Their knees the vermeil covers shall display.
As king hereafter one shall be addressed;
The rest, our princes, all the States shall sway.
9. And daughters also to him shall be born.
They shall be placed upon the ground to sleep;
Their playthings tiles, their dress the simplest worn;
Their part alike from good and ill to keep,
And ne’er their parents’ hearts to cause to mourn;
To cook the food, and spirit-malt to steep.[309]
The last two stanzas indicate the comparative estimate, in ancient days, of boys and girls born into a family; and this estimate, still maintained, has been in a great degree upheld by this authority. Another ode in the ‘Greater Eulogies’ (Book III., Ode 10) deplores the misery that prevailed about B.C. 780, owing to the interference of women and eunuchs in the government. Two stanzas only are quoted, which are supposed to have been specially directed against Pao Sz’, a mischief-maker in the court of King Yu, like Agrippina and Pulcheria in Roman and Byzantine annals.