II.—The Ionians and Hesiod

Between the Homeric poems in their first shape and the next stage of Greek literature there is a gap of centuries, and when the curtain goes up again on Greek history at the end of the eighth century, the centre of civilisation is in Asia Minor, the coast towns and their adjacent islands.

The period of fighting, invasions, and tribal migrations is over: there has been a revival of the old Minoan culture, the Greeks have become a nation of traders living in luxurious cities, such as Miletus and Mytilene. Politically they are dependent on the great Eastern land empires, and from the East they have taken ideas which vitally affect the position of women.

The first of these may be stated thus: a woman, even a free-born woman, is the property of the man who is her husband. The second, which follows from this, is that, love between man and his property being absurd, romantic affection is only conceivable between men; between man and woman it is impossible. Of these two ideas, the first, which involved the seclusion of women and the harem system, was only partially applied in ancient Greece. It flourished in Ionia and at Athens during the great period of her history, but it never took root in Sparta, or in the chief cities of Hellenistic civilisation. Its corollary, however, spread fatally from Asia to Greece, and from Greece to Italy. It lasted for many centuries, and tended to destroy all romantic love between the two sexes, and very often all the ordinary comfortable affection which may exist without romance between husband and wife. The sexes drew apart: the man, immersed in war and politics and absent from his home most of his life, had little experience of woman as a thinking animal, and unfamiliarity bred contempt. As happened again later in the world’s history under the very different conditions of monastic life, the natural social intercourse between men and women was artificially hampered, and the inevitable crop of errors and perversions followed. But the monks, in their dislike of women, were at least ostensibly inspired by a strict code of sexual morality: a good deal of Ionian literature has for one of its objects a desire to defend the perverted sexual instinct which was the curse of ancient life. Of this sort are the stories of Ganymede, the young Asiatic, taken up to heaven by the ruler of the sky and displacing the maiden Hebe, and of Hylas, the minion of Heracles, whose beauty brought him to his death.

Narcissus and Hyacinthus are persons of the same type, while the heroes of this kind of literature, Jason, Heracles, and Theseus, reserve all their finer chivalrous feelings for men, and regard women as a kind of booty, to be won, if possible, by fraud; if fraud is ineffective, by the judicious use of force. Jason deserts Medea in favour of a younger and richer woman. Heracles leaves his wife, to roam abroad, capturing by force any woman that pleases him. Theseus spends his life in betraying women, and in his old age marries Phædra, the young sister of Ariadne. But their exploits do not at all detract from the heroic character of the three worthies, for it is now recognised that women are vile creatures who deserve vile treatment, and so we have a second class of tale invented to illustrate the innate viciousness of the female sex. There is the story of Pasiphaë and the Minotaur, Myrrha and Adonis, Leda and the swan, Europa and the bull—and so on, and so on.

The same frame of mind that invented these tales ascribed to Sappho all kinds of unnatural vice, degraded Helen into a wanton, and Penelope into a shrew, and made it seem only logical that women, being the creatures they were, should be kept prisoners in a harem and confined to child-bearing—that indispensable function being, indeed, the main reason for their being allowed to exist at all.

The tales of Pasiphaë, Leda, and Europa, however, though useful enough in their way, are a little crude, and we have a more artistic method employed in the passages which about this time were incorporated into the Iliad by Ionian poets, with the idea of degrading the whole conception of the two divinities who represent womanly love, Hera and Aphrodite. Hera, the goddess of married life, the wife in her divine aspect, is represented by these decadents as an interfering termagant, spying upon her husband and seeking always to thwart him in the enjoyment of his legitimate lusts and caprices; Aphrodite, the goddess of unrestrained physical passion, becomes a calculating courtesan.

The method pursued is that same kind of false realism which has supplied our comic stage with the well-worn themes of the old maid and the mother-in-law, and it need hardly be said that it harmonises very badly with the romantic splendour of the epic lays. The heroic hexameter gives for our ears an air of nobility even to this stuff, but in its essence it is colloquial style of a rather tawdry sort, and one or two passages will illustrate its character; for example, the last hundred lines of Book 1 of the Iliad, an episode altogether out of harmony with the rest of the book. Thetis has come to ask Zeus to avenge her son: Hera knows of her visit, and this is the language she uses to her husband:

You crafty one—you know it’s true; who of the gods, pray, has been plotting with you again? You know that is what you like, to get away from me and to make up your mind without me, keeping your plans secret: never yet have you had the decency to tell me outright what you mean to do.

Her husband, being a male, is far more reasonable in his tone: ‘You must not expect to know all my business, my dear: it would be too hard for you, you know, though you are my wife,’ and so on, gently putting her in her inferior place. But Hera refuses to listen to reason: ‘What do you mean by that?’ she cries. ‘I have been only too ready in the past not to ask questions, I have left you at your ease, you have done what you liked,’ and she proceeds to disclose her well-founded suspicions, until Zeus, giving up any further appeals to her better feelings, tells her bluntly to sit still and do what she is told. If not, ‘All the gods in heaven, you know, won’t be of any use to you when I come close and lay my irresistible hands upon you.’ A further edifying touch is given by the well-meant intervention of Hera’s lame son, Hephaestus, and the scene closes with the unquenchable laughter of the blessed gods.

Another similar episode is the passage in Book 14, known as ‘the beguiling of Zeus,’ or, as we might say, ‘the tricked husband.’ Hera, it begins, saw her husband sitting on Mount Ida, and abhorred the sight of him. The story can be condensed by omitting all the ornamental epithets and turns of phrase which are used to give a very un-epic passage an epic colouring, and it runs somewhat like this.

Though she detests her lord, she still has to consider how to get the better of him, and she decides to dress herself in her finest. She goes accordingly to her bower, with its close-shut doors and its secret key, fastens the bolt, and begins an elaborate toilet. It is a sure sign of the odalisque that perfumes, jewellery, adornment of every kind are lavished upon her by the very men who really regard her as a chattel, and the whole description that follows reads like a passage in the Arabian Nights, themselves probably a product of the same kind of Greek genius as composed these portions of the Iliad. Every detail is lovingly dwelt upon; first with ‘ambrosia’ (the author hardly troubles himself about what ambrosia really is, and uses it as a sort of trade word), she washes her lovely skin, and then she anoints herself with oil, an ‘extra-ambrosial’ sort, which has been specially perfumed for her: then she combs her hair and twists it into bright, beautiful, ‘ambrosial’ curls. Next comes the ‘ambrosial’ robe with dainty patterns upon it, pinned across the chest by golden brooches, and the corset belt with its hundred tassels, and finally the earrings shining brightly with their three pendants. The goddess is now ready, except for the last two articles of a Greek lady’s toilette, the yashmak veil and the sandals, and as she is going abroad she puts them on and calls upon Aphrodite. Being a woman, she begins with a circumlocution. ‘Dear child,’ she says, ‘I wonder whether you will say yes or no to what I have to ask.’ Aphrodite invites her to be a little more plain, and ‘the crafty’ Hera then enters into an elaborate and entirely false explanation. She wants to borrow the magic cestus of Aphrodite in order to reconcile Oceanus and mother Tethys, a pair whose matrimonial affairs have been going so badly that they are now occupying separate rooms. ‘If I could only get them together,’ she says, ‘they would ever afterwards call me their friend.’

Whether Aphrodite believes the story or not is best left unsaid, but she at once consents: ‘It is not possible or proper to refuse you, for you sleep in the arms of the mighty Zeus,’ and she hands her the cestus with all its magic powers—‘in it are love and desire and sweet dalliance and alluring words, which rob even the wise of their wits’—then with mutual smiles they separate.

All through the passage it will be noticed there is a good deal of talk about magic, the same sort of magic as we get in the Arabian Nights, but the effect of the cestus is really quite independent of any supernatural aid. It was an article such as may be seen to-day advertised in a fashion paper—a ‘soutiengorge’—and it produced that development of the female bust and general appearance of embonpoint, which has always seemed to Eastern nations the ideal of feminine beauty.

Binding the cestus then under her breast, Hera goes off to pay her next visit, to the god Sleep, whom she begs to send Zeus into a deep slumber. For this service she promises the god ‘a beautiful golden chair, something quite unbreakable, with a footstool attached.’ But Sleep raises difficulties. He has tried a similar trick on Zeus before at the lady’s request, and when the god awoke he was very violent, and Sleep would have been thrown out of heaven into the sea had not mother Night interfered to save him. In fine, a chair, even a golden chair, is not a sufficient reward for such a dangerous task. Hera accordingly raises her offer from a chair to a woman, and promises him one of the younger Graces as his bed-fellow. Sleep at this agrees to help, the pair go to Mount Ida, Sleep changes himself into a bird to watch the scene of beguiling, and Hera reveals herself to Zeus.

As soon as the god sees her, he asks where she is going, and she repeats again the story of Oceanus and Tethys’ misadventures and her projected intervention. But the god tells her brusquely, like a real master of the harem, that he needs her presence and that she can go there another day: then, as a climax of good taste, he recites the long list of his mistresses, beginning with Ixion’s wife and ending with Leto. To this impassioned love-making, worthy of Don Juan himself, Hera, ‘the crafty,’ replies at first with an affectation of modesty, but the scene ends with the god in her arms: her purpose is accomplished and man once again is beguiled.

Dr. Leaf finds the passage full of ‘healthy sensuousness,’ but to other readers it may well seem thoroughly unpleasant, both in its sentiment and its language—for example, the horrible reiteration of ΤΟΙ, ‘mon chéri,’ at the end of Hera’s speech of invitation. Still, it is a valuable document. The brutal god and the crafty goddess are plainly the poet’s ideals of man and woman; and his ideals are very low.

These two passages from the Iliad may serve as specimens of the second method of attack, that of sarcastic depreciation under the guise of realism, of which we have some further examples in Hesiod.

The strange medley that now bears his name is in the same position as the Iliad. There is much ancient wisdom, in which woman has little part. ‘Get first a house, and then a woman, and then a ploughing ox,’ and there are also many passages plainly inspired by the new Ionian spirit.

The few facts that we know of Hesiod’s life would suggest that he was an Ionian poet who migrated to Bœotia, and incorporated into his verse the ancient lore of the country, much of it as old as anything we have in Greek literature.

Hesiod’s father was a merchant who lived at Kyme, on the coast of Asia Minor. The son passed most of his life at Askra, but of his life we know little, of his death a good deal. He had a friend, a citizen of Miletus, who came to stay with him in Greece. The two Ionians travelling together were entertained by one Phegeus, a citizen of Locris. They repaid his hospitality by seducing his daughter: the girl committed suicide, and her brothers, taking the law into their own hands, avenged her ruin by killing both Hesiod and his friend, who indeed was said to have been the chief culprit.

This tale, which is by far the best-authenticated fact in Hesiod’s life, does not give us a very pleasant impression as to the poet’s capacity for passing judgment on women, and probably the details of the Pandora myth are his own invention. The story itself is very old, but, as told by Hesiod, it has all the sham epic machinery, while it is linked on to the ancient fable of Prometheus.

To revenge the gift of fire to men, Zeus resolves to make a woman. ‘I will give them an evil thing,’ he says; ‘every man in his heart will rejoice therein and hug his own misfortune.’ Accordingly, Hephaestus mixes the paste and fashions the doll. Athena gives her skill in weaving, Aphrodite ‘sheds charm about her head and baleful desire and passion that eats away the strength of men.’ Finally, Hermes gives her ‘a dog’s shameless mind and thieving ways.’ Then the doll is dressed with kirtle and girdle, chains of gold are hung about her body, spring flowers put upon her head, and she is sent down to earth. ‘A sheer and hopeless delusion, to be the bane of men who work for their bread.’

Epimetheus takes her to wife, and when he had got her, ‘then and then only did he know the evil thing he possessed.’ So the tale of Pandora ends, and the story of the Jar, although it comes next in the ‘Works and Days,’ is not certainly connected with her history. It is ‘a woman,’ but not necessarily Pandora, who takes the lid from the Jar of Evil Things and lets them fly free over the world, so that only one curse now remains constant.

That curse, it will be remembered, is Elpis—not so much Hope as the gambler’s belief in Luck. It is the idea that things must change for the better if you will only risk all your fortune: that the laws of the universe will be providentially altered for your benefit; the belief, in fact, that so often makes the elderly misogynist take a young wife.

Such is Hesiod’s attitude towards women, and with Hesiod the first stage of Greek literature comes to an end.