According to Wilford, the Greeks were the descendants of the Yavanas of India. This writer observes that the Pandits insist that the words Yavana and Yoni are derived from the same root, Yu, and that when the Ionians emigrated they adopted this name to distinguish themselves as adorers of the female, in opposition to a strong sect of male worshippers which had been driven from the mother country.224 Under the constantly increasing importance of the male, however, both in human affairs and in the god-idea, they subsequently became ashamed of their religious title and sought to abandon it. Of the aversion felt in Greece for this name Herodotus says:  
The Athenians and most of the Ionic states over the world went so far in their dislike of the name as actually to lay it aside; and even at the present day the greater number of them seems to me to be ashamed of it.225
 
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Whenever in early historic times a country was subjugated, the conquerors either murdered or enslaved the men, and utilized the women for wives, or sexual slaves. The Ionians who, according to Herodotus, sailed from Attica, without women, took for wives native Carians whose fathers they had slain; hence these captives made a law, which they bound themselves by an oath to observe, and which they handed down to their daughters after them, that “none should ever sit at meat with her husband, or call him by his name; because the invaders slew their fathers, their husbands, and their sons, and then forced them to become their wives.”226 The terms of the oaths sworn by them at the time of the capture seem, subsequently, to have been enforced by their imperious masters.
 
As these women were foreigners they were entitled to little or no respect from their captors. However, as they were to become the mothers of Greek citizens, they must necessarily be “protected,” or, in other words, they must be kept in seclusion. In the time of Solon, rape committed on a free-born woman was punishable by fine.227
 
From that stage in the history of Greek tribes, at which through capture and appropriation of the soil by individuals women began to lose that influence which they had exercised under matriarchal usages, to the time of Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, when they had finally descended to the lowest level320 of misery and sexual degradation, may be observed a corresponding tendency gradually developing itself among the people towards selfishness, usurpation of power, and the slavery of the masses. In the age of Solon the limit of human wretchedness seems to have been reached, and as the human race is never at a standstill, it must at this time have either become extinct, or have begun gradually to lift itself from the condition of disgrace and ruin into which it had fallen.
 
The character of Solon, as gathered from the facts at hand regarding him, reflects in a measure the true condition of society at that time. Although vain and morally weak, he was in a certain sense humane; his humanity, however, extended only to those of his own sex. A large proportion of the women of Athens were imported foreigners, and were therefore so degraded that they had no rights which any one, even a lawgiver, was bound to protect. After his appointment to the archonship, Solon’s first act was to cancel the debts against the lands and persons of the Athenians, and to establish a law that in future no man should accept the body of his debtor for security.228 Many who had been previously banished or driven out of the country for debt, and had remained so long from their native land as to forget their Attic dialect, were recalled as freemen, while others, who at home had suffered slavery, were released and given their freedom.
 
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Perhaps, however, in no position in life will a vain, morally weak man display to better advantage the defects in his character than in his attempts to legislate for women; and under no circumstances will his true inwardness of purpose stand more truly revealed than in his efforts to “regulate” the relations of the sexes. A brief notice of Solon’s laws concerning women proves him to have been no exception to the generally observed rule. It is recorded of him that in his extreme solicitude lest their movements should not comport with his ideas of female propriety and decorum, he regulated their journeyings, and laid down rules respecting their mournings, sacrifices, and the number of gowns which they were to take with them when they went out of town. The provision for their journey and even the size of the basket in which it was to be conveyed were subjects not unworthy the attention of the great Athenian lawgiver. Women’s mode of travel by night was also prescribed as was also their conduct at funerals and various places of amusement. In fact all their actions were subjected to that meddlesome espionage and control which characterize a weak and sensuous age. Indeed, we have something more than a hint of the degraded position occupied by women, in the fact that a man might not be allowed to sell a daughter or a sister “unless she were taken in an act of dishonour before marriage,” in which case her accuser might sell her person for individual gain; and this, too, not322withstanding the fact that he, as well as nearly every other man in Athens, was steeped in infamy.
 
The measure adopted by Solon for the regulation of prostitution, and his division of women into classes for the convenience of all conditions of men, indicate clearly the disgrace and shamelessness which characterized the Athenians at this stage of their career, and depict with unerring fidelity the depth of horror into which womanhood had been dragged.
 
The condition of public morals during the three hundred years following the age of Solon is plainly indicated not only in the laws but in the mythologies of Greece and Rome. Prostitution was enjoined by religion and when Draco, suddenly shocked by the degeneracy of his time, affixed the penalty of death to rape, seduction, and adultery, it has been said that by the performance of the prescribed religious rites within the temple, the “rigour of his edicts was considerably softened.”
 
The restraint imposed upon the Athenians by the Draconian regulations was, however, of short duration; for when Solon, the successor of Draco, assumed the position of archon, he at once legally established a sufficient number of houses of prostitution at Athens to supply the demand, filling them with female slaves who had been taken captives in war, or who had been otherwise provided by the munificence of the government.
 
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But you did well for every man, O Solon;
For they do say you were the first to see
The justice of a public-spirited measure,
The Saviour of the State.229
By this time, so degraded had womanhood become, that the traffic in female captives for sexual purposes was regarded as a legitimate business, and the revenue accruing from their services was considered a lawful source of gain to the state, its use being devoted to the rearing of temples and to the carrying out of the various projects connected with religious worship.
 
That the Athenians of this period were wholly given over to luxury and licentiousness is shown by the fact that at their bacchanalian feasts, the troops of women who were in attendance and who had been provided for the occasion by the generosity of the state, performed all their duties under direct and explicit instruction of the government “to disobey no order of a guest”; for which wise regulations Solon received the praise and commendation of Athenian men.
 
In a former portion of this work the fact has been noted that until well into the Latter Status of barbarism all women were protected; that among the Kaffirs, the Fiji Islanders, and various other peoples occupying a lower stage in the order of growth, women, although divested of their former influence, are still jealously guarded by324 the gens to which they belong; and that when maidens are bereft of home and near relatives, they are adopted into some other gens within the tribe where they are invested with the same rights as are its own members. Therefore when contemplating the social condition of the Athenians five or six hundred years B.C., we are naturally led to inquire: What were the causes which during one ethnical period had produced so marked a change in the position of the female sex? For an answer to our question we must recall the facts set forth in this volume relative to the capture of wives, together with the feeling of hatred entertained by early society for alien women.
 
In the time of Pericles, an age when Athens was at the height of its prosperity, the women of the city were divided into five classes as regarded their duties and uses. The first of these consisted of wives, who, for the most part, were kept in seclusion and allowed to exist solely for the purpose of propagating Greek citizens. These women were without influence, possessing no rights or privileges beyond the will of their “lords”; while to such an extent were they considered merely in the light of household furniture that they were not permitted to appear in public, nor to sit at table with their masters.
 
The following dialogue between Socrates and Ischomachus, a man who had managed his household in such a manner as to be “pointed out as a model for all Athens,” perhaps serves as a correct325 picture of the relations existing between husband and wife in the Periclean age. “I should like to know this particular from you,” said Socrates, “whether you yourself educated your wife so as to make her what she ought to be, or whether you received her from her parents with a knowledge of her duties?”—“And how could I have received her so educated, Socrates, when she came to me not fifteen years old, and had lived up to that time under the strictest surveillance that she might see as little as possible, and hear as little as possible, and inquire as little as possible?”
 
Of the five classes to which reference has been made, wives only were native-born, and as this particular class had specific duties to perform, severe penalties were attached to the crimes of seduction and rape when committed upon Athenian women. The remaining four classes were arranged according to the dignity of their associates, the highest in rank and repute being the hetairai, the members of which comprised the only free women in Athens. Themselves philosophers and stateswomen, their associates among males were of the same rank or station. They constituted a highly intellectual class, and as such were able to control not only their own movements, but to exercise a remarkable influence upon literature, art, and the affairs of state. Because of the important position occupied by these women, they will be referred to later in this work.
 
The next in rank were the auletrides, or flute326-players. Many of the most fashionable of these were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators. We are informed that female musicians were a usual accompaniment to an Athenian banquet, and that flute-playing became an essential feature in the worship of several of their deities; hence, the services of this particular class were in demand, not only to heighten the enjoyment of social intercourse, but to stimulate and encourage religious enthusiasm. At public gatherings, after the dinner was over, and while the wine was flowing freely, these women made their appearance in a semi-nude condition, dancing and keeping time to the music by the graceful motion of their beautifully moulded figures. While the enthusiasm was at its height they were sold to the highest bidder. Fist fights, or hand-to-hand encounters for the possession of these female flute-players, were not uncommon occurrences in the best society in Athens.230
 
These scenes were performed under the sanction of religion and law; they therefore serve to reveal the true inwardness of the Greek character at this stage of development. It is reported that the finest houses in Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek auletrides. Of all the flute-players of Greece, Lamia is said to have been the most successful. For fifteen or twenty years she was the delight of the entire city of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy. Finally, when the327 city was taken by Demetrius of Macedon, Lamia was taken also. When she demanded that an immense tax be levied on the city of Athens for her benefit, it is recorded that although the people murmured at the amount, they nevertheless found it to their interest to deify her and erect a temple in her honour. According to the testimony of Plutarch, Lamia raised money on her own authority to provide an entertainment for the king.231
 
The fourth class consisted of concubines, or purchased slaves who were in the service of Athenian gentlemen (?). This appendage to the Greek family was a member of the household of her master where she was kept with the full knowledge of the wife, the latter occupying a position little if any superior to that of her rival. Indeed, as the purchased slave could be disposed of whenever the fancy or caprice of her master so dictated, and another installed in her place, it is reasonable to suppose that so long as she did remain, she was the object of quite as much attention as was the wife.
 
The lowest class, or those who were allowed the least freedom of action, were those known as the dicteriades. They were compelled to reside at a designated place, and were forbidden to be seen upon the streets by day. Nothing of a personal nature was allowed to interfere with the duties which were imposed upon them by their imperious masters. Their only duty was to obey.
 
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By this time we are prepared to appreciate, to a certain extent, the moral aspect of Greek society during the years intervening between the age of Solon and that of Pericles, a period of about a century and a half. That all women, wives and concubines, native-born and foreign, had been dragged to the lowest depths of disgrace and shame and that they were classified and arranged to meet the demands of those who through the unchecked tendencies inherent in the male nature had reached the lowest level of infamy to which it is possible for living creatures to descend, are facts which are only too plainly shown by those whose duty it has been to record the events connected with the history of the Greeks.
 
Although under Draco, the predecessor of Solon, the political degradation of the citizens of Greece may be said to have reached its height, and although the uprising of the masses against the usurpation of power by the few marks an era in the history of the Greeks, it was not until the dawn of the Periclean age that women had gained sufficient freedom to enable them to exercise any direct influence on thought, or on the principles underlying human conduct.
 
We must bear in mind the fact that for five or six centuries the inferiority of women had been systematically and religiously taught. Ever since the rule of Cecrops, at which time doubtless the manner of reckoning descent began to be changed from the female to the male line, woman’s influ329ence in Athens had gradually declined. The religio-physiological doctrine that in the office of reproduction the mother plays only an insignificant part had not only been proclaimed by Apollo but had been sanctioned also by Athene. It is recorded of Cecrops that “he instituted marriage and established a new religion.”
 
Just here may be observed the key to the gradually declining position of the female element in the deity, and to the finally accepted dogma that the female is inferior to the male. Through the private ownership of land and the consequent dependency of women upon men, the way had been paved for this assumption—an assumption which had the effect to create in Ionian men the supreme and lofty contempt for women which is observed throughout their literature and laws. From the age of Solon to that of Pericles, the overwhelming degree of superiority assumed by Athenian men over women had uprooted in the former every vestige of restraint, at the same time that it had deprived them of the last trace of that respect for womanhood which under earlier and more natural conditions had been entertained.
 
It has been frequently remarked that women took little or no part in the intellectual development of Greece; that during the most rapid progress of Greek men, there was no corresponding improvement in the position occupied by Greek women.
 
From what is recorded relative to Athenian330 women from the time of Cecrops to that of Solon, one would scarcely expect to find them competing with men for the prizes of life. Later, however, that a considerable number of them did assert their independence, and that, defying the customs and traditions by which they were bound, did prove themselves the equals of men, may not be doubted.
 
There probably has never been a time since the dominion of man began when the more sensitive and better endowed among women have not secretly rebelled against the tyranny exercised over them, and, throughout the ages, whenever an opportunity has been offered, large numbers of these women, have never failed to make known their discontent. Greek women were no exception to this rule. Their first step toward liberty was to free themselves from the galling chain imposed upon them by marriage, a position in which, as has been shown, wives were simply household slaves, tools of their imperious and degenerate masters. Greek women, in the Periclean age, simply assumed the control of their persons and by so doing provoked the maledictions of future ages, ages in which sensualism still reigned supreme.
 
For reasons which have already been explained, the foremost women in Greece, and in fact all women who during the Periclean age were engaged in art, literature, philosophy, and statesmanship, belonged to the class known as the hetairai, a term331 which, through the excessive growth or sensuality and superstition, subsequently became a term of reproach. Whatever may have been the importance of the services rendered by these women to society, such services would have been ignored, or, if not altogether ignored, would have been reflected upon, or appropriated by, the opposite sex.
 
To say that the hetairai were free is equal to saying that they have been misunderstood, hence the calumnies which for more than two thousand years have been heaped upon them. That the hetairai of Greece in the Periclean age included a class of women who were the intellectual compeers of the ablest statesmen and philosophers is a fact which may not by those who have paid close attention to this subject be denied. That they taught rhetoric and elocution, that they lectured publicly and established schools of philosophy at the same time that they wielded a powerful influence on the state and on the drift of current thought are facts which medi?val scholasticism has not been able to conceal.
 
I think one may not investigate the various schools of philosophy which arose during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., without noting the peculiarly altruistic principles involved in them, and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that, hitherto, extreme selfishness or egoism had constituted the prevailing character observed in Athenian society.
 
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According to the principles of the Cyrenaics, the virtuous man is not necessarily he who is in the possession of ple............