Women’s Suffrage (English) in: Europe – Roman
IX
When the city of the Athenians was founded, and what reason Varro gives for its name.
Now this is the reason Varro gives for the city’s being called Athens, a name that is certainly derived from Minerva, who is called Athena in Greek. When an olive tree had suddenly appeared there, and on another spot water had gushed forth, these portents alarmed the king, and he sent to Delphic Apollo to ask what the meaning of this was and what was to be done. Apollo answered that the olive signified Minerva and the spring Neptune, and that it rested with the citizens to decide from which of the two gods, whose symbols these were, they preferred that the city should take its name. When Cecrops received this oracle he called together all the citizens of both sexes—for at that time it was customary in that area that the women also should have a part in public deliberations—to take a vote. When therefore the multitude was consulted, the men voted for Neptune and the women for Minerva, and because the women were found to be one more, Minerva was victorious.
Then Neptune in his wrath devastated the lands of the Athenians by great floods of sea-water, for it is not difficult for demons to spread abroad any body of water that they choose. To appease his wrath, the same author tells us, the women were subjected by the Athenians to a triple punishment, namely, that they should never vote thereafter, that none of their children should bear their mother’s name and that no one should call them Athenian women. Thus that city, mother or nurse of liberal studies and of so many and such great philosophers, the greatest glory and wonder that Greece could show, by the trickery of demons received its name of Athens from the contest between two of its deities, a male and a female, and from the victory of the female through the women’s male it was compelled to average the victory of the victorious female, being more in awe of the waters of Neptune that of the weapons of Minerva. For in the person of the women who were thus punished Minerva, though victorious, was also defeated. Nor did she defend the women who had voted for her; when they lost the right of suffrage for the future, and their sons were cut off from their mothers’ names, she might at least have seen to it that they had the privilege of being called Athenians and of bearing the name of the goddess, since they had given her the victory over the male god by their votes. What comments, and how lengthy, might be offered on this subject, if only my discourse were not hurrying on to other themes!
(c.e.i) Latin — (c.e.ii) Dyson (1998) — (c.e.iii) Sanford and Green (1965) — (c.e.iv) Dods (1890) — (c.e.v) Wijdeveld (1983) (Dutch) — (c.e.vi) Secondary sources
– Sanford, Eva Matthews and Green, William McAllen, Saint Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans: V, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 391-393.
Flood Stories 