To speak with their enemy!
Rather, I say, than gold, than a palace of pride,
Give me children at home, right heritors of my blood.
Let the miser plead for the childless side:
I will none of it. Wealth denied,
Children given, I bless them and cleave to the better good’—(Ion. Verrall’s translation.)
or—
A strange and wondrous thing for women are the children they bear in travail. Womankind loves a baby.—(Phoenissae.)
All the questions of sex are considered and judged with clearest sense.
‘Man’s love when it is excessive is neither excellent nor, indeed, creditable. But still, sex is a divine thing and a gracious, if kept within bounds. A moderate temper, for that I pray: avaunt, contentious anger and the ceaseless bickering that drives a husband astray to another woman’s arms.’—(Medea.)