Tell all the criers in the public squares I
'Tis hard to say which of them louder blares."
"Great Zeus," says another poet, "may I perish, if I ever spoke against woman, the most precious of all acquisitions. For if Medea was an objectionable person, surely Penelope was an excellent creature. Does anyone abuse Clytemnestra? I oppose the admirable Alcestis. But perhaps someone may abuse Phaedra; then I say, by Zeus! what a capital person was.... Oh, dear! the catalogue of good women is already exhausted, while there remains a crowd of bad ones that might be mentioned." "Woman's a necessary and undying evil," says Philemon; and in another fragment:
"A good wife's duty 'tis, Nicostratus,
Not to command, but to obey her spouse;
Most mischievous a wife who rules her husband."
Menander, the greatest representative of the New Comedy, has been compared to a mirror, so clear were the images he presented of human life. His epigrammatic sayings are justly famous, and many of them refer to woman. "Manner, not money, makes a woman's charm," says he in one passage; and in another:
"When thou fair woman seest, marvel not;
Great beauty's oft to countless faults allied."
"Where women are, there every ill is found," is still another disparaging sentiment, as is his repetition of the frequent gibe at marriage: