30.  The Mental Horizon of Athenian Women.—­Despite the suggestions in the poets, probably the normal Athenian woman is neither degraded nor miserable.  If she is a girl of good ancestry and the usual bringing up, she has never expected any other conditions than these.  She knows that her parents care for her and have tried to secure for her a husband who will be her guardian and solace when they are gone.  Xenophon’s ideal young husband, Ischomachus, says he married his wife at the age of fifteen.[*] She had been “trained to see and to hear as little as possible”; but her mother had taught her to have a sound control of her appetite and of all kinds of self-indulgence, to take wool and to make a dress of it, and to manage the slave maids in their spinning tasks.  She was at first desperately afraid of her husband, and it was some time before he had “tamed” her sufficiently to discuss their household problems freely.  Then Ischomachus made her join with him in a prayer to the gods that “he might teach and she might learn all that could conduce to their joint happiness”; after which they took admirable counsel together, and her tactful and experienced husband (probably more than twice her age) trained her into a model housewife.

[*]See Xenophon’s “The Economist,” VII ff.  The more pertinent passages are quoted in W. S. Davis’s “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol.  I, pp. 265-271.

31.  The Honor paid Womanhood in Athens.—­Obviously from a young woman with a limited intellectual horizon the Athenian gentleman can expect no mental companionship; but it is impossible that he can live in the world as a keenly intelligent being, and not come to realize the enormous value of the “woman spirit” as it affects all things good.  Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, above all Pallas-Athena,—­city-warder of Athens,—­who are they all but idealizations of that peculiar genius which wife, mother, and daughter show forth every day in their homes?  An Athenian never allows his wife to visit the Agora.  She cannot indeed go outside the house without his express permission, and only then attended by one or two serving maids; public opinion will likewise frown upon the man who allowed his wife to appear in public too freely[*]; nevertheless there are compensations.  Within her home the Athenian woman is within her kingdom.  Her husband will respect her, because he will respect himself.  Brutal and harsh he may possibly be, but that is because he is also brutal and harsh in his outside dealings.  In extreme cases an outraged wife can sue for divorce before the archon.  And very probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the Athenian woman is contented with her lot:  partly because she knows of nothing better; partly because she has nothing concrete whereof to complain.

[*]Hypereides, the orator, says, “The woman who goes out of her own home ought to be of such an age that when men meet her, the question is not ‘Who is her husband?’ but ‘Whose mother is she?’” Pericles, in the great funeral oration put in his mouth by Thucydides, says that the best women are those who are talked of for good or ill the very least.