3. Sexes

Achaean society is a patriarchal despotism tempered with the beauty and anger of woman, and the fierce tenderness of parental love.* Theoretically the father is supreme: he may take as many concubines as he likes,† he may offer them to his guests, he may expose his children on the mountaintops to die, or slaughter them on the altars of the thirsty gods. Such paternal omnipotence does not necessarily imply a brutal society, but only one in which the organization of the state has not yet gone far enough to preserve social order; and in which the family, to create such order, needs the powers that will later be appropriated by the state in a nationalization of the right to kill. As social organization advances, paternal authority and family unity decrease, freedom and individualism grow. In practice the Achaean male is usually reasonable, listens patiently to domestic eloquence, and is devoted to his children.

Within the patriarchal framework the position of woman is far higher in Homeric than it will be in Periclean Greece. In the legends and the epics she plays a leading role, from Pelops’ courtship of Hippodameia to Iphigenia’s gentleness and Electra’s hate. The gynaeceum does not confine her, nor does the home; she moves freely among men and women alike, and occasionally shares in the serious discourse of the men, as Helen does with Menelaus and Telemachus. When the Achaean leaders wish to fire the imagination of their people against Troy they appeal not to political or racial or religious ideas, but to the sentiment for woman’s beauty; the loveliness of Helen must put a pretty face upon a war for land and trade. Without woman the Homeric hero would be a clumsy boor, with nothing to live for or die for; she teaches him something of courtesy, idealism, and softer ways.

Marriage is by purchase, usually in oxen or their equivalent, paid by the suitor to the father of the girl; the poet speaks of “cattle-bringing maidens.”⁵⁶ The purchase is reciprocal, for the father usually gives the bride a substantial dowry. The ceremony is familial and religious, with much eating, dancing, and loose-tongued merriment. “Beneath a blaze of torches they led the brides from their chambers through the city, and loud rose the bridal song. The young men whirled in the dance, and high among them did sound the flute and the lyre”;⁵⁷ so changeless are the essentials of our life. Once married, the woman becomes mistress in her home, and is honored in proportion to her children. Love in the truest sense, as a profound mutual tenderness and solicitude, comes to the Greeks, as to the French, after marriage rather than before; it is not the spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two bodies, but the fruit of long association in the cares and industries of the home. The Homeric wife is as faithful as her husband is not. There are three adulteresses in Homer—Clytaemnestra, Helen, and Aphrodite; but they do injustice to the mortal average, if not to the divine.

Formed out of this background, the Homeric family (barring the enormities of legends that play no part in Homer) is a wholesome and pleasing institution, rich in fine women and loyal children. The women function not only as mothers but as workers; they grind the grain, card the wool, spin, weave, and embroider; they do little sewing, since garments are mostly without seams; and cooking is normally left to men. Amid these labors they bear and rear children, heal their hurts, pacify their quarrels, and teach them the manners, morals, and traditions of the tribe. There is no formal education, apparently no teaching of letters, no spelling, no grammar, no books; it is a boy’s utopia. The girl is taught the arts of the home, the boy those of the chase and war; he learns to fish and swim, to till the fields, set snares, handle animals, aim the arrow and the lance, and take care of himself in all the emergencies of a half-lawless life. When the oldest boy grows up to manhood he becomes, in the absence of his father, the responsible head of the family. When he marries he brings his bride to his father’s home, and the rhythm of the generations is renewed. The individual members of the family change with time, but the family is the lasting unit, surviving perhaps for centuries, and forging in the turbulent crucible of the home the order and character without which all government is in vain.