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

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

Philip of Macedon took no women with him on his campaigns, but Darius, who was overthrown by Alexander, although he was fighting for his very existence dragged round with him 360 concubines, as Diczarchus tells us in his Life in Hellas (FHG II, 240).

The poet Euripides was also fond of women. Hieronymus (frag. 6) in his Historic Memoranda tells us that, when someone said to Sophocles that Euripides was a woman-hater, “Yes, in his tragedies,” said Sophocles, ‘““ but in bed he was very fond of them.”

Married women came off very badly in the comedy The Dealers in Garlands, by Eubulus (frag. 98, Kock), wherein is said of them: “Tf you go out during the summer, two streams of dark paint flow from your eyes, and from your cheeks the sweat makes a red furrow down to your neck, and the hair on your forehead is grey, Tull of white lead.”

From The Seers, a comedy of Alexis (frag. 146, Kock), one of the guests quotes the following lines: ‘‘ Unhappy that we are, we who have sold freedom of living and luxury; we live as slaves to our wives instead of being free. Then must we put up with it for nothing, and get no equivalent ? Except the dowry, which is bitter and full of woman’s gall, compared with which the gall of men is like honey. For they when injured by their wives forgive them, but the wives, when they do wrong, reproach us as well. They begin what they should not, and what they should begin they neglect, perjure themselves, and when they suffer no evil they complain that they are always suffering.”

Xenarchus (frag. 14, Kock) praises the grasshoppers as happy, since their females have no voice ; and Eubulus (frag. 116, 117, Kock) as well as Aristophon (frag. 5, Kock) give expression to the idea that a man who marries for the first time is not to be blamed since he does not yet

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