The Hetairai were foreign women, and stood outside the law: they were not Athenian citizens, and so had no privileges; but, on the other hand, they were not under restraint. Often highly educated, it was their business to take part in all men’s interests: they were their own mistresses, engaged freely in the political life of Athens, and in many cases exercised very great influence even in affairs of state. To their personal attractions they added social charm and a long training in the arts of pleasure, and the contrast between them and the Athenian wives may be illustrated if we compare the life of an actress of the _Comédie Française_ with that of an inmate of a Turkish harem. The French actress and the Japanese geisha are the nearest modern parallels to the Greek hetaira, and all three owe their existence as a class to much the same social conditions, a high standard of culture and intelligence, a low standard of sexual morality.
Such were the conditions of Athenian life, and we shall find them reflected in literature. The great lyric poets, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides, concern themselves almost exclusively with men; Æschylus alone, in this, as in most things, the exact antithesis of the typical Athenian, regards women as creatures possessed of mind and soul. In sharp contrast to the tragedian is Herodotus, and a comparison between their views is possible, for, although the historian is a considerably younger man, a good deal of his material goes back to an earlier date, and in social matters especially he often represents the ideas of the first years of the fifth century.
Herodotus, great traveller and charming personality though he is, is still a true Ionian. There is frequently a Milesian flavour about his tales—for instance the story of Rhampsinitus and the robber—and it is not unfair to say that in his researches into ancient tribal life and folklore he is especially interested in such savage customs as put women in an inferior place. The account of the native races of Libya in the last chapters of the fourth book of the History will afford an example.
But the grandeur of his main theme, the struggle between Athens and Persia, raised the historian from these doubtful interests, and in the last five books of his work there is little depreciation of women as a class. It is true that women scarcely come into the narrative, and that Xerxes’ remark about Artemisia, ‘My men have become women and my women have become men,’ is framed to suit the ideas of an Athenian, as it would have suited the Romans, who could hardly conceive of a Queen. It is scarcely as appropriate in the mouth of a Persian whose own mother, Atossa, was then acting as regent. But this is a small point and, speaking generally, there is little in the last part of the History to offend.