[4] This change, retrograde or not, according to taste, may be exactly paralleled from the social history of the Arabs.
[5] It is both instructive and amusing to compare this primitive ideal woman with the contemporary Greek woman, as Hesiod himself knew and described her. A striking passage is Op. 693 seqq., and others will be mentioned in the next few pages.
[6] That this was the general character of the erotic legends introduced into the celebrated “Catalogus” ascribed to Hesiod, seems shown by the remark in Serv. ad. Aen. vii. 268: “Hesiodus etiam περὶ των γυναικῶν inducit multas heroidas optasse nuptias virorum fortium”; cp. the whole note.
[7] The parallel view, that if a man wished to really love anyone, the only worthy object he could find would be another man, was doubtless, in part, the result of a similar line of argument, though its true origin must of course be sought in something more inspiring than mere contempt for women. A further examination of this side of the question will be made later on.
[8] Zeus pays ἄποινα to Tros for his son (cp. Hymn. Hom. iv. 210); that the golden shower in which he visited Danae means as much, is hardly a primitive notion. The argument in Ach. Tat. ii. 37 is ingenious, but scarcely convincing.
[9] This version of the relations between Zeus and Minos is at least as old as the Odyssey. Cp. Odyss. xix. 179; Athen. xiii. 601E.
[10] Hymn. Hom. iv. 247 seqq.
[11] The general view that the erotic version of this story is not the original seems to rest on the sole authority of Aesch. Cho. 613 seqq. Probably one version is as old as the other, the one being perhaps Dorian, the other Ionian. Aeschylus’ treatment of Dorian erotic legends will be touched upon later. (Infra, [p. 42].)
[12] A man may sometimes commit suicide after the death of his lady; but that is a very different thing to dying because she declines to have anything more to do with him. Stories like that of Iphis and Anaxarete only appear at a very late period.
[13] Athen. xiv. 619C.