The life of married women, maidens, children while in the care of women, and of female slaves, passed in the gynaikonitis, from which they issued only on rare occasions. The family life of Greek women widely differed from our Christian idea; neither did it resemble the life in an Oriental harem, to which it was far superior. The idea of the family was held up by both law and custom, and although concubinage and the intercourse with hetairai was suffered, nay favored, by the state, still such impure elements never intruded on domestic relations.
Our following remarks refer, of course, only to the better classes, the struggle for existence by the poor being nearly the same in all ages. In the seclusion of the gynaikonitis the maiden grew up in comparative ignorance. The care bestowed on domestic duties and on her dress was the only interest of her monotonous existence. Intellectual intercourse with the other sex was wanting entirely. Even where maidens appeared in public at religious ceremonies, they acted separately from the youths. An intercourse of this kind, at any rate, could not have a lasting influence on their culture. Even marriage did not change this state of things. The maiden only passed from the gynaikonitis of her father into that of her husband. In the latter, however, she was the absolute ruler. She did not share the intellectual life of her husband--one of the fundamental conditions of our family life. It is true that the husband watched over her honor with jealousy, assisted by the gynaikonomoi, sometimes even by means of lock and key. It is also true that common custom protected a well-behaved woman against offence; still her position was only that of the mother of the family. Indeed, her duties and achievements were hardly considered by the husband, in a much higher light than those of a faithful domestic slave.
In prehistoric times the position of women seems to have been, upon the whole, a more dignified one. Still, even then, their duties were essentially limited to the house, as is proved, for instance, by the words in which Telemachus bids his mother mind her spindle and loom, instead of interfering with the debates of men. As the state became more developed, it took up the whole attention of the man, and still more separated him from his wife. Happy marriages, of course, were by no means impossible; still, as a rule, the opinion prevailed of the woman being by nature inferior to the man, and holding a position of a minor with regard to civic rights. This principle has, indeed, been repeatedly pronounced by ancient philosophers and lawgivers. Our remarks hitherto referred chiefly to the Ionic-Attic tribe, renowned for the modesty of its women and maidens. The Doric principle, expressed in the constitution of Sparta, gave, on the contrary, full liberty to maidens to show themselves in public, and to steel their strength by bodily exercise. This liberty, however, was not the result of a philosophic idea of the equality of the two sexes, but was founded on the desire of producing strong children by means of strengthening the body of the female.
