A Day in Old Athens; a Picture of Athenian Life

few unmarried men in Athens. An Athenian girl is brought up with the distinct expectation of matrimony.[*] Opportunities for a romance almost never will come her wa

state and to perpetuate the family. That the girl should have any will of her own in the matter is almost never thought of. Very probably she has never seen "Him," save when they both were marching in a public religious procession

bly created a certain preponderance of males in Attica, and

de whom his father has selected; if not, he risks a stormy encounter with his parents, and will finally capitulate. He has perhaps never seen "Her," and can only hope things are for the best; and after all she is so young that his friends tell him that he can train her to be very useful and obedient if he will only take pains. The parents

husband divorced her (as by law he might), the dowry mu

s his bride when he takes over the property. A husband can bequeath his wife to some friend who is likely to treat her and the orphan children with kindness. Such affairs occur every day. Do the Atheni

ughtless; but when we attain maidenhood, lo! we are driven away from our

en more bitter

tures that hav

of all things

eeds, as buys th

and, and our bo

s trans

aps in a few days, perhaps with a longer wait till the favorite marriage month Gamelion [January].[*] Then on a lucky night of the full moon the bride, having, no doubt tearfully, dedicated to Artemis her childish toys, will be decked in her finest and will come down, all veiled, into her father's torchlit aula, swarming now with guests. Here will be at last that strange master of her fate, the bridegroom and his best man (paranymphos). Her father will offer sacrifice (probab

was sacred to Hera, t

Ho, Hymen! H

he doorways and street corners are crowded with onlo

ly riotous fun and hard drinking. At last the bride is led, still veiled, to the perfumed and flower-hung marriage chamber. The doors close behind the married pair

mbol of f

n'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 i

e pertinent passages are quoted in W. S. Davis's "

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 kin

et her, the question is not 'Who is her husband?' but 'Whose mother is she?'" Pericles, in the great funeral oration

WOMANHOOD a great deal. By a hundred tokens, delightful vase paintings, noble monuments, poetic myths, tribute is paid to the self-mastery, the self-forgetfulness, the courage, the gentleness "of the wives and mothers who have made Athens the beacon of Hellas"; and there is one witness better than all the rest. Along the "Street of Tombs," by the gate of the city, runs the long row of

she will do her utmost to display them to the greatest advantage[*]; and she has, naturally, plenty of other vanities (see § 38). Her husband has turned over to her the entire management of the household. This means that if he is an easy-going man, she soon understands his home business far better than he does himself, and really has him quite at her mercy. Between caring for her husband's wants, nursing the sick slaves, acting as arbitress in their inevitable disputes, keeping a constant watch upon the storeroom, and finally in attending to the manufacture of nearly

instead of shoes of course aided

es seem to have been allowed to attend the tragedies is a tribute to their intellectual ca

the reach of womanhood, much less the womanhood of the mothers of the warriors, poets, orators, and other immortals of Athens. One great side of civilization which the city of Athens might develop