Thus the couplet of Catullus—
"Tunc te dilexi, non tantum ut vulgus amicam,
Sed pater ut natos diligit et generos"—
is actually paraphrased "I loved you, not as a man loves a woman, but as a man loves a youth." The couplet in which Antigone says, "If my husband died, I could get another, and were I deprived of him too, I could be a mother by another man"—
ποσις μεν αν μοι, κατθανοντος, αλλος ην
και παις απ' αλλου φωτος, ει τουδ' ημπλακον—
is translated "If my husband had died, I could have married another, if he had failed to get me children, I could have committed adultery." The "main motive of the Iliad," we are informed, (p. 76), "is the love of Achilles for Patroclus." The interest of the Ajax "is meant to centre on Teucer, the amasius of the dead Ajax." That the Alcestis may not be pressed into the service of those who would maintain that the Greeks knew how to respect women, the key to it is to be found "in the relation existing between Admetus and Apollo"(!) The revolting coarseness and flippant vulgarity which mark the book, and, which do very little credit to Oxford training, are illustrated by the remarks employed to disparage these types of womanhood which the writer well knows would refute his theory. Thus of Nausicaa, "she is always regarded as a charming type of woman; but, after all, how one naturally thinks of her is (sic) as a charming type of washerwoman"; of Penelope, "she longs for the return of her husband, no doubt; but what really grieves her about the suitors is not their suggestions as to his death, but the quantity of pork they eat." On a par with this sort of thing is the remark about a play of Sophocles, which, by the way, is not extant, that "it merely drew the usual picture of the gods playing shove-halfpenny with human souls" (p. 47); or flippant vulgarity like the following—Admetus expresses "his deep regret that he cannot accompany Alcestis, as Charon does not issue return tickets." If this is the humour of young Oxford, the progress of which we hear so much has been purchased at a heavy price.
But to continue. On page 27 we are confronted with the astounding statement that "it is in Anacreon that we find for the first time love-poetry addressed to a woman." Why, Hermesianax (15, 16) distinctly states that Musæus wrote love-poetry to his wife or mistress, Antiope, and that Hesiod wrote many poems in honour of his love, Eoia (Id. 22-24). Alcæus notoriously wrote love-poems to Sappho, as we need go no further than the first book of Aristotle's Rhetoric to know; both Alcman, the lover of Egido and Megalostrate, and, probably Ibycus also wrote love-poetry to women. It is mere special pleading to contend that Mimnermus did not write poetry to the mistress of his affections, to whom, according to Strabo, his erotic poetry was addressed. Hermesianax distinctly states that Mimnermus was passionately in love with Nanno, and certainly implies that his love-poetry was addressed to her (35-38). It is true that two of the fragments of Archilochus are ambiguous, but one is not; and, if we may judge by a single line (Fr. 71), his love for Neobule expressed itself in a manner indistinguishable from Petrarch's vein—"Would that I might touch Neobule's hand": ει γαρ ὡς εμοι γενοιτο χειρα Νεοβουλης θιγειν. It is clear that women had a prominent place in the poetry of Stesichorus, and in his poem entitled Calyce we seem to have had an anticipation of the modern love romance. And yet, in spite of all this, we are informed that the Greeks had no love-poetry addressed to, or concerning women, before Anacreon.
The methods adopted for minimizing or disguising the importance of women in the Iliad and Odyssey are very amusing. "The Trojan war was the work of a woman; but how very little that woman appears in the Iliad." She appears quite as frequently and imposingly as the action admits, and she and Andromache are painted as elaborately as any of the dramatis personæ in the poem. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that, with the exception of Achilles and Agamemnon, they leave the deepest impression on us. "A woman has been managing the affairs of Odysseus for twenty years in an exemplary fashion; but the hero of the Odyssey on his return prefers to associate with the swineherd." Comment is superfluous. Nothing could be more striking than the prominence which is given to women both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey. To cite such writers as Simonides of Amorgus, Phocylides and Theognis, as authorities on the position of women, is as absurd, in Sancho Panza's phrase, as to look for pears on an elm.
The Greek Tragedies are treated after the same fashion as the Iliad and the Odyssey. We are told that the remarkable prominence given in Sophocles's plays to the affection between brother and sister affords conclusive proof that the nature of modern love between man and woman was unknown to him; and we are also informed, that the relations between Electra and Orestes, and Antigone and Polynices "are absolutely those of modern lovers." It would be difficult to say which is more absurd, the deduction or the statement. What love could be more loyal and more passionate than Hæmon's love for Antigone? The prominence given by Sophocles to the love between brother and sister has its origin from the same cause as the very small part played by lovers in the Greek tragedies generally. In the first place, a poet who took his plot from the fortunes of the houses of Pelops or Laius could only work within the limits of tradition; in the second place, love romances, unless involving deep tragical issues as in the Trachiniæ, the Medea, and the Hippolytus, were totally incompatible with the Greek idea of tragedy. But we must hurry to the grand discovery made by the author of this volume.