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; but for men is the word and the speech;
For all, but for me the chiefest, for here am I the might and the power.
Such was the doctrine already common in Greece at that time. It went even further. Woman, even if a widow, stands so completely under the rule of the nearest male relative, that she no longer has even the choice of a husband. The suitors, tired of long waiting, due to the cunning of Penelope, address themselves to Telemachus through the mouth of Antinous, saying:
But for thee, do we the suitors this answer to thee show,
That thou in thy soul may'st know it, and that all the folk may know,
Send thou thy mother away, and bid her a wedding to gain
With whomso her father willeth, of whomso her heart may be fain.
It is at an end with the freedom of woman. If she leaves the house, she must veil herself not to awaken the desires of another man. In the Orient, where, due to the warm climate, sexual passion is strongest, this method of seclusion is carried even to-day to extreme lengths. Athens becomes in this a pattern for the ancient nations. Woman shares, indeed, her husband's bed, but not his table; she does not address him by name, but "Sir;" she is his maid-servant; she was allowed to appear nowhere openly; on the street she was ever veiled and clad with greatest simplicity. If she committed adultery, she paid for the trespass, according to the laws of Solon, with her life, or with her freedom. The husband could sell her for a slave.
The position of the Greek woman at the time when Greece was rushing to the zenith of her development comes into plastic expression in the "Medea" of Euripedes. She complains:
Ay, of all living and of all reasoning things
Are women the most miserable race:
Who first needs buy a husband at great price,
To take him then for owner of our lives:
For this ill is more keen than common ills.
And of essays most perilous is this,
Whether one good or evil do we take.
For evil-famed to women is divorce,
Nor can one spurn a husband. She, so brought
Beneath new rule and wont, had surely need
To be a prophetess, unless at home
She learned the likeliest prospect with her spouse.
And if, we having aptly searched out this,
A husband house with us not savagely
Drawing in the yoke, ours is an envied life;
But if not, most to be desired is death.
And if a man grow sick to herd indoors,
He, going forth, stays his heart's weariness,
Turning him to some friend or natural peer;
But we perforce to one sole being look.
But, say they, we, while they fight with the spear,
Lead in our homes a life undangerous:
Judging amiss; for I would liefer thrice
Bear brunt of arms than once bring forth a child.
Wholly otherwise stood matters for the men. Although with an eye to the begetting of legitimate heirs for his property, he imposed upon woman strict abstinence from other men, he was, nevertheless, not inclined to lay a corresponding abstinence upon himself.
Hetairism sprang up. Women distinguished for their beauty and intellect, and who, as a rule, were aliens, preferred a free life in intimate intercourse with men, to the slavery of marriage. Nothing objectionable was seen in that. The names and fame of these hetairae, who held intimate intercourse with the leading men of Greece, and participated in their learned discourses, as well as in their revels, has come down to our own days; whereas the names of the legitimate wives are mostly forgotten and lost. Thus the handsome Aspasia was the intimate friend of the celebrated Pericles, who later made her his legitimate wife; the name of Phryne became in later days the generic designation of those women that were to be had for money. Phryne held intimate relations with Hyperides, and she stood for Praxiteles, one of the first sculptors of Greece, as the model for his Aphrodite. Danae was the sweetheart of Epicurus, Archeanassa that of Plato. Other celebrated hetairae, whose names have reached our days, were Lais of Corinth, Gnathanea, etc. There is no celebrated Greek, who had no intercourse with hetairae. It belonged to the style of life of distinguished Greeks. Demosthenes, the great orator, described in his oration against Neara, the sexual life of the rich men of Athens in these words: "We marry a woman in order to obtain legitimate children, and to have a faithful warder in the house; we keep concubines for our service and daily care; and hetairae for the enjoyment of love." The wife was, accordingly, only an apparatus for the production of children; a faithful dog, that watched the house. The master of the house, on the contrary, lived according to his bon plaisir, as he willed.
In order to satisfy the demand for venal women, particularly with younger males, there arose that which was unknown under the rule of the mother-right, —prostitution. Prostitution distinguishes itself from the free sexual intercourse that customs and social institutions rendered a matter of course under primitive conditions, and, accordingly, freed from objectionableness, in that the woman sells her body, either to one man or to several, for material benefit. Prostitution, therefore, exists so soon as woman makes a trade of her charms. Solon, who formulated the new law for Athens, and is, consequently, esteemed the founder of the new legal status, was also the founder of the public houses for women, the "deikterion," – official houses of prostitution – , and the price to all the customers was the same. According to Philemon it amounted to one obolus, about four cents of our money. Like the temples with the Greeks and Romans, and the Christian churches in Middle Ages, the deikterion was inviolable: it stood
Bachofen: "Das Mutterrecht."
