ANTIMACHUS OF COLOPHON
AND THE
POSITION OF WOMEN IN GREEK POETRY

Antimachus of Colophon
AND THE
Position of Women in Greek Poetry

E. F. M. BENECKE

A Fragment
PRINTED FOR THE USE OF SCHOLARS

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim.
1896

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The author of the following pages met with his death in Switzerland on July 16th, 1895, in his twenty-sixth year. Had he lived to complete the whole work of which they form part, he might have recast it throughout; and some apology is, perhaps, needed for its appearance in the present form. Several scholars have, however, expressed their opinion that the material contained in the extant fragments might be useful to those engaged in similar studies, and they are accordingly published, in the hope that this may prove to be the case.

From the author’s papers it appears that his work was, if completed, to have been entitled “Women in Greek Poetry: being an Enquiry into the Origin of the Romantic Element in Literature.” It was to have contained three divisions, dealing respectively with (1) the position occupied by women in the Greek lyric and tragic poets, (2) the part played by women in Greek comedy, (3) the Alexandrian ideal of woman. The former of the two essays contained in this volume (“Women in Greek Poetry”) no doubt includes much that would have been incorporated in the first of these three divisions. At the same time, as it was, in all probability, written before the whole scheme was arranged, and was intended to be complete in itself, it contains allusions to certain subjects which would more naturally have fallen into the third, and would have received fuller treatment there, while several points which belong properly to the first division have not been treated on the scale which would finally have belonged to them. The second essay (“Women in Greek Comedy”) corresponds more nearly in subject to the author’s matured plan, but had still less than the first essay the benefit of his final correction and revision. This much is said, not in order to deprecate criticism (a result which the author would have been the last to desire), but merely in explanation of the occasional repetitions, and possibly also inconsistencies, which are to be found in this volume.

In preparing the work for the Press as few alterations as possible have been introduced, and the essays appear substantially in the form given them by the author. Thus the second essay is divided into nine chief sections, while the first has no such sub-divisions. Again, Excursus F (which was originally written for the first essay) contains much material which is elaborated in the second essay. In several places also, especially towards the close of the volume, reference is made to parts of the work which seem never to have been written. It is believed that the reader will be anxious to possess the author’s own words so far as possible, and, accordingly, the changes which have been adopted are only such as the author would probably have made himself when revising his work.

In references to the Greek lyric poets, the numbers are those of Bergk’s Poetae Lyrici Graeci (4th edition, 1878-82). The fragments of the tragedians are cited from Nauck’s Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (2nd edition, 1889). For the comic fragments the author used Meineke’s Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum (five vols. 1839-57). Meineke’s numbering has been kept in the text, but a list will be found on [page 253], giving the corresponding references to Kock’s Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (three vols. 1880-88) in all cases where the two editions differ seriously. The references to Theocritus, Plautus, and Terence have been verified from the editions of Ziegler, Ritschl, and Dziatzko, respectively; but where the text is doubtful, the author appears to have adopted what seemed to him the most probable reading, without following any editor exclusively.

Additions by the editor of this volume are enclosed in square brackets. He has to acknowledge most gratefully his indebtedness to several friends for advice and assistance on various points.

Women in Greek Poetry

Greek literature may be divided roughly into two parts, the earlier school which culminated at Athens, and the later school which culminated at Alexandria. The obvious differences between these two schools of art have often been described, and there is no need to dwell on them here; but the great, the essential difference between them has been too generally ignored.

The chief inspiring element of all art is love; and it is in their inspiration—that is to say, in their view of love—that the real difference between the two schools consists. The love of the later poetry is the love of man for woman; the love of the earlier poetry is the love of man for man.

By “love” I mean here love in the modern sense. A man of the Alexandrian Age might say “I love you” to a woman, and mean by that what a man may mean if he says as much to-day; before that time a man could only have said “I love you” in this sense to a friend of his own sex. There is no trace in literature of what we now understand by the word “love” earlier than the end of the fourth century.

This phenomenon has been noticed before—indeed, it is one that could not very well escape notice—though its true importance has not always been appreciated; and the general consensus of opinion has agreed to ascribe this great change, the greatest change perhaps that has ever come over art, to the influence of two men, Euripides and Menander. My object in writing now is to endeavour to show, firstly, that this general view is a mistaken one, arising from an insufficient appreciation of the true nature of the change; and secondly, that the real originator of that new feeling which we encounter in Alexandrian literature,—in other words, the first man who had the courage to say that a woman is worth loving,—was Antimachus of Colophon.

The commonly accepted view as to the origin of that “romantic” feeling (for so, for briefness’ sake, it will be convenient to call it)[1] which meets us in Alexandrian literature, would seem to be due to a confusion, arising from a misunderstanding of what that feeling really is. This confusion takes two distinct forms. Thus, in the case of some writers, the improved tone with regard to women which appears in Greek erotic literature from the fourth century onwards, has been confounded with that improvement in their social and intellectual position which was so marked a feature of the latest period of the history of classical Greece. In other words, romantic feelings have been spoken of as if they were identical with feelings of social and intellectual respect. That they are not, scarcely requires even to be stated. Others again, while perceiving the distinction between these two entirely different things, have yet argued as if the one were the natural and inevitable outcome of the other, and inseparably connected therewith; as if, in fact, all that was necessary to purify and elevate the feelings of men towards women had been the social emancipation of the latter. This view is of course possible, and as such is entitled to consideration rather than the previous one; but not only is it improbable in itself, but it is also in direct opposition to the teaching of history: for while no one would deny that this emancipation, if more or less simultaneous with the appearance of the romantic feeling, would serve at once to disseminate and to dignify it, how entirely independent the one is of the other is sufficiently proved by the conditions prevailing in the Middle Ages. It is surely a fact which cannot well be ignored in discussing this question, that just during that period of history when “chivalry” and “romance” were at their height, the social and intellectual position of women, both absolutely and relatively, was perhaps lower than at any time before since the creation of the world.[2]

When once the romantic element is cut clear from all extraneous entanglements, so that it is possible to recognise what it really is, it becomes, I think, immediately evident that neither Euripides nor Menander can have much to do with its origin. The leading motive of romance is the idea that pure love for a woman may justifiably form the chief interest in a man’s life. But this idea, as I hope to be able to show clearly, does not appear in literature until after the time of Euripides, while it is already to be found fully developed before the time of Menander. This being so, it seems impossible to regard either of these writers as the originators of it.

In the course of the following pages, I shall therefore endeavour to show, by a detailed examination of such parts of the contemporary literature as bear upon the subject, that low as was the social position of woman in most parts of Greece during the so-called classical period, the place which she occupied in the minds of men and in their art was even lower, and that her subsequent social emancipation did not by any means immediately lead to her being regarded with any more real respect. In the course of this argument, I purpose to dwell especially on the influence of Euripides, and hope to succeed in making it clear that though he, as judged by his works, was strongly in favour of giving women larger liberties, and firmly convinced that their capacities both for good and evil were far greater than the more old-fashioned among his contemporaries supposed, there is yet nowhere in his plays any real love-element as between man and woman, nor is it anywhere suggested that love for a woman may be a determining factor in a man’s life.

Secondly, I purpose by a similar process to show that that place which in later Greek art and in modern times is occupied by the love of man for woman, was occupied among the earlier Greeks by the love of man for man—a fact which, though it may at first sight appear foreign to the immediate subject of our enquiry, is yet of such extreme importance for a true understanding of the history of the origin of the romantic feeling, that a consideration of it can on no account be omitted from any work professing in any way to deal with that question. For it cannot be too strongly emphasised that those who wish to study the development of love, as we now know it, must commence their studies with an examination of this essentially primitive emotion. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that love, as it now exists, has been evolved, not from the sexual instinct, but from the companionship of the battle-field, that the first real lovers the world ever knew were comrades in arms. The Iliad of Homer is a love story, its heroes Achilles and Patroclus; the Ajax of Sophocles is a love story, its heroes Ajax and Teucer. To ignore such facts as these is wilfully to misunderstand the meaning of Greek poetry and the meaning of Greece in the history of the world.

Having thus cleared the ground, I hope finally to show that it was Antimachus who first taught that that love which was possible between man and man was possible also between man and woman.

Antimachus stands at the junction of the two great tendencies of his time. The influence of Sparta and of Euripides was gradually re-emancipating women, and showing that their powers and their passions were at least equal to those of men; the steady growth and development of that relation between man and man which found its highest exponent in Plato had made it clear, even to the blindest, that love was possible as distinct from lust. It was left to Antimachus to unite the two streams of thought in one, and to show that woman, with her newly-awakened capabilities, was a worthy object of pure and chivalrous devotion.

The works of Antimachus are lost, and none of the few fragments which survive are of any importance. All discussion with reference to them must therefore be based on suppositions and an examination of relative probabilities. The risks of error in entering on such doubtful ground are manifestly infinite, and conclusions can be reached only through the accumulation of a mass of evidence, the separate particles of which are often in themselves of very little weight; the veil of darkness covering all such Greek literature as does not bear the hall-mark of Athens is so thick that it is perhaps no longer possible for the real truth about it ever to be known. Ceterum, fiat justitia. It is a bold claim, I know, that I am making for Antimachus; it is a claim which, if established, would give him right to rank among the greatest poets of the world: it would give him right to rank as the founder of modern literature. How great a poet he really was we do not know. Perhaps my estimation of his importance is altogether exaggerated. His contemporaries, we know, preferred Choerilus; perhaps they were right; for myself, Malo cum Platone errare.

It is generally agreed that in prehistoric times the position of women among the Greeks was a much higher one than was the case subsequently. There seems every reason to believe that the social conditions of the Lesbians and the Dorians and the other nations which did not come under the influence of the history-writing Ionians, were but the survivals of what was originally a more or less general state. It is of considerable assistance for a proper comprehension of the earliest literature, if one remembers that at the time of its production the enslavement of women had only comparatively recently taken place.

The reason of the influence of primitive woman over primitive man is probably not very far to seek. In early times women were regarded with superstitious reverence[3]—one need only watch a woman making lace, say, to be able nowadays still to quite appreciate the feeling—and with natural woman’s wit for a time kept up the illusion, the hard head of man taking some time to come to maturity. But when man did at last wake to the fact that he was physically, and therefore, for practical purposes, generally superior, an inevitable reaction set in, and the history of early Greece shows women as occupying on the whole a very low position—a position, too, which became lower still with advancing civilisation.[4]

That the original state of women was not one of slavery is clearly shown by the early epics. The Iliad and the Odyssey are pictures of an earlier state of society than that of the poet who describes them. A man living in a society in which women were despised, had to deal with legends belonging to an earlier social condition, in which women played a prominent part. Traces of this anomaly are easy to find in both poems. The Trojan war was the work of a woman, but how very little that woman appears in the Iliad! A woman has been managing the affairs of Odysseus for twenty years in an exemplary fashion; but the hero of the Odyssey on his return prefers to associate with the swineherd. It is by this contradiction between the actual experiences of the poet and the social conditions which he was called upon to depict, that the many inconsistencies in the treatment of the Epic woman must be explained.

Another excellent illustration of this conflict between the primitive and the subsequent views of the nature and importance of women is furnished by the elaborate treatment of the Pandora legend in the Opera et Dies of Hesiod. On the one hand is the early conviction of the power of women’s influence—it is only by the help of a woman that Zeus can outwit man: on the other the later conviction that this influence must be for evil—before Pandora came

ζώεσκεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ’ ἀνθρώπων

νόσφιν ἄτερ τε κακῶν καὶ ἄτερ χαλεποῖο πόνοιο. (l. 90)

And a like contradiction runs through all the details of the description. Woman will be man’s ruin, but he cannot fail to love her all the same—

τοῖς δ’ἐγὼ ἀντὶ πυρὸς δώσω κακὸν ᾧ κεν ἅπαντες

τέρπωνται κατὰ θυμὸν ἑὸν κακὸν ἀμφαγαπῶντες. (l. 57)

Woman will gain man’s heart by her beauty, which is like that of the immortals—

ἀθανάταις δὲ θεαῖς εἰς ὦπα ἐΐσκειν

παρθενικῆς καλὸν εἶδος ἐπήρατον (l. 62),

by her skill and by her charm; it is but as an afterthought that the poet adds—

ἐν δὲ θέμεν κύνεόν τε νόον καὶ ἐπίκλοπον ἦθος

Ἑρμείαν ἤνωγε διάκτορον ἀργειφόντην. (l. 67)

And, lastly, it is through a woman that trouble comes into the world; but it is this same woman’s doing that Hope at least is left. It was Pandora herself that shut down the lid of the casket before Hope had flown; it was she that preserved this “dream of waking hours” for mankind.[5]

But if we pass from the general condition of women, as depicted in Homer or Hesiod, and come to our own more immediate subject, it must be admitted that neither in the prehistoric legends, nor in their subsequent development, is there any trace whatever of a romantic sentiment existing between men and women to be found. Considering the important position occupied by women in these poems, the absence of the love element is most remarkable.

The insignificant part played by Briseis has always struck those who have wished to regard the Iliad as an Achilleis, of which she is the heroine; nor can Agamemnon’s love for the daughter of Chryses be said to go very deep. He is distressed at losing her, no doubt, but the loss is far from irremediable. He evidently agrees with Antigone, πόσις ἄν μοι κατθανόντος ἄλλος ἦν.

Paris again had originally been a celebrated warrior, and it was to this that he owed his position and his name. But his love for Helen, instead of inspiring him, seems to have had the very opposite effect. One exception there is, no doubt, to all this—the relation between Hector and Andromache. But the relation between Hector and Andromache (as illustrated by Iliad vi. 392, seqq.) is unparalleled in all Greek literature, and it is not, perhaps, without significance that they are Trojans and not Greeks. How great was the impression that they made is visible in the way in which the later literature cites Andromache rather than any Greek woman as the ideal of a wife. At the same time, how little really sympathetic to the Greek of the period was this wonderful and unique passage is sufficiently shown by this very fact, that no attempt was ever made to imitate or develop it. It may sound strange to say so, but in all probability we to-day understand Andromache better than did the Greeks for whom she was created; better, too, perhaps than did her creator himself.

In the Odyssey, well nigh the entire action is in the hands of women. What with Athene and Leucothea, Circe and Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope, Odysseus himself hardly comes to the fore at all; and yet it cannot be said that anywhere from beginning to end is there so much as a suggestion of a love-motive.

Nausicaa is always regarded as a charming type of woman, but, after all, how one naturally thinks of her is as a charming type of washerwoman. Penelope again is merely the ideal housekeeper: she longs for the return of her husband, no doubt, but what really grieves her about the suitors is not their suggestions as to his death, but the quantity of pork they eat.

As for any idea that her devotion requires similar constancy on the part of Odysseus, it is not so much as suggested. The Odyssey opens, it is true, with its hero longing to see even the smoke of his home rising in the air; but it must be remembered that he has been spending seven years alone with Calypso on a desert island, which for a man of his tastes was doubtless exceedingly tedious. There is no reason to suppose that he did not enjoy the first year or so of his stay quite as much as his visit to Circe or Aeolus.

An examination of other Greek myths and legends that have any claim to antiquity will furnish a very similar result. Whether in those myths of gods and heroes which found their way into literature from its beginning, or in those local legends which, though first appearing in the Alexandrian writers, are evidently in reality much older, wherever the antiquity of the story can be proved, two characteristics are very noticeable. The first is the importance of women as the originators of the action; the second is the absence of the romantic element. The capabilities of women are thoroughly recognised, though the tendency of the time is to describe their influence as for evil rather than as for good; their importance is everywhere admitted: but that a man should be really or seriously in love with a woman is a thing unknown.

This is certainly at first sight a strange anomaly, and yet it is, perhaps, capable of explanation. The developer of the myth could not fail to be confronted by a great contradiction—the traditional importance of women and their actual condition of repression. He saw in the stories the women, like Medea or Ariadne, profoundly influencing the career of their lovers, while the men, like Jason or Theseus, stood helplessly and more or less apathetically on one side. The converse of such positions he naturally did not find. His surroundings forbade his drawing the true deduction, that the stories were intended to illustrate the helplessness of men without a woman to direct them; he drew therefore the contrary deduction, that the dignity and superiority of man prevented him from taking an active interest in any matter where a woman was concerned. From this deduction, combined with all that was known of the emotional and passionate character of feminine nature, there followed that view of the relation between man and woman which is so noticeable in all the myths and legends as we find them in literature. A woman may be desperately in love with a man, but the converse is impossible.[6] Love may lead women to humiliation, to treachery, to crime, and to suicide, but never, except under the most extraordinary circumstances, men.[7]

The most cursory examination of the ordinary and most familiar Greek legends will sufficiently illustrate this.

Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα. Of the many amours of Zeus, the only one of at all a permanent character, the only one which he thought it worth his while to legalise, was that for Ganymede.[8] His treatment of Minos, again, was very different from that which any of his female friends received.[9]

The goddesses suffer for their indiscretions, never the gods. Aphrodite’s pathetic confession to Anchises,[10] or her agony for Adonis, the helpless devotion of Luna to Endymion, or of Aurora to Tithonus, can find no parallels among the stories of the gods. Love may drive Apollo to tend cattle, but it is love for Admetus.

In the lower stratum of humanity, the treachery of Medea or Ariadne, the story of Scylla[11] with its dozen variants, the guilt of Stheneboea, of Myrrha, of Pasiphae, the deaths of Byblis or Phyllis,[12] are but a few of the more obvious examples.

The idea that a man could be subject to such passions is not to be found till much later in the history of the legends. The original version of the story makes Eriphanis follow Menalcas through the forest and die for his disdain;[13] that Menalcas should afterwards die of love for Euhippe is an addition by Hermesianax.[14] In the old legend, Daphnis is the companion of Artemis, and the nymph who loves him seeks him in vain by every fountain and by every grove;[15] it is Sositheus who tells of his search for his lost Pimplea,[16] and Alexander Aetolus, or whoever Tityrus may be, who sets him wandering over the mountains after Xenea.[17]

A good commentary on all this is furnished by the stories selected, apparently more or less at random, by Parthenius in his Περὶ Ἐρωτικῶν Παθημάτων, and an examination of this work (dedicated to the Roman Cornelius Gallus) may serve to show how tenaciously the original idea of the relative positions of men and women retained its hold even among the “romantic” Alexandrians.

The stories narrated by Parthenius number 36 in all.

In three cases, those of Leucophrye (5), Peisidice (21), and Nanis (22), love induces women to betray their country to the enemy; in each case the suggestion of treachery is made by them. In one case a man, Diognetus (9), is guilty of similar treachery, but here he is trapped into it by an oath to his lady to do whatever she asks him—an oath which he swears without thinking what it may imply; and, besides, he betrays, not his own countrymen, but merely his allies.

Of other sorts of treachery there is enough and to spare, and always attributed to the woman. Penelope (3), out of jealousy, induces Odysseus to kill his son Euryalus; Erippe (8), owing to her love for a barbarian, plots against her husband’s life; Cleoboea (14) tries to seduce Antheus, and, failing, murders him.

Where a man is led by love to any unnatural crime, it is invariably excused as being the result of temporary insanity or the vengeance of some deity. Leucippus (5) falls in love with his sister κατὰ μῆνιν Ἀφροδίτης; for Byblis (11) no such excuse is alleged. Clymenus (13) violates Harpalyce διὰ τὸ ἔκφρων εἶναι; Orion, Hero (20) ὑπὸ μέθης ἔκφρων; Assaon’s love for his daughter Niobe (33) is a punishment from Leto; Dimoetes’ love for a corpse (31) is brought on by a curse. The sins of Neaera (18) and Periander’s mother (17) have no such palliative. The unique case in which Alcinoe (27) is driven κατὰ μῆνιν Ἀθήνης to elope with a stranger (as a punishment for sweating her sempstress) is derived from Moero, who would naturally regard women from a peculiar point of view.

Lastly, Rhesus (36) and Leucippus (15) are, it is true, induced, like Eriphanis, to follow the objects of their affection into the hunting-field, but in each case their devotion is very promptly rewarded.

The foregoing examination of the myths and legends of early Greece has led to certain definite results; but the importance of these results has been in many cases discounted by the impossibility of assigning any even approximate date to the myth or legend from which they have been drawn. Even if, in the case of any given legend, one could determine with certainty the occasion of its first appearance in literature, one would in reality be very little nearer determining the date of the legend itself. To the stories in Homer everyone is willing to allow a respectable antiquity; but who can say how long the story of Phaedra had been current at Troezen before Sophocles adopted it? It is satisfactory therefore to be able to leave this doubtful ground, and come to something more definite, in the shape of the actual words of the subjective lyric writers, who belong to the second stage of Greek literature.

It is, perhaps, generally agreed that romantic love-poetry was not produced by the early Greek lyric writers. What is less generally appreciated is the fact that these writers, at any rate before the time of Anacreon, wrote practically no love-poetry (addressed to women) at all.[18] So little indeed has this fact or its meaning been understood, that not a few passages in the fragments of these writers have been misinterpreted or strained; but really, if one comes to think of it, this absence of love-poetry is quite capable of explanation. The subjective lyric literature of early Greece, which extends roughly over the seventh and sixth centuries, and lasts on, in a desultory sort of way, into the fifth, is chiefly Ionian, and introduces one to a very different state of society from that of the heroic age. The actual social and intellectual position of women is, in the main, a very low one; and in other respects also the place which they occupy in the interests of men is very insignificant. But this is not all. The ideal woman of the time is not one to whom love-poetry could be addressed. The Greek of this period looked upon a woman as an instrument of pleasure, and as a means of creating a family, nothing more. The comparison of marriage to cattle-breeding sounds quite natural.[19] Now such feelings as these can neither of them provide the material for love-poetry of even the most rudimentary kind.[20]

The former of these two ideals we shall have frequent opportunities of encountering in the next few pages. A striking commentary on the latter, and, of course, more general one, is furnished by that important document for the early history of women in Greece, the “satire” of Simonides. If one examines the types of women that Simonides describes, and the objections that he urges against them, and compares these with the types one encounters in Juvenal, for instance, a noteworthy fact at once becomes apparent. The faults which Simonides blames, as well as the virtues he somewhat grudgingly commends, are simply those which concern woman as a housekeeper; those faults and vices which provoke the indignation of Juvenal are but lightly touched upon, or not mentioned at all. One woman is slovenly, another talks her husband’s head off, another is always eating, another is a thief, another is too fine a lady to do any cooking or sweeping; and the only three definite virtues of the woman “like a bee” are, that her husband’s income increases, that her children are satisfactory, and that she does not waste her time gossiping with the neighbours.

Indeed, the famous lines (Fr. 6)—

γυναικὸς οὐδὲν χρῆμ’ ἀνὴρ ληΐζεται

ἐσθλῆς ἄμεινον οὐδὲ ῥίγιον κακῆς,

might almost be translated, “There is nothing better in the world than a good cook, and nothing worse than a bad one.”[21]

Simonides grumbles a great deal, and thinks most women a great nuisance; that a woman could be more than a nuisance, or, if God were good, possibly a convenience, does not enter his head.

A century and a half later we find little change. Phocylides divides woman into four types: three bad—the flirt, the slattern, and the shrew; one good, the efficient housekeeper.[22] Another hundred years later the ideal of a wife is still unchanged.[23]

There was little reason, then, for these Greeks to address love-poetry to their women, or, indeed, to sing of “love,” otherwise than in its purely animal aspect, at all. It remains to convince oneself, by an examination of what remains of their works, that they actually did not. It is, of course, a very general opinion that Archilochus, the earliest lyric poet about whom we know anything of moment, addressed love-poetry to a woman, Neobule.

This view rests mainly on two fragments (Fr. 84, 103), which it is customary to consider as having been addressed by the poet to his lady at an early stage of their acquaintance, or as being, perhaps, recollections of this happy state.[24] Where all is uncertain, one does not like to speak with confidence, but there really seems to be no adequate reason for supposing that they are anything of the kind. There is nothing, whatever in Fr. 84

δύστηνος ἔγκειμαι πόθῳ

ἄψυχος, χαλεπῇσι θεῶν ὀδύνῃσιν ἕκητι

πεπαρμένος δι’ ὀστέων,

to prove that it was addressed to a woman, or, indeed, referred to one at all. It is at least as probable that it was addressed to the same person as Fr. 85

ἀλλά μ’ ὁ λυσιμελής, ὦ ’ταῖρε, δάμναται πόθος,

or someone similar.[25] Fr. 103 again must be taken in conjunction with those that go before and those that follow it. The whole scene described in these fragments[26] is very suggestive of the story in Proverbs vii. 6 seqq. A lady of mature charms (100) and somewhat doubtful character (101, 102) receives a youthful visitor, whose feelings are described in Fr. 103

τοῖος γὰρ φιλότητος ἔρως ὑπὸ καρδίην ἐλυσθείς

πολλὴν κατ’ ἀχλὺν ὀμμάτων ἔχευεν

κλέψας ἐκ στηθέων ἀταλὰς φρένας.

The subsequent fragments deal with the arrival of the husband, and the change to the more rapid metre must have been very effective. This context, of course, makes it clear that φιλότητος ἔρως means simply coitus cupido, and there is no reason to suppose that this fragment ever formed part of what could properly be called an erotic passage.[27]

As a matter of fact, all that we know of Archilochus tends to make it extremely improbable that he addressed love-poetry in any sense of the word to women. There is no evidence that he addressed any poems to Neobule (or for that matter to any other woman) except satires. In these satires we know that he referred to Neobule in terms of the vilest abuse. There is no evidence in his fragments that he ever referred to her otherwise. What reason, then, is there to suppose that he did? His love for her, such as it was, was confessedly purely animal.[28] This is not the kind of love that finds consolation in reminiscences and regrets. His pride was hurt, and he determined to take vengeance on the persons who had offended him. If one of these persons happened to be a woman, that was just as much a matter of chance as the fact that one of the enemies of Hipponax was a sculptor. The woman, like the sculptor, had tried to make the poet ridiculous, and the poet proceeded to have his revenge by satirising her. The fact that she was a woman may have given the satires a certain peculiar colouring, but it certainly did not make them love-poems. Under the circumstances it was not to be expected that Archilochus should express his feelings in erotic poetry, and, as a matter of fact, on the present evidence there is no reason to believe that he did.[29]

The claims of Alcman in this respect seem at first sight somewhat stronger.[30] He has been described as ἡγεμὼν ἐρωτικῶν μελῶν;[31] this has been supposed to mean that he was the first poet who wrote love-poems, and it has been assumed that these poems were addressed to women. This is not, however, all so certain as one might at first be inclined to suppose.

It has been said that Alcman was ἡγεμὼν ἐρωτικῶν μελῶν; but in how far were these μέλη ἀκόλαστα love-poems as we now understand them? All that the words of Archytas imply is that Alcman wrote melic poems, of which “love” was the chief subject. There is nothing whatever to prove that these μέλη were personal, or addressed to any particular woman; it is a misuse of words to call them “love-poems,” and then think of them as if they were what modern love-poems are. As soon as subjective poetry came to be written at all, it is obvious that the sexual passions must have appeared in it in some form. This no one would wish to deny. But there is a great gap between singing of “love” in general, of the pleasures of

κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή,

and singing of love as existing between two particular persons. It is a commonplace that every new lover loves as no one has ever done before. Until a poet speaks of himself in this way, until he emphasises the individuality of his own particular passion, he cannot be said to write real love-poetry. And certainly the fragments, at any rate, do not supply any proof that Alcman ever wrote such love-poetry. He may have been in love with Megalostrate; as far as we know, he never said so.[32]

Again, it must not be forgotten that Alcman also wrote poems addressed to boys, and it is at least possible that some of those erotic fragments which are preserved may have belonged to these.[33]

As for the Parthenia, they are not love-poems in any sense of the word. The poet is merely ὁ τῶν παρθένων ἐπαινέτης τε καὶ σύμβουλος,[34] which was possible in the happy condition of Spartan society, quite without anything further being implied.

“Multa tuae, Sparte, miramur iura palaestrae.”

One of these poems was written in old age;[35] perhaps all of them were.[36] Besides, they celebrate a number of girls indifferently; love-poems would not do that.[37]

Till Egypt renders up some more Alcman, it will be impossible to prove that he ever addressed a love-poem to a woman.

Strange as it may perhaps seem, it is almost an equal misuse of words to call Mimnermus a love-poet. It has so long been customary to regard him as such, that it is at first hard to realise that, in all probability, he was never anything of the kind. As a matter of fact, it seems naturally reasonable to suppose, and there is at any rate nothing in the fragments to contradict this view, that Mimnermus was, like the other elegiac writers of his age, purely didactic.[38] The philosophy which he inculcated differed from that of Tyrtaeus or Solon, no doubt, but it was none the less a philosophy. Mimnermus argued that, considering the shortness of life, and especially of youth, it was advisable to devote one’s self immediately and strenuously to sensual pleasures, before the power of enjoying them was lost. The argument was quite general. “What is life without love?” he says; he does not say, “What is life without your love?”[39] This enunciation of general principles is not love-poetry. As has already been remarked, no poetry can properly be so described until the personal element has entered into it, and of this personal element there is no evidence in the case of Mimnermus.

As for the actual poems themselves, there is no evidence that any of them were, as is generally tacitly assumed, addressed to Nanno or any other woman; and indeed, if one considers their nature, one will see that there is really no reason why they should have been. It is worthy of note, in the first place, that the only definite evidence of the existence of such a person as Nanno is that furnished by Hermesianax,[40] and that this writer’s information as to the early poets was not always very accurate, is sufficiently shown by what he says of Homer, Sappho, Anacreon, and others.[41] But granted that the story of the poet’s love for Nanno was true, that is very far from proving the fact that he addressed his poems to her. What seemed only natural in the fourth century, was by no means so in the seventh. But besides this (as it ought to be superfluous to remark, and probably is not), Hermesianax never states that Mimnermus did so; he does not even go so far as to say that the latter alluded to Nanno in his elegies. Hermesianax makes three definite statements about Mimnermus:—(1) that he invented or utilised the pentameter; (2) that he was in love with Nanno, and used often (in consequence?) to attend entertainments; (3) that he suffered from the enmity of Hermobius and Pherecles. More than this is not to be found in the passage, however one may emend or explain it. As for the supposition that Mimnermus gave to his collected elegies the title of Nanno, there is no evidence of a collection so entitled before the time of Strabo, by which time, of course, the influence of writers like Hermesianax had long been at work.[42] In short, there is no evidence whatever to lead one to suppose that the elegies of Mimnermus were anything but purely impersonal didactic moralisings on the shortness of youth, and the consequent advisability of making the best possible use of it.[43] Mimnermus was a philosopher;[44] to call him a love-poet is a misuse of words. He wrote exquisite poetry, and his service in developing the forms of art was unquestionably very valuable, but he brings us very little farther in the history of the treatment of women in literature.

It is in Anacreon that we find for the first time love-poetry addressed to women;[45] though one must never forget, as some modern writers seem inclined to do, that this writer also addressed a number of love-poems to boys, and that, in fact, these formed the bulk of his work.[46] The poems addressed to women were many of them, perhaps all, the work of the poet’s old age,[47] and their general tone is sufficiently indicated by such fragments as 55, 59, 161, etc.:[48] these two features serve, of course, to connect Anacreon with his predecessors; at the same time, the individualisation of this particular emotion, which we find here for the first time clearly indicated, was obviously a great advance in the art of the subject. Purely animal emotions, however highly developed or refined, could never lead to that feeling which we have called the romantic, and hence the direct importance of Anacreon for our immediate subject is but small; but the individualisation of these animal emotions was obviously of inexpressible importance for the development of the literature that dealt with them. The first essential of art is accurate observation, and the essence of accurate observation is attention to a definite object. By appreciating this fact, and concentrating upon a definite object the general emotions described by Mimnermus and the like, Anacreon created love-poetry as between man and woman, and thereby created that form of art in which the romantic feeling, when it arose, found the readiest means of expression. Thus, though in no sense of the word a romantic writer, or one who would have been likely to sympathise with romantic ideas, Anacreon was yet, unconsciously and indirectly, doing an unquestionable service in preparing the way for the dissemination, if not for the evolution, of this later feeling; and in so far this γυναικῶν ἠπερόπευμα deserves, at least, recognition, if not respect.

The last of the personal lyric writers on whom it will be necessary to dwell is Theognis.

On the general theory that the book of Theognis is a collection of poems by a number of writers of various dates, scholars have agreed to agree; on the details of the theory, they seem to have agreed to differ. For the present purpose, however, these details are unimportant, and it will be sufficient to assume that, while some of the poems are doubtless earlier, and others again later, the great bulk of the first book of the “Theognis” poetry belongs to the first half of the fifth century, while the second book is considerably later.[49]

It is equally indifferent for us how this heterogeneous collection arose; whether it was a chrestomathy “for the use of schools,” or whether, as has been argued with great force, it is in reality a volume of songs to be sung at social gatherings, and the forerunner of the later collections of epigrams.[50]

What is of importance for us is that, in any case, whatever theory as to its origin may be adopted, this book may be taken as presenting on the whole[51] a collection of those opinions and views of life which were generally held and generally accepted during the fifth century or thereabouts; for neither the schoolroom nor the dinner table is exactly the place where new and startling theories are welcomed.

Looking at this volume, then, as containing a collection of the ordinary and more or less commonplace views of the time, it is interesting, though, of course, not really surprising, to find that, while boy-love is universally acknowledged and forms the subject of not a few of the poems, women’s love is well-nigh entirely ignored;[52] and where the latter is mentioned, its sensual side merely is touched upon.[53]

Indeed, all the allusions of any importance to women can be very briefly dismissed.

In l. 183 seqq. marriage is compared to cattle-breeding, the folly of marrying for money being deprecated as spoiling the breed.

Ll. 257 seqq. are possibly the complaint of a woman with an unsuitable husband, though what is the nature of the objection to him, and indeed the whole allusion, is not clear.

Ll. 261 seqq. appear to deal with the behaviour of a man towards a woman on some occasion; but, what with the doubtfulness of the reading and the uncertainty as to whether the lines belong to one poem or two, the exact sense has never yet been ascertained.[54]

In l. 457 seqq. the infidelity of a young wife to an old man is tacitly assumed. “Girls will have boys.”

Ll. 547 seq. express vague disapprobation of dissolute habits.

Ll. 1063 seqq. are merely a reiteration of the philosophy of Mimnermus, the value of which philosophy for the development of love we have already discussed.

Ll. 1225 seq., “Nothing is sweeter ἀγαθῆς γυναικός.” So said also Simonides, and what he meant we know.

And this is all. The result is truly remarkable in its barrenness. Perhaps in no other literature would it be possible to find a collection of short poems on general subjects, of equal length, in which the relations of men to women are so utterly ignored.

Nor is there anything peculiar or exceptional in this. In the somewhat similar Scolia, absolutely the same is the case. The democrat sings of Harmodius, the aristocrat of Admetus;[55] the rare allusions that there are to women are regularly trivial or coarse.[56]

In the choral lyric writers, with whom it will now be necessary to deal, the character of the evidence to be examined is widely different from that of the evidence which we have hitherto been considering. The Greek choral poets were (with one notable exception) hardly ever subjective in their treatment of erotic matter. The erotic element, such as it is, consists in these writers almost entirely of erotic legends or myths, which would seem to have been recounted without special comment on the part of the poet and, in most cases, without elaborate analysis of the emotions of the characters introduced. The stories therefore that these writers tell, rather than the actual words in which they tell them, will require consideration in the present connection. The subjective lyric writers were, as we have seen, in the main Ionian. The choral writers, on the other hand, are in the main Dorian; consequently, one would naturally expect to find women occupying a more prominent place in their works. And this is, in fact, also the case. From the very beginning, already we find stories about women repeated with an interest and an appreciation which would have startled what one is generally taught to regard as orthodox Greece. At the same time, however, the true nature of this feature of choral poetry must not be overlooked. Though the efforts of these writers to re-awaken interest in women were unquestionably of importance for the ultimate development of the romantic element in literature, it is unjustifiable to suppose, as is too commonly done, that these writers were in themselves “romantic,” or, indeed, that they had any idea of what romantic feelings are. An examination of their works, as far as we know them, will show with sufficient clearness that in its essence their view of women differed little, if at all, from that of their Ionian predecessors and contemporaries. They thought more about women, perhaps; they did not think more of them.

A case in point is Stesichorus. In spite of the important part that female characters play in his poems, a result, no doubt, of his Boeotian connections and his freedom from Ionian influences, the poet’s way of regarding women is practically identical with that which we have already encountered among the Ionians. In the first place, Stesichorus appears always, professedly at least, as a misogynist. The legends in which he delights are those which relate the ruin caused by women’s influence. Besides the famous Ilii Persis, one need but mention the stories of Scylla, of Eriphyle, of Clytemnestra (in the Oresteia).[57] Even in the story of Artemis and Actaeon, he will not admit that the vengeance of the goddess was due to those feelings of outraged propriety to which it was generally ascribed.[58] As for his palinode of Helen, composed late in life, he was evidently induced to write it by strong private pressure of some kind, perhaps on the part of “Helen of Himera”;[59] but how isolated an expression of opinion this was, and how very unusual were the whole circumstances of the case, is shown by the great interest which the poem excited in antiquity.

In the more purely erotic legends again, it is striking how he conforms to those views as to the relative positions of men and women which, as has been already pointed out, were current in all Greek erotic stories of early date; the woman falls in love with the man, never, apparently, the reverse. Striking examples are the stories of Calyce, and probably also of Scylla; another, perhaps, that of Daphnis;[60] that of Rhadina seems at first sight a contradiction, but it must be noticed that Strabo (viii. 347) gives no information as to how the intrigue first began.[61]

That in addition to these poems concerned with women, Stesichorus interested himself also in the treatment of love in its more characteristically Greek aspect, may be gathered from Athenaeus xiii. 601 A, though, perhaps, no fragment dealing with this subject is preserved.[62] This side is, however, very strongly developed in his fellow-countryman Ibycus, who is again a most interesting figure in the history of the artistic development of Greek love.

Ibycus would seem to have been the first of the choral lyric poets who made use of this form of art for the expression of personal emotion. All the important fragments of him that remain seem to have belonged to passages of this kind. Two at least we know of as being addressed to particular individuals. Those who have been following the development of Greek feeling on this matter will not be surprised to find that these poems were addressed exclusively, as far as we know, to boys. It was a bold thing to introduce personal feelings at all into these choral odes, for a certain odour of sanctity was still hanging about them, and the Greeks had a natural aversion to the public expression of all violent emotions; but to have introduced anything so entirely sensual as woman’s love was then felt to be would not have been allowed. If love was to be tolerated at all, it must be that form of love which was generally recognised as dignified and ennobling. This amalgamation of ceremonial and personal poetry does not seem to have been popular or to have found imitators. The Greeks probably felt, what the modern glee-singer does not, the absurdity of a whole chorus expressing their undying devotion to one and the same person; but it is at least a very characteristic fact, and, for those that will not learn, a very instructive one, that boy-love was the only form of the passion which it was considered possible to attempt to treat in this way.

Of Ibycus’ views on women we know little.[63] That he followed the tendencies of Stesichorus, sometimes rather wildly,[64] and gave considerable prominence to love stories between women and men, is clear enough; but there is no evidence to show that these stories of his were any different in their essential characteristics to those of his predecessor.

The other choral lyric poets have remarkably little to say on this subject.

Myrtis’ story of Ochne is but one of the usual type, showing to what spretae iniuria formae may lead a woman. If Corinna tells of the heroism of the daughters of Orion, it is, after all, only what one would expect occasionally from a poetess.

Neither Pindar nor Simonides has anything of interest to say about women. For Bacchylides the climax of the charms of peace is

παιδικοί θ’ ὕμνοι φλέγονται.[65]

Among the dithyrambic writers, Licymnius tells the story of the treachery of Nanis, but the sort of legends which seem to interest him more are those of Hypnus and Endymion, Hymenaeus and Argynnus, and the like. The same was perhaps true of Cydias. But one interesting figure these writers do supply; that is the Cyclops of Philoxenus. A good deal has been written about this “romantic” conception, and it has been generally considered as a proof of how strongly the romantic feeling must have been already developed that it was possible to represent Polyphemus as in love with Galatea. Those who have considered what has already been said may perhaps be tempted to come to a somewhat different conclusion. The barbarous and boorish Polyphemus spends his time in singing of his love to Galatea, because no one who was not a barbarian and a boor would be such a fool as to waste so much time about a woman. This view spoils the idyllic charm of the picture rather, perhaps, but it may be the true one for all that.[66]

In the foregoing examination of the remains of the lyric writers, it was always necessary to regard, not only the date of each writer, but also the country to which he belonged; for, as we have already had occasion to notice, the social position of women differed widely in different parts of Greece, and this fact could not fail to be, to a certain extent, reflected in such literature as dealt with them.

In examining the work of the tragedians, this necessity will no longer be present. Early Greek tragedy is entirely under the influence of Athens. The only tragedians whose works have been to any considerable extent preserved were Athenians; and such fragments of the non-Athenian dramatists as have survived do not in any way lead one to suppose that their work was in any essential characteristic different from that of their Athenian contemporaries.

At Athens the social position of women was, on the whole, a very low one, and consequently the relations between men and women were not on a particularly high level. The men cared very little either for or about the women, and there is nothing therefore surprising in the generally admitted fact that the love-element as between the sexes plays but a very unimportant part in the early tragedians. Aeschylus seems well-nigh to have ignored it; in Sophocles it played a prominent part in but two, or at most three tragedies;[67] even in Euripides the proportion of plays in which love of any sort supplies the main interest is very small.[68]

But one question may very naturally be asked. Assuming that the way of regarding women at Athens rendered it difficult or impossible to interest an Athenian audience with a love-story, as between man and woman, why should not the tragedians have made more use of the many stories that told of the love of men for men? If, it may be argued, this form of love was really so important an element in the life of the time, if it really occupied that place in the hearts of men as a whole that is now occupied by the love of women, why did Aeschylus and Sophocles only devote a couple of plays between them to its treatment?[69] Sophocles, at any rate, ought to have understood all about it.

The answer is probably to be found in the fact that the passion of love, in any shape or form, is foreign to the true spirit of Greek tragedy. The taste of the Greeks, refined in this as in most other things, considered love as essentially unfitted for the stage. That two people should stand up and make love to one another with a crowd looking on was, to the Greek mind, essentially unfitting. Love was an emotion which concerned individuals; it was an emotion which ought to be controlled in public, and only find expression in private.

The whole history of Greek poetry is so much commentary on this one fact. The love-poems of Sappho or Anacreon, just like the later love-poems of Asclepiades or Poseidippus, were meant to be sung by a single singer to a small and select audience. In the choral poetry, which required a number of performers, and was listened to by a large audience, the personal love-element is well-nigh non-existent. The attempt of Ibycus to introduce it, and his failure to find imitators, we have already noticed.

And in the choral poetry sung in honour of Dionysus, from which tragedy had its rise, it is obvious, when one considers the intimate connection between the rites of Dionysus and Artemis, and the ascetic principle underlying their worship, how especially out of place a love-element would have been.

The fact, therefore, that love as between man and man does not play any very prominent part in the early tragedies, must simply be explained by the Greek dislike to the public display of violent private emotions. It took a long time to overcome this old-fashioned prejudice, and establish the love-element as an integral part of tragedy; and it is not uninstructive to observe how the movement began. The earliest love-story admitted on the Greek stage was the story of Achilles and Patroclus.[70]

But before entering upon the more detailed examination of the relations between the sexes, as illustrated by the Attic tragedians, it is necessary once more to call attention to, and warn against, a very fertile source of confusion.

It is above all things necessary that the reader should carefully distinguish between two very different things, two very different ways of regarding women, which are not uncommonly confused—woman as an object of interest, and woman as an object of love. As objects of interest, we find the female characters of the tragedians steadily developing throughout the fifth century; as objects of love, we do not find them develop at all. The relations between women and men are, in reality, as far from the modern in the last plays of Euripides as in the first of Aeschylus. Towards the close of the century, a very considerable proportion of the tragedies concern themselves with studies of female character in its various phases; the power of women for good and evil (especially the latter) is very generally acknowledged; their passions and their emotions are carefully analysed and elaborately discussed; and yet in all this analysis and discussion the love-element, in any modern sense of the word, plays no part whatever. By this time, woman at Athens held an important place in the mind of man; as yet she held no place in his heart at all. From end to end of the three great tragedians, there can hardly a single passage be quoted which so much as suggests the possibility of an unselfish and unsensual attachment between man and woman, playing at all an important part in the life of either; and this important fact it will be the object of the following pages to make clear.

Aeschylus, as has been said often enough, never brought on the stage a woman “in love.”[71] That he should never have brought on the stage a man in such a condition went of course without saying; even Euripides was never accused of that. Indeed, Aeschylus’ characters do not think much of women at all. That girls should not misbehave, if left to themselves, even their own father finds it hard to believe;[72] that in any sort of difficulty they should be a hindrance rather than a help, is only what one would expect.[73] Women are certainly not worth fighting about;[74] what really acquits Orestes is the fact that, after all, it was only a woman he killed.[75]

An apparent exception to all this is of course Clytemnestra. Why should Aeschylus, having so poor an opinion of women, have given so prominent a place to Clytemnestra in the murder of Agamemnon? The answer is doubtless to be found in the very significant fact that between Homer and Aeschylus the story had been treated by Stesichorus, to whom the prominence of Clytemnestra was beyond all reasonable doubt due.[76]

Aeschylus, then, has little enough to say about women; but in Sophocles there is fortunately somewhat more to be found; indeed, it is probably the female characters of Sophocles that are most generally appreciated by modern readers. And yet, for all the great part played by women in the Sophoclean drama, the part played by women’s love is wonderfully small.

Take a woman like Deianira; the man who can listen to her without feeling a positive shock must be more in sympathy with Athens than I ever wish to be.

She guesses the truth from Lichas about Heracles and Iole (Trach. 436), and begs him to tell her all, for she is no coward, nor yet is she the sort of woman who would refuse to admit a husband’s right to an occasional infidelity.

οὐ γὰρ γυναικὶ τοὺς λόγους ἐρεῖς κακῇ,

οὐδ’ ἥτις οὐ κάτοιδε τἀνθρώπων, ὅτι

χαίρειν πέφυκεν οὐχὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεί.

“Love is irresistible,” she says; “if I were to blame my husband or this woman for falling victims to it, I should be a fool. Do not be afraid to tell me all. Has not Heracles often done this sort of thing before without making me jealous? Why should he make me jealous now? And as for the woman, why, I can only pity her, when I see how her beauty has made her lose her home and her home comforts, for which, expertae crede, the love of Heracles is hardly a sufficient compensation.”

ᾤκτειρα δὴ μάλιστα προσβλέψασ’ ὅτι

τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς τὸν βίον διώλεσεν.[77]

When this is Sophocles’ ideal wife, one can hardly wonder that Haemon owes the only word of sympathy he gets from his Antigone to the editors.[78]

But even Deianira has her human moments, and in one of these she utters that wonderful lament of hers for the joys of her lost maidenhood, and the sorrows of her married life (Trach. 144 seqq.), a passage which may well be compared with one from the Tereus. (Fr. 524, Nauck). Both these dwell sympathetically on the slavery of married life, and almost make one think at first sight that the poet must have felt what a mockery his “ideal wife” really was. But a little further examination will show clearly enough that Sophocles is not expressing his own views in either of these two passages. The protest in the Tereus is merely the direct outcome of the decidedly exceptional circumstances in which Procne finds herself—a woman who has just cooked her only son is hardly likely to have unprejudiced views on matrimony—and as such it is not meant to be more than one of those outcries against irresistible destiny, which one may pity if one likes, or even pardon, but which one cannot pretend to treat seriously. For a girl to complain of having to marry was as reasonable as for a man to complain of having to die.

τί ταῦτα δεῖ

στένειν, ἅπερ δεῖ κατὰ φύσιν διεκπερᾶν;

As for the passage from the Trachiniae, that seems to be simply an echo from Sappho, and Sappho’s views on marriage were naturally different from those of Sophocles.[79]

To suppose from these passages that Sophocles saw anything inappropriate in the existing conditions of married life, or that he would have welcomed any change in them, is an unjustifiable inference.[80]

But the one play of Sophocles which is generally considered to be of supreme importance for this particular subject is the Phaedra. This play, which is supposed to have been the model for the Hippolytus of Euripides, is generally looked upon as the first “love-tragedy” of the Greeks. But was it a “love-tragedy” at all, in any sense in which the words are now understood? To judge by analogy, there is every reason to suppose that it was not.

The fragments unfortunately prove little, for no very important ones are preserved, and the one or two of them that do speak of love, merely speak of it in the regular Sophoclean way, not as a human passion, but as an unavoidable kind of disease, something like measles or distemper.[81]

But in spite of the paucity of the fragments, the main principle on which the legend (of which we have already spoken)[82] was treated, is sufficiently clear; and this principle is such as is, I venture to submit, incompatible with the presence in the play of any real love-element.

Phaedra’s love is not passion but madness, it is not an emotion but a disease. Aphrodite treats her in exactly the same way as Athene treats Ajax. Her love is so entirely outside her control, it is so entirely the result of external influences, that while one can perhaps pity her, one certainly cannot sympathise with her, for the simple reason that her misfortune is entirely outside human experience. She loves Hippolytus, as Oedipus kills Laius, for no earthly reason except that the story said the god made her do so. The Phaedra of Sophocles, like the Clytemnestra of Aeschylus, is made an instrument of divine vengeance for reasons which do not concern her personally in the least; one pities her, not as an unhappy lover, but as the victim of fate. She is no longer a human being influenced by human emotions; she is simply a tool in the hands of a relentless deity. In other words, she is never in love with Hippolytus at all, in any commonly-accepted sense of the term.

And thus it must be sufficiently clear to anyone who is able to get rid of preconceived ideas on the matter, that the Phaedra was in reality no more “romantic” than the Trachiniae or the Antigone. Like the rest of the plays of Sophocles, it merely drew the usual picture of the gods playing shove-halfpenny with human souls; the fact that Aphrodite for once took a hand in the game gave it on this occasion a peculiar character of its own, but of anything in any way resembling a modern love-element there is no more trace here than there is anywhere else.[83]

But what really affords a more conclusive proof than any other of how utterly anything of the nature of modern love between man and woman was unknown to Sophocles, is the remarkable prominence given in his plays to the affection between brother and sister.[84] The relations between Electra and Orestes, or Antigone and Polynices, are absolutely those of modern lovers; but Sophocles could not conceive of such relations as existing between people whom he would have called “lovers,” and, therefore, he had to think of the parties to them as brother and sister. He wished to draw a picture of pure, noble, and unselfish devotion existing between man and woman; the only conditions under which such a thing seemed to him possible were that the man and the woman should be close blood relations.

There are those who complain of the indifference of Electra to Pylades, or of Antigone to Haemon, and think that a little love infused into these heroines would make them more human. These people have overlooked the fact that Electra and Antigone are in reality quite as much in love as ever woman was; but they are in love with their brothers. They did not know it perhaps; Sophocles did not know it; but the fact remains. Antigone despises love—what she and her audience thought was love. Between Polynices and Haemon there is never a moment’s hesitation; almost her last words are an exclamation of the bitterest contempt for marriage: “If my husband had died, I could have married another; if he had failed to get me children, I could have committed adultery; but—my brother is dead!”[85]

And yet, Antigone comes far nearer to a modern lover than Phaedra ever does.

This is a fact of the greatest importance in the present connection, and one that cannot be too much emphasised. The relation of the sexes was such among the early Greeks that a pure love between man and woman seemed to them a sheer impossibility, and yet their instinct told them that pure love was not really an impossible thing. The ways in which the difficulty was surmounted were various. Of the love of man for man and of woman for woman we have already spoken; in Sophocles a third alternative is suggested. The lovers are made man and woman, but the possibility of sensuality is first removed by making them brother and sister. A woman who loves a man may love him purely, says Sophocles, if she is in such a position that she cannot love him otherwise.[86]

In the first two of the Athenian dramatists there are then, as we have seen, practically no traces whatever to be found of a love-element in any real sense of the term. But this, it may be said, is nothing wonderful. This everyone will admit. For the love-element one looks to Euripides. In the following examination of Euripides, I hope to show that not only is love, in any modern sense, quite unknown to his characters, but also that the whole “romantic” element of his plays, on which it is the custom to lay such stress, is much less pronounced than is generally supposed; in other words, that his men take really very little interest in his women.

But before discussing what Euripides did not do, it is well to have a clear conception of what he did do; for he did do a great deal. The great service of Euripides to art was that he emphasised unmistakably the importance of women. He seems to have been the first emphatically to enunciate that doctrine of cherchez la femme, which has been the groundwork of all modern art. He was not the first man to discover it; the men who made the story of Troy knew it as well as he did; but he was the first, as far as we know, consciously to adopt it as an artistic canon. He was the first deliberately to maintain that the highest artistic effects were to be obtained by the contrast of the sexes. The women of the earlier tragedians, as far as they are of any interest, are merely women, as it were by accident; they are men in everything but their dress. The women of Euripides, however unpleasant they may be, are always intensely feminine. The emphasis which Euripides laid on the feminine as opposed to the masculine element is at once his chief characteristic and his chief merit.

The ways in which he emphasises the importance of women are various. Everyone knows the stress he lays on their power of doing harm; the “misogyny” of Euripides need hardly be illustrated here.[87] At the same time, he is fully aware of their power for good.[88] He dwells on their cleverness repeatedly: “If supremacy were a matter of brains, and not of brute force, men would not have a chance.”[89] He is convinced of their heroism: Iphigeneia goes to her death with far more dignity than Antigone. He is even convinced, in a way that not all his successors have been, of their reasonableness: there are few men who could discuss their own deaths as calmly and clearly as Phaedra[90] or Polyxena.[91] It would be easy to multiply instances if there were any need to do so.

All this Euripides did. He made his women powerful, intelligent, heroic, reasonable. He did not make them loved or loveable. In this Euripides is well-nigh as old-fashioned as any of his predecessors. In all the extant plays there is not a single instance of a man in love with a woman; there is no evidence, except perhaps in one isolated case,[92] of such a character in any of the plays that have been lost. So far from Euripides being the poet of love between man and woman, there are numerous situations in his plays where it seems simply extraordinary to the modern reader how such obvious opportunities for the introduction of such love can have been missed or ignored.[93]

A detailed examination of some of the plays will bring this out clearly; but before proceeding to this, it would be well to observe certain of the more general features of the Euripidean conception of the relations, other than social and intellectual, existing between men and women.

The first point to be noticed is that Euripides, too, just like Sophocles, speaks of love as a sort of irresistible madness or disease,[94] which seizes on its victims without any particular reason, and can only be cured or borne by being allowed to have free course. It is, as I have said before, exactly like measles; the only proper treatment is to help it as much as you can to “come out,” as then it is less painful at the time, and less likely to have serious consequences. Instances of this view are sufficiently numerous. It forms the chief framework of the Hippolytus, and all attempts to interpret the emotions of that play in accordance with more modern notions, are without success. The same was still more the case in the Phoenix, as Suidas distinctly implies by his use of the words τῷ υἱῷ ἐπέμηνε τὴν παλλακήν in this connection.[95] It is enunciated by Jason to Medea in the Medea (526 seqq.) as a proof that he owes nothing to her, as she was not responsible for her actions in saving him; by Helen to Menelaus in the Troades (945 seqq.) as a perfect excuse for her conduct with Paris.

Now it is just here, one may as well notice at once, that the difference between Euripides and modern writers, with the Alexandrians at their head, is so striking. The lovers in Euripides, as far as they are lovers at all, are carried along by a forcible external impulse, the direction of which is entirely sensual and entirely selfish. If, or as soon as, they fail in achieving the gratification of their sensual desires, their “love” immediately turns to hate. The idea of devotion or self-sacrifice for the good of the loved person, as distinct from one’s own, is absolutely unknown. “Love is irresistible,” they say, and, in obedience to its commands, they sit down to reckon how they can satisfy themselves, at no matter what cost to the objects of their passion.

Love is irresistible still, one knows, as irresistible now as ever it was in Greece, but the impulse it gives has a different direction. To put it perfectly crudely, the Euripidean woman who “falls in love” (it is of women we are speaking now) thinks first of all, “How can I seduce the man I love?” The modern woman thinks, “How can I die for him?” This is the difference between ancient and modern love, and in Euripides the old is still untouched by the new.[96]

It is this sensual, this well-nigh mechanical view of love which makes possible that conception of the ideal wife, of which we have already spoken in the case of Sophocles’ Deianira, and which is so strongly insisted upon in the Andromache of Euripides.

Andromache regularly appears as the model wife, not only in the play which bears her name, but also in the Troades. Her views on married life have, therefore, a peculiar weight of their own.

οὐ τὸ κάλλος, ὦ γύναι,

ἀλλ’ ἁρεταὶ τέρπουσι τοὺς ξυνευνέτας,

she explains to the youthful Hermione.[97] “Now the greatest of these virtues is, to be content with your husband and not to be jealous. You are jealous of me. What would you do, supposing you were married to a Thracian king with twenty wives instead of only two? You would murder them all, I suppose, in your jealousy, showing thereby how utterly unbridled was your lust. I was never jealous; I used to act as foster-mother to Hector’s illegitimate children.

καὶ ταῦτα δρῶσα τἀρετῇ προσηγόμην

πόσιν.

“But you, you are afraid to let a drop of rain fall on your husband’s head.

μὴ τὴν τεκοῦσαν τῇ φιλανδρίᾳ, γύναι,

ζήτει παρελθεῖν.”

φιλανδρία![98]

This is not irony; it is just sober earnest, the sober earnest morality of respectable Athens. The view is by no means confined to Andromache. It is deliberately propounded by Electra to her mother,[99] and Jason twice taunts Medea with her failure to live up to its level.[100] Indeed, it may be said to colour, to a certain extent, the whole conception of married life. For a woman to wish to keep her husband to herself was a sign that she was at once unreasonable and lascivious.

This doctrine of the absolute subjection of the wife[101] is emphasised in various ways. That a really respectable wife not only always stays at home, but also never sees visitors, is more or less of an axiom.[102] To give a woman her head is dangerous in the last degree, and if you do, you will probably get murdered for your pains.[103] Suicide for a husband’s sake is only respectable on the part of a woman,[104] for her husband is her life.[105]

But where is one to find such a model wife? for marriage is such a lottery that one ought really to be allowed, if one can afford it, to have several tickets, in case the first doesn’t turn out well.[106] The only chance is to marry a woman of good family; in other words, the only thing worth marrying for is rank.[107] To prefer to marry for love is not only foolish, but unfair on one’s children.[108]

It is this view of married life, this devotion to an ideal of drudgery on the part of the woman, and the calm acceptance of such devotion as a matter of course on the part of the man, which explains such a play as the Alcestis.[109] The woman is devoted to the man, not because he is himself, but because he is her husband. For the man she does not care in the least, but for the husband—for the ideal of the family—she is perfectly ready to die. It is this which at once makes the story of Alcestis possible, and robs it of half its pathos. Had Alcestis loved Admetus as a man, she could not but have felt the bitterest disappointment at his accepting her offer. As it is, she seems to regard his conduct almost as much as a matter of course as he does.[110]

The brief examination of one further point in the Euripidean view of women may serve as introduction to the more detailed discussion of the romantic element in his plays, or, rather, of its absence. Euripides speaks frequently as if there were a sort of freemasonry existing among women, which makes one woman always ready to side with another as against a man. Instances of this are common, especially in the relations between the heroine and the Chorus, when the latter, as mostly in Euripides, consists of women.

Thus Medea, when asking the Chorus not to reveal her plans, says—

λέξῃς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν ἐμοὶ δεδογμένων,

εἴπερ φρονεῖς εὖ δεσπόταις γυνή τ’ ἔφυς.

(Med. 822.)

Similar in spirit is a line from the Alope (Fr. 108):

γυνὴ γυναικὶ σύμμαχος πέφυκέ πως,

or l. 329 of the Helen:

γυναῖκα γὰρ δὴ συμπονεῖν γυναικὶ χρή.

In this same play, too, Menelaus decides that his wife is the proper person to go and ask help of Theonoe:

σὸν ἔργον, ὡς γυναικὶ πρόσφορον γυνή.

(Hel. 830.)

A “romantic” writer might have thought that the prayers of Menelaus himself would have been more effectual with a lady.[111]

The most important of the extant plays of Euripides is, for the student of the development of the romantic tendency, undoubtedly the Hippolytus. But, in thinking of this play, the reader must first of all guard against a very common and, for a modern, very natural mistake. He must remember that the interest of the piece is intended to centre, not on Phaedra, but on Hippolytus. The main interest of the plot is the struggle between asceticism and self-gratification, as personified in the maiden Artemis and the sensual Aphrodite.[112] Phaedra is only made to fall in love with Hippolytus in order that he may reject her advances, and thereby irritate her into working his ruin. As has already been pointed out, she is dragged into a quarrel which does not concern her, for a purpose which does not interest her personally in the least.[113]

Bearing this in mind, the reader will be able to understand that combination of passionate desire and cold-blooded reasoning which marks the utterances of Phaedra. She has come to the conclusion, she says at last (l. 391 seqq.), that love is an irresistible disease; and since her position as a married woman makes impossible the only means of cure with which she is acquainted, she decides that, for the sake of her husband and children, she had better die. She will never dishonour her children, for, next to money, there is nothing so valuable as a good name.

To this the Nurse replies (l. 433 seqq.) that of course love is irresistible, and there is only one way to cure it; but she points out that this way may perfectly well be adopted. The fact that Phaedra is married need not be any obstacle, for husbands are used to seeing more than they say.

“ἀλλ’, ὦ φίλη παῖ, λῆγε μὲν κακῶν φρενῶν,

λῆξον δ’ ὑβρίζουσ’: οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο πλὴν ὕβρις

τάδ’ ἐστὶ, κρείσσω δαιμόνων εἶναι θέλειν,

τόλμα δ’ ἐρῶσα· θεὸς ἐβονλήθη τάδε.”

“Leave the matter to me, and if women can’t effect a cure, perhaps men can.”

Phaedra protests. The Nurse answers with a little very natural impatience (l. 490)

“τί σεμνομυθεῖς; οὐ λόγων εὐσχημόνων

δεῖ σ’, ἀλλὰ τἀνδρός.”

Phaedra admits this, but insists that it would be more respectable to die. The Nurse, however, persuades her to try a love-potion first, and with this excuse leaves her to look for Hippolytus. Hippolytus, as one knows, rejects the Nurse’s proposals, and Phaedra takes refuge in suicide, making, as she dies, one last desperate attempt to save her own good name at the expense of the man she is supposed to love (l. 715).

This, then, is the story of Phaedra. Where in all this is there a trace of what we now call love? Where is there a single expression of affection for Hippolytus, a single expression to show that she thinks of him otherwise than of one who has done her a great and irretrievable injury? She seems to think of him as one would think of a man from whom one had caught the cholera. “Love is all bitterness,” she says (l. 349); “and he is the cause.” The catastrophe comes, and she walks off quietly to murder him,

“ὥστ’ εὐκλεᾶ μὲν παισὶ προσθεῖναι βίον,

αὐτή τ’ ὄνασθαι πρὸς τὰ νῦν πεπτωκότα.”

If this is love, the world must be a poorer place than I gave it credit for.

Then follows the great argument between Hippolytus and his father, which to the Athenians was doubtless the chief point of the play. On the speech of Theseus we need not dwell, though it is perhaps just worth noticing the way in which he enunciates, as a sort of great discovery which his own experience and observation have enabled him to make, the theory that it is possible for the initiative in a criminal liaison to come from the side of the man (l. 966 seqq.).

The answer of Hippolytus, however, is well worth study. For the first 24 of his 52 lines he describes in general terms his own blameless character, and it is only at the 25th that he condescends to discuss the particular incident. “But you do not perhaps believe all this about my chastity,” he says (l. 1007); “but do tell me, then, what was the temptation in this particular instance? Was this woman’s body so especially beautiful? (1½ lines.) Or did I wish by my conduct to become your heir? (2½ lines.) Or to become king? (3 lines.) Surely you know my only interest is in athletics.” (5 lines.) Then, having finished the arguments which he is able to bring forward, he proceeds to swear, and so concludes. In other words, in a speech of 52 lines, the suggestion that he might have been in love with Phaedra, even in the most rudimentary sense of the words, is contemptuously dismissed in a line and a half, and no one seems to think that this part of the subject ought to have been treated at greater length. Now this one fact seems to me in itself almost a sufficient proof that “romantic” ideas, even as they were understood at the end of the fourth century, were utterly foreign to Euripides.[114]

To come to another play. There are probably few things in all literature so strange, not to say comic, to modern ideas, as the relations between Achilles and Iphigeneia in the Iphigeneia in Aulis.

Clytemnestra has been trapped into bringing her daughter to Aulis, on promise of marriage with Achilles, and when, in the scene which begins at l. 801, she discovers the truth, she appeals to him for protection. Achilles, “the nearest approach to a modern gentleman of all the Greek tragic characters,”[115] replies as follows (l. 919 seqq.):

“I am a person of the highest breeding, and therefore you may trust me to give you the correct answer under the circumstances. Your daughter, having been betrothed to me, shall not be killed; it would reflect discredit on me if she were, and that I cannot permit. No one shall so much as touch the hem of her garment. It is not, of course, for her sake that I undertake to do this, but because I consider that Agamemnon has treated me shamefully. He used my name to trap you into coming here without asking my consent; of course I should have allowed him to use it if he had asked me, for I always put patriotism before everything; but he did not ask me. I feel grossly insulted, and he will touch Iphigeneia at his peril.”

“Your sentiments, Achilles,” remarks the Chorus, “are worthy alike of you and of your divine descent.”

“How can I thank you enough,” replies Clytemnestra, “for all the trouble you have promised to take in this matter, which cannot interest you personally in the least?”

There is a moment’s pause; then she suggests timidly, “But would you like the girl to come to you herself?”

“God forbid!” exclaims Achilles with horror. “How can you suggest anything so improper?” Then after a little he adds, “You must first of all go and argue the case with Agamemnon.”

“Why that?” asks Clytemnestra. “There is no chance there.”

“Perhaps not,” he answers, “but still I wish you to try; for I should very much prefer, if possible, that my name should be kept out of the business altogether.”

“What you say does you credit,” she answers. “I will do my best to obey you.”

For the modern reader who studies this scene, and then leans back and thinks a little what he would have done or thought in Achilles’ place, comment is, I imagine, superfluous.[116]

Or look at Andromache’s speech in the Andromache. (l. 184 seqq.) She is accused of occupying too high a place in the favour of Neoptolemus. “Tell me,” she answers to Hermione, “what reason could I possibly have for wishing to stand well with your husband? Do I wish to reign in your place, or to have more children, or to make my children kings? Or what reason could he possibly have for preferring me? Is my native city so powerful? Have I such influential friends?” &c. &c. As in the Hippolytus, the idea that there may be love on either side is dismissed without discussion.

Or look at the character of the Autourgos in the Electra. He has married Electra, but refuses to touch her, and why?

αἰσχύνομαι γὰρ ὀλβίων ἀνδρῶν τέκνα

λαβὼν ὑβρίζειν, οὐ κατάξιος γεγώς. (l. 45.)

He is distressed that the daughter of such wealthy parents should have made so poor a match. It is pity for the house of Agamemnon that affects him, not pity for Electra.[117]

Hecuba again, in the play that bears her name, does not think that it is much use to appeal to the “romantic” feelings of Agamemnon.

καὶ μὴν ἴσως μὲν τοῦ λόγου κενὸν τόδε,

Κύπριν προβάλλείν κ.τ.λ. (l. 824.)

In the Phoenissae there is not much love lost between Antigone and Haemon (cp. l. 1672 seqq.). In the Orestes the only incident which causes Pylades to take the slightest interest in Electra is her suggestion that they should murder Hermione. (l. 1191 seqq.) In the Helena the first exclamation of Menelaus, when his wife assures him that she has really been faithful to him all the time, is, “How can you prove it?”[118] In the Medea again the absence of the love-element is a distinct loss. No one can doubt that the character of Medea would have gained at once in probability and in pathos, if she had been allowed to recur, if only for a moment, to the memory of her early love for Jason.

If more plays had been preserved, it would, doubtless, have been easy still further to multiply instances; but what has been said already is perhaps enough to show that the romantic element in Euripides is really most conspicuous by its absence. And this cannot be a surprise to anyone who cares to go to the root of the matter. That relation between men and women which we call the “romantic” is founded upon sentiments and ideas which are entirely distinct from the sexual emotions. Euripides, as we have had occasion to notice again and again, though he had carefully studied the sexual instinct in all its workings, had never been able to conceive of a relation between man and woman which had not this for its basis.[119] Without pure—I had almost said Platonic—love for its fundamental principle, romance is an impossibility. The romantic Alexandrian writers may not have themselves loved purely, but they knew what pure love was, and such love was their ideal. With Euripides it was not so, and this one fact is enough to show that he belongs to the old literature and not to the new. That Euripides, by the emphasis which he laid on the female character, contributed largely towards preparing men’s minds for the growth of romance and what we now call love, cannot be denied; but that he himself had more than the very faintest glimmerings of what such love really was, cannot be maintained by anyone who has ever read his works.

And here we may close this first part of our enquiry. The foregoing examination of the Greek writers, though it has made no mention of various well-known names, has yet been for our present purpose a practically complete one. Pindar was prevented by the nature of his works from dealing to any large extent with the position of women or their relations with men;[120] and even where he has an opportunity of so doing (as, e.g., Fr. 122), the result is very disappointing, especially in view of his Boeotian origin. The fragments of the early tragedians, other than the three discussed, are strangely deficient in references to women. Nor need the old Attic Comedy detain us. The general spirit of this thoroughly Athenian product is sufficiently summed up in what profess to be the earliest words of it extant, the fragment of Susario,

ἀκούετε λεῴ· Σουσαρίων λέγει τάδε,

υἱὸς Φιλίνον Μεγαρόθεν Τριποδίσκιος·

κακὸν γυναίκες,

while it may be doubted whether in the whole course of this literature a female character was ever introduced on the stage, except with the view of leading up to some form of indecency.[121]

The net results of this examination, though chiefly negative, are yet fairly clear. It has, I hope, been shown that—

(1) That relation between men and women which is now called “love” was, as far as can be gathered from literature, non-existent among the Greeks down to the end of the fifth century.

(2) The position occupied by women in the consideration of men was so unimportant, that even the sensual relation of the sexes was but little treated of in literature till a comparatively late period, and was always, down to the end of the fifth century, looked upon by a considerable section of society as unfitted for public discussion and representation. In other words, love-poetry in the modern sense is non-existent in classical Greek literature; while love-poetry in any sense, addressed to women, is a far more insignificant element in that literature than is commonly supposed.

That what has just been said does not hold good of the “Alexandrian” poets is so obvious that it hardly needs to be stated. Equally true, however, and not equally obvious, is the fact that, from the very first, these writers talk of women and women’s love in an entirely different tone to that adopted by those of whom we have hitherto been speaking. The line of cleavage between, say, Asclepiades and Euripides, is in reality quite as marked as that between Euripides and Apollonius. On this subject, therefore, it is perhaps worth while to say a few words, though the terribly mutilated condition in which the works of the earlier Alexandrians especially have come down to us, makes it very difficult to point to striking examples of what has been said.

The first representatives of the “Alexandrian” school of poets—that is, of the school of women-lovers—are Asclepiades and Philetas;[122] and in both cases the mere nature of their works (quite apart from their tone) is sufficiently striking when compared with the literature that had gone before.

Whether Philetas actually gave the title of Battis to a collection of his poems is difficult to say—it is, perhaps, on the whole, not improbable that he did—but in any case there can be no doubt that a considerable number of his elegies were either actually addressed to Battis, or else treated of her. The erudite and elaborate style of these poems is equally indisputable. Now, whatever may have been the actual tone of address in these elegies—the fragments unfortunately tell us nothing, and such other evidence as there is on the subject is of the scantiest description[123]—the two facts above-mentioned form of themselves a combination quite without parallel in the Greek literature of which we have hitherto been speaking. That anyone should have taken the trouble to devote erudition and elaboration to the praise of a woman, would have been an unheard-of thing in early Greece.

Asclepiades is an equally striking figure in the early Alexandrian literature; for it was he who was the first to introduce woman-love into the epigram—the first, in fact, to give it that social recognition which we have seen already accorded to boy-love, well-nigh two centuries before.[124]

But what renders Asclepiades particularly important for us just now—far more so than Philetas—is the fact that some forty of his epigrams have been preserved, and that it will therefore be possible, by examining these, to study at close quarters the points in which the tone of this new love-poetry differs from that of the old.

In the epigrams of Asclepiades we find, for the first time, love for a woman spoken of as a matter of life and death:—

οἴχομ’, ἔρωτες, ὄλωλα, διοίχομαι· είς γὰρ ἑταίραν

νυστάζων ἐπέβην, ἠδ’ ἔθιγόν τ’ Ἀΐδα.[125]

Anth. Pal. v. 162, 3-4.

Here, for the first time, such love appears as an end in life—as an object for which a man may well brave death:—

νῖφε, χαλαζοβόλει, ποίει σκότος, αἶθε, κεραύνου,

πάντα τὰ πορφύροντ’ ἐν χθονὶ σεῖε νέφη.

ἢν γάρ με κτείνῃς, τότε παύσομαι· ἢν δὲ μ’ ἀφῇς ζῆν,

καὶ διαθεὶς τούτων χείρονα, κωμάσομαι.

Anth. Pal. v. 64, 1-4.

Similar in spirit to this is the epigram in Anth. Pal. xii. 166:—

τοῦθ’ ὅ τι μοι λοιπὸν ψυχῆς, ὅ τι δή ποτ’, Ἔρωτες,

τοῦτό γ’ ἔχειν, πρὸς θεῶν, ἡσυχίην ἄφετε.

εἰ μή, ναὶ τόξοις μὴ βάλλετέ μ’, ἀλλὰ κεραυνοῖς·

ναὶ πάντως τέφρην θέσθε με κἀνθρακίην.

ναί, ναί, βάλλετ’ Ἔρωτες· ἐνεσκληκὼς γὰρ ἀνίαις,

ὀξύτερον τούτων εἴ γ’ ἔτι, βούλομ’ ἔχειν.

or another—perhaps the most beautiful of all his poems that we know—so like, and yet so utterly unlike, the elegies of Mimnermus:—

πῖν’, Ἀσκληπιάδη· τί τὰ δάκρυα ταῦτα; τί πάσχεις;

οὐ σὲ μόνον χαλεπὴ Κύπρις ἐληΐσατο,

οὐδ’ ἐπὶ σοὶ μούνῳ κατεθήξατο τόξα καὶ ἰοὺς

πικρὸς Ἔρως· τί ζῶν ἐν σποδιῇ τίθεσαι;

πίνωμεν Βάκχου ζωρὸν πόμα· δάκτυλος ἀώς·

ἢ πάλι κοιμιστὰν λύχνον ἰδεῖν μένομεν;

πίνωμεν γαλερῶς· μετά τοι χρόνον οὐκέτι πουλὺν,

σχέτλιε, τὴν μακρὰν νύκτ’ ἀναπαυσόμεθα.

Anth. Pal. xii. 50.[126]

The love of Mimnermus was hardly of a kind to bring tears to the eyes!

Yet, though this love has reached to such a passionate height, it does not forget to be gallant and courteous;[127] and there is a striking absence of that jealousy and that savage spirit of revenge which may almost be said to be the one motive of the “lovers” in Euripides. A remarkable instance of this most un-Greek willingness to forgive, is the epigram in Anth. Pal. v. 150:—

ὡμολόγησ’ ἥξειν εἰς νύκτα μοι ἡ ’πιβόητος

Νικώ, καὶ σεμνὴν ὤμοσε Θεσμοφόρον·

κοὐχ ἥκει, φυλακὴ δὲ παροίχεται· ἆρ’ ἐπιορκεῖν