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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

every day how she may do him the greatest injury.”

After this systematic compilation of female vices in no fewer than 82 lines there follows in only nine lines the praise of a true wife, the industrious mistress of the house and mother, who descends from the bee and who “ loved and loving, grows old with her husband, the mother of a beautiful and famous race ”’.

Naturally, voices are not wanting to announce the praise of the wife. In the bulky Anthology of Stobzus, iv, 22 (No. 4), several chapters deal in great detail with marriage; numerous quotations from poets and philosophers are advanced, amongst which are to be found a mixture of very spiteful and also very eulogistic and admiring expressions. Thus the comedian Alexandrus, CAF., iii, 373 (No. 5), says: “A noble wife is the storehouse of virtue,’ and even Theognis (1225) commits himself to the opinion that “ there is nothing sweeter than an honest wife ”’.

According to Euripides (TGF., 566) it is a mistake to blame all women alike: “ for as there are many women, so will one find many a one bad, but also many good”. Certainly, it would be easy to quote several judgments of this kind, but they are more or less scanty and the praise of women is hardly ever expressed without reservation. It is also significant that in this chapter of Stobzeus there is a section entitled ‘‘ Blame of Women ”’, without a parallel on the praise of women.

We possess an excellent pamphlet by Plutarch entitled “Advice to the Married” (see p. 38), dedicated to a newly wedded couple, with whom Plutarch was acquainted.

Plutarch also wrote an extant monograph “ On Women’s Virtues” (better translated ‘‘ Heroism of Women”), a collection of examples with the wellknown saying of Pericles in his funeral oration, that those women are the best of whom one speaks

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