Of other sorts of treachery there is enough and to spare, and always attributed to the woman. Penelope (3), out of jealousy, induces Odysseus to kill his son Euryalus; Erippe (8), owing to her love for a barbarian, plots against her husband’s life; Cleoboea (14) tries to seduce Antheus, and, failing, murders him.
Where a man is led by love to any unnatural crime, it is invariably excused as being the result of temporary insanity or the vengeance of some deity. Leucippus (5) falls in love with his sister κατὰ μῆνιν Ἀφροδίτης; for Byblis (11) no such excuse is alleged. Clymenus (13) violates Harpalyce διὰ τὸ ἔκφρων εἶναι; Orion, Hero (20) ὑπὸ μέθης ἔκφρων; Assaon’s love for his daughter Niobe (33) is a punishment from Leto; Dimoetes’ love for a corpse (31) is brought on by a curse. The sins of Neaera (18) and Periander’s mother (17) have no such palliative. The unique case in which Alcinoe (27) is driven κατὰ μῆνιν Ἀθήνης to elope with a stranger (as a punishment for sweating her sempstress) is derived from Moero, who would naturally regard women from a peculiar point of view.
Lastly, Rhesus (36) and Leucippus (15) are, it is true, induced, like Eriphanis, to follow the objects of their affection into the hunting-field, but in each case their devotion is very promptly rewarded.
The foregoing examination of the myths and legends of early Greece has led to certain definite results; but the importance of these results has been in many cases discounted by the impossibility of assigning any even approximate date to the myth or legend from which they have been drawn. Even if, in the case of any given legend, one could determine with certainty the occasion of its first appearance in literature, one would in reality be very little nearer determining the date of the legend itself. To the stories in Homer everyone is willing to allow a respectable antiquity; but who can say how long the story of Phaedra had been current at Troezen before Sophocles adopted it? It is satisfactory therefore to be able to leave this doubtful ground, and come to something more definite, in the shape of the actual words of the subjective lyric writers, who belong to the second stage of Greek literature.
It is, perhaps, generally agreed that romantic love-poetry was not produced by the early Greek lyric writers. What is less generally appreciated is the fact that these writers, at any rate before the time of Anacreon, wrote practically no love-poetry (addressed to women) at all.[18] So little indeed has this fact or its meaning been understood, that not a few passages in the fragments of these writers have been misinterpreted or strained; but really, if one comes to think of it, this absence of love-poetry is quite capable of explanation. The subjective lyric literature of early Greece, which extends roughly over the seventh and sixth centuries, and lasts on, in a desultory sort of way, into the fifth, is chiefly Ionian, and introduces one to a very different state of society from that of the heroic age. The actual social and intellectual position of women is, in the main, a very low one; and in other respects also the place which they occupy in the interests of men is very insignificant. But this is not all. The ideal woman of the time is not one to whom love-poetry could be addressed. The Greek of this period looked upon a woman as an instrument of pleasure, and as a means of creating a family, nothing more. The comparison of marriage to cattle-breeding sounds quite natural.[19] Now such feelings as these can neither of them provide the material for love-poetry of even the most rudimentary kind.[20]
The former of these two ideals we shall have frequent opportunities of encountering in the next few pages. A striking commentary on the latter, and, of course, more general one, is furnished by that important document for the early history of women in Greece, the “satire” of Simonides. If one examines the types of women that Simonides describes, and the objections that he urges against them, and compares these with the types one encounters in Juvenal, for instance, a noteworthy fact at once becomes apparent. The faults which Simonides blames, as well as the virtues he somewhat grudgingly commends, are simply those which concern woman as a housekeeper; those faults and vices which provoke the indignation of Juvenal are but lightly touched upon, or not mentioned at all. One woman is slovenly, another talks her husband’s head off, another is always eating, another is a thief, another is too fine a lady to do any cooking or sweeping; and the only three definite virtues of the woman “like a bee” are, that her husband’s income increases, that her children are satisfactory, and that she does not waste her time gossiping with the neighbours.
Indeed, the famous lines (Fr. 6)—
γυναικὸς οὐδὲν χρῆμ’ ἀνὴρ ληΐζεται
ἐσθλῆς ἄμεινον οὐδὲ ῥίγιον κακῆς,