Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-04-02
GREECE EXPANSION
UNDER QUEER BAN
Unity Prohibited by Localized
Patriotism and City,
State Pride.
BY RALPH v. d. MAGOFFIN.
PHI. d.. LII. ID.

Professor and Head, Department Of Classics,
New York University.
Imagine, If you will, hundred or
more towns with from 1000 to 10000
population each, the majority being the
conquered ancient inhabitants with a
glorious past, with fine traditions of
the social rights and privileges of wom-
en-, the minority being the recent con-
querors who held their women as only
the best and most productive of their
chattels. Imagine also that many of
the older inhabitants worshiped a
goddess as their chief deity, and the
newcomers god.
One party from lack of strength, the
other from lack Of numbers, realizing
that amalgamation was the only means
of self preservation, intermarried both
their deities and themselves. Now
imagine farther all these hundred or
more towns situated from 8 to 10
miles apart, all enemies, each one fight
ing for its individual life, the citizens
of each one losing every right OF citi-
zenship in every other, and you have
the beginning of an understanding why
there developed in Greece such a mar
row city-state patriotism, and why ma
tionality, although approached at the
time of the Persian wars, was never
understood or became of first impor-
lance.
Boys Arrival Celebrated.
When a boy was born laurel wreath
was hung upon the door, the city-state
and therefore the family was lucky be-
cause in due time he would grow to be
fighter; when a girl was born tuft
of wool was put upon the door; it was
unlucky. The little grill grew up with
her brothers under their mothers care,
but she saw her brothers go into the
service of the state at Z years OF age.
A boy went to school and got the
! small learnings of the time; his plays
were martial exercises, his sports were
to lure him to the hardShips OF war
A girl stayed at home, she carried
water from the spring or fountain, she
played with her dolls, she sang an 1,
danced, she played lacks" with
knucklebones. she helped her mother
at the loom, and learned to make linen
and wooden cloth.
The little girl learned from heI
mother and nurse the fireside tales OF
family history and the religious reasons
why the family had to be preserved, but
she never learned to think. She knew
! that at Is or 16 she would be married 70
some man If % or 80, whom she had
probably never seen, and that she would
do about as she had seen her own
mother do. That was one OF the things
| that made the lot of the Greek woman
such sad one. She had to assume the
responsibilities of family and therefore
city-state duties too early. She was
never long enough a girl, and, to para
phrase, "it is a great thing to have been
a girl, no real woman ever gets entirely
over it."
Goodby to Childhood.
Let us read the translation Of an an
l'cirfet epigram from the Greek Anthol-
ogy entitled goodby to childhood: Her
tambourines and pretty ball, and the
net that confined her hair, and her dolls
and dolls dresses, Timareta dedicateS
before her marriage to Artemis the god
dess-a maiden to a maiden, as is mt;
do thou, daughter Of Leto, laying thine
hand over the girl Timareta, preserve
her purely in her purity"
Grecian Home Was Clustered.
Hitherto, the Greek girl had seen the
city streets but seldom, several times a
year only when she, with the other girls,
marched in some procession to dedicate
a gift at the altar of some goddess.
Hereafter, as a married woman, custom
kept her only little less bound to the
house in which she was mistress. The
common phrase was Better for a
woman to be in the house than out. and
better for man to be out of the house
than in" Such was custom, that con-
sentative code of action that lags usually
too far behind the times.
We can appreciate the shock that
Herodotus, the Greek traveller and his
torian, felt when in Egypt he saw
women shopping and men weaving: He
thought the world was upside down.
There is everything in the point OF
view, as the Persian King showed the
Greeks, when. he confronted them with
people from his dominions, some OF
whom thought it sacrilegious to bury
the dead, others to burn them. while
still others thought it terrible to do
either, for their custom was to eat them.