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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

““PaL.: You, sir, are a man who can give good counsel to another, and to yourself as well.

‘““PeR.: Yes, sir, it’s all very pleasant to marry a good wife—if there were any spot on earth where you could find one; but am I[ to bring home a woman who'd never say to me: ‘Husband mine, do buy me some wool to make a soft, warm cloak for you, and some nice, heavy tunics so that you won't be cold this winter.’ Nothing like that would you ever hear from a wife, but before cockcrow she’d wake me up with: ‘ Husband mine, give me some money. for a present for mother at the Matrons’ Festival ; give me some money to make preserves ; give me some money to give to the sorceress at the festival of Minerva, and to the dream-interpreter, and the clairvoyant and the soothsayer. It’s ashame if I don’t send something to that woman that tells your fortune from your eyebrows. And then the modiste—I must tip her, in common decency. And oh, for ever so long the cateress has been angry at getting nothing. ‘The midwife, too—she protested to me for sending her so little. What? Will you send nothing to the nurse that cares for the slaves born under your own roof?’ ‘These ruinous outlays of the women, and a lot more like ’em, keep me from taking a wife to torment me with talk like that.

‘““Pat.: The gods are kind to you, sir, for, by gad, once you let go of that liberty of yours, you won’t readily restore it to its old place.”

As many certainly had such ideas, on the other hand, the well-known majority of young girls in Greece was a special phenomenon, owing to the eternal struggles of the individual states amongst themselves, which cost much and just the best male blood. We may conjecture that the woman who never marries, the “‘ old maid ”’, may have been no rarity in Greece, although our authorities certainly do not trouble themselves in special detail about this regrettable type of the female sex, but only for

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