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

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

3. ADDITIONS AND SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

We may give a brief account of the further life of the married pair. In general the wife now remained in the Gynekonitis, by which we understand all the rooms which formed the wife’s kingdom. Henceforth only the bedroom and eating room were common to husband and wife, presuming that the master of the house had no friends as guests. Then the meal was unattended by women, and it would never have occurred to a Greek wife, unless she wanted to be considered a courtesan or paramour, to take part in the meals of her husband and his friends. We may call this one-sided, indeed, we may think it shows a want of tenderness ; that the intellectual enjoyments of the table were immensely enhanced by this arrangement must be clear to everyone who, raised above the force of convention, thinks what is the nature of the conversation, as long as ladies are present in modern society, and how scandalous stories succeed conversation, when, after dining together, the gentlemen have retired into the smoking-room. Yes, it is even so: “ gallantry’ was an unknown idea to the ancient Greeks, but on the other hand the difficult art of the conduct of life was all the more familiar to them.

If it was thought incompatible with the natural gifts of the woman to allow her to have an interest in the conversation of the men that possessed intellectual value, on the other hand an incomparably higher task was allowed her, namely, bringing up the boys until the time when they are exposed to the stronger wind of a man’s education, and the girls until their marriage. ‘To show how greatly the husband respected this activity of the wife, we will cite from the vast amount of evidence only the beautiful sentiment of Alexis (frag. 267 (Kock), in Stobzeus’ Florilegium, 79,13): “God reveals himself to us in the mother more than in anything else.”

57