Notwithstanding women were thus removed from their position as leaders, the customs connected with the old system of morals continued for centuries to sway the public mind, although the meaning of the surviving customs was gradually lost to the people. It is only in modern times that pains are being taken to inquire into the original meaning of these old customs. In Greece, for instance, it remained a religious practice that Greek women prayed only to goddesses for advice, help and favors. Likewise, the yearly recurring celebration of the Thesmophoria owed its origin to the days of mother-right. Even in later days, the women of Greece celebrated this festival for five days in honor of Demeter; and no man was allowed to be present. It was similarly in old Rome with a festival in honor of Ceres. Both Demeter and Ceres were considered goddesses of fertility. In Germany also such festivals, once customary in the heathen days of Frigga, were held, deep into the Middle Ages, Frigga being considered the goddess of fertility among the old Germans. According to the narratives, women gave a free reign to their frolicsomeness on the occasions of these festivals. Also here men were excluded from participation in the festival.
In Athens, where, as already stated, the mother-right made earliest room for the father-right, but, as it seems, under strong opposition from the women, the transition is portrayed touchingly and in all the fullness of its tragic import, in the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The story is this: Agamemnon, King of Mycene, and husband of Clytemnestra, sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, upon the command of the oracle on his expedition against Troy. The mother, indignant at the sacrifice of her daughter, takes, during her husband's absence, Aegysthos for her consort. Upon Agamemnon's return to Mycene, after an absence of many years, he is murdered by Aegysthos with the connivance of Clytemnestra. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges the murder of his father, at the instigation of Apollo and Athene, by slaying his mother and Aegysthos. The Erinnyes, as representatives of the old law, pursue Orestes on account of the murder of his mother. Apollo and Athene, the latter of whom, according to mythology, is motherless – she leaped full-armed out of the head of Jupiter – represent the new law, and defend Orestes. The issue is carried to the Areopagus, before which the following dialogue ensues. The two hostile principles come here into dramatic vividness of expression:
Erinnyes – The prophet bade thee be a matricide?
Orestes – And to this hour I am well content withal.
Erinnyes – Thoul't change that tune, when judgment seizes thee.
Orestes – My father from his tomb will take my part; I fear not.
Erinnyes – Ay, rely on dead men's aid,
When guilty of matricide!
Orestes – She, that is slain,
Was doubly tainted.
Erinnyes – How? Inform the court.
Orestes – She slew her wedded lord, and slew my sire.
Erinnyes – Death gave her quittance, then. But thou yet livest.
Orestes – And while she lived, why did you not pursue her?
Erinnyes – No tie of blood bound her to whom she slew.
Orestes – But I was tied by blood-affinity
To her who bare me?
Erinnyes – Else, thou accursed one,
How nourished she thy life within her womb?
Wouldst thou renounce the holiest bond of all?
The Erinnyes, it will be noticed, recognize no rights on the part of the father and the husband; to them there exists only the right of the mother. That Clytemnestra slew her husband is indifferent to them; on the other hand, they demand punishment for the matricide, committed by Orestes: in killing his mother he had committed the worst crime imaginable under the old gentile order. Apollo, on the contrary, stands on the opposite principle. Commissioned by Zeus to avenge the murder of his father, he had led Orestes to the murder of his own mother. Apollo now defends Orestes' action before the judges, saying:
That scruple likewise I can satisfy.
She who is called the mother of the child
Is not its parent, but the nurse of seed
Implanted in begetting. He that sows
Is author of the shoot, which she, if Heaven
Prevent not, keeps as in a garden-ground.
In proof whereof, to show that fatherhood
May be without the mother, I appeal
To Pallas, daughter of Olympian Zeus,
In present witness here. Behold a plant,
Not moulded in the darkness of the womb,
Yet nobler than all scions of Heaven's stock.
According to Apollo, the act of begetting confers the superior right; whereas, according to the views in force until then, the mother, who gives to the child her blood and its life, was esteemed the sole possessor of the child, while the man, the father of her child, was regarded a stranger. Hence the Erinnyes reply to the strange notions of Apollo:
Thou didst lead astray
Those primal goddesses with draughts of wine,
O'erturning ordinance.
Young, thou wouldst override our ancient right.
The judges, thereupon, make ready for the sentence. One half stand by the old, one half by the new right; a tie is threatened; thereupon Athene seizes the ballot from the altar and dropping it in the urn, says:
To me it falls to give my judgment last.
Here openly I give it for Orestes.
No mother bore me. To the masculine side
For all save marriage my whole heart is given, —
In all and everything the father's child.
So little care I for a woman's death,
That slew her lord, the guardian of her home.
Now though the votes be even, Orestes wins.
The new right won. Marriage with the father as head, had overpowered the gyneocracy.
Another legend represents the downfall of the mother-right in Athens this way: "Under the reign of Kekrops, a double miracle happened. There broke forth simultaneously out of the earth an oil-tree, and at another place water. The frightened king sent to Delphi to interrogate the Oracle upon the meaning of these happenings. The answer was: 'The oil-tree stands for Minerva, the water for Neptune; it is now with the citizens after which of the two deities they wish to name their city.' Kekrops called together the assembly of the people in which men and women enjoyed the right of suffrage. The men voted for Neptune, the women for Minerva; and as the women had a majority of one, Minerva won. Thereupon Neptune was angered and he caused the sea to wash over the territory of the Athenians. In order to soothe the wrath of the god, the Athenians placed a threefold punishment upon their women: —they were to forfeit the suffrage, children were no longer to carry their mother's name, and they themselves were no longer to be called Athenian women."9
As in Athens, the transition from the mother to the father-right was everywhere achieved so soon as a certain height was reached in social development. Woman is crowded into the house; she is isolated; she is assigned special quarters – the gynekonitis – , in which she lives; she is even excluded from intercourse with the male visitors of the house. That, in fact, was the principal object of her isolation.
This change finds its expression as early as the Odyssey. Telemachus forbids Penelope's, his mother's, presence among the suitors. He, the son, orders his mother:
But come now, go to thy bower, and deal with such things as ye can;
With the sock and the loom be busy, and thine handmaids order and teach,
That they speed the work and the wearing;