A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Vashti
VASHTI,
The beautiful wife of Ahasuerus, (or Artaxerxes,) King of Persia, gained her celebrity by disobeying her husband. Ahasuerus, who was then the most powerful monarch of the world, reign over a kingdom stretching from "India to Ethiopia," gave a great feast to the governors of his provinces, his courtiers, and the people who were at his palace of Shushan. This fast lasted seven days, and every man drank wine "according to his pleasure which means that they were very gay, at least. Queen Vashti also gave a feast, at the same time, to the women of her household. On the seventh day, "when the king's heart was merry with wine," he commanded Vashti to be brought before him with the crown-royal on her head, "to show the people and the princes her beauty."
She refused to come. The sacred historian does not inform us why she refused; the presumption is, that the thing was unprecedented, and she considered it, as it was, an outrage on her modesty to show her face to these drunken men. Her courage most have been great as her beauty, thus to have braved the displeasure of her royal and drunken husband.
In his wrath the king instantly referred the matter to his "wise men," who "knew law and judgment;" for since the days of Cyrus the Great, the kingdom of Persia had been, ostensibly, government by established laws. But it appears there was no law which reached Vashti's case; so the king was advised to repudiate his wife by royal decree, unjust because retrospective, and issued expressly for her conjugal disobedience. The speech of Memucar, who delivered the opinion of the council, is curious, as showing the reasons which have, usually, (in all countries more or less,) influenced men in making laws for the government of women, namely—what man requires of the sex for his own pleasure and convenience, not that which would be just towards woman, and righteous in the sight of God. See chap. i. of the Book of Esther. What became of Vashti after she was repudiated is not known. These events occurred B.C. 519.