Egyptian civilisation survived, was one describing
the deceased as “loving his father, reverencing
his mother, and being beloved by his brothers,”
and there can be no doubt that this sentiment represented
the maturest convictions of the Egyptians as to the
sentiments necessary for the felicitous working of
the family relationships. It is, indeed, significant
to find this reversal of the usual sentiments towards
the father and the mother-the former to
be loved and the latter to be reverenced. It would
seem as if “they assumed that fathers would
be sufficiently reverenced if they were loved, and
mothers loved if they were honoured.” How
true here is the understanding of affection and of
the sexes!
If we pause for a moment to seek the
reason why the Egyptians had, as Herodotus so strikingly
states, established in their domestic relationships
laws and customs different from the rest of mankind-the
answer is easy to find. The Egyptians were an
agricultural and a conservative people. They
were also a pacific race. They would seem not
to have believed in that illusion of younger races-the
glory of warfare. I have seen it stated that
in battle they were known for the habit of running
away. This may, of course, be thought to count
against them as a people. It depends entirely
on the point of view that is taken. But if, as
I believe, the fighting activities belong to an early
and truly primitive stage of social development, then
the view would be very different. Races begin
with the building up of society, then there follows
the period of warfare-the patriarchal period
which leads on to a later stage, much nearer in its
working to the first-a final period, as
Havelock Ellis says, “the stage of fruition.”
Woman’s place and opportunity for the true expression
of the powers that are hers belong to the first and
last of these stages; in the middle stage she must
tend to fall into a position of more or less complete
dependence on the fighting male. Here is, I think,
the explanation of the power and privilege of the
Egyptian women. The Egyptians, due to their pacific
and conservative temperament, seem to have escaped
the patriarchal stage, and passed on from the first
to final stage. Through the long centuries of
their civilisation they devoted their energies to
the building up and preserving of their social organisation.
Thus, it may be, came about that solving of the problem
of the sexes, which they among all races seem to have
accomplished. The relationships of their family
life and domestic administration were entirely civilised
and humane.
Nowhere, except in Egypt, is so much
stress laid upon the truth, that authority is sustained
by affection. Their monuments and the inscriptions
that have come down to us abundantly testify the value
set upon affection: it is always the love of the
husband for the wife, the wife for the husband, or
the parent for the child, that is recorded. The
frequency and detail with which such affections are
described, prove the high estimation in which the purely
domestic virtues were held, as forming the best and
chief title of the dead to remembrance and honour.
It is clear, moreover, that these affectionate relations
between the members of a family are counted among the
pleasures and joy of life. The inscriptions urge
and warn the survivors to miss none of the joys of
life, since the disembodied dead sleep in darkness,
and this is the worst of their grief, “they know
neither father nor mother, they do not awake to behold
their brethren, their heart yearns no longer after
wife and child." There is a delightful inscription
on the sepulchral tablet of the wife of a high priest
of Memphis, in which she urges the duty of happiness
for her husband. It says-
“Hail, my brother, husband, friend,
... let not thy heart cease to drink water, to
eat bread, to drink wine, to love women, to make
a happy day, and to suit thy heart’s desire by
day and by night. And set no care whatsoever
in thy heart: are the years which (we pass)
upon the earth so many (that we need do this)?”
Such a conception, with its clear
idea of the right of happiness, stands as witness
to the high ideal of love which regulated the Egyptian
family relationships.
It is necessary to remember, in this
connection, that the domestic ties of the Egyptians
were firmly based on proprietary considerations.
No surprise need be felt that this was so, when we
recall the wise arrangements of the marriage contracts,
whereby both parties of the union secured equal freedom
and an equal share in the family property. The
antagonism between ownership and affection which so
frequently destroys domestic happiness must thus have
been unknown. “There was no marriage without
money or money’s worth, but to marry for
money, in the modern sense, was impossible where individual
ownership was abolished by the act of marriage itself."
This in itself explains the fact,
proved by these inscriptions, that the Egyptian woman
remained to the end of life, “the beloved of
her husband and the mistress of the house.”
“Make glad her heart during the time that thou
hast,” was the traditional advice given to the
husband. To this effect runs the precept of Petah
Hotep-
“If thou wouldst be a wise man,
rule thy house and love thy wife wholly and constantly.
Feed her and clothe her, love her tenderly and
fulfil her desires as long as thou livest, for she
is an estate which conferreth great reward upon
her lord. Be not hard to her, for she will
be more easily moved by persuasion than by force.
Observe what she wisheth, and that on which her
mind runneth, thereby shalt thou make her to stay in
thy house. If thou resisteth her will it is
ruin.”
The maxims of Ani, written six
dynasties later, give the same advice with fuller
detail-
“Do not treat rudely a woman in
her house when you know her perfectly; do not
say to her, ‘Where is that? bring it to me!’
when she has set it in its place where your eye
sees it, and when you are silent you know her
qualities. It is a joy that your hand should
be with her. The man who is fond of heart is
quickly master in his house.”
Honour to the mother was strongly
insisted on. The sage Kneusu-Hetep thus
counsels his son-
“Thou shalt never forget thy mother
and what she has done for thee. From the
beginning she has borne a heavy burden with thee in
which I have been unable to help her. Wert thou
to forget her, then she might blame thee, lifting
up her arms unto God, and he would hearken to
her. For she carried thee long beneath her
heart as a heavy burden, and after thy months were
accomplished she bore thee. Three long years
she carried thee upon her shoulder and gave thee
her breast to thy mouth, and as thy size increased
her heart never once allowed her to say, ’Why
should I do this?’ And when thou didst go
to school and wast instructed in the writings,
daily she stood by thy master with bread and beer
from the house.”
I would note in passing that in this
passage we have a conclusive testimony to health and
character of the Egyptian mother. The importance
of this is undoubted, when we remember the active part
taken by women in business and in social life.
It is, I am sure, an entirely mistaken view to hold
that motherhood is a cause of weakness to women.
In a wisely ordered society this is not so. It
is the withdrawal of one class of women from labour-the
parasitic wives and daughters of the rich (which of
these women could feed and carry her child for three
years?), as the forcing of other women into work under
intolerable conditions that injures motherhood.
But on these questions I shall speak in the final
part of my inquiry.
When I had written thus far in this
chapter, I went from the reading-room of the British
Museum, where all day I had been working, to spend
a last quiet hour in the Egyptian Galleries. I
knew one at least of these galleries well, but as
a rule I had hurried through it, as so many of the
reading-room students do, to reach the refreshment-room
which is placed there. I found I had never really
seen anything. This time it was different, for
my thoughts were aflame with the life of this people,
whose wonderful civilisation speaks in all these sculptured
remains through the silence of the centuries.
Some fresh thought came to me as I waited to look at
first one statue and then another. I sought for
those which represented women. There is a small
statue in green basalt of Isis holding a figure of
Osiris Un-nefer, her son. The goddess is represented
as much larger than the young god, who stands at her
feet. The marriage of Isis with her brother Osiris
did not blot out her independent position, her importance
as a deity remained to the end greater than his.
Think for a moment what this placing of the goddess,
rather than the god, in the forefront of Egyptian
worship signifies; very clearly it reflects the honour
in which the sex to whom the supreme deity belongs
was held. In the third Egyptian room is a seated
statuette of Queen Teta-Khart, a wife of Aaehmes
I (1600 B.C.), whose title was “Royal Mother,”
and another figure of Queen Amenartas of the XXVth
Dynasty 700 B.C.; near by is a beautiful head of the
stone figure of a priestess. There is something
enigmatic and strangely seductive in the Egyptian faces;
a joy and calmness which are implicit in freedom.
And the impression is helped by the fixed attitudes,
usually seated and always facing the spectator, and
also by the great size of many of the figures; one
seems to realise something of the simplicity and strength
of the tireless enduring power of these women and
men.
But I think what interested me most
of all was the little difference manifested in the
representations of the two sexes. The dress which
each wears is very much the same; the attitudes are
alike, and so often are the faces, even in the figures
there seems no accentuation of the sexual characters.
Often I did not know whether it was at a man or a
woman, a god or a goddess, I was looking, until the
title of the statue told me. How strange this
seemed to me, and yet how significant of the beautiful
equality of partnership between the woman and the
man. It is in the statues which represent a husband
and wife together, seated side by side, that this
likeness is most evident. There are several of
these domestic groups. One very interesting one
is of early date, and belongs to the IVth Dynasty
3750 B.C. It is in painted limestone, and shows
the portrait figures of Ka-tep, “a royal kinsman”
and priestly official, and his wife Hetep-Heres, “a
royal kinswoman.” The figures are small
and of the same size; the faces are clearly portraits.
The one, which I take to be the woman, though I am
uncertain whether I am right, has her arm around the
man, embracing him. There is another group
in white limestone of very fine work, portraits of
a high official and his wife. The figures resemble
each other closely, but that of the man is a little
larger, showing his rank. The man holds the hand
of the woman. This statue belongs to the XIXth
Dynasty. On the right-hand side of the North Gallery
is a second group of an earlier period. The husband
and wife are seated, and the figures are of the same
size, showing that their rank was equal; their arms
are intertwined, and between them, standing at their
feet, is a small figure of their son. It was
before this family group I waited longest: it
pleased me by its completeness and its sincerity.
Once more I should have had difficulty in identifying
which figure was the father and which the mother,
but the man wears a small beard. In all these
statue groups there is this great resemblance between
the sexes.
Were the sexes, then, really alike
in Egypt? I do not know. Such a conception
opens up biological considerations of the deepest
significance. It is so difficult to be certain
here. Is the great boundary line which divides
the two halves of life, with the intimate woman’s
problems that depend upon it, to remain for ever fixed?
In sex are we always to be faced with an irresolvable
tangle of disharmonies? Again, I do not
know. Yet, looking at these seated figures of
the Egyptian husband and wife, I felt that the answer
might be with them. Do they not seem to have
solved that secret which we are so painful in our
search of? The statues thus took on a kind of
symbolic character, which eloquently spoke of a union
of the woman and the man that in freedom had broken
down the boundaries of sex, and, therefore, of life
that was in harmony with love and joy. And the
beautiful words of the Egyptian Song of the Harper
came to my memory, and now I understood them-
“Make (thy) day glad! Let
there be perfumes and sweet odours for thy nostrils,
and let there be flowers and lilies for thy beloved
sister (i.e. wife) who shall be seated by thy
side. Let there be songs and music of the
harp before thee, and setting behind thy back
unpleasant things of every kind, remember only
gladness, until the day cometh wherein thou must travel
to the land which loveth silence.”
II.-In Babylon
“The modern view of
marriage recognises a relation that love has
known from the outset.
But this is a relation only possible
between free self-governing
persons.”-HOBHOUSE.
If we turn now to the very ancient
civilisation of Babylon we shall find women in a position
of honour similar in many ways to what we have seen
already in Egypt: there are ever indications that
the earliest customs may have gone beyond those of
the Egyptians in exalting women. The most archaic
texts in the primitive language are remarkable for
the precedence given to the female sex in all formulas
of address: “Goddess” and gods, women
and men, are mentioned always in that order, which
is in itself a decisive indication of the high status
of women in this early period.
There are other traces all pointing
to the conclusion that in the civilisation of primitive
Babylon mother-right was still very much alive.
It is significant that the first rulers of Sumer and
Akkad-the oldest Babylonian cities-frequently
made boast of their unknown parentage, which can only
be explained by the assumption that descent through
the father was not recognised. Thus Sargon,
one of the earlier rulers, says: “My mother
was a princess, my father I know not ... my mother,
the princess, conceived me, in a secret place she
brought me forth.” A little monument in
the Hague museum has an inscription which has been
translated thus: “Gudea patesi of Sirgulla
dedicates thus to Gin-dung-nadda-addu, his wife.”
The wife’s name is interpreted “maid of
the god Nebo.” It is thought that Gudea
reigned in her right. The inscription goes on
to say: “Mother I had not, my mother was
the water deep. A father I had not, my father
was the water deep.” The passage is obscure,
but it is explained if we regard this as one of the
legends of miraculous birth so frequent in primitive
societies under mother-descent. Another relic
of some interest is an ancient statue of a Babylonian
woman, not a goddess or a queen, who is presented
alone and not with her husband, as was common in Egypt;
such a monument may suggest, as is pointed out by Simcox,
that women at this period possessed wealth in their
own right.
As in Egypt, the mother, the father,
and the eldest son seem to have been the essential
members of the family. We find that the compound
substantive translated “family” means literally
“children household.” This is very
interesting and may betoken a conception of marriage
and the family like that of the Egyptians, in which
the union of the wife and the husband is only fully
established by the birth of children. In the
house the wife is “set in honour,” “glad
and gladdening like the mid-day sun.” The
sun-god Merodach is thus addressed: “Like
a wife thou behavest thyself, cheerful and rejoicing.”
The sun-god himself is made to say, “May the
wife whom thou lovest come before thee with joy.”
These examples, and also many others, such, for instance,
as the phrase, “As a woman fashioned for a mother
made beautiful,” show that the Babylonians shared
the Egyptian idealism in their conception of the wife
and mother and her relation to the family. Many
of the Summerian expressions throw beautiful light
on the happiness of the domestic relationships.
The union of the wife and husband is spoken of as
“the undivided half,” the idiogram for
the mother signifies the elements “god”
and “the house,” she is “the enlarger
of the family,” the father is “one who
is looked up to.”
The information that has come down
to us is not so full as our knowledge of the Egyptian
family, or, at least, the facts which relate to women
have not yet been so firmly established. We may,
however, accept the statement of Havelock Ellis when
he says that “in the earliest times a Babylonian
woman enjoyed complete independence and equal rights
with her brothers and husband."
Later in Babylonian history-though
still at an early period-women’s
rights were more circumscribed, and we find them in
a position of some subordination. How the change
arose is not clear, but it is probable that in Babylon
civilisation followed the usual order of social development,
and that with the rise of military activities, bringing
the male force into prominence, women fell to a position
of inferior power in the family and in the State.
That this was the condition of society
in Babylon in the time of Hammurabi (i.e. probably
between 2250 B.C. and 1950 B.C.) is proved by the
marriage code of this ruler, which in certain of its
regulations affords a marked contrast with the Egyptian
marriage contracts, always so favourable to the wife.
Marriage, instead of an agreement made between the
wife and the husband, was now arranged between the
parents of the woman and the bridegroom and without
reference to her wishes. The terms of the marriage
were a modified form of purchase, very similar to
the exchange of gifts common among primitive peoples.
It appears from the code that a sum of money or present
was given by the bridegroom to the woman’s father
as well as to the bride herself, but this payment
was not universal; and, on the other side of the account,
the father made over to his daughter on her marriage
a dowry, which remained her own property in so far
that it was returned to her in the case of divorce
or on the death of her husband, and that it passed
to her children and, failing them, to her father.
Polygamy, though permitted, was definitely
restricted by the code. Thus a man might marry
a second wife if “a sickness has seized”
his first wife, but the first wife was not to be put
away. This is the only case in which two equal
wives are recognised by the code. But it was
also possible-as the contracts prove-for
a man to take one or more secondary wives or concubines,
who were subordinate to the chief wife. In some
cases this appears to have been done to enable the
first wife to adopt the children of the concubine
“as her children."
It is worth while to note the exact
conditions of divorce in the reference to women as
given in the clauses of Hammurabi’s code-
“137. If a man has set his
face to put away his concubine, who has granted
him children, to that woman he shall return his marriage
portion, and shall give her the usufruct of
field, garden, and goods, and shall bring up her
children. From the time that her children
are grown up, from whatever is given to her children,
they shall give her a share like that of one son,
and she shall marry the husband of her choice.”
“138. If a man
shall put away his bride, who has not borne him
children, he shall give her
money as much as her bride-price.”
“139. If there
was no bride-price he shall give her one mina
of
silver.”
“140. If he is
a poor man he shall give one third of a mina of
silver.”
So far the position of the wife is
secured in the case of the infidelity of the husband.
But if we turn to the other side, when it is the woman
who is the unfaithful partner it is evident how strongly
the patriarchal idea of woman as property has crept
into the family relations. We find that a woman
“who has set her face to go out and has acted
the fool, has wasted her house or has belittled her
husband,” may either be divorced without compensation
or retained in the house as the slave of a new wife.
I would ask you to contrast this treatment
with the free right of separation granted to the Egyptian
wife, whose position, as also that of her children,
in all circumstances was secure, and to remember that
this difference in the moral code for the two sexes
is always present, in greater or lesser force, against
woman wherever the property considerations of father-right
have usurped the natural law of mother-right.
Conventional morality has doubtless from the first
been on the side of the supremacy of the male.
To me it seems that this alone must discredit any
society formed on the patriarchal basis.
The Babylonian wife was permitted
to claim a divorce under certain conditions, namely,
“if she had been economical and had no vice,”
and if she could prove that “her husband had
gone out and greatly belittled her.” But
the proof of this carried with it grave danger to
herself, for if on investigation it turned out that
“she has been uneconomical or a gad-about, that
woman one shall throw into the water.”
Probably such penalty was not really carried out, but
even if the expression be taken figuratively its significance
in the degradation of woman is hardly less great.
The position of the wife as subject to her husband
is clearly marked by the manner in which infidelity
is treated. The law provides that both partners
may be put to death for an act of unfaithfulness,
but while the king may pardon “his servant”
(the man), the wife has to receive pardon from “her
owner” (i.e. the husband). The lordship
of the husband is seen also in his power to dispose
of his wife as well as his children for debt.
The period for debt slavery was, however, confined
to the years of Hammurabi.
From this time onwards we find the
position of the wife continuously improving, and in
the later Neo-Babylonian periods she again acquired
equal rights with her husband. The marriage law
was improved in the woman’s favour. Contracts
of marriage by purchase became very rare. It
appears from the later contracts that a wife could
protect herself from divorce or the taking of another
wife by special penalties imposed on the husband by
the conditions of the deed, thus giving her a position
of security similar to that of the Egyptian wife.
In all social relations the Babylonian
women had remarkable freedom. They could conduct
business in their own right. Their power to dispose
of property is proved by numerous contract tablets,
and, at any rate in later periods, they were held
to possess a full legal personality equal in all points
with their husbands. In many contracts husband
and wife are conjoined as debtors, creditors, and
as together taking pledges. The wife, as in Egypt,
is made a party to any action of the husband in which
her dowry is involved. The wife could also act
independently; women appear by themselves as creditors,
and in some contracts we find a wife standing in that
relation to her husband. In one case a woman
acts as security for a man’s debts to another
woman. In a suit about a slave a woman, who was
proved by witnesses to have made a wrongful claim,
was compelled to pay a sum of money equivalent to
the value of the slave. We find, too, a married
woman joining with a man to sell a house. In
another case, in which a mother and son had a sum
of money owing to them, the debt was cancelled by giving
a bill on the mother. The rich woman, by name
Gugua, disposes her property among her children, but
she reserves the right of taking it back into her
own hands if she should so wish, and stipulates that
it may not be mortgaged to any one without her consent.
There is another interesting deed by which a
father who, it is suggested, was a spendthrift, assigns
the remnant of his property to his daughter under
the stipulation “thou shalt measure to me, and
as long as thou livest give me maintenance, food,
ointment and clothing.”
It would be easy to multiply such
cases. All these contract tablets have interest
for us. The active participation of the Babylonian
women in property transactions is the more instructive
when we consider that in the development of commercial
enterprise the Babylonians were in advance of all
the rest of the world. One is tempted to suggest
that the assistance of women may have brought an element
into commerce beneficial to its growth. There
is ample evidence to show the administrative and financial
ability of women. This quality is noted by Lecky
in the chapter on “Woman Questions” in
his Democracy and Liberty. He says:
“How many fortunes wasted
by negligence or extravagance have
been restored by a long minority
under female management?”
He notes, too, the financial ability
of the French women.
“Where can we find in
a large class a higher level of business
habits and capacity than that
which all competent observers have
recognised in French women
of the middle classes?”
The estimate of J.S. Mill on
this question is too well known to call for quotation.
We may recall also the superior ability in trade of
the women of Burma. It is not necessary, however,
to seek for proof of women’s ability in finance.
Against one woman who mismanages her income at least
six men may be placed who mismanage theirs, not from
any special extravagance, but from sheer male inability
to adapt expenditure to income. A woman who has
had any business training will discriminate better
than a man between the essential and the non-essential
in expenditure.
The civilisation of a people is necessarily
determined to a large extent by the ideas of the relations
of the sexes, and by the institutions and conventions
that arise through such ideas. One of the most
important and debatable of these questions is whether
women are to be considered as citizens and independently
responsible, or as beings differing in all their capacities
from men, and, therefore, to be set in positions of
at least material dependence to an individual man.
It is the answer to this question we are seeking.
The Babylonians decided for the civic equality of
their women, and this decision must have affected
all their actions from the larger matters of the State
down to the smallest points of family conduct.
The wisdom which, by giving a woman full control over
her own property, recognised her right and responsibility
to act for herself, was not, as we have seen, at once
established. This recognition of the equality
and fellowship between women and men as the finest
working idea for the family relationship was only
developed slowly through the long centuries of their
civilisation.
III.-In Greece
“Of all things upon
earth that breathe and grow
A herb most bruised is woman.
We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded
for that one day
To buy us some man’s
love, and lo, they bring
A master of our flesh.
There comes the sting
Of the whole shame, and then
the jeopardy
For good or ill, what shall
that master be?
Reject she cannot, and if
she but stays
His suit, ’tis shame
on all that woman’s days.
So thrown amid new laws, new
places, why,
’Tis magic she must
have to prophesy.
Home never taught her that-how
best to guide
Towards peace this thing that
sleepeth at her side,
And she, who, labouring long,
shall find some way
Whereby her lord may bear
with her, nor fray
His yoke too fiercely, blessed
is the breath
That woman draws! Else
let her pray for death.
Her lord, if he be wearied
of her face
Within doors, gets him forth;
some merrier place
Will ease his heart; but she
waits on, her whole
Vision enchained on a single
soul.
And then, forsooth, ’tis
they that face the call
Of war, while we sit sheltered,
hid from all
Peril. False mocking.
Sooner would I stand
Three times to face their
battles, shield in hand,
Than bear our child.”-EURIPIDES.
If we turn now from eastern civilisation
to ancient Greece, the picture there presented to
us is in many ways in sharp contrast to anything we
have yet examined. The Greeks founded western
civilisation, but their rapid advance in general culture
was by no means accompanied by a corresponding improvement
in the position of women. The fineness of their
civilisation and their exquisite achievement in so
many directions makes it the more necessary to remember
this.
At one time there would seem to have
been in prehistoric Greece a period of fully developed
mother-rights, as is proved by numerous survivals
of the older system so frequently met with in Greek
literature and history. This was at an earlier
stage of civilisation, before the establishment of
the patriarchal system. There is little doubt,
however, that the influence of mother-right remained
as a tradition for long after the actual rights had
been lost by women. It will be remembered how
great was the astonishment of the Greek travellers
at the free position of the Egyptian women, in particular
the apparent subjection of the husband to his wife.
Now, such surprise is in itself sufficient to prove
a different conception of the relation of the sexes.
The patriarchal view whereby the woman is placed under
the protection and authority of the man was already
clearly established in the Hellenic belief. Yet,
in spite of this fact, the position of the woman was
striking and peculiar, and in some directions remarkably
free, and thus offering many points of interest not
less important in their significance to us than what
we have seen already in Egypt and in Babylon.
In speaking of the Hellenic woman
I can select only a few facts; to deal at all adequately
with so large a subject in briefest outline is, indeed,
impossible. I shall not even try to picture the
marriage and family relationships, which offer in
many and varied ways a wide and fascinating study;
all that I can do is to point to some of the conditions
and suggest the conclusions which seem to arise from
them. Glancing first at the women of the Homeric
period we find them represented as holding a position
of entire dependence, without rights or any direct
control over property; under the rule of the father,
and afterwards of the husband, and even in some cases
humbly submissive to their sons. Telemachus thus
rebukes his mother: “Go to thy chamber;
attend to thy work; turn the spinning wheel; weave
the linen; see that thy servants do their tasks.
Speech belongs to men, and especially to me, who am
the master here.” And Penelope allows herself
to be silenced and obeys, “bearing in mind the
sage discourse of her son." This is the fully
developed patriarchal idea of the duties of the woman
and her patient submission to the man.
Now, if we look only at the outside
of such a case as this it would appear that the position
of the Homeric woman was one of almost complete subjection.
Whereas, as every one knows, the facts are far different.
The protection of the woman was a condition made necessary
in an unstable society of predominating military activity.
Apart from this wardship, women very clearly were
not in a subordinate position and, moreover, never
regarded as property. The very reverse is the
case. Nowhere in the whole range of literature
are women held in deeper affection or receive greater
honour. To take one instance, Andromache relates
how her father’s house has been destroyed with
all who were in it, and then she says: “But
now, Hector, thou art my father and gracious mother,
thou art my brother, nay, thou art my valiant husband."
It is easy to see in this speech how the early ideas
of relationships under mother-right had been transferred
to the husband, as the protector of the woman, conditioned
by father-right.
Again and again we meet with traces
of the older customs of the mother-age. The influence
of woman persists as a matter of habit; even the formal
elevation of woman to positions of authority is not
uncommon, with an accompanying freedom in action, which
is wholly at variance with the patriarchal ideal.
Thus it is common for the husband to consult his wife
in all important concerns, though it was her special
work to look after the affairs of the house. “There
is nothing,” says Homer, “better and nobler
than when husband and wife, being of one mind, rule
a household." Penelope and Clytemnestra are left
in charge of the realms of their husbands during their
absence in Troy; the beautiful Chloris ruled as queen
in Pylos. Arête, the beloved wife of Alcinous,
played an important part as peacemaker in the kingdom
of her husband. It is to her Nausicaea brings
Ulysses on his return, bidding him kneel to her mother
if he would gain a welcome and succour from her father.
We find the Homeric women moving freely
among men. They might go where they liked, and
do what they liked. As girls they were educated
with their brothers and friends, attending together
the classes of the bards and dancing with them in
the public dancing-places which every town possessed.
Homer pictures the youths and the maidens pressing
the vines together. They mingled together at
marriage feasts and at religious festivals. Women
took part with men in offering the sacrifices to the
gods; they also went alone to the temples to present
their offerings. Nor did marriage restrict their
freedom. Helen appears on the battlements of
Troy, watching the conflict, accompanied only by her
maidens.
This freedom insured to the Homeric
women that vigour of body and beauty of person for
which they are renowned. Health was the first
condition of beauty. The Greeks wanted strong
men, therefore the mothers must be strong, and this,
as among all peoples who have understood the valuation
of life more clearly than others, made necessary a
high physical development of woman. Yet, I think,
that an even more prominent reason was the need by
the woman herself for the protection of the male,
which made it her first duty to charm the man whom
destiny brought to be her companion. This is a
point that must not be overlooked. To me it is
very significant that in all the records of the Egyptians,
showing so clearly the love and honour in which woman
was held, we find no insistence on, and, indeed, hardly
a reference to, the physical beauty of woman.
It is love itself that is exalted; a husband wishing
to honour his lost wife says: “she was
sweet as a palm tree in her love,” he does not
tell us if she were beautiful. I cannot follow
this question further. Yet it is clear that danger
lurks for woman and her freedom, when to safeguard
her independence, she has no other resources than
the seduction of her beauty to gain and to hold the
love she is able to inspire. Sex becomes a defensive
weapon, and one she must use for self-protection,
if she is to live. It seems clear to me that this
economic use of sex is the real cancer at the very
root of the sexual relationship. It is but a
step further and a perfectly logical one, that leads
to prostitution. At a later period of Hellenic
civilisation we find Aristotle warning the young men
of Athens against “the excess of conjugal tenderness
and feminine tyranny which enchains a man to his wife."
Can any surprise be felt; does one not wonder rather
at the blindness of man’s understanding?
That such warning against women should have been spoken
in Egypt is incredible. Woman’s position
and liberty of action was in no way dependent on her
power of sex-fascination, not even directly on her
position as mother, and this really explains the happy
working of their domestic relationships. Nature’s
supreme gifts of the sexual differences among them
were freed from economic necessities, and woman as
well as man was permitted to turn them to their true
biological ends-the mutual joy of each other
and the service of the race. For this is what
I want to make clear; it is men who suffer in quite
as great a degree as women, wherever the female has
to use her sexual gifts to gain support and protection
from the male. It is so plain-one
thing makes the relations of the sexes free, that
both partners shall themselves be free, knowing no
bondage that is outside the love-passion itself.
Then, and then only, can the woman and the man-the
mother and father, really love in freedom and together
carry out love’s joys and its high and holy duties.
The conditions that meet us when we
come to examine the position of women in historic
Greece are explained in the light of this valuation
of the sexual relationship. We are faced at once
by a curious contrast; on one hand, we find in Sparta,
under a male social organisation, the women of AEolian
and Dorian race carrying on and developing the Homeric
traditions of freedom, while the Athenian women, on
the contrary, are condemned to an almost Oriental seclusion.
How these conditions arose becomes clear, when we remember
that the prominent idea regulating all the legislation
of the Greeks was to maintain the permanence and purity
of the State. In Sparta the first of these motives
ruled. The conditions in which the State was placed
made it necessary for the Spartans to be a race of
soldiers, and to ensure this a race of vigorous mothers
was essential. They had the wisdom to understand
that their women could only effectively discharge
the functions assigned to them by Nature by the free
development of their bodies, and full cultivation
of their mental faculties. Sappho, whose “lofty
and subtle genius” places her as the one woman
for whose achievement in poetry no apology on the
grounds of her sex ever needs to be made, was of AEolian
race. The Spartan woman was a huntress and an
athlete and also a scholar, for her training was as
much a care of the State as that of her brothers.
Her education was deliberately planned to fit her
to be a mother of men.
It was the sentiment of strict and
zealous patriotism which inspired the marriage regulations
that are attributed to Lycurgus. The obligation
of marriage was legal, like military service.
All celibates were placed under the ban of society.
The young men were attracted to love by the privilege
of watching (and it is also said assisting in) the
gymnastic exercise of naked young girls, who from
their earliest youth entered into contests with each
other in wrestling and racing and in throwing the
quoit and javelin. The age of marriage was also
fixed, special care being taken that the Spartan girls
should not marry too soon; no sickly girl was permitted
to marry. In the supreme interest of the race
love was regulated. The young couple were not
allowed to meet except in secret until after a child
was born. Brothers might share a wife in common,
and wife lending was practised. It was a praiseworthy
act for an old man to give his wife to a strong man
by whom she might have a child. The State claimed
a right over all children born; each child had to be
examined soon after birth by a committee appointed,
and only if healthy was it allowed to live.
Such a system is no doubt open to
objections, yet no other could have served as well
the purpose of raising and maintaining a race of efficient
warriors. The Spartans held their supremacy in
Greece through sheer force and bravery and obedience
to law; and the women had equal share with the men
in this high position. Necessarily they were
remarkable for vigour of character and the beauty of
their bodies, for beauty rests ultimately on a biological
basis.
Women took an active interest in all
that concerned the State, and were allowed a freedom
of action even in sexual conduct equal and, in some
directions, greater than that of men. The law
restricted women only in their function as mothers.
Plato has criticised this as a marked defect of the
Spartan system. Men were under strict regulation
to the end of their days; they dined together on the
fare determined by the State; no licence was permitted
to them; almost their whole time was occupied in military
service. No such regulations were made for women,
they might live as they liked. One result was
that many wives were better educated than their husbands.
We find, too, that a great portion of land passed
into the hands of women. Aristotle states that
they possessed two-fifths of it. He deplores the
Spartan system, and affirms that in his day the women
were “incorrigible and luxurious”; he
accuses them of ruling their husbands. “What
difference,” he says, “does it make whether
the women rule or the rulers are ruled by women, for
the result is the same?" This gynaecocracy was
noticed by others. “You of Lacedaemon,”
said a strange lady to Gorgo, wife of Leonidas, “are
the only women in the world that rule the men.”
“We,” she answered, “are the only
women who bring forth men." Such were the Spartan
women.
In Athens the position of women stands
out in sharp contrast. Athens was the largest
of the city-states of Greece, and, for its stability,
it was ruled that no stranger might enter into the
rights of its citizens. Restrictions of the most
stringent nature and punishments the most terrible
were employed to keep the citizenship pure. As
is usual, the restrictions fell most heavily upon
women. It would seem that the sexual virtue of
the Athenian women was not trusted-it was
natural to women to love. Doubtless there were
many traces of the earlier sexual freedom under mother-right.
Women must be kept in guard to ensure that no spurious
offspring should be brought into the State. This
explains the Athenian marriage code with its unusually
strict subordination of the woman to her father first,
and then to her husband. It explains also the
unequal law of divorce. In early times the father
might sell his daughters and barter his sisters.
This was abolished by Solon, except in the case of
unchastity. There could, however, be no legitimate
marriage without the assignment of the bride by her
guardian. The father was even able to bequeath
his unmarried daughters by will. The part assigned
by the Athenian law to the wife in relation to her
husband was very similar to that of the married women
under ancient Jewish law.
Women were secluded from all civic
life and from all intellectual culture. There
were no regular schools for girls in Athens, and no
care was taken by the State, as in Sparta, for the
young girls’ physical well-being. The one
quality required from them was chastity, and to ensure
this women were kept even from the light of the sun,
confined in special apartments in the upper part of
the house. One husband, indeed, Ischomachus,
recommends his wife to take active bodily exercise
as an aid to her beauty; but she is to do this “not
in the fresh air, for that would not be suitable for
an Athenian matron, but in baking bread and looking
after her linen." So strictly was the seclusion
of the wife adhered to that she was never permitted
to show herself when her husband received guests.
It was even regarded as evidence of the non-existence
of a regular marriage if the wife had been in the
habit of attending the feasts given by the man
whom she claimed as husband.
The deterioration of the Athenian
citizen-women followed as the inevitable result.
It is also impossible to avoid connecting the swift
decline of the fine civilisation of Athens with this
cause. Had the political power of her citizens
been based on healthier social and domestic relationships,
it might not have fallen down so rapidly into ruin.
No civilisation can maintain itself that neglects the
development of the mothers that give it birth.
As we should expect we find little
evidence of affection between the Athenian husband
and wife. The entire separation between their
work and interests would necessarily preclude ideal
love. Probably Sophocles presents the ordinary
Greek view accurately, when he causes one of his characters
to regret the loss of a brother or sister much more
than that of a wife. “If a wife dies you
can get another, but if a brother or sister dies,
and the mother is dead, you can never get another.
The one loss is easily reparable, the other is irreparable."
We could have no truer indication than this as to
the degradation into which woman had fallen in the
sexual relationship.
That once, indeed, it had been far
otherwise with the Athenian women the ancient legends
witness. Athens was the city of Pallas Athene,
the goddess of strength and power, which in itself
testifies to a time when women were held in honour.
The Temple of the Goddess, high on the Acropolis,
stood as a relic of matriarchal worship. Year
by year the secluded women of Athens wove a robe for
Athene. Yet, so complete had become their
subjection and their withdrawal from the duties of
citizens, that when in the Theatre of Dyonysus men
actors personated the great traditional women of the
Greek Heroic Age, no woman was permitted to be present.
What wonder, then, that the Athenian women rebelled
against the wastage of their womanhood. That they
did rebel we may be certain on the strength of the
satirical statements of Aristophanes, and even more
from the pathos of the words put here and there into
the mouths of women by Euripides-
“Of all things upon
earth that breathe and grow
A herb most bruised is woman.
We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded
for that one day
To buy us some man’s
love, and lo, they bring
A Master of our flesh.
There comes the sting
Of the whole shame."
The debased position of the Athenian
citizen woman becomes abundantly clear when we find
that ideal love and free relationship between the
sexes were possible only with the hetairae.
Limitation of space forbids my giving any adequate
details of these stranger-women, who were the beloved
companions of the Athenian men. Prohibited from
legal marriage by law, these women were in all other
respects free; their relations with men, either temporary
or permanent, were openly entered into and treated
with respect. For the Greeks the hetaira
was in no sense a prostitute. The name meant friend
and companion. The women to whom the name was
applied held an honourable and independent position,
one, indeed, of much truer honour than that of the
wife.
These facts may well give us pause.
It was not the women who were the legal wives, safeguarded
to ensure their chastity, restricted to their physical
function of procreation, but the hetairae, says
Donaldson, “who exhibited what was best and
noblest in woman’s nature.” Xenophon’s
ideal wife was a good housekeeper-like her
of the Proverbs. Thucydides in the famous funeral
oration which he puts in the mouth of Pericles, exhorts
the wives of the slain warriors, whose memory is being
commemorated, “to shape their lives in accordance
with their natures,” and then adds with unconscious
irony, “Great is the glory of that woman who
is least talked of by men, either in the way of praise
or blame.” Such were the barren honours
granted to the legal wife. The hetairae
were the only educated women in Athens. It was
only the free-companion who was a fit helpmate for
Pericles, or capable of sustaining a conversation
with Socrates. We know that Socrates visited
Theodota and the brilliant Diotima of Mantinea,
of whom he speaks “as his teacher in love."
Thargalia, a Milesian stranger, gained a position
of high political importance. When Alcibiades
had to flee for his life, it was a “companion”
who went with him, and being present at his end performed
the funeral rites over him. Praxiteles carved
a statue of Phryne in gold, and the work stood in
a place of honour in the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Apelles painted a portrait of Lais, and, for his skill
as an artist, Alexander rewarded him with the gift
of his favourite concubine; Pindar wrote odes to the
hetairae; Leontium, one of the order, sat at
the feet of Epicurus to imbibe his philosophy.
Among all these free women Aspasia
of Miletus stands forward as the most brilliant-the
most remarkable. There is no doubt as to the
intellectual distinction of the beloved companion of
Pericles. Her house became the resort of all
the great men of Athens. Socrates, Phidias and
Anaxagoras were all frequent visitors, and probably
also Sophocles and Euripides. Plato, Xenophon
and AEschines have all testified to the cultivated
mind and influence of Aspasia. AEschines, in
his dialogue entitled “Aspasia,” puts into
the mouth of that distinguished woman an incisive
criticism of the mode of life traditional for her
sex.
The high status of the hetairae
is proved conclusively from the fact that the men
who visited Aspasia brought their wives with them to
her assemblies, that they might learn from her.
This breaking through the accepted conventions is
the more significant if we consider the circumstances.
Here, indeed, is your contrast-the free
companion expounding the dignity of womanhood to the
imprisoned mothers! Aspasia points out to the
citizen women that it is not sufficient for a wife
to be merely a mother and a good housekeeper; she urges
them to cultivate their minds so that they may be
equal in mental dignity with the men who love them.
Aspasia may thus be regarded, as Havelock Ellis suggests,
as “a pioneer in the assertion of woman’s
rights.” “She showed that spirit
of revolt and aspiration” which tends to mark
“the intellectual and artistic activity of those
who are unclassed or dubiously classed in the social
hierarchy.”
It is even probable that the movement
to raise the status of the Athenian women, which seems
to have taken place in the fourth century B.C., was
led by Aspasia, and perhaps other members of the hetairae.
Ivo Bruns, whom Havelock Ellis quotes, believes that
“the most certain information we possess concerning
Aspasia bears a strong resemblance to the picture
which Euripides and Aristophanes present to us of the
leaders of the woman’s movement."
It was this movement of awakening
which throws light on the justice which Plato accords
to women. He may well have had Aspasia in his
thoughts. Contact with her cultivated mind may
have brought him to see that “the gifts of nature
are equally diffused in both sexes,” and therefore
“all the pursuits of man are the pursuits of
woman also, and in all of these woman is only a weaker
man.” Plato did not believe that women
were equally gifted with men, only that all their powers
were in their nature the same, and demanded a similar
expression. He insists much more on woman’s
duties and responsibilities than on her rights; more
on what the State loses by her restriction within the
home than on any loss entailed thereby to herself.
Such a fine understanding of the need of the State
for women as the real ground for woman’s emancipation,
is the fruitful seed in this often quoted passage.
May it not have arisen in Plato’s mind from the
contrast he saw between Aspasia and the free companions
of men and the restricted and ignorant wives?
A vivid picture would surely come to him of the force
lost by this wastage of the mothers of Athens; a force
which should have been utilised for the well-being
of the State.
Sexual penalties for women are always
found under a strict patriarchal regime. The
white flower of chastity, when enforced upon one sex
by the other sex, has its roots in the degradation
of marriage. Men find a way of escape; women,
bound in the coils, stay and waste. There is
no escaping from the truth-wherever women
are in subjection it is there that the idols of purity
and chastity are set up for worship.
The fact that Greek poets and philosophers
speak so often of an ideal relationship between the
wife and the husband proves how greatly the failure
of the accepted marriage was understood and depreciated
by the noblest of the Athenians. The bonds of
the patriarchal system must always tend to break down
as civilisation advances, and men come to think and
to understand the real needs and dependence of the
sexes upon each other. Aristotle says that marriage
besides the propagation of the human race, has another
aim, namely, “community of the entire life.”
He describes marriage as “a species of friendship,”
one, moreover, which “is most in accordance
with Nature, as husband and wife mutually supply what
is lacking in the other.” Here is the ideal
marriage, the relationship between one woman and the
one man that to-day we are striving to attain.
To gain it the wife must become the free companion
of her husband.
It is Euripides who voices the sorrows
of women. He also foreshadows their coming triumph.
“Back streams the waves of
the ever running river,
Life, life is changed and the laws of it o’ertrod.
And woman, yea, woman shall be terrible in story;
The tales too meseemeth shall be other than of
yore;
For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and
a glory,
And the hard hating voices shall encompass her
no more."
IV.-In Rome
“The character of a people
is only an eternal becoming.... They
are born and are modified under the influence
of innumerable
causes.”-JEAN FINOT.
Of the position of women in Rome in
the pre-historic period we know almost nothing.
We can accept that there was once a period of mother-rule.
Very little evidence, however, is forthcoming; still,
what does exist points clearly to the view that woman’s
actions in the earliest times were entirely unfettered.
Probably we may accept as near to reality the picture
Virgil gives to us of Camilla fighting and dying on
the field of battle.
In the ancient necropolis of Belmonte,
dating from the iron age, Professor d’Allosso
has recently discovered two very rich tombs of women
warriors with war chariots over their remains.
“The importance of this discovery is exceptional,
as it shows that the existence of the Amazon heroines,
leaders of armies, sung by the ancient poets, is not
a poetic fiction, but an historic reality.”
Professor d’Allosso states that several details
given by Virgil coincide with the details of these
tombs.
From the earliest notices we have
of the Roman women we find them possessed of a definite
character of remarkable strength. We often say
this or that is a sign of some particular period or
people; when nine times out of ten the thing we believe
to be strange is in reality common to the progress
of life. In Rome the position of woman would
seem to have followed in orderly development that cyclic
movement so beautifully defined by Havelock Ellis
in the quotation I have placed at the beginning of
the first section of this chapter.
The patriarchal rule was already strongly
established when Roman history opens; it involved
the same strict subordination of woman to the one
function of child-bearing that we have found in the
Athenian custom. The Roman marriage law developed
from exactly the same beginning as did the Greek;
the woman was the property of her father first and
then of her husband. The marriage ceremony might
be accomplished by one or two forms, but might also
be made valid without any form at all. For in
regard to a woman, as in regard to other property,
possession or use continued for one year gave the right
of ownership to the husband. This marriage without
contract or ceremony was called usus.
The form confarreatio, or patrician marriage,
was a solemn union performed by the high Pontiff of
Jupiter in the presence of ten witnesses, in which
the essential act was the eating together by both
the bride and bridegroom of a cake made of flour,
water and salt. The religious ceremony was in
no way essential to the marriage. The second
and most common form, was called coemptio,
or purchase, and was really a formal sale between the
father or guardian of the bride and the future husband.
Both these forms transferred the woman from the potestas
(power) of her father into the manus (hand)
of her husband to whom she became as a daughter, having
no rights except through him, and no duties except
to him. The husband even held the right of life
and death over the woman and her children. It
depended on his will whether a baby girl were reared
or cast out to die-and the latter alternative
was no doubt often chosen. As is usual under
such conditions, the right of divorce was allowed
to the husband and forbidden to the wife. “If
you catch your wife,” was the law laid down
by Cato the Censor, “in an act of infidelity,
you would kill her with impunity without a trial; but
if she were to catch you she would not venture to
touch you with a finger, and, indeed, she has no right.”
It is true that divorce was not frequent. Monogamy
was strictly enforced. At no period of Roman
history are there any traces of polygamy or concubinage.
But such strictness of the moral code seems to have
been barren in its benefit to women. The terrible
right of manus was vested in the husband and
gave him complete power of correction over the wife.
In grave cases the family tribunal had to be consulted.
“Slaves and women,” says Mommsen, “were
not reckoned as being properly members of the community,”
and for this reason any criminal act committed by them
was judged not openly by the State, but by the male
members of the woman’s family. The legal
right of the husband to beat his wife was openly recognised.
Thus Egnatius was praised when, surprising his wife
in the act of tasting wine, he beat her to death.
And St. Monica consoles certain wives, whose faces
bore the mark of marital brutality, by saying to them:
“Take care to control your tongues....
It is the duty of servants to obey their masters ...
you have made a contract of servitude." Such
was the marriage law in the early days of Rome’s
history.
Now it followed almost necessarily
that under such arbitrary regulations of the sexual
relationship some way of escape should be sought.
We have seen how the Athenian husbands found relief
from the restrictions of legal marriage with the free
hetairae. But in Rome the development
of the freedom of love, with the corresponding advancement
of the position of woman, followed a different course.
The stranger-woman never attained a prominent place
in Roman society. It is the citizen-women alone
who are conspicuous in history. Here, relief
was gained for the Roman wives as well as for the husbands,
by what we may call a clever escape from marriage
under the right of the husband’s manus.
This is so important that I must ask the reader deeply
to consider it. The ideal of equality and fellowship
between women and men in marriage can be realised
only among a people who are sufficiently civilised
to understand the necessity for the development and
modification of legal restrictions that have become
outworn and useless. Wherever the laws relating
to marriage and divorce are arbitrary and unchanging
there woman, as the weaker partner, will be found
to remain in servitude. It can never be through
the strengthening of moral prohibitions, but only
by their modification to suit the growing needs of
society that freedom will come to women.
The history of the development of
marriage in Rome illustrates this very forcibly.
Even in the days of the Twelve Tables a wholly different
and free union had begun to take the place of the legally
recognised marriage forms. It was developed from
the early marriage by usus. We have seen
that this marriage depended on the cohabitation of
the man and the woman continued for one year, which
gave the right of ownership to the husband in exactly
the same way as possession for a year gave the right
over others’ property. But in Rome, if the
enjoyment of property was broken for any period during
the year, no title to it arose out of the usufruct.
This idea was cleverly applied to marriage by usus.
The wife by passing three nights in the year out of
the conjugal domicile broke the manus of the
husband and did not become his property.
When, or how, it became a custom to
convert this breach of cohabitation into a system
and establish a form of marriage, which entirely freed
the wife from the manus of the husband, we do
not know. What is certain is that this new form
of free marriage by consent rapidly replaced the older
forms of the coemptio, and even the solemn
confarreatio of the patricians.
It will be readily seen that this
expansion of marriage produced a revolution in the
position of woman. The bride now remained a member
of her own family, and though nominally under the control
of her father or guardian, she was for all purposes
practically free, having complete control over her
own property, and was, in fact, her own mistress.
The law of divorce evolved rapidly,
and the changes were wholly in favour of women.
Marriage was now a private contract, of which the
basis was consent; and, being a contract, it could
be dissolved for any reason, with no shame attached
to the dissolution, provided it was carried out with
the due legal form, in the presence of competent witnesses.
Both parties had equal liberty of divorce, only with
certain pecuniary disadvantages, connected with the
forfeiting of the wife’s dowry, for the husband
whose fault led to the divorce. It was expressly
stated that the husband had no right to demand fidelity
from his wife unless he practised the same himself.
“Such a system,” says Havelock Ellis,
“is obviously more in harmony with modern civilised
feeling than any system that has ever been set up in
Christendom."
Monogamy remained imperative.
The husband was bound to support the wife adequately,
to consult her interests and to avenge any insult
inflicted upon her, and it is expressly stated by the
jurist Gaius that the wife might bring an action for
damages against her husband for ill-treatment.
The woman retained complete control of her dowry and
personal property. A Roman jurist lays it down
that it is a good thing that women should be dowered,
as it is desirable they should replenish the State
with children. Another instance of the constant
solicitude of the Roman law to protect the wife is
seen in the fact that even if a wife stole from her
husband, no criminal action could be brought against
her. All crimes against women were punished with
a heavy hand much more severely than in modern times.
Women gained increasingly greater
liberty until at last they obtained complete freedom.
This fact is stated by Havelock Ellis, whose remarks
on this point I will quote.
“Nothing is more certain than
that the status of women in Rome rose with the
rise of civilisation exactly in the same way as in
Babylon and in Egypt. In the case of Rome,
however, the growing refinement of civilisation
and the expansion of the Empire were associated
with the magnificent development of the system of
Roman law, which in its final forms consecrated
the position of women. In the last days of
the Republic women already began to attain the
same legal level as men, and later the great Antonine
jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural
law, reached the conception of the equality of
the sexes as the principle of the code of equity.
The patriarchal subordination of women fell into
complete discredit, and this continued until, in the
days of Justinian, under the influence of Christianity
the position of women began to suffer."
Hobhouse gives the same estimate as
to the high status of women.
“The Roman matron of the Empire,”
he says, “was more fully her own mistress
than the married woman of any earlier civilisation,
with the possible exception of a certain period
of Egyptian history, and, it must be added, the
wife of any later civilisation down to our own
generation."
It is necessary to note that this
freedom of the Roman woman was prior to the introduction
of Christianity, and that under its influence their
position began to suffer. I cannot follow this
question, and can only say how entirely mistaken is
the belief that the Jewish religion, with its barbaric
view of the relationship between the sexes, was beneficial
to the liberty of women.
The Roman matrons had now gained complete
freedom in the domestic relationship, and were permitted
a wide field for the exercise of their activities.
They were the rulers of the household; they dined
with their husbands, attended the public feasts, and
were admitted to the aristocratic clubs, such as the
Gerousia is supposed to have been. We
find from inscriptions that women had the privilege
of forming associations and of electing women presidents.
One of these bore the title of Sodalitas Pudicitiae
Servandrae, or “Society for Promoting Purity
of Life.” At Lanuvium there was a society
known as the “Senate of Women.” There
was an interesting and singular woman’s society
existing in Rome, with a meeting-place on the Quirinal,
called Conventus Matronarum, or “Convention
of Mothers of Families.” This seems to
have been a self-elected parliament of women for the
purpose of settling questions of etiquette. It
cannot be said that the accounts that we have of this
assembly are at all edifying, but its existence shows
the freedom permitted to women, and points to the
important fact that they were accustomed to combine
with one another to settle their own affairs.
The Emperor Heliogabalus took this self-constituted
Parliament in hand and gave it legal powers.
The Roman women managed their own
property; many women possessed great wealth:
at times they lent money to their husbands, at more
than shrewd interest. It appears to have been
recognised that all women were competent in business
affairs, and, therefore, the wife was in all cases
permitted to assume complete charge of the children’s
property during their minority, and to enjoy the usufruct.
We have instances in which this capacity for affairs
is dwelt on, as when Agricola, the general in command
in Britain, shows such confidence in his wife as a
business woman that he makes her co-heir with his
daughter and the Emperor Domitian. Women were
allowed to plead for themselves in the courts of law.
The satirists, like Juvenal, declare that there were
hardly any cases in which a woman would not bring a
suit.
There are many other examples which
might be brought forward to show the public entry
of women into the affairs of the State. There
would seem to have been no limits set to their actions;
and, moreover, they acted in their own right independently
of men. On one occasion, when the women of the
city rose in a body against an unfair taxation, they
found a successful leader in Hortensia, the daughter
of the famous orator Hortensus, who is said to have
argued their case before the Triumvirs with all
her father’s eloquence. We find the wives
of generals in camp with their husbands. The
graffitti found at Pompeii give several instances
of election addresses signed by women, recommending
candidates to the notice of the electors. We find,
too, in the municipal inscriptions that the women
in different municipalities formed themselves into
small societies with semi-political objects, such
as the support of some candidate, the rewards that
should be made to a local magistrate, or how best funds
might be collected to raise monuments or statues.
It is specially interesting to find
how fine a use many of the Roman women made of their
wealth and opportunities. They frequently bestowed
public buildings and porticoes on the communities among
which they lived; they erected public baths and gymnasia,
adorned temples, and put up statues. Their generosity
took other forms. In Asia Minor we find several
instances of women distributing large sums of money
among each citizen within her own district. Women
presided over the public games and over the great
religious festivals. When formally appointed
to this position, they paid the expenses incurred in
these displays. In the provinces they sometimes
held high municipal offices. Ira Flavia, an important
Roman settlement in Northern Spain, for instance,
was ruled by a Roman matron, Lupa by name.
The power of women was especially great in Asia Minor,
where they received a most marked distinction, and
were elected to the most important magistracies.
Several women obtained the highest Priesthood of Asia,
the greatest honour that could be paid to any one.
There is one final point that has
to be mentioned. We have seen how the liberty
and power of the Roman women arose from, and may be
said to have been dependent on, the substituting of
a laxer form of marriage with complete equality and
freedom of divorce. In other words it was the
breaking down of the patriarchal system which placed
women in a position of freedom equal in all respects
with men. Now, it has been held by many that,
owing to this freedom, the Roman women of the later
period were given up to licence. There are always
many people who are afraid of freedom, especially
for women. But if our survey of these ancient
and great civilisations of the past has taught us
anything at all, it is this: the patriarchal subjection
of women can never lead to progress. We must
give up a timid adherence to past traditions.
It is possible that the freeing of women’s bonds
may lead in some cases to the foolishness of licence.
I do not know; but even this is better than the wastage
of the mother-force in life. The child when first
it tries to walk has many tumbles, yet we do not for
this reason keep him in leading strings. We know
he must learn to walk; how to do this he will find
out by his many mistakes.
The opinion as to the licentiousness
of the Roman woman rests mainly on the statements
of two satirical writers, Juvenal and Tacitus.
Great pains have been taken to refute the charges they
make, and the old view is not now accepted. Dill,
who is quoted by Havelock Ellis, seems convinced that
the movement of freedom for the Roman woman caused
no deterioration of her character; “without being
less virtuous or respected, she became far more accomplished
and attractive; with fewer restraints, she had greater
charm and influence, even in social affairs, and was
more and more the equal of her husband." Hobhouse
and Donaldson both support this opinion; the
latter writer considers that “there was no degradation
of morals in the Roman Empire.” The licentiousness
of pagan Rome was certainly not greater than the licentiousness
of Christian Rome. Sir Henry Maine, in his valuable
Ancient Law (whose chapter on this subject
should be read by every woman), says, “The latest
Roman law, so far as it is touched by the constitution
of the Christian Emperors, bears some marks of reaction
against the liberal doctrines of the great Antonine
jurisconsults.” This he attributes to the
prevalent state of religious feeling that went to
“fatal excesses” under the influence of
its “passion for asceticism.”
At the dissolution of the Roman Empire
the enlightened Roman law remained as a precious legacy
to Western civilisations. But, as Maine points
out, its humane and civilising influence was injured
by its fusion with the customs of the barbarians,
and, in particular, by the Jewish marriage system.
The legislature of Europe “absorbed much more
of those laws concerning the position of women which
belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilisation.
The law relating to married women was for the most
part read by the light, not of Roman, but of Christian
Canon Law, which in no one particular departs so widely
from the enlightened spirit of the Roman jurisprudence
than in the view it takes of the relations of the
sexes in marriage.” This was in part inevitable,
Sir Henry Maine continues, “since no society
which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions
is likely to restore to married women the personal
liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law.”
It is not possible for me to follow
this question further. One thing is incontrovertibly
certain, that woman’s position and her freedom
can best be judged by the equity of the moral code
in its bearing on the two sexes. Wherever a different
standard of moral conduct is set up for women from
men there is something fundamentally wrong in the
family relationship needing revolutionising. The
sexual passions of men and women must be regulated,
first in the interests of the social body, and next
in the interests of the individual. It is the
institution of marriage that secures the first end,
and the remedy of divorce that secures the second.
It is the great question for each civilisation to
decide the position of the sexes in relation to these
two necessary institutions. In Rome an unusually
enlightened public feeling decided for the equality
of woman with man in the whole conduct of sexual morality.
The legist Ulpian expresses this view when he writes-“It
seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity
from his wife while he himself shows no example of
it." Such deep understanding of the unity of
the sexes is assuredly the finest testimony to the
high status of Roman women.
I have now reached the end of the
inquiry set before us at the opening of this chapter.
I am fully aware of the many omissions, probable misjudgments,
and the inadequacy of this brief summary. We have
covered a wide field. This was inevitable.
I know that to understand really the position of woman
in any country it is necessary to inquire into all
the customs that have built up its civilisation, and
to gain knowledge upon many points outside the special
question of the sexual relationships. This I
have not been able even to attempt to do. I have
thrown out a few hints in passing-that is
all. But the practical value of what we have
found seems to me not inconsiderable. I have
tried to avoid any forcing of the facts to fit in with
a narrow and artificial view of my own opinions.
To me the truth is plain. As we have examined
the often-confused mass of evidence, as it throws light
on the position of woman in these four great civilisations
of antiquity, we find that, in spite of the apparent
differences which separate their customs and habits
in the sexual relationships, the evidence, when disentangled,
all points in one and the same direction. In
the face of the facts before us one truth cries out
its message: “Woman must be free face to
face with man.” Has it not, indeed, become
clear that a great part of the wisdom of the Egyptians
and the wisdom of the Babylonians, as also of the
Romans, and, in a different degree, of the Greeks,
rested in this, they thought much of the mothers
of the race. Do not the records of these old-world
civilisations show us the dominant position of the
mother in relation to the life of the race? In
all great ages of humanity this has been accepted
as a central and sacred fact. We learn thus, as
we look backwards to those countries and those times
when woman was free, by what laws, habits and customs
the sons of mothers may live long and gladly in all
regions of the earth. The use of history is not
alone to sum up the varied experiences of the past,
but to enlarge our vision of the present, and by reflections
on that past to point a way to the future.