Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry A fragment printed for the use of scholars — Story, Setting & Ideas

achus to unite the two streams of thought in one, and to show that woman, with her newly-awakened capabilities, was a worthy object of pure and chivalrous devotion.

The works of Antimachus are lost, and none of the few fragments which survive are of any importance. All discussion with reference to them must therefore be based on suppositions and an examination of relative probabilities. The risks of error in entering on such doubtful ground are manifestly infinite, and conclusions can be reached only through the accumulation of a mass of evidence, the separate particles of which are often in themselves of very little weight; the veil of darkness covering all such Greek literature as does not bear the hall-mark of Athens is so thick that it is perhaps no longer possible for the real truth about it ever to be known. _Ceterum, fiat justitia._ It is a bold claim, I know, that I am making for Antimachus; it is a claim which, if established, would give him right to rank among the greatest poets of the world: it would give him right to rank as the founder of modern literature. How great a poet he really was we do not know. Perhaps my estimation of his importance is altogether exaggerated. His contemporaries, we know, preferred Choerilus; perhaps they were right; for myself, _Malo cum Platone errare_.

It is generally agreed that in prehistoric times the position of women among the Greeks was a much higher one than was the case subsequently. There seems every reason to believe that the social conditions of the Lesbians and the Dorians and the other nations which did not come under the influence of the history-writing Ionians, were but the survivals of what was originally a more or less general state. It is of considerable assistance for a proper comprehension of the earliest literature, if one remembers that at the time of its production the enslavement of women had only comparatively recently taken place.

The reason of the influence of primitive woman over primitive man is probably not very far to seek. In early times women were regarded with superstitious reverence[3]—one need only watch a woman making lace, say, to be able nowadays still to quite appreciate the feeling—and with natural woman’s wit for a time kept up the illusion, the hard head of man taking some time to come to maturity. But when man did at last wake to the fact that he was physically, and therefore, for practical purposes, generally superior, an inevitable reaction set in, and the history of early Greece shows women as occupying on the whole a very low position—a position, too, which became lower still with advancing civilisation.[4]

That the original state of women was not one of slavery is clearly shown by the early epics. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are pictures of an earlier state of society than that of the poet who describes them. A man living in a society in which women were despised, had to deal with legends belonging to an earlier social condition, in which women played a prominent part. Traces of this anomaly are easy to find in both poems. The Trojan war was the work of a woman, but how very little that woman appears in the _Iliad_! A woman has been managing the affairs of Odysseus for twenty years in an exemplary fashion; but the hero of the _Odyssey_ on his return prefers to associate with the swineherd. It is by this contradiction between the actual experiences of the poet and the social conditions which he was called upon to depict, that the many inconsistencies in the treatment of the Epic woman must be explained.

Another excellent illustration of this conflict between the primitive and the subsequent views of the nature and importance of women is furnished by the elaborate treatment of the Pandora legend in the _Opera et Dies_ of Hesiod. On the one hand is the early conviction of the power of women’s influence—it is only by the help of a woman that Zeus can outwit man: on the other the later conviction that this influence must be for evil—before Pandora came

ζώεσκεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ’ ἀνθρώπων νόσφιν ἄτερ τε κακῶν καὶ ἄτερ χαλεποῖο πόνοιο. (l. 90)

And a like contradiction runs through all the details of the description. Woman will be man’s ruin, but he cannot fail to love her all the same—

τοῖς δ’ἐγὼ ἀντὶ πυρὸς δώσω κακὸν ᾧ κεν ἅπαντες τέρπωνται κατὰ θυμὸν ἑὸν κακὸν ἀμφαγαπῶντες. (l. 57)

Woman will gain man’s heart by her beauty, which is like that of the immortals—

ἀθανάταις δὲ θεαῖς εἰς ὦπα ἐΐσκειν παρθενικῆς καλὸν εἶδος ἐπήρατον (l. 62),

by her skill and by her charm; it is but as an afterthought that the poet adds—

ἐν δὲ θέμεν κύνεόν τε νόον καὶ ἐπίκλοπον ἦθος Ἑρμείαν ἤνωγε διάκτορον ἀργειφόντην. (l. 67)