Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

what we usually call “gallantry”. In Greek antiquity, such differences as those between “woman” and “ wife’? were excluded. There gyne (yvry) designated the woman without reference to age, no matter whether she were married or not; and to be addressed as gynai (yivar) was no disgrace to the queen or the simple woman of the people. At the same time, it is to be observed that linguistically the word means “ bearer of children ”’,t and the etymology also shows that the Greek chiefly honoured the mother of his children in the woman. Not until Roman imperial times do we meet with the word domina (lady, mistress) as the address of women of the imperial house (whence the French dame). ‘The Greeks reserved the word despoina (meaning the same as domina) for actual ladies, that is, for the wives of kings, without lowering it to a merely conventional term, or in opposition to domestic servants ; for in the house the women were mistresses in everything which constitutes her particular domain, as Plato expressly calls attention to in a well-known passage (Laws, vu, 808a). From the modern point of view the Greek separation of women into three classes, though certainly not “gallant ”’ is very significant, as given by the author of the speech against Neaera: “ We have courtesans for our pleasure, concubines for daily personal service, and married women to bear us children and manage our house faithfully ” (§ 122).

The position of the concubine was very different. We hear of such who were entirely the property of their master, who could also sell them (Antiphon, De Veneficio, 14), e.g. to a brothel ; yet from a law referred to by Demosthenes (Im Aristocratem, 55 ; see also Ath., xiii, 555), in which mother, wite, sister, daughter, concubine, are named in one breath, we may conjecture that the relations between a man and his concubine may have been like those ot husband and wife. Besides, it was only in the heroic

1 Plato, Cratylus, 414a: yur) 5é yor i por dalverar BovrAccBar etvac.

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