Of course the matter did not stop here. It was so easy to raise a laugh with a row between husband and wife, that Comedy was sure not to abandon the subject, even after its raison d’être had disappeared; and a modern audience, we know, is just as ready to laugh at the husband who has lost his latch-key as were the Athenians of the fourth century. But the point to be remembered is, that a pair of characters like Chremes and Sostrata in the Heauton Timorumenus, or Laches and Sostrata in the Hecyra, furnishes no real argument against the view that Menander and his followers of the New Comedy regarded marriage, if properly entered upon, as a state of happiness.
Another exception, and one that is perhaps in reality a more important one, is furnished by Menander’s Misogynes, a work which gained very great popularity, doubtless owing to the way in which it appealed to the lower instincts of the audience whom its author was trying to educate up; but here it has to be observed that, in the first place, as the play is lost, it is impossible to say what the actual dénouement was; while, secondly, there was no reason why a man of Menander’s versatile genius should not for once treat the subject of married life in an unusual manner, without in any way abandoning his general views on the subject.[287]
A further feature of the New Comedy treatment of marriage is the universal respect for its sanctity.[288] The adulterer, who is the favourite hero of mediaeval romance, is here invariably held up to contempt and hatred. The most familiar instance of this is, of course, the story in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, but it is far from being an isolated one. The Halieis of Menander evidently treated of a somewhat similar subject,[289] which appears once more in the Eunuchus.[290] In the Andria again, Charinus is horror-stricken at the idea of committing adultery with the woman he loves, though, when accused of seducing the same woman, his only regret is that he cannot plead guilty to the charge.[291] An even more remarkable instance, and one perhaps without parallel, is furnished by the Hecyra, where the Hetaera Bacchis asserts that she had refused to admit her lover, Pamphilus, as soon as she learned that he was married.[292] It may be argued, of course, that she did this out of pique, but the very cordial nature of the meeting between the two (Ter. Hec. v. 4, 16, seqq.), and the fact that Bacchis knew that her lover had abandoned her sorely against his will (i. 2, 45 seqq.), and was still devoted to her (i. 2, 82), seem to suggest that this is not the most natural explanation of her conduct.[293]
The passages just described may serve to introduce us to a further feature of our subject—a feature in which the New Comedy is, if possible, even more remarkably unlike the Middle Comedy than in those which have already been discussed. In the Middle Comedy, as we have already had frequent occasion to observe, the wife and the husband are invariably held up to ridicule when compared with the Hetaera and her lover; in the New Comedy we may find this position exactly reversed. Instances are rare, (as is indeed to be expected, when we consider, in the first place, the strong current of popular feeling on the subject, and, secondly, the personal relations between the leading writers of the New Comedy and the prominent Hetaerae of the time,) but they do unquestionably occur. The most striking example is perhaps that in the Heauton Timorumenus, where not only is the Hetaera contrasted unfavourably with the virgin, (as she herself admits,)[294] but her lover is made consistently ridiculous as compared with the lover who contemplates marriage, and in the end comes off badly in the extreme. Very similar evidence is furnished by the Hecyra. In the struggle for the love of Pamphilus, which takes place in that play between the wife and the Hetaera, the former is completely successful, and her victory is gained by sheer amiability of temper (Ter. Hec. i. 2, 85 seqq.); indeed, so charming is she, that the Hetaera is driven in the end to congratulate her husband on his good fortune in having married her. (v. 4, 22.) And this victory of the wife becomes the more remarkable, when we observe that the Hetaera is evidently intended to be a very favourable specimen of her class, in every way deserving of the lover she is compelled to lose.[295]
While on this point, it may not be amiss to remark that it is by no means impossible that the famous Thais of Menander really belonged to this class of plays, and that the Hetaera, who gives her name to the piece, is intended as a parody on the typical Hetaera of Middle Comedy. This view, which is not improbable in itself, receives some support from the mock-heroic tone of Fr. 1 of the Thais,[296] and still more from Mart. xiv. 187;[297] but cannot, of course, be regarded as more than a possible suggestion.[298]
Of mere vulgar ridicule or abuse of the ordinary Hetaera, as heartless,[299] mercenary,[300] and the like, there is, of course, enough and to spare; but it would be unjustifiable to claim expressions such as these as distinctive of New Comedy, in the face of passages like Epicrates, Antilais, 2, or Anaxilas, Neottis, 1. Menander indeed makes a more serious charge, perhaps, when one of his characters asserts that an Hetaera cannot be good, for she makes a trade of sin:
οὐδέποθ’ ἑταίρα τοῦ καλῶς πεφρόντικεν,
ἣ τὸ κακόηθες πρόσοδον εἴωθεν ποιεῖν.
(Incert. 107.)