[66] The Sicilian Telestes makes rather an interesting remark about Athene when she throws away the flute because it spoils her looks:
τί γάρ νιν εὐηράτοιο κάλλεος
ὀξὺς ἔρως ἔτειρεν,
ᾇ παρθενίαν ἄγαμον καὶ ἄπαιδ’ ἀπένειμε Κλωθώ;
But, as we have already seen, men took more interest in women in Magna Graecia than in Greece itself.
[67] The Phaedra, Oenomaus, and perhaps the Colchides.
[68] Among the extant plays there is only the Hippolytus, and even in this, probably to the Greek mind a great part of the interest centred in the relations between Hippolytus and Theseus, and in their argument, where both start from the assumption that it would be absurd to suppose that the former could possibly have been in love with Phaedra. Of the lost plays it is hard to speak with confidence, but certainly the Andromeda, Phoenix, and Aeolus, seem to have been the only three in which the love element was at all the leading motive. The heroine of the Meleager was probably Althaea, not Atalanta. The Stheneboea merely describes the vengeance of Bellerophon for the treachery of his hosts. In the Antigone the “love-story” has all taken place before the action begins. Of the Alcestis and the Protesilaus we shall speak elsewhere, pp. [57], [99].
[69] That is to say, two only in which it furnished the main interest. That it lent a peculiar character to various other tragedies will be shown further on.
[70] Cp. what has been said above ([p. 35]) in the case of Ibycus; the parallel is a remarkable and important one.
[71] The statement to this effect in Aristoph. Ran. 1044, is so definite that it seems necessary to infer from it that, in spite of the words in Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. i. 773, the erotic incident in the Hypsipyle was very little emphasised.