Woman and the Republic | Page 4

Greek men down to the second century before
our era?"
Mrs. Dietrick's remarkably realistic version of the old myth does not
tell the tale as Greek men published it. Varro, who was educated at
Athens, goes on to say: "Thereupon, Neptune became enraged, and
immediately the sea flowed over all the land of Athens. To appease the
god, the burgesses were compelled to impose a threefold punishment
upon their wives--they were to lose their votes; the children were to
receive no more the mother's name; and they themselves were no
longer to be called Athenians, after the goddess." It seems to me this
fable teaches that physical force was indeed the governing power in
Athens at that day, and that men were its manifestation.
The legend is generally taken to indicate the time when the Greek gens
progressed to the family. In the ruder time, the legitimacy of the
chieftain might be traced, because the mother, though not always the
father, could be known with certainty. When the father became the
acknowledged head of the household, a distinct advance was made
toward that heroic age in which the vague but towering figures of men
and women move across the stage. Goddesses, queens, princesses, are
powerful in love and war. Sibyls unfold the meaning of the book of fate.
Vestals feed the fires upon the highest and lowest altars. Later,

throughout most of the states of Greece, something like the following
order of political life is seen: from kings to oligarchs, from oligarchs to
tyrants or despots, from them to some form of restricted constitutional
liberty. In Sparta, all change of government was controlled by the
machinery of war, and the soldiers were made forever free. Athens,
separated from the rest of Greece, was less agitated by outward conflict.
In government she passed from king to archon; from hereditary archon
to archons chosen for ten years, but always from one family, then to
those elected for one year, nine being chosen. At the time of the
Areopagus there were four classes of citizens. The first three paid taxes,
had a right to share in the government, and formed the defence of the
state. If women were of political importance in earlier times, and if a
republic is more favorable to the exercise by them of the elective
franchise, we should expect to find women reaching their highest
power under the Areopagus. Exactly the contrary appears to be true.
Native and honorable Greek women retired to domestic life as the
liberty of their people grew. Grote, in his "History of Greece," referring
to the legendary period, says: "We find the wife occupying a station of
great dignity and influence, though it was the practice of the husband to
purchase her by valuable presents to her parents. She even seems to live
less secluded, and to enjoy a wider sphere of action, than was allotted
to her in historic Greece."
Lecky, in his "European Morals," says: "It is one of the most
remarkable and, to some writers, one of the most perplexing facts in the
moral history of Greece, that in the former and ruder period women had
undoubtedly the highest place, and their type exhibited the highest
perfection." What the "highest perfection" is, for her type, or for man's
type, is not here under discussion; but it is not out of place to say in
passing that if the final conquest of the spiritual over the material forces
of humanity is really the aim of civilization, these "facts in the moral
history of Greece" become less "perplexing."
The heroines of Homer's tales were all of noble birth--they were
goddesses, princesses, hereditary gentlewomen. In early historic times,
also, it was only royal or gentle blood that secured for woman political
power. Athena was, in gentle Athens, patroness of household arts; but

in Sparta, as Minerva, the same divinity was goddess, not of political
interests, as Mrs. Dietrick puts it, but of war. She sprang full-armed
from the head of Jove--rather a masculine origin, it must be owned. In
Sparta women became soldiers as the democratic idea advanced.
Princess Archidamia, marching at the head of her female troop to
rebuke the senators for the decree that the women and children be
removed from the city before the anticipated attack could come, is an
example. In Etolia, in Argos, and in other states, the same was true.
Maria and Telesilla led the women in battle and disciplined them in
peace. But the world does not turn to Sparta for its ideal of a
pre-Christian republic, and the Suffragists of our day do not propose to
emulate the Spartan Amazon and hew their way to political power with
the sword.
In Athens, which does present the model, matters were far otherwise. In
the year 700 B. C., the