ἀτυχοῦντι συμπαρέμεινεν, ἀποθανόντα τε
ἔθαψε, περιέστειλεν οἰκείως. (Fr. 1, 9.)
or Menand. Incert. 73, where the husband takes up the cudgels in his wife’s behalf. Incert. 101, again, dwells on the close relationship existing between man and wife—
οἰκεῖον οὕτως οὐδέν ἐστιν, ὦ Λάχης,
ἐὰν σκοπῇ τις, ὡς ἀνήρ τε καὶ γυνή,
Incert. 100 points out that a wife must rule her husband by love—
ἕν ἐστ’ ἀληθὲς φίλτρον, εὐγνώμων τρόπος.
τούτῳ κατακρατεῖν ἀνδρὸς εἴωθεν γυνή,
and a careful reader will have no difficulty in finding other more or less important examples of the same spirit, both in Menander and in the Latin Comedians.
One important exception there is, of course, to this state of affairs, and that is the relation between the old men and their wives. The types of the hen-pecked husband and the Xanthippe-like wife are too familiar to need illustration. But here it is to be observed, that the husbands who appear in this position, are always old or elderly men, and this fact is probably not without its significance. In describing his elderly married men as unhappy, Menander was ridiculing, not marriage, but the mariages de convenance which had, before his time, been the regular thing at Athens. “These men are unhappy,” says Menander, “not because they are married, but because they have married wives whom they never loved, and whom they chose merely because of their money, or to please their relations. If they had married for love, the case might well have been different.” And thus the hen-pecked husband, who belongs to the old régime, is only a further argument in favour of the romantic love-matches of which Menander approved.