DOMESTIC LIFE.
The life of married women, maidens, children while in the care of women, and of female slaves, passed in the gynaikonitis, from which they issued only on rare occasions. The family life of Greek women widely differed from our Christian idea; neither did it resemble the life in an Oriental harem, to which it was far superior. The idea of the family was held up by both law and custom, and although concubinage and the intercourse with hetairai was suffered, nay favored, by the state, still such impure elements never intruded on domestic relations.
Our following remarks refer, of course, only to the better classes, the struggle for existence by the poor being nearly the same in all ages. In the seclusion of the gynaikonitis the maiden grew up in comparative ignorance. The care bestowed on domestic duties and on her dress was the only interest of her monotonous existence. Intellectual intercourse with the other sex was wanting entirely. Even where maidens appeared in public at religious ceremonies, they acted separately from the youths. An intercourse of this kind, at any rate, could not have a lasting influence on their culture. Even marriage did not change this state of things. The maiden only passed from the gynaikonitis of her father into that of her husband. In the latter, however, she was the absolute ruler. She did not share the intellectual life of her husband—one of the fundamental conditions of our family life. It is true that the husband watched over her honor with jealousy, assisted by the gynaikonomoi, sometimes even by means of lock and key. It is also true that common custom protected a well-behaved woman against offence; still her position was only that of the mother of the family. Indeed, her duties and achievements were hardly considered by the husband, in a much higher light than those of a faithful domestic slave.
In prehistoric times the position of women seems to have been, upon the whole, a more dignified one. Still, even then, their duties were essentially limited to the house, as is proved, for instance, by the words in which Telemachus bids his mother mind her spindle and loom, instead of interfering with the debates of men. As the state became more developed, it took up the whole attention of the man, and still more separated him from his wife. Happy marriages, of course, were by no means impossible; still, as a rule, the opinion prevailed of the woman being by nature inferior to the man, and holding a position of a minor with regard to civic rights. This principle has, indeed, been repeatedly pronounced by ancient philosophers and lawgivers. Our remarks hitherto referred chiefly to the Ionic-Attic tribe, renowned for the modesty of its women and maidens. The Doric principle, expressed in the constitution of Sparta, gave, on the contrary, full liberty to maidens to show themselves in public, and to steel their strength by bodily exercise. This liberty, however, was not the result of a philosophic idea of the equality of the two sexes, but was founded on the desire of producing strong children by means of strengthening the body of the female.
The chief occupation of women, beyond the preparing of the meals, consisted in spinning and weaving. In Homer we see the wives of the nobles occupied in this way; and the custom of the women making the necessary articles of dress continued to prevail even when the luxury of later times, together with the degeneracy of the women themselves, had made the establishment of workshops and places of manufacture for this purpose necessary. Antique art has frequently treated these domestic occupations. The Attic divinities, Athene Ergane and Aphrodite Urania, as well as the Argive Here, Ilithyia, the protecting goddess of child-bearing, Persephone, and Artemis, all these plastic art represents as goddesses of fate, weaving the thread of life, and, at the same time, protecting female endeavors; in which two-fold quality they have the emblem of domestic activity, the distaff, as their attribute. Only a few representations of spinning goddesses now remain; but many are the pictures of mortal spinning-maidens painted on walls, chiefly for female use. For the spinning, a spindle was used, as is still the case in places where the northern spinning-wheel has not supplanted the antique custom. Homer describes noble ladies handling the distaff with the spindle belonging to it. Helen received a present of a golden spindle, with a silver basket to keep the thread in. The distaff, with a bundle of wool or flax fastened to its point, was held under the left arm, while the thumb and first finger of the right hand, slightly wetted, spun the thread at the end of which hung the spindle, made of metal. The web was, from the spindle, wound round a reel, to be further prepared on the loom.
SOCIAL ENJOYMENT OF WOMEN (From an ancient painting.)
Akin to spinning are the arts of weaving and embroidering. We frequently see in vase-paintings women with embroidering-frames in their laps. The skill of Greek ladies in embroidery is sufficiently proved by the tasteful embroidered patterns and borders on Greek dresses, both of men and women. The vase-paintings supply many examples.
Our remarks about female duties in preparing the meal must be short. The heavy parts of the duty, like grinding the corn in hand-mills, were performed by servants. In the palace of Odysseus twelve female slaves were employed all day in grinding wheat and barley in an equal number of hand-mills, to supply the numerous guests. The hand-mill consisted (like those still used in some Greek islands) of two stones, each about two feet in diameter, the upper one of which was made to rotate by means of a crooked handle, so as to crush the corn poured through an opening in it.
Baking and roasting meat on the spit were among the duties of female slaves. In every house of even moderate wealth, several of these were kept as cooks, chambermaids, and companions of the ladies on their walks, it being deemed improper for them to leave the house unaccompanied by several slaves. How far ladies took immediate part in the preparing of dainty dishes we can not say. In later times it became customary to buy or hire male slaves as cooks.
Antique representations of women bathing, adorning themselves, playing, and dancing, are numerous. The Athenian maiden, unlike her Spartan sister, did not think it proper to publicly exhibit her bodily skill and beauty in a short chiton, but taking a bath seems to have been among her every-day habits as is shown by the numerous bathing scenes on vases. In one of them, a slave pours the contents of a hydria over her nude mistress. Cowering on the floor in another we see an undressed woman catching in her hand the water-spout issuing from a mask of Pan in the wall into a bath. An alabastron and comb are lying on the floor. A picture on an amphora in the museum of Berlin offers a most interesting view of the interior of a Greek bath-chamber. We see a bathing establishment built in the Doric style. By a row of columns the inner space is divided into two bath-chambers, each for two women. The water is most likely carried by pressure to the tops of the hollow columns, the communication among which is effected by means of pipes about six feet from the ground. The openings of the taps are formed into neatly modeled heads of boars, lions, and panthers, from the mouths of which a fine rain spray is thrown on the bathers. Their hair has been tightly arranged into plaits. The above-mentioned pipes were evidently used for hanging up the towels; perhaps they were even filled with hot water to warm the bathing linen. Whether our picture represents a public or private bath seems doubtful. The dressing after the bath has also been frequently depicted.
We need not enter upon the subject here. We will mention the chief utensils, as the comb, ointment-bottle, mirror, etc., on a following page. The scenes thus depicted are undoubtedly borrowed from daily life, although Aphrodite, with her attendance of Cupids and Graces, has taken the place of mortal women.
For music, games, and dances, we mention only a game at ball, which was played in a dancing measure, and, therefore, considered as a practice of graceful movements. Homer mentions Nausikaa as a skilled player of this game. It is remarkable that wherever women playing at ball appear in pictures they are represented in a sitting posture. (See cut, page 205.)
The swing was essentially a female amusement. In commemoration of the fate of Erigone, daughter of Ikarios, a festival had been ordained at Athens at which the maidens indulged in the joys of the swing. Illustrations of this pastime occur frequently on vases, free from any mythological symbolism, even in cases where Eros is made to move the swing.
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