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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

time possibly this was legally permitted owing to the deficiency of population. Among the Persians the king’s wife is treated with reverence and respect by the rest of the concubines, who prostrate themselves before her. Priam (Jad, xxiv, 496) also has a number of concubines without his wife Hecuba being annoyed. “ Fifty sons I had when the sons of the Achzeans came; nineteen were born to me of the self-same womb, and the others women of the palace bare.”

As Aristotle (frag. 162) remarks, we might be surprised that Homer in the Jad never mentions a concubine as sleeping with Menelaus, although he allows more than one wife to the rest. For there slept by him even old men like Nestor and Phenix with their wives. They had not weakened themselves in their youth by drunkenness, sexual excesses, or gluttony, so that quite naturally in their old age they were still vigorous. If then Menelaus renounces a subsidiary wife, he evidently does so out of regard for Helen, who is his wedded wite, and for whose sake he has assembled an army. But Agamemnon is abused by Thersites (diad, ii, 226) as a man of many wives: “ Filled are thy huts with bronze, and women full many are in thy huts, chosen spoils that we Achzans give thee first of all, whenso’er we take a citadel.” © Of course,” says Aristotle further, “ these many women are only a gift of honour, not for use ; since he was not supplied with much wine to.get drunk.” But Heracles, who is reputed to have had the greatest number of wives (for he was very fond of women), only had them one after another, when he was on a campaign and travelled in different countries.

The 50 daughters of Thestius he certainly deflowered in seven days, as we are told by Herodorus (FHG Il, 30). Istrus in his Attic Stories (FHG I, 420) enumerates the different wives of ‘Theseus, and says that some he married for love, others he catried off as booty, while one was his lawful wife.

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