[283] Here, too, there can be little doubt that in the original (the Philadelphi of Menander), this erotic element was more prominent than it is in the Latin.
[284] Cp. Plaut. Trin. v. 1, 1 seqq.; 2, 64.
[285] Some further interesting evidence on this subject will be discussed later. [Cp. [p. 189]; but the reference seems to be to a part of the work which was not written.]
[286] In Tragedy, of course, the faithful and loving wife was not so entirely unknown. The Athenian might accept an Alcestis, who lived in prehistoric and heroic times, though even here his natural tendency was to jeer (cp. Aristoph. Equit. 1251); but, imagine such a character in Comedy, which was taken from real contemporary life? The idea was preposterous.
[287] It is of course obvious that characters such as Clitipho in the Heauton Timorumenus, or Lesbonicus in the Trinummus, do not regard matrimony with much enthusiasm, but, in all these cases, the reasons for their objection are so apparent that no one would consider them as real exceptions to the general rule that the young man of the New Comedy looks on marriage with favour.
[288] And here one may remark at once that the incontinence of women, which is one of the favourite subjects both of Aristophanes and of Euripides, is nowhere emphasised in New Comedy.
[289] Cp. Fr. 10.
[290] Cp. Ter. Eun. v. 4, 21 seqq.
[291] Ter. And. ii. 1, 15 and 25. [The author is assuming that the words “quam vellem!” in the latter passage, are spoken by Charinus, not by Pamphilus: the editors differ on this point.] This curious passage furnishes a further instance, if further instances be needed, of the fact that what the Greek required of a woman for a love-match was not so much physical purity as constancy to a particular lover. Hence we find that by far the greater mass of Greek romantic love-poetry is addressed, not to virgins, but to women to whom the writer is, in one way or another, married. Thus, too, in the romance of Xenophon Ephesius, the adventures of the lovers all take place after marriage (the wedding occurs already in chapter viii of book I.), and in this the Ephesiaca are at least as Greek as, if not more so than the Pastoralia of Longus, or the novel of Eumathius, where the most ridiculous and desperate expedients have to be resorted to in order that the heroine may preserve her virginity till the end of the last chapter. But this whole matter will be more fully discussed when we come to consider the Callimachean ideal of woman. [The reference is to a part of the work which was not completed.]
[292] Ter. Hec. v. 1, 24 seqq.; cp. i. 2, 82.