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In dealing with the Ionian poetry, exact dates are impossible, but the lyric age extends roughly from the middle of the seventh to the middle of the sixth century. The earliest writer in order of time, and in some ways the most important, is Archilochus, the Burns or Villon of Greece---outlaw, soldier of[31] fortune, poet, the first man to introduce his own personal feelings into literature.
Archilochus has his own special reasons for hating women---'Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo'---and, as he says, he had learned the great lesson, 'If anyone hurts you, hurt her in return.' Betrothed to Cleobule, the daughter of a wealthy citizen of Paros, he found his marriage forbidden by the lady's father, Lycambes. The father's reasons may be guessed, even from the few fragments of Archilochus that still remain. But the poet turned abruptly from amorist to misogynist, and spent the rest of his life in railing against his lost mistress and womankind in general.
Both in love and war he is uncompromisingly frank. He tells us how he threw away his shield 'beside the bush in battle: but deuce take the shield, I will get another just as good, and at any rate I have escaped from death.' His love poems are equally free-spoken. It is the actual image of his mistress that torments him when he cries, 'With myrtle boughs and roses fair she used to delight herself'; and again, 'All her back and shoulders were covered by the shadow of her hair.' But to his fierce spirit such love brings little comfort: 'Wretch that I am, like a dead man I lie, captive to desire, pierced with cruel anguish through all my bones'; and, 'The longing[32] that takes the strength from a man's limbs, it is that which overcomes me now.'
Soon his love turns to hate and loathing, and he imputes to the woman the fault that is really his own: 'I was wronged, I have sinned. Aye! and many another man, methinks, will fall like me to ruin.' His mistress now for him has lost her beauty. 'No longer does your soft flesh bloom fair; even as dry leaves it begins to wither.' Like all women, she is false and full of guile: 'In one hand she carries water, in the other the fire of craft.' To marry a woman now is, 'To take to one's house manifest ruin.'
The folly of men and the falsity of women seem to have been the themes of the animal stories which Archilochus, like sop, composed. Woman is the fox; man is now the eagle, now the ape; but the fragments are too short for a certain judgment. What remains, indeed, of Archilochus is always tantalising in its incompleteness. Of his epigrams, for example, only three are left; here is a free translation of one of them: 'Miss High-and-mighty, as soon as she became a wedded wife, kicked her bonnet over the moon.'
Fortunately, however, we have preserved for us in Herodotus a much longer specimen of Archilochus' manner---a real Milesian tale, the story of Gyges and Candaules. The tale is handed down to us in Herodotus' prose, and it is impossible to disentangle[33] the shares contributed by the Ionian poet and the Ionian historian; nor is it necessary; the story is typical of both.
Candaules makes the initial mistake of being enamoured of his own wife, and the second mistake of not believing Gyges when he is enlightened on the subject of female modesty. His folly naturally brings him to a bad end.
The story is interesting, but it is especially significant when we compare it with the tale of the same Gyges as told by Plato. There the sensual elements disappear, the interest centres in the magic ring, and the seduction of the queen and murder of the king form merely the hasty conclusion of the narrative. The difference between the two stories is the measure of the difference between the feminist philosopher and the libertine turned woman-hater.
But Archilochus at least has once loved a woman. Our next poet, Simonides of Amorgos, seems to have been a misogynist from birth. His work now only exists in fragments, but it is so significant of a frame of mind that the two longest passages that survive deserve a verbatim translation. The first runs thus:
Women, they are the greatest evil that God ever created. Even if they do appear to be useful at times, they usually turn out a curse to their owners. A man who lives with a wife never gets through a whole day[34] without trouble, and it is no easy matter for him to drive away from his house that fiend abhorred, the foul fiend, Hunger. Moreover, just when a man is thinking to be merry at home---by God's grace or man's service---the woman always finds some ground of fault and puts on her armour for battle. Where there is a wife, you can never entertain a guest without fear of trouble. Again, the woman who seems to be most virtuous, mind you, may well be the most mischievous of all. Her husband gapes at her in admiration, but his neighbours laugh to see him, and the mistake he is making.
Every one will praise his own wife---men are shrewd enough for that---and then will talk scandal about his neighbour's, and all the time we do not realise that we are all in the same plight, for, as we said before, this is the greatest evil that God ever created.
The other fragment, the catalogue of women, is longer and better known. It begins:
From the first God made women's characters different. Into one kind of woman He put the mind of a pig, lank and bristly, and in her house everything lies about in disorder, bedraggled with mud and rolling on the floor, while she herself, unwashed, in dirty clothes sits in the mire and waxes fat.
The second woman God made out of a mischievous fox. She is cunning in all things alike; she knows everything, all that is bad and all that is good; often her speech is fair, but often it is evil, and her mood changes every day.
The third sort of woman was made out of a dog, and she is the true child of her mother, ever restless. She wants to hear and know about everything; she is always peering about and roaming around, growling even though there is no one in sight. A man cannot stop[35] her with threats; no, not even if in sudden anger he break her teeth with a stone. Soft talk is useless, too; it is all the same even if she happen to be sitting among strangers: a man finds her a continual and hopeless nuisance.
The fourth woman the gods in heaven made out of mud---or rather they half made her---and then gave her to man. Such a one knows nothing, good or bad; the only business she has sense enough for is eating. Even if God sends a bitter winter's day and she be shivering, she never will draw her chair closer to the fire.
The fifth woman was made out of the sea, and she has two minds within her. One day she is all smiles and gladness. A stranger seeing her in the house will praise her. 'In all the world,' says he, 'there is not a better or a fairer lady.' But another day she is insupportable to look at or to approach. She is filled with fury, like a bitch guarding her cubs: savage to all alike, friends and foes, detestable. Even so the sea often stands quiet and harmless, a joy to sailors in the summer tide, and often again is driven to madness by the thunderous waves. It is to the sea that such a woman is most like.
The sixth woman was made from an ass, grey of hide and stubborn against blows. Though you use reproaches and force, it is with difficulty you get her to give way to you and do her work satisfactorily. She is always eating, day and night; she eats in her bedroom, she eats by the fireside. But if a man approaches to make love to her, she comes forward quickly enough to welcome him.
The seventh was made out of a polecat, a plaguy and a grievous kind. There is nothing fair or lovable in her, nothing pleasant, nothing charming, and any man who comes near she fills with nausea. She is a thief[36] and annoys her neighbours, and often she gobbles up the sacrifice herself without offering any to the gods.
The eighth woman was the daughter of a mare, stepping daintily with flowing mane. She shudders at the thought of any servant's work or labour. She will never lay her hand to the millstone, nor lift up the sieve, nor throw the dung out of doors: she won't even sit near the kitchen stove, because she is afraid of the soot, and she makes her husband well acquainted with adversity. Every day, two or three times, she washes every speck of dirt off her, and anoints herself with unguents. Her hair is always luxuriant and well combed, with garlands of flowers upon it. Of course, such a woman is a fine sight for the men to see, but she is a curse to her owner, unless indeed he be a tyrant or sceptred king who has a fancy to pride himself on such delights.
The ninth woman came from a monkey: this sort is, indeed, pre-eminently the very greatest curse that God ever sent to men. Her features are shamefully ugly; such a woman, as she walks through a town, is a mockery to all men. She has a short neck, and moves with difficulty; she has no buttocks, her legs are all bone. Alas for the poor wretch who holds such an evil thing in his arms! But as for guile and tricks, she knows them all, and like a monkey she does not mind being laughed at. She never renders anyone a service, but all day long this is what she is seeking and looking for---how to do some one as much harm as she can.
The tenth woman was made out of a bee: happy the man who gets her! On her alone no breath of scandal lights, but she brings a life of happiness and prosperity. Husband and wife grow old together in love, and fair and glorious are her children. Famous among all women is she, and a grace divine encompasses her[37] about. She takes no delight in sitting with other women when they are telling bawdy tales.
Such women as she are the best and wisest given by God to men: all the other kinds are a bane to men, and by God's decree a bane they always will be.
