ἀλλ’ εἴ μοί τι πίθοιο νέος προγενεστέρῳ.
[159] A striking record of temptation resisted is to be found in l. 949 seqq., but this is almost certainly by a later hand.
[160] l. 237 seqq.
[161] For an examination of the Second Book of Theognis, vide [Excursus E].
[162] Athen. xv. p. 694 seqq. This number excludes the poems of Hybrias and Aristotle, which are different in character from the rest.
[163] Of the remaining ten, the first four are religious, and only three contain any mention of women, two of these being coarse.
[165] For, as we have seen, one of the first of these canons was that the public expression of private emotions was an offence against art no less than against decency, and this would tend to exclude from the stage all forms of love equally. In the case of woman-love there were, of course, special objections; that was why the Myrmidones was the first erotic play of any kind produced; but this is beside the present issue.
[166] For the story in Aelian, Var. Hist. ii. 21, as to the relation between Euripides and Agathon, does not seem to be more than a vague piece of scandal.
To this must be added the fact that the earlier part of the century was the time when such a subject would most readily have appealed to the Athenian imagination. Later on, and especially from the fourth century onwards, the changed position of women was beginning to make itself felt in the way we have seen.