Mitchell Carroll

“ Of all the creations of poetic fancy, none equals her in perennial charm. "She is simply," says Symonds, "the most perfect maiden, the purest, freshest lightest-hearted girl of Greek romance." This immortal child of the poetic imagination will, with two real women,--Lesbian Sappho, and Mary, Queen of Scots,--have lovers in every age and in every clime. Though merely a poet's fancy, Nausicaa is absolutely human and full of life, and thus differs from the heroine of The Tempest, who of all poetic creations most resembles her. ”

“ It is from this enthusiasm and extremism that there sounds one of the key-notes of woman's nature--her loyalty. Loyalty is one of the blending traits of the sexes; yet, if I were compelled to attribute it distinctively to one sex, I should class it as feminine in its nature.
Loyalty to one idea, to one ideal, has been a predominant characteristic of woman from time immemorial. Sometimes this loyalty takes the form of patriotism, sometimes of altruism, sometimes of piety in true sense; but always it has its origin and life in love. ”

“ When woman figures so largely in the few relics of antiquity which have come down to us intact, what a commentary on ancient womanhood must the art of the Greeks have been, before the ruthless hands of Romans and barbarians and the tooth of time effaced her most precious treasures! The vase paintings of the Greeks illustrate every phase of private life, and abound in representations of the maiden and the matron, in the home, at the loom, in the bridal procession, at the wedding. ”

“ Rarely indeed do we find the history of any age unconcerned with its women. Though their part may at times seem but minor, yet do they stand out to the observant eye as the prime causes of many of the great events which make or mark epochs. When we think of the Trojan War, it is Agamemnon and Priam, Achilles and Hector, who rise up before our mental vision as the protagonists in that great struggle; but if there had been no Helen, there would have been no war, and therefore no Iliad or Odyssey. ”

“ She fears a god may deceive her, and, the better to preserve for Odysseus the treasures of the tenderness stored up in her heart, she devises every cunning test to make sure it is really he. Never was there in woman's heart a more ardent flame of love and devotion; never in a woman's head intelligence so subtle, judgment so sure. When we fully appreciate the charm of Penelope's character, we better understand how the hero should sacrifice the devotion of a goddess for the love of such a woman. ”

“ What an age it was, truly, when, as the companions of Pericles, there were assembled in one city Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides, Meton and Hippocrates, Aristophanes and Phidias, Socrates and Anaxagoras, Appollodorus and Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Parrhasius;--in a city which had but lately lost Æschylus, and was soon to possess Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle; a city which, moreover, to make the illustrious dead its own, erected statues to their memory! ”

“ Zeus, angered at being outwitted by the crafty Prometheus, determined to inflict on men a bane from which they would not quickly recover. He straightway commanded Hephæstus to mix earth and water, to endow the plastic form with human voice and powers, and to liken it to a heavenly goddess--virginal, winning, and fair. Athena was commanded to teach her the domestic virtues; Aphrodite, to endow her with beauty, eager desire, and passion that wastes the bodies of mortals; and Hermes, to bestow on her a shameless mind and a treacherous nature. ”

“ By a spread of the knowledge of Greek philosophy and literature, she sought to quicken the sensibilities of the people and to reawaken a reverence for the Greek gods. It seemed at first as if her efforts would be crowned with success. Her lecture hall was crowded with the clever and intellectual men of the day, and many came from distant parts, attracted by the reputation of her beauty and learning. Hypatia soon surpassed all her contemporaries in wisdom and influence, and rapidly became the soul of the rather numerous pagan community at Alexandria. ”

“ She bounds our ideas by a circle over which we cannot step. The sculptors of Greece represented nothing but what they saw; and even when the cunning of their hand was most felicitous, even when love and grace and all the poetry of womanhood appeared to breathe from their marbles, the inferiority of their imitation to the creations of God, in properties belonging to form, in mere contour, in the grouping and development of features, must have sufficed to impress even upon Phidias, that high priest of art, how childish it was to rise above nature. ”

“ So, in obedience to the king's command, the mule team is made ready in the courtyard, and the maiden and her mother store in the wagon the raiment, a basket filled with all manner of food, and wine in a goatskin bottle, and olive oil in a golden cruse, that the princess and her maidens might anoint themselves after the bath. Then Nausicaa herself takes the whip and the reins, and she and her attendants start off for a joyous holiday. When they reach the stream of the river, the maidens unharness the mules and turn them loose to graze on the honey-sweet clover. ”

“ Sappho consecrated herself heart and soul to the elevation of her sex. As poetry and art constitute the natural channels for the aesthetic cultivation of woman, she trained her pupils to be poets like herself. The result of her lifelong devotion to the service of Aphrodite and the Muses was that she herself not only achieved an immortal reputation as a poet, but through her inspiring influence her pupils carried the love of poetry and of intellectual and artistic pursuits back to their distant homes. ”

“ Agamemnon and Achilles are reconciled before the assembly of the Achæans, and fair-faced Briseis is restored to her lover. She utters shrill laments over the body of Patroclus, who had been ever kind to her. Achilles enters the combat, clad in the armor of Hephæstus. Hector alone dares to face him, and he is slain, and his lifeless body is dragged behind Achilles's chariot as he drives exultantly toward the ships. Piteous wailings are heard from the walls, wailings of the aged Priam, and of the sorrowful Hecuba, whose cry is the full bitterness of maternal grief. ”

“ With such brilliant pictures of domestic life--the queens Penelope, Helen, and Arete, exerting a womanly influence in the palaces, the goddess-lovers Circe and Calypso on their enchanted islands, the slave Euryclea tenderly caring for mistress and young master, and the maiden Nausicaa, engaged in occupation and in pastime with her girl friends--the Odyssey is a mirror reflecting the character of the Heroic Age of Greece. ”

“ Had his life not been blessed with union with hers, had his temperament not been sweetened by her companionship, had his policy not been moulded partly by her counsel and her wisdom, had his taste not been made so subtle and refined by communion with her artistic temperament, Athens would not have been embellished by the works of art which have made that city the unapproachable ruler in the domain of the spirit. Woman's influence, where it has counted most, has always been a silent one, and has worked through man. ”

“ I do not believe that the present Empress of China, strong woman as she is, is greater than Semiramis, or that even Elizabeth of England was the equal of the warrior-queen of Babylon. But there can be no doubt that there exists a broader culture to-day than ever before and that thus the intellectual sum of women is always growing, though there comes no increase in the mental powers of the individual. It has been so with man. We boast of the mighty achievements of our age; but we have not yet built such a structure as that of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, or the Pyramid of Cheops at Ghizeh. ”

“ The case of Mark Antony is the most conspicuous example in history of the complete subjugation by the arts and fascinations of a woman of a will stern and indomitable, if reckless, and of a heart that was naturally generous and noble. Cleopatra led him to betray every public trust, to alienate from himself the affections of all his countrymen, to repel most cruelly the kindness and devotedness of a beautiful and faithful wife ”

“ The fame of her beauty was spread throughout all Hellenic lands, and the national devotion to the goddess Aphrodite was at once extended to her earthly counterpart. If she united intellectual brilliancy with beauty, fortune at once cast its most precious gifts at her feet. The most celebrated men of every city contested for her favors, poets made her the theme of their verses, artists portrayed her charms with chisel and with brush, and the wealthy filled her coffers with gold and precious stones. ”

“ There was no impulse toward distinguishing between the two, no restless reaching out toward something regarded as higher and nobler; seeing infinite possibilities in man as man, the Greek sought only the idealization of the human being as such, the completion and realization of the highest type of humanity, physical and spiritual. Because of this peculiar conception of man, the gods of the Greeks rose out of nature and did not transcend it. ”

“ She is, by the very plot of the play, the helpless victim of the malice of a goddess. With her brain beclouded by fever frenzy, she agonizes for clear vision and wails for peace of mind. She is a pure-souled, true-hearted woman, who tingles with shame and shudders with horror at the hideous thing that has been born in her. She is driven by the imminence of ruin to a desperate expedient to shield her name from the unmerited dishonor which she might well believe, from the ambiguously worded threat with which Hippolytus departed, was to be cast upon her. ”

“ Phryne, with a modesty one would not expect in a woman of her class, was very careful to keep her beautiful figure concealed, avoiding the public baths and having her body always enveloped in a long and graceful tunic. But on two occasions the beauty-loving Greeks had displayed to them the charms of her person. The first was at the solemn assembly at Eleusis, on the feast of the Poseidonia. Having loosened her beautiful hair and let fall her drapery, Phryne plunged into the sea in the sight of all the assembled Greeks. ”

“ Within the city, in the inner chamber of her palace, a young wife is engaged in weaving a double purple web and directing the work of her handmaidens. Her thoughts are all of her warrior husband, and she has had a servant set a great tripod upon the fire that Hector might have warm washing when he comes home out of the battle--fond heart all unaware how, far from all washings, bright-eyed Athena has slain him by the hand of Achilles! ”

“ Nor is there ever entire lack of contemporary influence of good, even when the evil seems predominant. If we read of an Argive Helen bringing war and desolation upon a nation, we shall find in those same pages record of a Penelope teaching the world the beauty of faith and constancy. If we trace the story of a Cleopatra ruining men with a smile, we shall find in the same day an Octavia and a Portia. ”

“ Yet the traveller in Sparta in her prime must have marvelled at the splendid maidens and matrons he saw amid the hills of Lacedæmon--trained in athletic exercises, fleet of foot, vigorous and well-proportioned, and showing in their very bearing how important they were to the well-being of the State.
In Sparta, woman was the equal of man--in Athens, his inferior. In this fact lies the secret of the training that was given her, for the character of the education of woman is an index to the position assigned her by the spirit of the State. ”

“ And Greek sculpture presents ideal types of woman, perfect physically and highly endowed with every intellectual and sensuous charm. From these works of plastic art, abounding in the museums of Europe, we know that the Greek woman was beautiful, the peer of man in physical excellence. In form, the Greek woman was so perfect as to be still taken as the type of her sex. "Her beauty, from whatever cause, bordered closely upon the ideal, or rather was that which, because now only found in works of art, we call the ideal. But our conceptions of form never transcend what is found in nature. ”

“ The Greek attitude toward nature was that of reverent children who saw everywhere therein manifestations of the divine. To them everything was what we call supernatural. If wine gladdened the heart of man, it was the influence of a god. If love stirred the breast, a god was inspiring man with a sweet influence, and the divine power must not be resisted. The gods themselves yielded to the impulses of love; why should not men? Furthermore, Greek thought conceived of the human being as the noblest creation of nature. ”

“ Euripides set himself to appeal to human hearts as he found them, to exalt men's estimate of woman, to redeem women from despair of themselves, by uplifting before them inspiring ideals of womanhood which might be types and examples for all time. And, first, he gave them those transcendent four--who in the union of the sweetness and lovable gentleness of the pure womanly with the magnificent exaltation of the highest heroism are unapproached by Homer's Penelope and Andromache, or by Sophocles's Antigone. ”

“ The island was renowned for the salubrity of its climate, the purity of its atmosphere, and the transparency of its skies. Its inhabitants, owing to the variety of the products of the soil and their attention to commerce, enjoyed unbounded prosperity. They gave themselves up to the enjoyments of life, and cultivated everything that contributed to luxury, elegance, and material well-being. The men devoted their energies to politics and war and the pursuits of pleasure. The women, who were remarkable for their beauty and grace, enjoyed a freedom and rank accorded them nowhere else in Greece. ”

“ That she does not always ask whether the object of her love, be it abstract or concrete, be worthy of her devotion is not to be attributed to her as a fault, but rather as a virtue, since the love itself expands and vivifies her soul if itself be worthy. It is at once the expression and the expenditure of the unsounded depths of her soul; it is through its power over her that she recognises her own nature, that she knows herself for what she is. The woman who has not loved, even in the ordinary human and limited meaning of the word, has no conception of her own soul. ”

“ So shalt thou abide in Argos and ply the loom at another woman's bidding, and bear water from Fount Messeis or Hyperia, being grievously entreated, and sore constraint shall be laid upon thee. And then shall one say that beholdeth thee weep: 'This is the wife of Hector, that was foremost in battle of the horse-training Trojans, when men fought about Ilium.' Thus shall one say hereafter, and fresh grief will be thine for lack of such an husband as thou hadst to ward off the day of thraldom. ”

“ It is undoubtedly true that the Greeks, as well as the Hindoos, Gauls, and Germans, attributed to woman the gift of second-sight; and the immaculate life which the Pythia was required to lead attests the fact that to receive the inspiration of the god of light there were needed a purity of heart and a devoutness of spirit which could only be found in a woman. Strange to say, it was the law that no woman could consult this oracle of Apollo, whose divine will was revealed through a woman; women could, however, indirectly receive a response through the mediation of a man. ”

“ In the days of human sacrifices, it was the women who most thronged to the spectacles, who most eagerly fastened their eyes upon the expiring victims. In the gladiatorial combats, it was the women who greeted each mortal thrust with applause, and whose reversed thumbs won the majority for the signal of death to the vanquished. In the days of terror in France, it was the woman who led the mob that threatened the king and queen, and hanged Foulard to a lamp post after almost tearing him to pieces ”