Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

THE GREEK WOMAN

part played by the modern woman in social life. But, on the other hand, it was free from the unnaturalness and falsehood which is frequently attached to modern society. It is not by accident that the Greek language has no equivalent for the ideas of “ flirt’, “ gallantry’, and “ coquetry”’.

The modern man might feel inclined to ask the question whether the Greek girls and women did not feel desperately unhappy in a life of such retirement. But the answer must be in the negative. It must never be forgotten that what one does not know cannot be missed; then, also, the Greek women took the strictly limited (but for that reason no less noble) tasks which resulted from their household duties so seriously, that they had no time for detailed or painful thoughts about their existence.

But the foolishness of the talk about the unworthy position of the Greek woman is indisputably shown by the fact that in the oldest literary records marriage, and with it the woman, is described in a manner more intimate and charming than can be imagined. Where in all literature is the parting of a husband and wite represented with greater depth of feeling than in the famous scene in the Lad (vi, 392-496), in which Hector takes leave of Andromache ?

“ When now he was come to the gate, as he passed through the great city, the Scaean gate, whereby he was minded to go forth to the plain, there came running to meet him his bounteous_ wife, Andromache, daughter of great-hearted FEétion, Eétion that dwelt beneath wooded Placus, in Thebe under Placus, and was lord over the men of Cilicia ; for it was his daughter that bronze-harnessed Hector had to wife. She now met him and with her came a handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, a mere babe, the well-loved son of Hector, like to a fair star. Him Hector was wont to call Scamandrius, but other men Astyanax; for only

+ Dr. A. T. Murray’s translation, in the Loeb Classical Library, is used by kind permission of the Editors and Publisher.

a