[14] Hermes. Leont. i. Fr. 3. (Ed. Bach.)
[15] Theocr. i. 82 seqq. Cp. Reitzenstein, Epigramm und Skolion, p. 212 seqq.
[16] Serv. ad Ecl. viii. 68.
[17] Theocr. vii. 72.
[18] The only real exceptions to this rule are, perhaps, Sappho and her followers!
[19] Theognis, 183; cp. Pseudo-Phocylides, 189. Very similar in spirit is Hesiod’s advice to the farmer to get
οἶκον μὲν πρώτιστα γυναῖκά τε βοῦν τ’ ἀροτῆρα. Op. 403.
[20] That is to say, these feelings by themselves. As regards the first, no one, of course, would wish to deny that the sexual instinct, in its most sensual form, has often played a prominent part in what is unquestionably love-poetry; but the sexual instinct can never of itself supply the fundamental basis of the feeling necessary for the production of such poetry. Woman, regarded merely as a source of pleasure or convenience, can no more be an object of love than a bottle of brandy or a railway train.
[21] Cf. Hes. Op. 700, seqq. A comparison of that passage with the types mentioned in Simonides, i.e. the γυνὴ γηΐνη and the γυνὴ ἐξ ὄνου, would seem to show that the sense of δειπνόλοχος is not so much ‘fishing for invitations to dinner,’ i.e. fond of going out (so L. and S.), as ‘waylaying dinners,’ i.e. making havoc of the food, like Plautus’ ‘pernae pestis.’ Wastefulness in household matters was much more likely to ‘burn up’ a Greek husband, and bring him to a ‘cruel old age,’ than any amount of frivolity or flirtation. For the idea cp. Aristoph. Eccl. 226.