dum mi abstineant invidere, sibi quisque habeant quod suum est![271]
But there are others, almost equally forcible, in the Rudens (iv. 8)—where particular enthusiasm is expressed at the prospect of marriage, as opposed to the relation which had previously been the lover’s highest possible ideal,—the Poenulus (v. 4, 49)[272], and elsewhere.
But another and equally important type of story is that in which the man first seduces the woman, and then subsequently marries her. Plays of this description are the Andria, the Eunuchus, the Adelphi (all by Menander), the Aulularia, and the Cistellaria.[273]
Of these, the Cistellaria is different from the rest. Here, the girl Silenium, who, though supposed to be the daughter of a lena, has been brought up as a virgin (i. 3, 24), is induced by a promise of marriage to live with the man Alcesimarchus, a promise which is afterwards fulfilled only after a considerable delay. (i. 1, 90-100.) In the other four cases, however—and this is very important—the promise of marriage is subsequent to the seduction, and takes the form, not of an inducement to, but of a reparation for the latter. The lover regards the seduction as a crime, for which he is willing to make amends to the utmost of his power, while at the same time he is anxious to perpetuate and legalise his amour. He therefore adopts what we are accustomed in modern times to call an “honourable course,” and offers marriage to the woman whom he has loved and still loves. The importance of this feature is twofold—firstly, the close association thus brought about between marriage and love of the most “romantic” and unconventional description; and secondly, the perpetuation and legalisation of a form of love which is obviously by nature temporary and illegitimate. And thus the love-stories of the New Comedy may be said to begin where those of the Middle Comedy end; while the heroes of the latter are concerned with achieving the temporary satisfaction of their sensual desires, the heroes of the former are occupied in striving to make permanent atonement for the indiscretions which such desires have led them to commit.
To quote instances of what has been said: in the Andria the promise of marriage is distinctly an act of reparation, which the lover feels himself in duty bound to make. This is evident from the argument of Sulpicius Apollinaris,[274] and from various passages in the play.[275] The same is the case in the Adelphi.[276] Here Aeschinus, as soon as he considers what he has done, comes to the mother of Pamphila, and begs with tears to be allowed to marry her by way of reparation.[277] In the Aulularia, the petition of Lyconides to the miser Euclio is animated by a very similar spirit.[278] In the Eunuchus (which is, it must be remembered, the love-story of a boy of sixteen)[279], there is no opportunity for any such behaviour on the part of Chaerea, though his sincere regret (ii. 3, 33 seqq.), and his enthusiasm when the possibility of marriage becomes apparent (v. 8, 1 seqq.), show clearly enough that he is not intended to be an exception to the general rule.
It must not, however, be supposed that the feeling, which prompts the various characters of whom we have spoken to make reparation for their wrongdoing, is merely a feeling of repentance, or a regard for public opinion. It is love, and love of a most passionate kind, that makes them so anxious to marry the women they have wronged. Of the enthusiasm of the hero of the Eunuchus at the prospect of marriage we have already spoken; in the Adelphi, Aeschinus is equally elated under similar circumstances;[280] in the Aulularia, the anxiety and persistency of Lyconides are evidently inspired by the same feeling;[281] in the Andria, Pamphilus protests that nothing short of death will divide him from Glycerium.[282] That love which the Middle Comedy could not conceive of as outliving its sensual gratification, appears in the New Comedy, not weakened, but strengthened by time, and obstacles only serve to make the lover more determined to perpetuate and to legalise those emotions which had, to a previous generation, owed their chief charm to their freedom from the restraints of constancy and propriety.
In the Hecyra again, it is by marriage that, through a strange coincidence, the hero is eventually able to repair the wrong done to the heroine. In the Stichus, too, the plot turns on the constancy of two wives to their absent husbands,[283] while, in the Trinummus, there seems strong reason to believe, that it is not all love for Lesbonicus which makes Lysiteles so anxious to marry the former’s sister.[284]
To this evidence from the plays themselves may be added some further evidence of a more general kind. Marriage is mentioned by the anonymous author of the epigram in the C. I. G. 6083, as the most characteristic feature of Menander’s plays—
φαιδρὸν ἑταῖρον Ἔρωτος ὁρᾷς, σειρῆνα θεάτρων,