But at last we reach the bee: "The man who gets her is lucky; to her
alone belongs no censure; one's household goods thrive and increase
under her management; loving, with a loving spouse, she grows old, the
mother of a fair and famous race. She is preeminent among all women, and
a heavenly grace attends her. She cares not to sit among the women when
they indulge in lascivious chatter. Such wives are the best and wisest
mates Zeus grants to men."
Only one woman in ten has been found in some measure desirable, and the
poet concludes with a lengthy and comprehensive dunciad of the female
sex, the gist of which is as follows: "Zeus made this supreme
evil--woman: even though she seem to be a blessing, when a man has
wedded one she becomes a plague."
How much truth is there in Semonides's views on the women of his time?
The poet agrees with Hesiod in regarding woman as a necessary evil. Nine
women out of ten he finds altogether bad, and the tenth is prized only
for her domestic virtues. Industrious, quiet, economical, the mother of
children, she is merely the good housewife, which seems to have been the
primitive ideal of the perfect woman. The poem treats of women of the
middle class, and is important in showing the freedom of movement, and
appearance in public, of the married woman. She is not shut up in the
harem; but in the use of her tongue, and in her capacity as a busybody,
there seems to be no restraint upon her. Semonides's range of vision was
narrow, and he probably knew not much beyond his own little island, but
we may credit him with expressing the prevalent views of the honest
burghers of Amorgus.
Phocylides of Miletus, a successor of Semonides by rather more than a
century, composed in the same strain an epigrammatic satire on woman. It
is manifestly an imitation of the tirade of Semonides.
"The tribe of women," says he, "is of these four kinds,-
-that of a dog,
that of a bee, that of a burly sow, and that of a long-maned mare. This
last is manageable, quick, fond of gadding about, fine of figure; the
sow kind is neither good nor bad; that of the dog is difficult and
snarling; but the bee-like woman is a good housekeeper, and knows how to
work. This desirable marriage, pray to obtain, dear friend."
The bitterest of all the observations against woman by the iambic
writers, however, is that of Hipponax, a brilliant satirist of the sixth
century before Christ, He says:
"Two happy days a woman brings a man: the first, when he marries her;
the second, when he bears her to the grave."
Theognis is another of the poets of Greece who took a gloomy view of
life, and was not happy in his matrimonial ties. He laments that
marriages in his native town of Megara are made for money, and avers
that such marriages are the bane of the city. Says Theognis:
"Rams and asses, Cyrnus, and horses, we choose of good breed, and wish
them to have good pedigrees; but a noble man does not hesitate to wed a
baseborn girl if she bring him much money; nor does a noble woman refuse
to be the wife of a base but wealthy man, but she chooses the rich
instead of the noble. For they honor money; and the noble weds the
baseborn, and the base the highborn; wealth has mixed the race. So, do
not wonder, Polypaides, that the race of the citizens deteriorates, for
the bad is mixed with the good."
To sum up this cursory survey of the iambic poets, we find that in their
period woman is still regarded as the determining factor of man's weal
or woe, but that there exists in the sex every variety of woman which
lack of education and, especially, lack of appreciation can produce.
Woman is prized by man only for her domestic virtues; and any endeavor
she may make to step beyond the narrow circle of the home is resented by
the lords of creation. Man looks down on her as his inferior, and gives
her no share in his larger life. Among the aristocratic the bane of
wealth has entered, and marriages of convenience are the prevailing
custom.
When we pass from the iambic to the elegiac poets, we begin to note the
causes why wedded life, especially among the Ionian Greeks, does not
present the beautiful pictures of domestic bliss and conjugal
comradeship so attractive in heroic times. The martial elegists show
how woman could still inspire man to deeds of valor, but the erotic
poets give us glimpses of the root of the evil that was undermining the
very foundations of domestic life. The Greek woman did not develop under
enlarged conditions with the same rapidity as the Greek man; the wife
was expected to be merely the mother of her husband's children and the
keeper of his house; for companionship and pleasure he looked elsewhere.
The free woman, or the hetaera, has entered upon the stage. Poets were
inspired by love, but romantic love between husband and wife is being
replaced by the love of the beautiful and highly educated "companion,"
or the natural place of the highborn woman is being invaded by the baser
passion for "those fair and stately youths, with their virgin looks and
maiden modesty "--two classes that were to play so large a role in
society in the greatest days of Greece, and who were to bring about its
downfall.
In the fragments of Alcman are many allusions to his passion for his
sweetheart Megalostrata; and many of the elegies of Mimnermus are said
to have been addressed to a flute player, Nanno, who, according to one
account, did not return his passion. The following, translated by
Symonds, shows the intensity of his love:
"What's life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
When to the gold-haired goddess cold am I, When love and love's soft gifts no more delight me,
Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die!
Ah! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth; On man and maids they beautifully smile: But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth, Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile.
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn Scarce serve the very sunshine to behold--
Unloved of youths, of every maid the scorn--
So hard a lot gods lay upon the old."
Even from Solon the Sage, maker of constitutions, we possess some
amorous verses, of so questionable a character that it would hardly be
fitting to present them in this volume. They are ascribed to his early
youth. They afforded much comfort to the libertines of antiquity, who
were glad to be able to cite so respectable an exemplar; but the good
people were scandalized by these couplets.
Ibycus resembles Sappho in the intensity of his passion and in his
conception of Eros as a concrete existence. "Love once again looking
upon me from his cloud-black brows, with languishing glances drives me
by enchantments of all kinds to the endless nets of Cypris. Verily, I
tremble at his onset as a chariot horse, which hath won prizes, in old
age goes grudgingly to try his speed in the swift race of cars."
Anacreon, to English readers the best known of the erotic poets of
Greece, had as his mistress the golden-haired Eurypyle.
He was very
susceptible to the influence of love, and, owing to the grace and
sweetness and ease of expression in his verses, has won an enduring
fame. Many of his verses and numerous imitations of his poems are
extant, and in these love is the constant theme.
Stesichorus was the composer of love poems with a plot, which were
highly popular among the ladies of ancient days. As forerunners of the
Greek Romance they possess unique literary importance, and as love
stories of an early day they throw much light on the status and ideals
of woman. Aristoxenus had preserved an outline of the plot of the
_Calyce:_ "The maiden Calyce having fallen madly in love with a youth,
prays to Apollo that she may become his lawful wife; and when he
continues to be indifferent to her, she commits suicide." Ancient
critics favorably comment on the purity and modesty of the maiden, and
the story indicates that marriages were not always a matter of
arrangement, that love at times determined one's choice, and that to the
ancient highborn maiden death was preferable to dishonor. Another of
these romantic poems, called _Rhadina_, tells also a tale of unhappy
love, how a Samian brother and sister were put to death by a cruel
tyrant because the sister resisted his advances.
Yet we cannot hold that woman had in this period universally assumed a
lower status than that accorded her in the Homeric poems. Among Ionian
peoples, this was doubtless true; but among AEolians and Dorians, woman
had not only attained a greater degree of freedom than was permitted her
in the Heroic Age, but had also shown herself the equal of man in
literary and aesthetic pursuits. In this transition age, the name of one
woman--Sappho--presents itself as the bright morning star in the history
of cultured womanhood.
VI
SAPPHO
Toward the close of the seventh century before Christ, a singular
phenomenon presented itself in the history of Greek womanhood.
Heretofore Greek women have been beautiful; they have been fascinating;
they have exerted great influence on the course of events; but it cannot
be said that they have been intellectual. At the time mentioned, there
occurred an unusual movement in the intellectual realm.
This remarkable
movement centres about the name of the first great historical woman of
Greece--Lesbian Sappho, "the Tenth Muse." In the history of universal
woman, Sappho holds a position altogether unique; for she is not only
regarded as the greatest of lyric poets, but she was also the founder of
the first woman's club of which we have any record.
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. Hence,
it is not surprising to learn that from this time there were to be
found here and there in the Greek world women who in intellectual
pursuits were the peers of their male compeers, and that there should be
found among women the nine terrestrial Muses, so called as a counterpart
to the celestial Nine.
Sappho's unique greatness is best appreciated when we consider how she
has been regarded by the great men of antiquity and of modern times.
Among the Greeks, she possessed the unique renown of being called "The
Poetess," just as Homer was "The Poet." Solon, hearing one of her poems,
prayed that he might not see death until he had learned it. Plato
numbered her among the wise. Aristotle quotes without reservation a
judgment that placed her in the same rank as Homer and Archilochus.
Plutarch likens her "to the heart of a volcano," and says that the grace
of her poems acted on her listeners like an enchantment, and that when
he read them he set aside the drinking cup in very shame. Strabo called
her "a wonderful something," and says that "at no period within memory
has any woman been known who, in any way, even the least degree, could
be compared to her for poetry." Demetrius of Phaleron adds his word of
praise: "Wherefore Sappho is eloquent and sweet when she sings of beauty
and of love and spring, and of the kingfisher; and every beautiful
expression is woven into her poetry besides what she herself invented."
Writers in the Greek Anthology continually sing her praises, calling her
"the Tenth Muse," "pride of Hellas," "comrade of Apollo," "child of
Aphrodite and Eros," "nursling of the Graces and Persuasion." Nor have
modern critics been less restrained in their praises, notwithstanding
the fact that they possess merely a handful of fragments by which to
judge "The Poetess." Addison, for example, says: "Among the mutilated
poets of antiquity there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as
those of Sappho." John Addington Symonds is even more enthusiastic. "The
world has suffered no greater literary loss," says he,
"than the loss of
Sappho's poems. So perfect are the smallest fragments preserved, that we
muse in a sad rapture of astonishment to think what the complete poems
must have been." And Swinburne, her best modern interpreter, calls
Sappho "the unapproachable poetess," and says: "Her remaining verses are
the supreme success, the final achievement, of the poetic art."
Sappho was at the zenith of her fame about the beginning of the sixth
century before the Christian era. Her home was at Mytilene, on the
island of Lesbos. The lapse of twenty-five centuries has left us few
authentic records of her life. There is a tradition that she was born at
Eresus, on the island of Lesbos, and later established herself in the
capital city, Mytilene. She was of a wealthy and aristocratic family.
Herodotus says that she was the daughter of Scamandronymus, and Suidas
states that her mother's name was Cleis, that she was the wife of a rich
citizen of Andros, Cercylas or Cercolas by name, and that she had a
daughter named after her grandmother, Cleis. Sappho refers to a daughter
by this name in one of the extant fragments, but none of these other
statements are corroborated. She had two brothers, Larichus, a public
cupbearer at Mytilene,--an office reserved for noble youths,--and
Charaxus, a wine merchant, of whom we shall speak more fully later. From
one source we learn that she went into exile to Sicily along with other
aristocrats of Lesbos, but the date is a matter of conjecture. Pittacus
was tyrant of Mytilene at this time, and Sappho probably returned to
Lesbos at the time when he granted amnesty to political exiles. How
long she lived we cannot tell, while how and when she died are also
unknown. Judging from the allusions of the writers in the Anthology, her
tomb, erected in the city of her adoption, was for centuries afterward
regularly visited by her votaries.
These are the few facts we can positively state regarding the life of
Sappho; but myth and legend have supplied what was lacking, and those
scandalmongers, the Greek comic poets, have woven all sorts of stories
about her manner of life. These stories centre chiefly about the names
of three men,--Alcaeus and Anacreon, the poets, and Phaon, the mythical
boatman of Mytilene, endowed by Aphrodite with extraordinary and
irresistible beauty.
Alcaeus, the poet of love and wine and war, was a native of Mytilene, and
a contemporary of Sappho, and the two poets no doubt knew each other
well. The comic poets made them lovers. There is still extant the
opening of a poem which Alcaeus addressed to Sappho:
"Violet-crowned, chaste, sweet-smiling Sappho, I fain would speak; but bashfulness forbids."
To which she replied:
"Had thy wish been pure and manly, And no evil on thy tongue,
Shame had not possessed thine eyelids; From thy lips the right had rung."
Anacreon, the lyric poet, was also represented as a lover of Sappho; and
two poems are preserved, one of which he is said to have addressed to
her, while the other is said to be her reply. But there is no doubt
whatever that Anacreon flourished at least a generation after Sappho, so
that the two could never have met. It seems to have been one of the
stock motifs of the comic poets to represent Greek lyrists as being
lovers of the Lesbian; thus Diphilus, in his _Sappho_, pictured
Archilochus and Hipponax, her predecessors by a generation, as her
lovers.
The story of Sappho's love for Phaon and her leap from the Leucadian
rock in consequence of his disdaining her, though it has been so long
implicitly believed, rests on no historical basis. The perpetuation of
the story is due chiefly to Ovid, who, in his epistle, _Sappho to
Phaon_, tells of her unquenchable love and of her determination to
attempt the leap. The story is best told by Addison:
"Sappho, the Lesbian, in love with Phaon, arrived at the temple of
Apollo, habited like a bride, in garments white as snow.
She wore a
garland of myrtle on her head, and carried in her hand the little
musical instrument of her own invention. After having sung a hymn to
Apollo, she hung up her garland on one side of his altar, and her harp
on the other. She then tucked up her vestments, like a Spartan virgin,
and amidst thousands of spectators, who were anxious for her safety and
offered up vows for her deliverance, marched directly forward to the
utmost summit of the promontory, where, after having repeated a stanza
of her own verses, she threw herself off the rock with such an
intrepidity as was never observed before in any who had attempted that
leap. Many who were present related that they saw her fall into the sea,
from whence she never rose again; though there were others who affirmed
that she never came to the bottom of her leap, but that she was changed
to a swan as she fell, and that they saw her hovering in the air under
that shape. But whether or not the whiteness and fluttering of her
garments might not deceive those who looked upon her, or whether she
might not really be metamorphosed into that musical and melancholy bird,
is still a doubt among the Lesbians."
Modern critics justly set aside the whole story as fabulous, explaining
it as derived from the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, who in the Greek
version was called Phaethon or Phaon. The leap from the Leucadian
rock--the promontory of Santa Maura, or Leucate, in Sicily, known to
this day as "Sappho's Leap"--was used by other poets, notably
Stesichorus and Anacreon, as a metaphorical expression to denote
complete despair, and Sappho herself may have used it in this sense. The
legend did not connect itself with Sappho until two centuries after her
death, and then only in the comic poets; hence it can have no basis in
fact. The tradition of Sappho's AEolian grave, preserved in the
Anthology, indicates strongly that she died a peaceful death on her own
island. "Sappho," says Edwin Arnold, "loved, and loved more than once,
to the point of desperate sorrow; though it did not come to the mad and
fatal leap from Leucate, as the unnecessary legend pretends. There are,
nevertheless, worse steeps than Leucate down which the heart may fall;
and colder seas of despair than the Adriatic in which to engulf it."
The whole story of her love for Phaon is an instance of how her name was
maligned by the comic poets of the later Attic school.
It was impossible
for the Athenians, who kept their women in seclusion, to understand how
a woman could enjoy the freedom of life and movement that Sappho enjoyed
and yet remain chaste. Consequently, she became a sort of stock
character of the licentious drama, and even modern writers have used her
name as the synonym for the brilliant, beautiful, but licentious woman.
As says Daudet, who of all recent writers has done most to degrade the
name: "The word Sappho itself, by the force of rolling descent through
ages, is encrusted with unclean legends, and has degenerated from the
name of a goddess to that of a malady." The Greek comic poets invented
the misrepresentation; the early Christian writers accepted it, and
exaggerated it in their tirades against heathenism; and thus the
tradition that Sappho was a woman of low moral character became fixed.
Only in the present century have the ancient calumnies against Sappho
been seriously investigated. A German scholar, Friedrich Gottlieb
Welcker, was the first to show that they were based on altogether
insufficient evidence. Colonel Mure, with great lack of gallantry,
endeavored, without success, to expose fallacies in Welcker's arguments.
Professor Comparetti has more recently gone laboriously over the whole
ground, and his work substantiates in the main the conclusions of
Welcker. The whole tendency of modern scholarship is to vindicate the
name of Sappho.
We cannot claim that Sappho was a woman of austere virtue; but she was
one of the best of her race, and there is no trace of wantonness in any
stanza of hers preserved to us. She repulsed Alcaeus when he made
improper advances, while a recently discovered papyrus fragment shows
how keenly she felt a brother's disgrace, and this aversion to the
dishonorable would hardly have existed had her own life been open to
censure.
Sappho's brother Charaxus, who was a Lesbian wine merchant, fell
violently in love with the famous courtesan Rhodopis, then a slave in
Naucratis, and subsequently the most noted beauty of her day. He
ransomed her from slavery, devoted himself exclusively to her whims, and
squandered all his substance upon her maintenance.
Sappho was violently
incensed at his conduct, and resorted to verse for the expression of her
anger and humiliation. According to the story in Ovid, Charaxus was
fiercely provoked by her ill treatment of him, and would listen to no
attempts at reconciliation made by his poet-sister after her anger had
cooled, though she reproached herself for the estrangement and did all
she could to win him back.
A twenty-line fragment of a poem, found a few years ago among the
Oxyrhynchus papyri, in a reference to the poet's brother, in its tone of
reproach, in its expression of a desire for reconciliation, in dialect
and in metre, indicates its origin as a part of an ode addressed by
Sappho to her brother Charaxus. It is conceived by its editors and
translators to be one of her vain appeals that he would forget the past:
"Sweet Nereids, grant to me
That home unscathed my brother may return, And every end for which his soul shall yearn, Accomplished see!
"And thou, immortal Queen,
Blot out the past, that thus his friends may know Joy, shame his foes--nay, rather, let no foe By us be seen!
"And may he have the will
To me his sister some regard to show,
To assuage the pain he brought, whose cruel blow My soul did kill,
"Yea, mine, for that ill name
Whose biting edge, to shun the festal throng Compelling, ceased a while; yet back ere long To goad us came!"
Was Sappho's beauty a myth? Greek standards of feminine beauty included
height and stateliness. Homer celebrates the characteristic beauty of
Lesbian women in speaking of seven Lesbian captives whom Agamemnon
offered to Achilles, "surpassing womankind in beauty."
Plato, in the
Phaedrus, calls Sappho "beautiful," but he was probably referring to the
sweetness of her songs. Democharis, in the Anthology, in an epigram on a
statue of Sappho, speaks of her bright eyes and compares her beauty
with that of Aphrodite. According to Maximus of Tyre, who preserves the
traditions of the comic poets, she was "small and dark,"
a phrase
immortalized by Swinburne:
"Th