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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

and forthwith glorious Hector took the helm from his head and laid it all gleaming upon the ground. But he kissed his dear son and fondled him in his arms, and spake in prayer to Zeus and the other gods: ‘Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may likewise prove, even as I, preeminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh back from war: He is better than his father; and may he bear the bloodstained spoils of the foeman he hath slain, and may his mother’s heart wax glad.’

“‘So saying, he laid his child in his dear wife’s arms, and she took him to her fragrant bosom, smiling through her tears, and her husband was touched with pity at sight of her, and he stroked her with his hand, and spake to her, saying: ‘ Dear wife, in no wise I pray thee, grieve overmuch at heart; no man beyond my fate shall send me forth to Hades ; only his doom, methinks, no man hath ever escaped, be he coward or valiant, when once he hath been born. Nay, go thou to the house and busy thyself with thine own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and bid thy handmaids ply their work : but war shall be for men, for all, but most of all for me, of them that dwell in Ilios.’

‘‘ So spake glorious Hector, and took up his helm with horsehair crest ; and his dear wife went forthwith to her house, oft turning back, and shedding big tears.”

Can one think of the woman to whom Homer devotes so touching, indeed, so lofty a scene of parting, as a miserably neglected, vegetating creature ? If anyone is dissatisfied with this example, let him afterwards read in the Odyssey the part played by Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. How loyally she waits for her husband during his absence of many weary years! With what displeasure is she conscious of her weakness in the face of the uncouth, turbulent, and disorderly

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