BRAVERY OF WOMEN
Regarding the virtues of women, Clea, I do not hold
the same opinion as Thucydides.
1 For he declares
that the best woman is she about whom there is the
least talk among persons outside regarding either
censure or commendation, feeling that the name of
the good woman, like her person, ought to be shut up
indoors and never go out.
2 But to my mind Gorgias
appears to display better taste in advising that not
the form but the fame of a woman should be known to
many. Best of all seems the Roman custom,
3 which
publicly renders to women, as to men, a fitting commemoration after the end of their life. So when
Leontis, that most excellent woman, died, I forthwith
had then a long conversation with you, which was not
without some share of consolation drawn from
philosophy, and now, as you desired, I have also
written out for you the remainder of what I would
have said on the topic that man's virtues and woman's
virtues are one and the same. This includes a good
deal of historical exposition, and it is not composed
to give pleasure in its perusal. Yet, if in a convincing
argument delectation is to be found also by reason of
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the very nature of the illustration, then the discussion
is not devoid of an agreeableness which helps in the
exposition, nor does it hesitate
To join
The Graces with the Muses,
A consorting most fair,
as Euripides says,
4 and to pin its faith mostly to the
love of beauty inherent to the soul.
If, conceivably, we asserted that painting on the
part of men and women is the same, and exhibited
paintings, done by women, of the sort that Apelles,
or Zeuxis, or Nicomachus has left to us, would anybody reprehend us on the ground that we were aiming
at giving gratification and allurement rather than at
persuasion ? I do not think so.
Or again, if we should declare that the poetic or
the prophetic art is not one art when practised by
men and another when practised by women, but the
same, and if we should put the poems of Sappho side
by side with those of Anacreon, or the oracles of the
Sibyl with those of Bacis, will anybody have the power
justly to impugn the demonstration because these
lead on the hearer, joyous and delighted,
5 to have
belief in it ? No, you could not say that either ?
And actually it is not possible to learn better the
similarity and the difference between the virtues of
men and of women from any other source than by
putting lives beside lives and actions beside actions,
like great works of art, and considering whether the
magnificence of Semiramis has the same character
and pattern as that of Sesostris, or the intelligence of
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Tanaquil the same as that of Servius the king, or
the high spirit of Porcia the sanie as that of Brutus,
or that of Pelopidas the same as Timocleia's, when
compared with due regard to the most important
points of identity and influence. For the fact is that
the virtues acquire certain other diversities, their own
colouring as it were, due to varying natures, and they
take on the likeness of the customs on which they are
founded, and of the temperament of persons and their
nurture and mode of living.
6 For example, Achilles
was brave in one way and Ajax in another; and the
wisdom of Odysseus was not like that of Nestor, nor
was Cato a just man in exactly the same way as
Agesilaus, nor Eirene fond of her husband in the
manner of Alcestis, nor Cornelia high-minded in the
manner of Olympias. But, with all this, let us not
postulate many different kinds of bravery, wisdom,
and justice - if only the individual dissimilarities
exclude no one of these from receiving its appropriate
rating.
Those incidents which are so often recited,
and those of which I assume that you, having kept
company with books, have assuredly record and
knowledge, I will pass over for the present; but with
this exception : if any tales worthy of perusal have
escaped the attention of those who, before our time,
have recorded the commonly published stories.
Since, however, many deeds worthy of mention have
been done by women both in association with other
women and by themselves alone, it may not be a
bad idea to set down first a brief account of those
commonly known.
