Sir James Donaldson

“ There is no reason to suppose that Aspasia had any romantic notions in regard to love or the destiny of woman. She was, on the whole, practical, and thought that woman should find her satisfaction in work, not in dreams. She did not imagine that one could have only one love, and that if she did not get that, or lost it, she should repine and turn from life. ”

“ She seems to have had a rarely intense love of nature. The bright sun, the moon and the stars, the music of birds, the cool river, the shady grove, Hesperus, and the golden-sandalled Dawn—all are to her ministers of love, of this intense love for her poetical pupils, for one of whom she says she would not take the whole of Lydia. But though this association may have been one great object, it cannot be affirmed that she formed any idea of making the love of women a substitute for the love of men. Some of her girls unquestionably married, and Sappho composed their hymeneal songs. ”

“ One would have imagined that Christianity would have favoured the extension of woman’s freedom. For Christianity itself was one of the most daring revolutions which the world has ever seen. It defied all past customs, it aimed at the overthrow of the religions of the world, it overleapt the barriers of nationality, and it desired to fuse all mankind into one family and one faith. ”

“ In considering the effect of the marriage customs of the Romans we think naturally first of the fact that consent was the essence of a Roman marriage. No woman could be compelled to marry. It is true that women very frequently married when they were exceedingly young, often when they were only fourteen or fifteen years old, and that we must suppose that in these cases the influence of the fathers was predominant. But even in these cases the girl had to give her consent, and consent remained the essence of the obligation to a married life. ”

“ Monogamy is in the very heart of the Greek heroes. No one of them wishes for more than one woman.
There is a curious instance of the power of heroic affection in Achilles. A captive widow has become his partner before the walls of Troy. She is very fond of him, and he becomes very fond of her. But there is no proper marriage between them, and Achilles could not worthily celebrate his marriage in a camp far from his friends and home. Yet such is his love for her, and her alone, that she is to him a real wife. ”

“ In a speech which Sophocles puts into the mouth of Dejanira, she expresses her conviction that a wife has no right to expect a husband to be always faithful to her, or to blame the woman with whom he falls in love. “Thou wilt not,” she says, “tell thy tale to an evil woman, nor to one who knows not the nature of man, that he does not naturally rejoice always in the same. For whosoever resists Love in a close hand-to-hand combat, like a boxer, is not wise. For he sways even the gods as he wishes, and me myself also ”

“ Man was a human being made for the highest and noblest purposes; woman was a female made to serve only one. She was on the earth to inflame the heart of man with every evil passion. She was a fire-ship continually striving to get alongside the male man-of-war to blow him up into pieces. This is the way in which Tertullian [150] addresses women: “Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. ”

“ If a lesson is to be drawn, it surely is that, as with individuals there is no place like home, so with a State there is no institution like home; that a community can be great only where there are happy, harmonious, and virtuous homes, and that homes cannot be happy and harmonious and virtuous unless woman is accorded a worthy place in these homes, with freedom of action, with a consciousness of responsibility, and with the right, unfettered by circumstance or prejudice, to develope all that is best and noblest in her to the utmost perfection. ”

“ Why hast thou delivered me to such a life as this, in which a pitiable [181] youth wastes away before old age, and old age is shunned as under the doom of death? Dreadful, O mother, is the course of life which has death as the goal of the runner. Bitter is the road of life we travel, with the grave as the wayfarer’s inn.” Tertullian [148] says: “Further reasons for marriage which men allege for themselves arise from anxiety for posterity, and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. ”

“ Foremost among these is Alcmena in the ‘Amphitruo.’ She is a true, loving, faithful wife. She greets her supposed husband on his return from war with the kindliest welcome. She is never impure even in any single thought, but is simply chaste throughout, even in scenes which might have tempted the poet to pander to his rough audience. She is astonished and amazed at the suspicions of her real husband, but no consideration will make her confess to a crime which she has not committed. She always retains the dignity of stainless purity. ”

“ The commonplace man has had wings furnished to his mind, and he sees heaven opening before his eyes, and an infinite tenderness suffuses his soul. The girl, who could not utter a word in her own behalf before, has had her lips unsealed, and wit and brightness and poetry sparkle in every sentence which she addresses to her companion. She too flings from her the ordinary routine of daily life, and sees before her a paradise of purest bliss and unending joy. ”

“ If we look at the external position of women, we must place the Homeric age exceedingly low in civilization. Women have almost no rights; they are entirely under the power of man, and they live in continual uncertainty as to what their destiny may be. The woman may be a princess, brought up in a wealthy and happy home; but she knows that strangers may come and carry her off, and that she may therefore at some time be a slave in another man’s house. ”

“ Just as Socrates almost swoons at the sight of the exquisite beauty of an Athenian youth, so Sappho trembles all over when she gazes on her lovely girls. And she weaves all the beauties of nature into the expression of the depth of her emotion. ”

“ The authentic case of the largest number of husbands is that of the woman of Samaria, who had five husbands, and was living with one who was not her husband. But her case may have been quite peculiar; and, strangely enough, it is to this notorious woman to whom the grandest revelation of universal worship ever made to mortal was vouchsafed. There is no good reason to suppose that divorces were very frequent in ordinary society. There were not the same causes at work as prevailed in the circles in which political power was the predominant motive of action. ”

“ But they could not marry, and therefore continued to live the life in which they had been trained, or dealt in slave-girls. The whole mode of life of such women could not but brutalize them. And some of the characters which Plautus gives us exhibit the lowest coarseness and utter and irredeemable selfishness. They looked upon men as their victims. Men are the sheep that they have to fleece. The courtezan woman who would dream of being faithful to one man is a fool. She must have money. As soon as a man is ruined he must be turned out of doors ”

“ The women were too independent. A Roman marries a Roman woman who has ample means of her own. He finds that the old times are gone, and he cannot now lay hold of her money or property without her consent. He must now humour her if he is to enjoy her wealth, and the effort to gain her over in this way is held up as degrading and humiliating to a man, and it is represented that it is better for a man to be without a wife than to be subject to all the imperious whims of a wealthy woman.
Then, again, there was no shame attached to a dissolution of marriage. Marriage was a contract. ”

“ In early Rome we find the same state of matters as we have found in Greece. The city is the unit. This city-State consists of citizens who have all equal rights and privileges. All outside of the city have at first no rights within its territories, and if they come within the city, they have no claim to justice or consideration except what they can obtain through a citizen. In all ancient cities there was always a large number of slaves, men or women who either themselves or whose ancestors had been taken captive in war or stolen from their homes. ”

“ All the training anterior to marriage was deliberately contrived to fit the Spartan women to be mothers. And it is needless to say that all the arrangements in connexion with marriage were made solely for the good of the State. All the Spartan girls had to marry. No one ever thought of not marrying. There was one exception to this. No sickly woman was allowed to marry. The offspring must be healthy. And, indeed, if she had had to consult her own feelings in Sparta, the sickly girl would, of her own accord, have refrained from marriage. ”

“ There is one other free woman who deserves special notice—the priestess of the Temple of Venus in the ‘Rudens.’ Priestesses, as Benoist has remarked, had much more liberty of movement than ordinary matrons, and could appear in public on many occasions on which the others could not. When Palæstra and Ampelisca flee to her temple for refuge, she is astonished to find that they have not come in white garments, and with victims, as visitors to a temple should; but no sooner does she learn the real state of the case than she remembers mercy, and not sacrifice, and gives them a hearty welcome. ”

“ Homer’s insight into human nature is apparent in the circumstance that it is only in the heart of a true woman that he places resistance to the ordinary modes of thought. The peculiarity of Penelope’s affection is that it will not submit to prevalent ideas; she loves and admires her Ulysses, and she will love no other. Contrary to all custom, she puts off the suitors year after year. The time has arrived when every one expects her to marry again. She has seen her son Telemachus grow to manhood. ”

“ For perhaps all human tasks are open to all, and common both to men and women, and nothing is necessarily appointed exclusively for either; not that some things may not be more suitable for one, and others for the other [137] nature, so that some are called men’s and others women’s occupations. But whatever things have reference to virtue, these one may rightly affirm to be equally appropriate to both natures, since we say that virtues do not belong more to the one than to the other.” Musonius applies his principle of equality to sexual relations and to marriage. ”

“ As long as the Roman wives were under the control or in the hands of the husband, the husband unquestionably could kill his wife under certain restrictions; but when this state of matters ceased, then the obvious course was, unless the wife committed great crimes, and thereby incurred severe punishment, to dissolve the marriage quietly. And it seems to us that women would prefer divorce to death, and that, instead of a degeneracy, the altered state of matters implies a softening of manners and an advance in civilization. ”

“ Now, the first remark that has to be made is that Rome gave the same expansion to marriage as to citizenship, and thereby produced a revolution in the position of woman: a revolution, however, gradual in its extension and gradual in its effects, but of most momentous consequence to the world, for it broke down completely the old constitution of city-States, by which their privileges were conferred on men as members of families, and established a new and world-wide constitution by which men obtained their privileges as men. ”

“ The student of the history of woman is continually reminded of the fact that when men lose their dignity and eminence, woman disappears from the scene, but when they rise into worth, she again comes on the stage in all her power and tenderness. ”

“ The noble men and women on the other hand, who were dominated by the loftiest aspirations and exhibited the greatest temperance, self-control, and virtue, left no children. During this period there is a striking absence of home life in the history of Christians. No son succeeds his father, no wife comforts the wearied student, no daughter soothes the sorrow of the aged bishop. ”

“ In the front we see nothing but affection, regard, and even deference. The men appear never to have found fault with the women. It was natural for a woman to love, and she might do what they would deem an eccentric or disproportionate action in consequence of this influence; but it was either a man or a god that was to blame. She was for the [13] time mad. Even in the case of Helen, who brought so many disasters on Greeks and Trojans, the men find no fault. She reproaches herself bitterly, but the men think that it was Paris who was to blame, for he carried her off forcibly. ”

“ This woman determined to do her utmost to elevate her sex. The one method of culture open to women at that time was poetry. There was no other form of literature, and accordingly she systematically trained her pupils to be poets, and to weave into verse the noblest maxims of the intellect and the deepest emotions of the heart. Young people with richly endowed minds flocked to her from all quarters, and formed a kind of woman’s college. ”