This ever will arise from suffering women
To intermix with men. But mark me well,
Whoe’er henceforth dares disobey my orders,
Be it man or woman, old or young,
Vengeance shall burst upon him, the decree
Stands irreversible, and he shall die.
War is no female province, but the scene
For men: hence home; nor spread your mischiefs here,
Hear you, or not? Or speak I to the deaf?[173]
From this scene pictured by Æschylus five centuries and a quarter B.C., let us return to the siege of Troy, three centuries earlier, and listen to Homer. During the thickest of the fight Helenus, approaching Eneas and Hector, his brother, thus addresses the latter: