The life of the Greek man was essentially and in his best hours outside his own house. By the Greek man we now mean the upper or more wealthy classes; all these had their work done by slaves. He went forth in the early morning to visit the theatres, where he was entertained with the dramas of Æschylus, of Euripides, of Aristophanes; he breakfasted; he visited the markets; he went to the bath; to the hairdresser; he conversed in the porticoes; he frequented the gymnasia, where he could talk or listen, where he could exercise and enjoy his body, where beautiful bodies and philosophic tongues found free play and ample room. Everything of politics, of poetry, of art, of scandal, was a delight to the keen and active intellect of the Greek; as in St. Paul’s day, he was eager to hear or see some new thing: and when such a ruler as Pericles had grasped the purse and the sword, and had gathered together in the small city of Athens all the sculptures, all the poetry, all the eloquence, all the pictures, all the vases, to adorn and glorify it, the Greek man may be said—using our expressive American phrase—“to have had a good time!”—as good as he has been able yet to see in the long history of the race.
Fig. 52.—Etruscan Vase.
Knowing as much as we do of the life of the Greek man and the Greek woman, need we be surprised that the rather sharp-tempered Xantippe, wife of that delightful vagabond and philosopher, Socrates—he who puzzled the too conscious sophists and pleased the simpler people, who loved the true and hated the false; he who lived for wisdom and not for power; who cared much for mind and less for money; who basked in the sunshine of the porticoes and pined in the shadows of his own house—need we be surprised that this wife of his was driven to go forth at times to seek her vagrant lord in the throng of the market-place or the excitements of the Academy, and to lead him thence to the place of his wife and children? Need we be surprised that her speech was then unmelodious, unconjugal, and that she became a sport and by-word for the wicked wits of that brilliant city?