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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

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know the “ rotten swindle”; but he who marries the second time is beyond help.

In the same play one of the characters wants to take wives under his protection, “‘ the most excellent of all blessings.” He is also successful in confronting the notorious mischief-makers with some examples of good wives—Medea with a Penelope, Clytzmnestra with an Alcestis. “But perhaps someone will speak ill of Pheedra ; but, by Zeus, who indeed was a good woman ? unhappy man that I am, good women will soon fail me, but I have still many bad women to mention.”

Antiphanes (frag. 221, Kock) quotes the words : “He has married. What do you say? Is he really married, whom I left walking about yesterday.”

The following two passages are from Menander (frag. 65, 154, Kock), “You will not marry, if you’ve any sense, and leave this life of yours. For I who speak to you have married. Therefore I advise you: ‘Do not wed.’ The matter’s voted and decreed. Be cast the dice! Well then, go on! But heaven send you come off safe. On a real sea of troubles you’re embarking now, No Libyan nor A®gean nor Sicilian sea where three boats out of thirty may escape from wreck—there is no married man at all who has been saved ! ”

* Now may he perish, root and branch, whoever was the first to marry, and then the second one, and next the third, and then the fourth, and then the last one on the list.”

A tragedy of the poet Carcinus (frag. 3, Nauck) contains the words: ‘‘O Zeus, what need is there to abuse women? It would be enough if you only said the word *‘ woman’ ”’.

We might supplement these extracts by some others, but if we desired to collect all the passages in which Greek authors, more or less cleverly, turn their attention towards the female sex, this alone would fill an imposing volume. From the

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