Erinnyes The prophet bade thee be a matricide?
Orestes And to this hour I am well content withal.
Erinnyes Thoul't change that tune, when judgment seizes thee.
Orestes My father from his tomb will take my part; I fear not.
Erinnyes Ay, rely on dead men's aid,
When guilty of matricide!
Orestes She, that is slain,
Was doubly tainted.
Erinnyes How? Inform the court.
Orestes She slew her wedded lord, and slew my sire.
Erinnyes Death gave her quittance, then. But thou yet livest.
Orestes And while she lived, why did you not pursue her?
Erinnyes No tie of blood bound her to whom she slew.
Orestes But I was tied by blood-affinity
To her who bare me?
Erinnyes Else, thou accursed one,
How nourished she thy life within her womb?
Wouldst thou renounce the holiest bond of all?
The Erinnyes, it will be noticed, recognize no rights on the part of the father and the husband; to them there exists only the right of the mother. That Clytemnestra slew her husband is indifferent to them; on the other hand, they demand punishment for the matricide, committed by Orestes: in killing his mother he had committed the worst crime imaginable under the old gentile order. Apollo, on the contrary, stands on the opposite principle. Commissioned by Zeus to avenge the murder of his father, he had led Orestes to the murder of his own mother. Apollo now defends Orestes' action before the judges, saying:
That scruple likewise I can satisfy.
She who is called the mother of the child
Is not its parent, but the nurse of seed
Implanted in begetting. He that sows
Is author of the shoot, which she, if Heaven
Prevent not, keeps as in a garden-ground.
In proof whereof, to show that fatherhood
May be without the mother, I appeal
To Pallas, daughter of Olympian Zeus,
In present witness here. Behold a plant,
Not moulded in the darkness of the womb,
Yet nobler than all scions of Heaven's stock.
According to Apollo, the act of begetting confers the superior right; whereas, according to the views in force until then, the mother, who gives to the child her blood and its life, was esteemed the sole possessor of the child, while the man, the father of her child, was regarded a stranger. Hence the Erinnyes reply to the strange notions of Apollo:
Thou didst lead astray
Those primal goddesses with draughts of wine,
O'erturning ordinance.
Young, thou wouldst override our ancient right.
The judges, thereupon, make ready for the sentence. One half stand by the old, one half by the new right; a tie is threatened; thereupon Athene seizes the ballot from the altar and dropping it in the urn, says:
To me it falls to give my judgment last.
Here openly I give it for Orestes.
No mother bore me. To the masculine side
For all save marriage my whole heart is given,
In all and everything the father's child.
So little care I for a woman's death,
That slew her lord, the guardian of her home.
Now though the votes be even, Orestes wins.
The new right won. Marriage with the father as head, had overpowered the gyneocracy.
Another legend represents the downfall of the mother-right in Athens this way: "Under the reign of Kekrops, a double miracle happened. There broke forth simultaneously out of the earth an oil-tree, and at another place water. The frightened king sent to Delphi to interrogate the Oracle upon the meaning of these happenings. The answer was: 'The oil-tree stands for Minerva, the water for Neptune; it is now with the citizens after which of the two deities they wish to name their city.' Kekrops called together the assembly of the people in which men and women enjoyed the right of suffrage. The men voted for Neptune, the women for Minerva; and as the women had a majority of one, Minerva won. Thereupon Neptune was angered and he caused the sea to wash over the territory of the Athenians. In order to soothe the wrath of the god, the Athenians placed a threefold punishment upon their women: they were to forfeit the suffrage, children were no longer to carry their mother's name, and they themselves were no longer to be called Athenian women."9
As in Athens, the transition from the mother to the father-right was everywhere achieved so soon as a certain height was reached in social development. Woman is crowded into the house; she is isolated; she is assigned special quarters the gynekonitis , in which she lives; she is even excluded from intercourse with the male visitors of the house. That, in fact, was the principal object of her isolation.
This change finds its expression as early as the Odyssey. Telemachus forbids Penelope's, his mother's, presence among the suitors. He, the son, orders his mother:
But come now, go to thy bower, and deal with such things as ye can;
With the sock and the loom be busy, and thine handmaids order and teach,
That they speed the work and the wearing; but for men is the word and the speech;
For all, but for me the chiefest, for here am I the might and the power.
Such was the doctrine already common in Greece at that time. It went even further. Woman, even if a widow, stands so completely under the rule of the nearest male relative, that she no longer has even the choice of a husband. The suitors, tired of long waiting, due to the cunning of Penelope, address themselves to Telemachus through the mouth of Antinous, saying:
But for thee, do we the suitors this answer to thee show,
That thou in thy soul may'st know it, and that all the folk may know,
Send thou thy mother away, and bid her a wedding to gain
With whomso her father willeth, of whomso her heart may be fain.
It is at an end with the freedom of woman. If she leaves the house, she must veil herself not to awaken the desires of another man. In the Orient, where, due to the warm climate, sexual passion is strongest, this method of seclusion is carried even to-day to extreme lengths. Athens becomes in this a pattern for the ancient nations. Woman shares, indeed, her husband's bed, but not his table; she does not address him by name, but "Sir;" she is his maid-servant; she was allowed to appear nowhere openly; on the street she was ever veiled and clad with greatest simplicity. If she committed adultery, she paid for the trespass, according to the laws of Solon, with her life, or with her freedom. The husband could sell her for a slave.
The position of the Greek woman at the time when Greece was rushing to the zenith of her development comes into plastic expression in the "Medea" of Euripedes. She complains:
Ay, of all living and of all reasoning things
Are women the most miserable race:
Who first needs buy a husband at great price,
To take him then for owner of our lives:
For this ill is more keen than common ills.
And of essays most perilous is this,
Whether one good or evil do we take.
For evil-famed to women is divorce,
Nor can one spurn a husband. She, so brought
Beneath new rule and wont, had surely need
To be a prophetess, unless at home
She learned the likeliest prospect with her spouse.
And if, we having aptly searched out this,
A husband house with us not savagely
Drawing in the yoke, ours is an envied life;
But if not, most to be desired is death.
And if a man grow sick to herd indoors,
He, going forth, stays his heart's weariness,
Turning him to some friend or natural peer;
But we perforce to one sole being look.
But, say they, we, while they fight with the spear,
Lead in our homes a life undangerous:
Judging amiss; for I would liefer thrice
Bear brunt of arms than once bring forth a child.
Wholly otherwise stood matters for the men. Although with an eye to the begetting of legitimate heirs for his property, he imposed upon woman strict abstinence from other men, he was, nevertheless, not inclined to lay a corresponding abstinence upon himself.