From that stage in the history of Greek tribes, at which through capture and appropriation of the soil by individuals women began to lose that influence which they had exercised under matriarchal usages, to the time of Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, when they had finally descended to the lowest level of misery and sexual degradation, may be observed a corresponding tendency gradually developing itself among the people towards selfishness, usurpation of power, and the slavery of the masses. In the age of Solon the limit of human wretchedness seems to have been reached, and as the human race is never at a standstill, it must at this time have either become extinct, or have begun gradually to lift itself from the condition of disgrace and ruin into which it had fallen.
The character of Solon, as gathered from the facts at hand regarding him, reflects in a measure the true condition of society at that time. Although vain and morally weak, he was in a certain sense humane; his humanity, however, extended only to those of his own sex. A large proportion of the women of Athens were imported foreigners, and were therefore so degraded that they had no rights which any one, even a lawgiver, was bound to protect. After his appointment to the archonship, Solon’s first act was to cancel the debts against the lands and persons of the Athenians, and to establish a law that in future no man should accept the body of his debtor for security.[228] Many who had been previously banished or driven out of the country for debt, and had remained so long from their native land as to forget their Attic dialect, were recalled as freemen, while others, who at home had suffered slavery, were released and given their freedom.
Perhaps, however, in no position in life will a vain, morally weak man display to better advantage the defects in his character than in his attempts to legislate for women; and under no circumstances will his true inwardness of purpose stand more truly revealed than in his efforts to “regulate” the relations of the sexes. A brief notice of Solon’s laws concerning women proves him to have been no exception to the generally observed rule. It is recorded of him that in his extreme solicitude lest their movements should not comport with his ideas of female propriety and decorum, he regulated their journeyings, and laid down rules respecting their mournings, sacrifices, and the number of gowns which they were to take with them when they went out of town. The provision for their journey and even the size of the basket in which it was to be conveyed were subjects not unworthy the attention of the great Athenian lawgiver. Women’s mode of travel by night was also prescribed as was also their conduct at funerals and various places of amusement. In fact all their actions were subjected to that meddlesome espionage and control which characterize a weak and sensuous age. Indeed, we have something more than a hint of the degraded position occupied by women, in the fact that a man might not be allowed to sell a daughter or a sister “unless she were taken in an act of dishonour before marriage,” in which case her accuser might sell her person for individual gain; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that he, as well as nearly every other man in Athens, was steeped in infamy.