The Historians' History of the World 03

Phidias symbolised the solitariness of the home-keeping wife by the tortoise, on whose back he set the statue of Aphrodite Urania in Elis. But the acutest note of women’s relations to the outer world is in the Thesmophoriazusæ of Aristophanes, where the women speak themselves: “If we are an evil, why do you marry us, and allow us neither to go out, nor to be caught looking from the windows, and insist on guarding the evil with so much care? And if a woman goes out and you find her before the door, you get into a rage, whereas you ought to be pleased and bring a thank offering, if you were really rid of the evil and did not find her sitting there any more when you came home. Then when we take a peep out of the window every man wants to look at the evil, and when one blushes and draws in one’s head, they all want all the more to see the evil peep out.” Even on occasions when fear and necessity would break through conventional restrictions, we find the women going no farther than the door of the house; and the orator Lycurgus actually complains because after the battle of Chæronea, the women inquired after the fate of their own men-folk from their doorways.

Walking in the street was made a very difficult matter even for married women. Even Solon left directions on this subject; and among other things he said that no woman, when she went out, must have more than three pieces of clothing, nor more than one obolus’ worth of food and drink with her, nor must she carry any basket of more than two feet. Also she must not travel by night, except in a carriage, and then have a light carried before her. In the times of the Diadochi, indeed, special superintendents were appointed in Athens to check the immorality and extravagance of women, such as were already established in other cities, Syracuse, for example. Since the husband generally did the marketing himself, and walks had not yet, it would seem, become fashionable, although they were recommended by a woman disciple of Pythagoras, Phintys, there were hardly any other motives left for going out except the attendance at religious functions and the play.d

Priestess of Ceres

Ruins on Acropolis at Athens

CHAPTER XXVIII. ART OF THE PERICLEAN AGE

ARCHITECTURE

[460-430 B.C.]

Policy united with natural inclination to induce Pericles to patronise the arts, and call forth their finest productions for the admiration and delight of the Athenian people. The Athenian people were the despotic sovereign; Pericles the favourite and minister, whose business it was to indulge the sovereign’s caprices that he might direct their measures; and he had the skill often to direct even their caprices. That fine taste, which he possessed eminently, was in some degree general among the Athenians; and the gratification of that fine taste was one means by which he retained his influence. Works were undertaken, according to the expression of Plutarch, in whose time they remained still perfect, of stupendous magnitude, and in form and grace inimitable; all calculated for the accommodation or in some way for the gratification of the multitude. Phidias was superintendent of the works: under him many architects and artists were employed, whose merit entitled them to fame with posterity, and of whose labours (such is the hardness of the Attic marble, their principal material, and the mildness of the Attic atmosphere) relics, which have escaped the violence of men, still, after the lapse of more than two thousand years, exhibit all the perfection of design, and even of workmanship, which earned that fame.c

But the Greeks had not attained all at once to the architectural perfection which we admire on the Acropolis. They had assigned their gods the crest of the mountains or the deep forests for their first abode; they desired to have them nearer to themselves and, from the earliest times, they built them dwellings, at first rustic and clumsy, but which were gradually embellished and attracted other arts with religious pomp; the poets celebrating the gods and their native country, the philosophers raising the great problems of nature and of the soul. The temple was the centre of Hellenic life.

But the gods, like men, have to reckon with time. Before sending out the radiations of their divine majesty from the midst of the wonders of art, those destined to become the glorious dwellers on Olympus were at first obscure and indefinite personalities, inhabiting the trunk of an oak, then wretched wooden structures, and later on houses of stone and sometimes of brass, like the Athene Chalciœcus of Sparta. It was only with the progress of civilised life that their habitation grew in size and loftiness. The true temples, and the most ancient of them, those of Corinth, Samos, and Metapontum—date only from the seventh century.