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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

far between, who demanded a like morality for both sexes in marriage, somewhat like the homely Isocrates (IVicocles, 40); and Aristotle (Repub., vil, 16, 1335) in certain definite cases demands Atinua, that is, loss of civil rights by the married man who “ has intercourse with another woman or man”; but, in the first place, as observed, such voices are few and far between, and next, we nowhere hear that anyone in practice acted so; rather it remained a matter of circumstances, as the eightyfour year old slave Syra in the Mercator (iv, 6) of Plautus complains with comic indignation : “My, my! women do live under hard conditions, so much more unfair, poor things, than the men’s. Why, if a husband has brought home some strumpet, unbeknown to his wife, and she finds it out, the husband goes scot free. But once a wife steps out of the house unbeknown to her husband, he has his ground and she’s divorced. Oh, I wish there was the same rule for the husband as for the wife ! Now a wife, a good wife, is content with just her husband ; why should a husband be less content with just his wife? Mercy me, if husbands too were taken to task for wenching on the sly, the same way as wanton wives are divorced, I warrant there'd be more lone men about than there are now women!”

We may mention as a curiosity what we are told by the romance writer Achilles Tatius (vi, 6), (fifth century A.D.), about the so-called test of virginity. He says that in Ephesus there was a grotto, dedicated by Pan to the maiden Artemis in which he had hung up his flute, with the intention that only pure virgins might enter it. If any suspicion of unchastity arose against a young girl, she was shut up in the grotto. If she was innocent, the flute was heard to sound loudly, the door opened automatically and the girl came out with a clear character. If she was not, the flute was silent and

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