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'The whole country was full of the story,' so the tale runs, 'and men of every class agreed that this was a real and brilliant example of virtue and affection in a woman---the only one they had ever known.'
In the meantime, however, some robbers had been crucified near the place, and a soldier on guard over the crosses noticed the light of the taper gleaming in the darkness. Yielding to the weakness of human nature, he made his way down to the vault, and was surprised to find a pretty woman, where[55] he had expected to see a ghost. But he soon realised the situation---that the lady could not get over the loss of her man---and so he brought his traps down to the cellar and began to address some words of comfort to her. 'Do not persist in useless grief,' said he, 'do not rend your breast with unavailing sobs; all of us will come to this; we all have but one final resting-place.' His attempt at consolation---which, though well-meant, is certainly somewhat commonplace---only irritated the lady, and he turned his attention to the servant (for in this sort of stories there is always a soubrette) and induced her to partake of his rations.
The girl was then able to persuade her mistress to follow her example, and soon all three were eating and drinking together.
'You know,' so says Eumolpus, 'the result of a good meal: the soldier was soon as successful in overcoming the matron's resolute virtue as he had been in overcoming her resolute desire for death.'
The doors of the vault were closed, so that it might appear that the good lady had breathed her last over her husband's body; the soldier brought down all sorts of comestibles, and two or three days and nights were spent in dalliance.
Meanwhile the crucified robbers were quite forgotten, and on the third morning the soldier found that one of the crosses was empty, for the body had[56] been removed for burial by the relatives in the night. He explained his plight to the lady, and announced his intention of committing suicide, the proper penalty, as he said, for his neglect of duty.
But the matron was as compassionate as she was virtuous, and 'Heaven forfend!' she cried. 'I cannot bear to see two such dear men both depart from life. I would rather pay over the dead than lose the living.' So she told the soldier to take the husband's body out of its receptacle and fix it on the vacant cross. 'The soldier gladly followed the clever lady's ingenious idea, and the next day people were wondering how it was that a dead man had found his way to the cross.'
The Ephesian Widow represents the Milesian Tales at their best; at their worst they are only to be read by those who can touch pitch and not be defiled. In themselves they are beneath contempt, but they have a very considerable importance in the history of the world, and especially in the history of the relations of the sexes. The perverse ideas that underlie them were transplanted from Ionia to Athens, and, recommended by the literary genius of Athenian writers, they have had an influence on later thought which the Ionian pornographers would never have secured.
We have traced the main tendencies of Ionian thought, and have seen how the degradation of women involved a corresponding degradation of literature. Its very offensiveness protects a great deal of Ionian work from notice, but it has been necessary to quote some of the less noisome specimens, for it must be remembered that this immorality of literature was both the cause and the result of the low opinion in which women were held. The motives which inspired the whole school of writers were utterly contemptible, the means they employed were not much better; but they were successful in their purpose. When Athens took over the leadership of Greece, she took over from Ionia the idea of women as inferior creatures, and during all the great period of Athenian history women were a subject class. It became no longer necessary to slander them; they were simply neglected.
A woman's life at Athens in the fifth century B.C. was a dreary business. She was confined closely to the house, a harem prisoner, but without any of that luxurious ease which the harem system has[58] sometimes offered as a solace for the loss of freedom. An Athenian house was small, dark, and uncomfortable, and a woman's day was occupied with a long round of monotonous work. Occasionally she was allowed out of prison to walk in some sacred procession, as we see the quiet line of girls marshalled on the Parthenon frieze, but all the amusements of the town were closed against her. From the school and the gymnasium, from the Odeon and the Academy, from public meetings and from private banquets, women were jealously debarred. It is doubtful whether they were permitted even to enter the theatre of Dionysus; and their shopping quarter, where they bought their rouge and white lead, was in the most remote and inaccessible part of the city.
The whole structure of social life was arranged to suit men and to exclude women. It is true that the patron divinity of the state was a woman, Athena, but the goddess was divested of feminine attributes. She became the ideal Athens, a conception as far remote from an anthropomorphic divinity as any race has ever possessed.
The stages by which women were reduced to this condition of inferiority are, in the general obscurity of early Athenian history, quite unknown; but there can be little doubt that the whole position was due to Ionian influence. The legal status of women, especially in relation to property, seems to have been[59] changed by definite enactment about the end of the sixth century B.C., and in the Suppliant Maidens of schylus there are traces of the conflict of principles on which the change was based. Henceforward, in the eyes of the Athenian law, a woman was merely an appanage of any property which she chanced to inherit, and her nearest male relative had to take charge of her person---a damnosa hereditas for which the material advantages of her estate served as compensation.
Moreover, women in Athens were married far too young, for the average age was about fifteen, and the result of these early marriages was that by the time a woman had arrived at years of discretion and might have been an intellectual companion for her husband, her beauty too often was gone and she herself was worn out, a premature old woman. For girls no education was considered necessary, and throughout their childhood they were kept in constant seclusion. They were regarded only as potential bearers of children, and the most extreme precautions known to modern eugenics were apparently practised before marriage. But even as mothers they were not very efficient, for their physique suffered from the narrowness of their lives, and the wet-nurse---Titthe---was to be found in most families. Just as the Breton and Norman girls migrate to Paris, so those Athenian households that could afford the expense would hire[60] the robust women of Sparta to take the mother's place. Alcibiades, for example, was suckled by a Lacedmonian nurse, and was not altogether an alien when, exiled from Athens, he took refuge in the Peloponnese. It was not in Athens, but at Sparta, or in the islands where girls wrestled and raced with young men, that Paionios found the model for his 'Victory' with her flying feet, deep bosom, and firm, rounded limbs; and in Aristophanes, when Lysistrata assembles the women of Greece, the Athenians can scarcely refrain their half-envious admiration of the buxom vigour of the Spartan Lampeto.
