Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry / A fragment printed for the use of scholars

by E. F. M. Benecke

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

ἤθελε; τὸν λύχνον, παῖδες, ἀποσβέσατε.

while the sudden bathos of Anth. Pal. v. 7, is quite in the same spirit. Even where a more real punishment is suggested, its execution is put off into a very vague and distant future:—

ταὐτὰ παθοῦσα

σοὶ μέμψαιτ’ ἐπ’ ἐμοῖς στᾶσά ποτε προθύροις.[128]

Anth. Pal. v. 164, 3-4.

Striking, too, is the note of resignation that marks poems like Anth. Pal. v. 189, xii. 153.[129] Still more striking, to those who remember the brutality of Epicrates’ attack upon Lais,[130] is the tone in which the aged courtesan is spoken of in Anth. Pal. vii. 217. The two little pictures of happy lovers, so suggestive of the Acme and Septimius of Catullus, in Anth. Pal. v. 153, xii. 105, are also very far indeed away from anything of the kind that had ever gone before.[131]

We are thus confronted by a very remarkable fact. That way of regarding women which we may call the romantic feeling—a feeling which we have noticed to be conspicuous by its absence in Euripides—appears suddenly developed to a high degree, in what is practically the first poetry extant after him. The full meaning of this fact we shall come to consider later; but before it is possible to do this, it will be necessary to institute some further preliminary enquiries.

Attention has already been sufficiently drawn to the almost entire absence from the early Greek literature of love-poetry of any kind addressed to women; at the same time, it has been briefly pointed out more than once that love-poetry addressed to boys or men is a very common phenomenon in this literature. This mere fact in itself would be one requiring some investigation, in an examination of this kind; but when the nature of this love-poetry comes to be considered, it will be seen how particularly important, in the present connection, is this phase of the Greek mind. For it is a fact which becomes immediately apparent, and grows more and more evident, the more the matter is looked into, that while such little love-poetry as does exist, addressed by men to women, is entirely concerned with the purely sensual aspect of the matter, in the very considerable volume of poetry addressed by men to men, this aspect is well-nigh entirely ignored. But obvious though this fact must be to everyone who reads the early Greek poetry with open eyes, the influence of our present methods of thought and training has been so strong, that not only has its importance been strangely ignored by modern writers, but even the fact itself has been questioned or denied. Under these circumstances, it will not be superfluous to go into the matter at some length, for reasons which will appear more clearly when the truth has been established.[132]

The story of the Iliad is a story without a heroine, a feature which makes it well-nigh unique among national legends. This fact has struck various people, and has been accounted for in various ways, the favourite explanation, perhaps, being that the Greek imagination was severer and more self-controlled, more statuesque, one may almost say, than that of other primitive peoples, and was therefore content with a hero whose sole inspiration lay in love of glory and love of battle, apart from any gentler emotion whatever.[133] This estimate of the Greek imagination is no doubt a just one, but there is none the less a strong objection to seeking in it an explanation of the peculiarities of the Iliad. To regard the Achilles of Homer as a person animated solely by ambition and military enthusiasm, is, in face of the facts of the case, impossible. As is well known, Achilles sulks because deprived of Briseis, and is only roused again by the death of Patroclus; that is to say, his two main actions are influenced entirely by motives outside of those which are looked upon as his chief characteristics.[134] In other words, Achilles is not a military hero at all; the interest one feels in him is due almost entirely to the emotional side of his character. But while this much is clear, the question still remains: Why has this emotional hero no corresponding heroine? for, of course, one cannot regard Briseis as such.

The answer to this is one that will not please a certain class of modern minds, but that is no proof that it is not true. There is a heroine in the Iliad, and that heroine is Patroclus. The Achilleis is a story of which the main motive is the love of Achilles for Patroclus.[135] This solution is astoundingly simple, and yet it took me so long to bring myself to accept it, that I am quite ready to forgive anyone who feels a similar hesitation. But those who do accept it, cannot fail to observe, on further consideration, how thoroughly suitable a motive of this kind would be in a national Greek epic. For this is the motive running through the whole of Greek life, till that life was transmuted by the influence of Macedonia. The lover-warriors Achilles and Patroclus are the direct spiritual ancestors of the Sacred Band of Thebans, who died to a man on the field of Chaeronea.

Those who have made any study of the social life of early Greece, will hardly need to be reminded how important a part this relationship between older and younger men played there. In some states, such as Megara, it was specially patronised by the government. Among the Cretans, and to a certain extent also among the Lacedaemonians,[136] it formed the basis of the military organisation.[137] At Thespiae, the festival of the Erotidia was consecrated to this form of love.[138] At Elis there was a periodical beauty-competition among the youths, the prizes consisting of arms and armour.[139] A somewhat similar contest took place every spring at the tomb of the hero Diocles at Megara.[140] Nor was this all. In many states this relationship came to be looked upon as well-nigh an emblem of constitutional liberty;[141] so much so, that the tyrants used to regard it as a standing menace to themselves, and actually took steps to suppress it.[142] Thus Polycrates destroyed the gymnasium[143] at Samos ὥσπερ ἀντιτείχισμα τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἀκροπόλει, and others are said to have behaved in a similar way.[144]

But while the social importance of this relationship cannot be questioned, its character is equally unmistakable. In principle, and also in practice, it was pure. Its first and most striking feature, a feature specially emphasised by almost every ancient writer who alludes at all to the subject, is its perfect purity. The very idea of sensuality in connection with it is almost invariably vigorously repudiated,[145] and the author of the “Erotic Oration” of Demosthenes is but expressing the universal convictions of his predecessors when he says, δίκαιος ἐραστὴς οὔτ’ ἂν ποιήσειεν οὐδὲν αἰσχρὸν οὔτ’ ἀξιώσειεν.[146]

How entirely this was the case will be still more apparent when we come to examine the writers who dealt with the subject. Here it may suffice to remark that, apart from that main sewer, the Old Attic Comedy, there are, in all the Greek poetry extant down to the end of the fifth century, but a couple, or at most three, passages in which sensuality is so much as suggested in this connection.[147]

To trace the growth and development of this form of love—for love it was in the most modern sense of the word—would be extremely interesting; but it would be a long and difficult undertaking, which cannot be attempted here. The main outlines of its history are, however, sufficiently clear. Originating in the companionship of the battle-field, where the younger and weaker combatants would naturally look to their elders for help and support, it introduced itself also, as we have seen, into those peaceful exercises which serve to train the soldier; and hence, as soon as we find civilised communities, we find both the army and the gymnasium organised with reference to it. When a somewhat more settled condition of affairs had succeeded to the constant warfare of earlier times, we find it losing to some extent its distinctively military character, though this never entirely disappears, as is clear from the institution by Epaminondas of that “Sacred Band” of which we have had occasion to speak already. And so, in peace and war alike, it continues throughout classical times a dominating element in Greek society. Its highest development was due, of course, to Socrates and his followers; but from the end of the fifth century onwards it was beginning to lose its hold upon the Greek mind. The improved position of women, and that improved way of regarding them which was gradually springing up about this time, could not fail to affect it prejudicially, while other equally potent causes were at work to bring about its overthrow; indeed, it is not long before we find writers speaking in open disparagement of it.[148] And in all probability this contempt for the “hypocrisy of the philosophers” was now, to a great extent, justified; for there is little reason to suppose that at this period that high standard of moral purity, with which this form of love had been originally associated, was any longer a prominent feature of it. The Macedonians, in destroying the old Greek states, were destroying at once the home of its birth and the cause of its existence. It is small wonder that it failed, like so many other of the old Greek institutions, to adapt itself to its new surroundings, and that it could not survive the downfall of those virtues of patriotism and independence of which it was at once the outcome and the emblem.

But the fragrance of its early purity and beauty was never quite lost, as long as the classical world remained. In well-nigh all the poetry dealing with it there is a tone of dignity and chivalry to which the poetry addressed to women never, perhaps, wholly attained. The charming grace of the 12th Idyll of Theocritus is unsurpassed in any of his other works; the passionate despair of the 23rd is unequalled. The contrast in tone between the 12th and the 5th books of the Anthology is one of the most remarkable features of that remarkable collection of poems.[149] Even Catullus, when striving to give expression to a love purer and more intense than any Roman had ever known, still feels the spell of early Greece upon him.

“tunc te dilexi, non tantum ut vulgus amicam,

sed pater ut natos diligit et generos,”

he exclaims. “I loved you, not as a man loves a woman, but as a man loves a youth!”[150]

We have hitherto been speaking chiefly of the social aspect of this form of love; we can now proceed to examine somewhat more in detail its influence upon literature. And here two striking facts will at once present themselves to us, the exact converse of those which met us when examining the early literary treatment of woman-love. From the earliest period onwards we shall find the love of man for man taking a prominent place in poetry, while at the same time this love as there depicted is remarkable for its chivalrous and unsensual character. In other words, while the love of man to woman was among the early Greeks a love of the senses, the love of man to man was a love of the soul.

Of the Iliad we have spoken already, and we need not speak further, for though, as we have already pointed out, the relations between various of the Greek heroes there described are strong presumptive evidence of a state of affairs parallel to that which we know to have existed in historical times,[151] it is in the nature of an epic to be unable to supply proof of so positive a kind as is to be found in lyric poetry, which is generally, anyhow in early times, the expression of the writer’s actual feelings with reference to actual surrounding circumstances.

In dealing with the lyric writers we shall therefore be on firmer ground.

Here, in the fragments of Archilochus already we find very strong evidence of the existence of love-poems addressed to men; indeed, it is impossible satisfactorily to explain Fr. 85—

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

on any other supposition. This being so, and there being no evidence of any erotic poems addressed to women, it is justifiable to consider that Fr. 84 also belonged to this same class of poetry[152]; while there is further no reason to believe that these two passages were unique in the works of Archilochus. In other words, love-poems addressed to men are among the earliest known forms of subjective Greek poetry.

But while both Archilochus and Alcman[153] produced works of this kind, the fragments of these which remain are too scanty for it to be possible to feel any real certainty as to their exact nature; nor again was either of these two authors particularly celebrated in ancient times for this class of composition.

It is different with Alcaeus. Alcaeus was recognised throughout antiquity as the master par excellence of this form of poetry, and though the actual fragments of his works on this subject which remain are not much more satisfactory than is the case with his predecessors, we have most valuable evidence as to their nature in two poems of Theocritus, the one professedly and the other evidently imitated from them.[154] These poems contain certain evidently Alexandrian elements,[155] and, consequently, it would be unjustifiable to press any particular detail of them as illustrating Alcaeus, but, at the same time, there seems every reason to believe that in their general tone they reflect the spirit of their originals, and it is to their general tone that I wish to draw the reader’s attention.

To take the first of them (Idyll xxix.). The speaker is about to tell some unpleasant truths, but he feels constrained to apologise for so doing (1-4). After a passionate but dignified protestation of his love (5-8), he appeals to his friend’s better feelings (9), and urges him to be constant in his affections (10-20).

ποίησαι καλιὰν μίαν εἰν ἑνὶ δενδρίῳ,

ὅπᾳ μηδὲν ἀπίξεται ἄγριον ὄρπετον.

“If you do so,” he continues—

“ἀγαθὸς μὲν ἀκούσεαι

ἐξ ἀστῶν,

and Love will deal kindly with you, and save you from such pangs as I have suffered (21-24). For we grow older every day, and youth is the season for forming those friendships which last a lifetime (25-34). Now, I would readily do anything for your sake, but if you disregard my words, the time may come when even if you call me I will not answer” (35-40).

But anyone who has ever read this charming little poem will not need to have its character further forced upon him. The manliness, the dignity, the courtesy of it, are patent in every line; more striking still to those who know Greek literature is the spirit of self-negation which pervades the whole; and all this, combined with a passion which is none the less real because it is kept rigorously under control. Even in Alexandrian times it would be hard to find a poem addressed to a woman which can equal this in its chivalrous tone; to look for such a poem in early Greek literature would be vain indeed.

In the second of these two pieces (Idyll xxx.), also in all probability modelled on Alcaeus, the purely erotic side of the matter comes more to the front than in the one we have just been discussing, but here, too, one cannot fail to be struck by the quiet earnestness of the tone, which is as far removed from the good-humoured banter of Asclepiades as it is from the outspoken brutality of Archilochus.

But perhaps the most striking commentary on this state of feeling is that furnished by the other section of the Lesbian school of poets. It has troubled the minds of many modern commentators to think why Sappho should have addressed love-poems to Anactoria; for those who have formed a true idea of what “love” between a man and a woman meant in Greece of the seventh century, and compared this with the love then existing among men for one another, the question answers itself. Sappho, in addressing love-poems to Anactoria, was but adapting to her own circumstances and sex the universal contemporary principles of love-poetry. It seemed so unnatural then, and so impossible, to connect the sexual instinct with any pure or noble feeling, that Sappho, because her love was pure and its ideal a noble one, instinctively and inevitably chose as the object of this love her fellow-women, just as the men of her time chose their fellow-men.[156] To the Greek of the period the association of the sexes inevitably suggested sensuality; Sappho loved Anactoria, just as Alcaeus loved Lycus, in order that this suggestion might be as far as possible excluded. Sappho loved a woman because her love was too pure to allow her to love a man. All this sounds strange—monstrous almost—to modern ears; and yet, of all the scandal of the centuries which has heaped itself up around the name of Lesbos, what Sappho herself would have resented most would perhaps have been the story that she was in love with Phaon.

We have already had occasion to notice that Anacreon, while he was the originator of love-poetry addressed to women, at the same time addressed a large number of his poems, in fact, the majority, to boys. In his case, therefore, it is possible for the first time to compare the two forms of “love” in the same individual. The comparison is not much to the advantage of the newer feeling. While the outspoken sensuality of the poems devoted to women cannot be matter of dispute, even judging from such fragments of them as remain, the chaste and sober nature of Anacreon’s relation to his boy-lovers is not only a feature of the extant fragments, but is also alluded to more than once by ancient writers, who had his complete works from which to draw their inferences. Thus Aelian (Var. Hist. ix. 4), speaking of the love of Anacreon for Smerdias (cp. Anacreon, Fr. 48) says—

εἶτα ἥσθη τὸ μειράκιον τῷ ἐπαίνῳ καὶ τὸν Ἀνακρέοντα ἠσπάζετο σεμνῶς εὖ μάλα, ἐρῶντα τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦ σώματος. μὴ γάρ τις ἡμῖν διαβαλλέτω, πρὸς θεῶν, τὸν ποιητὴν τὸν Τήϊον, μηδ’ ἀκόλαστον εἶναι λεγέτω.

Maximus Tyrius again, who several times alludes to Anacreon (and always under the title of ὁ σοφός or ὁ σοφιστής), expressly compares his love to that of Socrates (xxiv. 9)—

ἡ δὲ τοῦ Τηΐου σοφιστοῦ τέχνη τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἤθους καὶ τρόπου, καὶ γὰρ πάντων ἐρᾷ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἐπαινεῖ πάντας. μεστὰ δὲ αὐτοῦ τὰ ᾄσματα τής Σμερδίου κόμης καὶ τῶν Κλεοβούλου ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ τῆς Βαθύλλου ὥρας· ἀλλὰ κὰν τούτοις τὴν σωφροσύνην ὅρα. ἔραμαι δέ τοι κ.τ.λ. (Fr. 44) καὶ αὖθις, καλὸν εἶναι τῷ ἐρῶντι τὰ δίκαια φησί.

A similar compliment to Anacreon seems to glimmer through Athenaeus’ account of Polycrates, (xii. 540 E.)

How deep the difference really went, it is of course impossible, in the absence of the poet’s complete works, to show, but, as already remarked, even in the few fragments we have, the distinction between the strong passion with which he speaks of his boy-loves and the frivolous tone of his addresses to women is very noticeable.

On the deep significance of the attempt of Ibycus to introduce personal erotic poetry into the choral hymns, we have also dwelt,[157] so that we can proceed without further delay to the works which bear the name of Theognis, a body of poems which, in the present connection, are perhaps the most interesting in all early Greek literature.

The great mass of these poems are in the form of short pieces addressed by the writer to his youthful friend Cyrnus, and, as such, are one long commentary on the subject we are discussing. Regarded from this point of view, several features at once force themselves upon the attention. Notwithstanding the fact that many of them are thorough love-poems, yet not only is the sensual side of the matter entirely ignored, but even the erotic, as far as that is subjective, is kept rigorously in the background. The counsel Theognis gives is such as a father might give to his son—[158]

σοὶ δέ τοι οἷά τε παιδὶ πατὴρ ὑποθήσομαι αὐτός

ἐσθλά. (l. 1049.)

Indeed, he is afraid lest Cyrnus’ eagerness may lead him into temptation, and so even urges him not to be over-loving.

μή μ’ ἀέκοντα βίῃ κεντῶν ὑπ’ ἄμαξαν ἔλαυνε,

ἐς φιλότητα λίην, Κύρνε, προσελκόμενος.[159] (l. 371.)

He will not thrust himself upon his friend if the latter is unwilling; he will rather himself bear the pang of parting—

ἀργαλέως μοὶ θυμὸς ἔχει περὶ σῆς φιλότητος·

οὔτε γὰρ ἐχθαίρειν οὔτε φιλεῖν δύναμαι,

γινώσκων χαλεπὸν μέν, ὅταν φίλος ἀνδρὶ γένηται,

ἐχθαίρειν, χαλεπὸν δ’ οὐκ ἐθέλοντα φιλεῖν.

(l. 1091.)

Yet he is always ready to sympathise with him when in trouble—

σὺν σοί, Κύρνε, παθόντι κακῶς ἀνιώμεθα πάντα.

(l. 655.)

Though Cyrnus does not heed him, he will yet make him immortal by his songs.[160]

Much more there is, similar in tone, chiefly advice as to the choice of friends and the like, but it would be an endless task to examine all this in detail. The reader may open the collection at random, and at once find further proof of what has been said here. Whatever the subject of the poems and whatever their occasion, they are all well-nigh equally remarkable for their dignity, their temperance, their manliness, and for their most un-Greek virtue of unselfishness, and remarkable, no less, for the absence from them of that meanness and spitefulness which even in modern times so often mark the unfortunate lover. It does one good to read these poems; they are keen and clear like a mouthful of mountain air; and it does one good, too, to think of the θοῖναι καὶ εἰλάπιναι where they were sung and where the spirit of them was understood. After all, modern writers may decry and defame these amantes contra naturam as much as they please, but they cannot deny that they were the first to teach that the mission of love was to make men better.[161]

The intimate connection between the poems that bear the name of Theognis and the Scolia has already been noticed; it will not therefore be surprising to find that the latter are almost as full as the former of references to our present subject, though, as it is in their nature to be commonplace, they need not detain us long.

Of the 25 Scolia preserved by Athenaeus,[162] 15 deal with friendships of this kind;[163] these may be roughly divided into two classes: those which sing the praises of famous pairs of friends, and those which contain general remarks on the subject. A striking instance of the first class is, of course, the well-known Scolion of Callistratus (9-12), in which it may be observed that in the second verse, where Harmodius is promised immortality among the celebrated heroes of antiquity, the two of these specially mentioned are Achilles, the lover of Patroclus, and Diomed, the lover of Sthenelus. Other examples are Scol. 21, referring to Admetus, and Scol. 17, 18 referring to Ajax, the latter of whom is a hero in the Scolia as early as the time of Alcaeus. In the second class, perhaps the most interesting are Scol. 23, with its very Theognis-like advice, and Scol. 19, of which we have already spoken.[164]

As is, of course, only to be expected, these poems do not add much to our knowledge of the subject or its treatment; but it was none the less worth while to call attention to them, owing to the fact that verse or doggerel of this kind, though it may not be of much importance itself, is yet able to furnish important evidence as to the nature of the popular feeling to which it owes its origin. The views expressed in these poems are not those of individual authors, they are the views of the whole community; and it is this fact which gives to the Scolia a far deeper significance than would at first sight appear to belong to them.

So far, the examination of such fragments of the early Greek literature as have survived, has resulted in the discovery of a body of evidence which, if not very voluminous, is yet remarkably unanimous. It remains to be seen in how far it is possible to supplement this from the works of the Attic tragedians, which have been preserved in a more perfect condition. At the first glance the prospect is not very promising; love altogether, as we have seen, plays a very subordinate part in the Attic drama, while that form of love which we are immediately considering, seems at first sight to be especially neglected. And indeed, to a certain extent, this is really the case, for very obvious reasons. In the early days of tragedy, when the love-element was well-nigh entirely excluded, in obedience to the then artistic canons, it was not to be expected that exception would be made in favour of this particular form of it;[165] later, when the love-element was gradually forcing itself into the drama, the playwrights were all, whether they cared to confess it or not, under the influence of Euripides, who, as we know, was a special student of feminine nature, and as such, felt only a qualified interest in the mutual relations of men.[166] But at the same time, a closer examination of the Attic tragedians will perhaps reveal that this characteristically Greek emotion has had a greater influence on their work than one would, at the first moment, be disposed to believe.

Two plays, the Myrmidones of Aeschylus and the Niobe of Sophocles, are specially mentioned by Athenaeus[167] as introducing ἀρσενικοὶ ἔρωτες; unfortunately, however, in neither case are the fragments preserved of a kind to throw much light on the method of treatment adopted.

The Myrmidones, which seems to have been the first play of a trilogy, treated of the death of Patroclus and Achilles’ lament for him,[168] which seems, to judge by such expressions as those preserved in Fr. 135,[169] 138, to have been of a passionate character; but whether the erotic element was the only interest in the play, and whether it was in any way developed in the latter part of the trilogy, it is impossible now to say. The Niobe recounted the misfortunes of that heroine, with her subsequent grief and exile from Thebes, the scene of the tragedy, to Lydia. But a striking feature, the most striking, perhaps, if we may draw any inference from the statement in Athenaeus[170] that this play was commonly known as ἡ τραγῳδία ἡ παιδεράστρια, was the relation represented as existing among Niobe’s sons.[171] This would appear to have been especially emphasised in the account of the death-scene[172]—a passage which we can gather indirectly to have been the most popular in the play;[173] whether it was at all prominent in the previous action we cannot tell; and, indeed, the fragments of the Niobe are of a quite particularly meagre description.

To these two plays mentioned by Athenaeus must be added a third, the Chrysippus of Euripides, a work which is peculiarly interesting for two reasons—its author and its subject. The Myrmidones and the Niobe, of which we have just spoken, seem, as far as can be judged by the little of them that remains, to have dealt with what may be called simple straightforward love-stories. Men are introduced as in love with other men, and this love is brought to a climax by the most usual of expedients—the death of the loved object. Euripides, on the other hand, was, as we have seen, above all things a student of the emotions in their more complex phases, and a dénouement of so ordinary a kind could not have failed to appear commonplace to a writer who took such an interest in the pathology of the senses, even when he for once abandoned his favourite field of the feminine passions, and undertook the examination of a form of love, the symptoms of which are notoriously more easily capable of diagnosis. And, as a matter of fact, the Chrysippus introduces us to a novel and most interesting side of the question. The story on which the play is founded is, to quote the words of the Argument to the Phoenissae, as follows:

οὗτος (ὁ Λάϊος) ἀφικόμενός ποτε εἰς Ἦλιν καὶ τὸν τοῦ Πέλοπος υἱὸν Χρύσιππον ἰδών, ὃς ἦν ἐξ ἄλλης αὐτῷ γυναικὸς καὶ οὐκ ἐκ τῆς θυγατρὸς Οἰνομάου Ἱπποδαμείας, καὶ ἁλοὺς τούτου κατάκρας τῷ ἔρωτι, ἁρπάσας εἰς Θήβας ἤνεγκεν. καὶ συνῆν αὐτῷ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ πρῶτος ἐν ἀνθρώποις τὴν ἀρρενοφθορίαν εὑρών, καθὼς δὴ καὶ ὁ Ζεὺς ἐν θεοῖς τὸν Γανυμήδην ἁρπάσας. ὁ δὲ Πέλοψ μαθὼν τοῦτο κατηράσατο Λάϊῳ μηδέποτε μὲν παῖδα τεκεῖν, εἰ δ’ ἄρα καὶ συμβαίη, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦτον ἀναιρεθήσεσθαι.

Or, according to a slightly different version found in “Peisander”:

ἱστορεῖ Πείσανδρος, ὅτι κατὰ χόλον τῆς Ἥρας ἐπέμφθη ἡ Σφὶγξ τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων μερῶν τῆς Αἰθιοπίας, ὅτι τὸν Λάϊον ἀσεβήσαντα εἰς τὸν παράνομον ἔρωτα τοῦ Χρυσίππου, ὃν ἥρπασεν ἀπὸ τῆς Πίσης, οὐκ ἐτιμωρήσαντο ... πρῶτος δὲ ὁ Λάϊος τὸν ἀθέμιστον ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἔσχεν. ὁ δὲ Χρύσιππος ὑπὸ αἰσχύνης ἑαυτὸν διεχρήσατο τῷ ξίφει. (Schol. ad Eur. Phoen. 1760.)

The moral of both these stories is obvious. The behaviour of Laius towards Chrysippus was a crime deserving the most exemplary punishment.

Now this fact at once affords us a clue as to the real nature of Laius’ conduct. It seems impossible that the statement that Laius πρῶτος τὸν ἀθέμιστον ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἔσχεν can be taken to mean that he was the founder of love as between man and man in the same way as this is related of, for instance, Orpheus. It seems impossible to believe that any legend should have described the originator of that form of love with which, as we know, the highest thoughts and ideals of the early Greeks were so intimately associated, as a criminal worthy of divine punishment. Euripides himself might not have shrunk from such a course, but it does not seem conceivable that he should have found any existing legend on which to begin to work;[174] and it seems, therefore, unquestionable that the meaning of the story cannot have been this. As a matter of fact, a careful examination of such evidence as we have, affords every reason for believing that its meaning was a very different one.

The true meaning of the legend is this. Laius was the first to violate the universal law that the love between man and man must be pure; and it was this transgression that involved himself, his family, and his country in such universal ruin.

That this meaning is in itself a more likely one than the other, will probably not be disputed by anyone who has formed a true conception of early Greek feeling on the subject; more than this one cannot expect. But while actual proof on the point is impossible, it may not be inapposite to draw attention to the way in which the sensuality and unreasoning animalism of Laius are emphasised at every turn, with the view doubtless, in the first case, of preventing any conceivable misunderstanding of the true purport of the tradition.

In the play itself, the nature of his passion is shown only too clearly by the famous distichs (Fr. 840, 841):

λέληθεν οὐδὲν τῶνδέ μ’ ὧν σὺ νουθετεῖς,

γνώμην δ’ ἔχοντά μ’ ἡ φύσις βιάζεται.

αἰαῖ, τόδ’ ἤδη δεινὸν ἀνθρώποις κακόν,

ὅταν τις εἰδῇ τἀγαθόν, χρῆται δὲ μή.

Cicero says as much (Tusc. iv. 33, 71): Quis ... non intellegit quid apud Euripidem et loquatur et cupiat Laius? Aelian, too (N. H. vi. 15), draws an unconscious comparison between this play and the pure old-Greek Niobe of Sophocles when, after describing how the dolphin that loved a boy ἐπιβιῶναι τοῖς παιδικοῖς οὐκ ἐτόλμησεν, he adds, Λάϊος δὲ ἐπὶ Χρυσίππῳ, ὦ καλὲ Εὐριπίδη, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔδρασεν.

The sensuality of the passion is clearly shown, too, by various features of the legend as recorded by various writers, above all by the fact that Hera is the goddess outraged, and by the peculiar nature of the curse of Pelops. The actual words, moreover, of the Scholiast of the Phoenissae (τὸν Λάϊον ἀσεβήσαντα ἐς τὸν παράνομον ἔρωτα τοῦ Χρυσίππου) and of the argument of that play (καὶ συνῆν αὐτῷ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ πρῶτος ἐν ἀνθρώποις τὴν ἀρρενοφθορίαν εὑρών), seem all to point the same way.[175]

In fact, the sensuality of Laius is made such a feature of the story in every case in which it is narrated, that it cannot well be doubted that this sensuality was a feature of the story in its earliest form; and if this be granted, there can be very little question as to the meaning of the story itself, as originally current.

We thus have three plays, one by each of the great dramatists, dealing with this subject, two of them dwelling upon the intense and unselfish nature of the passion in its true form, the third emphasising the disastrous consequences of any transgression of that purity which was so integral a part of it; but are these three the only ones of their kind? They are the only three, perhaps, that dealt with the purely erotic side of the matter; but its general influence evidently extended over a far wider field. This influence makes itself felt in various ways and in varying degrees, and it would be a lengthy task, and one beside the present purpose, to endeavour to trace its workings wherever they are visible in Attic tragedy; but a few noticeable instances of it are well worthy of attention.

One of these is the Ajax of Sophocles. It is a common complaint against this play that the second half of it is inferior in interest to the first. The admirers of Sophocles, however, contend that, to an Athenian audience, the details of funeral arrangements were matters of such paramount importance that, in a play intended for the Athenian stage, a second act dealing entirely with this subject would not by any means be of the nature of an anti-climax. I am no great admirer of Sophocles, and still less am I an admirer of the mob that pelted Aeschylus and hooted Euripides, but yet I should be disposed to give the Athenians credit for rather higher tastes than this would seem to imply; while, even had the predilections of his audience been so strongly those of the undertaker, it might surely have been hoped that a poet of Sophocles’ genius would have had the courage to ignore them. Indeed, as long as the interest of the second half of the Ajax is considered as centred on the dead body of the hero, it is impossible successfully to refute the charge of bathos; but a more careful consideration of this part of the play will, perhaps, show that the interest is by no means intended to be attached in this Mezentius-like manner to a corpse. The interest is meant to centre on Teucer, the amasius of the dead Ajax,[176] and on his efforts to prove himself worthy of his heroic lover; for his lover’s sake, in spite of every obstacle, and in the face of what looks like certain death, he insists that due respect shall be paid to the dead; in fact, there are in this situation the germs of the situation which excites such general interest in the Antigone.[177] There the character whose weakness is made strength through love, is a woman, and so we moderns admire; here it is a man, and so we misunderstand; but it does not follow that the Greeks were equally narrow in their sympathies.

Another instance, less obvious at first sight, but equally convincing on nearer examination, is the Alcestis. The Alcestis is a very difficult play to understand, as far as the motives of its leading figures are concerned; nor is it enough to say that, because the play has been described as “something of a satyric drama,” therefore all its characters are meant to be grotesque. The self-concentration of Admetus and the complete acquiescence therein of Alcestis, must surely be capable of some more satisfactory explanation.[178] This explanation is, perhaps, to be found in the relation existing between Admetus and Apollo. The story of the love of Apollo for Admetus is sufficiently familiar,[179] and has been alluded to on various occasions in the preceding pages. Both at Athens and Sparta the legend seems to have been well known,[180] and there can be no doubt that an audience, when called upon to listen to a play dealing with Admetus, would instinctively call to mind this incident in his life.[181] Granted this, it is not, perhaps, too bold to say that it is equally unquestionable that this recollection on their part must have influenced their view of the hero’s character. He was unwilling to die; for any Greek to be unwilling to die was excusable in a way which we who live in English fogs can never understand; but for Admetus, the beloved of the Sun-god! If he, who for nine years had met Apollo face to face, shrank from the mould and the mud of Hades, what reason to wonder at it? To a Greek, to live was to see the sun; surely then, to one whom the Sun-god loved, life must be doubly precious, precious to a degree that less happy mortals could never comprehend.[182] Then, again, if one thought of who Admetus was. Surely the man whom the Sun-god loved was a man whom the world could not spare, a man for whom it was a privilege to be considered worthy to die. Patriotism, too, no less than personal affection, would seem to compel a sacrifice on behalf of the man in whose kingdom a god took such a special interest;[183] nor, again, was the gift of a divine lover a thing that it was safe lightly to put aside. All this, and much more of a kindred nature, must have been present in the minds of those who first saw this strange play, and must have served in part to mitigate its strangeness. It could not, perhaps, explain the central mystery; but then, the mystery of self-sacrifice has never been explained yet.

Another striking instance is the persistent way in which Orestes and Pylades figure in the Athenian drama. They play a prominent part in no fewer than five tragedies, in one of which, the Iphigeneia in Tauris, the scene between them became proverbial;[184] and thus we get repeated again and again the, to modern minds, almost grotesque situation of the intense affection between Orestes and Pylades, and the intense affection between Orestes and Electra,[185] and the supreme indifference between Pylades and Electra, the two lovers who are going to marry one another as soon as the curtain comes down. And yet, those who have read what has gone before will know that not only did this situation seem natural to the Athenian audience, but any other situation under the circumstances would have seemed to them monstrous or absurd.

It is hardly necessary to follow this subject further, for enough has been said already to make its main features perfectly clear. Still less is it necessary, for our present purpose, to study the history of this emotion during the succeeding centuries. As we have already pointed out, from the end of the fifth century onwards it begins to lose its hold on the popular imagination, and ceases to be a national institution; and when next we find traces of it in literature, we see at once that its nature has entirely altered. Paederastic poetry there is enough and to spare among the Alexandrians, but it is poetry which looks strange indeed by the side of Theognis.[186] What were the causes that led to this change, a change as great as that which about this time came over the relation between man and woman—how far it was due to Persian influence, how far to the employment of professional soldiers instead of the citizen-armies of an earlier period—all these are questions of the greatest interest in themselves, but they cannot be discussed here. The fact remains that that purity and self-devotion which had been the rule in one generation became the exception in the next, and that the downward course was never again fully arrested throughout classical times.

And yet, even the most sensual of the later poets, somehow, sometimes, when speaking of this, rise to strange heights of beauty. Listen to Rhianus:

ἰξῷ Δεξιόνικος ὑπὸ χλωρῇ πλατανίστῳ

κόσσυφον ἀγρεύσας, εἷλε κατὰ πτερύγων·

χὡ μὲν ἀναστενάχων ἀπεκώκυεν ἱερὸς ὄρνις.

ἀλλ’ ἐγώ, ὦ φίλ’ Ἔρως, καὶ θαλεραὶ χάριτες,

εἴην καὶ κίχλη καὶ κόσσυφος, ὡς ἂν ἐκείνου

ἐν χερὶ καὶ φθογγὴν καὶ γλυκὺ δάκρυ βάλω.

(Anth. Pal. xii. 142.)

Listen to Meleager, the last of the Greek poets:

οὐκ ἐθέλω Χαρίδαμον· ὁ γὰρ καλὸς εἰς Δία λεύσσει,

ὡς ἤδη νέκταρ τῷ θεῷ οἰνοχοῶν.

οὐκ ἐθέλω· τί δὲ μοὶ τὸν ἐπουρανίων βασιλῆα

ἄνταθλον νίκης τῆς ἐν ἔρωτι λαβεῖν;

αἱροῦμαι δ’, ἢν μοῦνον ὁ παῖς ἀνιὼν ἐς Ὄλυμπον

ἐκ γῆς νίπτρα ποδῶν δάκρυα τἀμὰ λάβῃ,

μναμόσυνον στοργῆς· γλυκὺ δ’ ὄμμασι νεῦμα δίϋγρον

δοίη, καί τι φίλημ’ ἁρπάσαι ἀκροθιγές.

τἄλλα δὲ πάντ’ ἐχέτω Ζεύς, ὡς θέμις. εἰ δ’ ἐθελήσει,

ἦ τάχα που κἀγὼ γεύσομαι ἀμβροσίας.

(Anth. Pal. xii. 68.)

δάκρυα σοὶ καὶ νέρθε διὰ χθονός, Ἡλιοδώρα,

δωροῦμαι.

The foregoing discussion has covered a quantity of ground and dealt with a large variety of topics, some of which may have appeared but remotely connected with our immediate subject; but in the end it has succeeded in establishing certain facts very clearly. We have learnt from an examination of such parts of the early Greek literature as have survived, and from a consideration of the probable nature of the rest, that

(1) Love in the modern sense, as existing between men and women, was unknown in early Greece.

(2) Such love on the part of men for men was not only a fact, but was generally recognised as a social, and in some cases a national, institution.

From this it would seem inevitably to follow, that the change which we find at a later period to have come over the way of regarding women, was due to a transference to the sexual instinct, and an amalgamation with it, of that form of emotion which had previously been confined to the mutual relations of men. In other words, men first began to look upon women as fit objects of pure and chivalrous devotion, when they began (to quote the expression of Alcman)[187] to look upon them as “female boy-friends.”

Now, my reason for calling attention to this point is the following: If one regards the origin of what, for briefness’ sake, we have called the romantic feeling, as entirely a new growth of the fourth century, unconnected with anything that had gone before, it is obvious that such a growth, if indeed possible at all, can only have been made possible by a simultaneous movement on the part of a large number of persons; for it is inconceivable that any one man, however great his influence, could invent and popularise an entirely new emotion. But if, on the other hand, we regard the romantic feeling as simply due to the readjustment of an already existing emotion, it is no longer absurd to suppose that the original suggestion of this readjustment may have been due to some single individual. Indeed, the probabilities rather point in that direction, for it is a commonplace that revolutions of thought are generally due to the discovery, on the part of some individual, of the apparently obvious formula for which the rest of mankind have long been seeking in vain. This being so, it will be justifiable to apply the general principle to the case before us, and it will no longer seem a fruitless task to look about among the literary names of the close of the fifth century and the beginning of the fourth, for the man who gave the first impulse to that remarkable movement with which we are at present concerned.

The great obstacle which here confronts us at the outset, and, indeed, makes this whole investigation one of exceptional difficulty, is the fact that, of all the periods of Greek poetry, that which covers the first part of the fourth century—in other words, that which forms the transition from the classical to the so-called Alexandrian era—is just that of which the fewest monuments of importance have been preserved. From the death of Aristophanes to the time when Asclepiades began to write is pretty well 70 years,[188] but all the poetry which has come down to us from this whole period consists of a few fragments of comedy,[189] most of which it is impossible even approximately to date, and a few epigrams, the history of which is often more obscure still. There is thus a great gap in our knowledge, and it is just during this interval of darkness that the romantic feeling must first have found expression, for while in Euripides, confessedly the most “modern” of the classical poets, no real trace of it is to be found,[190] in Asclepiades and his immediate contemporaries and followers we find it already so thoroughly established as a noteworthy factor in their work, that it is impossible to doubt that its origin must belong to a considerably earlier period. This being so, it is impossible to speak with any certainty. It seems, however, most probable that the initiation of the movement was due to Antimachus of Colophon.

Antimachus was a distinguished man in various ways. The author of an important critical edition of the text of the Homeric poems, he was himself an epic poet second only in the general estimation to Homer, and his Thebaid was still read and admired more than 500 years after his death.[191] But the work on which his present claim rests is his elegiac poem, Lyde. It may not be amiss briefly to recall the circumstances and nature of this poem.[192]

Antimachus, falling in love with some Lydian lady, married her, and went to live with her in her native country. Afterwards, on her death, he returned to Colophon, where he composed, in her memory, the elegy Lyde, a poem containing, in the form of digressions, accounts of most of the unhappy lovers of tradition or mythology.[193]

Now, in this there are two features which it is impossible to parallel in any previous Greek poem. The Lyde of Antimachus was a love-poem addressed to his wife, and written after her death. In these two facts we recognise, on the part of the writer, a view both of married life and of women in general, which is entirely new. Mimnermus had said that life without love was not worth living, but his was hardly the love to last after his lady’s death. Simonides had sung the charms of the ideal housekeeper, but one would not expect to find emotional poetry addressed even to the most perfect housekeeper, as such. Euripides had expatiated on the powers and the capabilities of women; but there is a difference between regarding a woman as a particularly cunning and dangerous sort of beast, and regarding her as a fit object for a life’s devotion. In Antimachus, for the first time, we meet with the new spirit which animates the new literature and forms the foundation of the Greek romantic conception; for it is respect for women and, above all, for marriage, that constitutes the fundamental principle of the romantic feeling throughout the later Greek poetry.[194] It was this spirit which rendered possible the artistic treatment of the story of Acontius and Cydippe, and the growth of the novel, with its one inviolable canon that, whatever trials or temptations might befall them, the two lovers must throughout remain pure and faithful to one another.[195] It was this that rendered possible the New Comedy, with its endless variations on the ever-fresh theme of the unhappy lover, made happy at the last by marriage with his lady.[196] It was this that rendered possible the Battis of Philetas and the Leontium of Hermesianax, just as it rendered possible the Delia and the Lycoris of a later time. Under the old régime none of these things could have been. When Antimachus first sat down in his empty house at Colophon to write an elegy to his dead wife, consciously or unconsciously, he was initiating the greatest artistic revolution that the world has ever seen.

The circumstances under which the Lyde was produced were thus in themselves sufficiently unusual to have made a deep impression, and there is reason to believe further that the way in which Antimachus there treated his subject was also strikingly original. Not only was the actual literary form a novel one, and one that subsequently became very popular, but the general tone evidently differed in a marked manner from that of any love-poetry which had gone before. It was, above all things, noticeable for its seriousness, its gravity, and its self-restraint, characteristics entirely foreign to any previous love-poetry addressed to women. Thus Poseidippus expressly contrasts the temperate Antimachus with the licentious Mimnermus.[197] Something similar seems equally implied by the epithet σεμνοτέρη in the epigram of Asclepiades (Anth. Pal. ix. 63, 2). Indirect evidence of the same nature is to be found in the remark of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who refers to Antimachus as an instance τῆς αὐστηρᾶς ἁρμονίας.[198] Lastly, it is not, perhaps, too far-fetched to suppose that in Catullus xcv. the contrast between the Smyrna and the Lyde is not intended to be confined merely to the literary form, but is meant to further imply the poet’s preference for the story of Myrrha over the less highly spiced anecdotes in Antimachus. Very interesting too, from this point of view, are the relations of mutual admiration which are known to have existed between Antimachus and his younger contemporary Plato, an admiration illustrated by several striking anecdotes.[199] That the philosopher’s views on love were directly influenced by the poet cannot, of course, be absolutely proved. At the same time, the well-authenticated story of this intimacy, coupled with all that we know of the Lyde, is very suggestive of this, and might well furnish the subject for more elaborate research on the part of some Platonist. In spite therefore of the very scanty references to the Lyde, and the still scantier remains of the poem itself, it seems to be clear beyond doubt that, both in its circumstances of origin and its style, it was entirely different from any love-poem which had preceded it; and, further, that both circumstances and style may justly be described as romantic. In other words, the Lyde was a romantic love-poem.

But this is not in itself enough to show that the origin of the romantic feeling which appears in Alexandrian literature was due to its influence. It is further necessary to prove that those writers in whose works this feeling first appeals—viz. Asclepiades and Philetas—were actually readers and admirers of Antimachus.

This it is, perhaps, possible to do more conclusively than the general absence of evidence on the whole subject would have led one to expect. It is just Asclepiades and his particular followers who speak with the greatest enthusiasm of Antimachus. Very noteworthy are the words of Asclepiades himself—

Λύδη καὶ γένος εἰμὶ καὶ οὔνομα· τῶν δ’ ἀπὸ Κόδρου

σεμνοτέρη πασῶν εἰμὶ δι’ Ἀντίμαχον.

τίς γὰρ ἔμ’ οὐκ ἤεισε; τίς οὐκ ἀνελέξατο Λύδην,

τὸ ξυνὸν Μουσῶν γράμμα καὶ Ἀντιμάχου;

Anth. Pal. ix. 63.

And the passage in Poseidippus, where Antimachus and Mimnermus, coupled but contrasted, are spoken of as the first two love-poets, is scarcely less emphatic.[200]

In the case of Philetas, the evidence is also strong. His elegies addressed to Battis are generally admitted to have been modelled, in form, at any rate, on the Lyde of Antimachus; and it does not seem unjustifiable to infer from this that their spirit and their general character were also, in the main, similar. The way in which the two poets are coupled by Ovid (Trist. i. 6, 1) seems to support this view, and, as we have already seen, there is no evidence to the contrary.[201] To sum up, then: the conclusions arrived at are briefly as follows:

(1) In extant Greek poetry there is no trace of romantic love-poetry addressed to women, prior to the time of Asclepiades and Philetas.

(2) In the works of these writers this element suddenly appears, not in the nature of an experiment, but as a leading motive—an almost sure proof that they were not the originators of it.

(3) The Lyde of Antimachus was a work of such a kind, both in nature and in circumstances of production, that there is every reason to believe that it was a romantic love-poem.

(4) Philetas and Asclepiades were notoriously admirers of the Lyde of Antimachus.

(5) Therefore there is reason to believe that the romantic element appearing in their poems was due to the influence of Antimachus, who may thus be regarded as the originator of the romantic element in literature.

Vale, lector benevole, si quidem huc usque mecum perveneris.