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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

law of the State will kill you’.” (Lysias, De Caede Eratosthenis, 24.)

If a girl of irreproachable character was seduced in ancient Athens severe, indeed barbarous, punishments were possible. We read in Aéschines (Contra Timarchum, 182, 183): ‘Our forefathers were so severe where their honour was affected, and valued the purity of their children’s morals so highly, that one of the citizens, becoming aware that his daughter had been violated and that she had not preserved her maidenhood until her marriage, shut her up with a horse in a lonely house, so that she died of hunger. ‘The site of the house is still to be seen in our city, and the place is called ‘'The Horse and Girl’.’ According to the Scholiast it was a wild horse, which first ate the girl from hunger and then died itself. It is hard to say whether the frightful story is true. Probably it arose from the name of the place, when the latter was no longer understood.

Also in regard to the punishment of a woman caught in the act of adultery A‘schines expresses himself as follows: “The woman may put on no ornaments and may not visit the public temples, lest she should corrupt women who were beyond reproach; but if she does so or adorns herself, then the first man who meets her may tear her clothes from her body, take her ornaments from her and beat her; but he may not kill her or make her a cripple, if only he makes her a dishonoured woman and deprives her of all pleasure in life. But pimps (male and female) are accused and, if they are convicted, are punished with death, since, while those who are greedy for lust are shy of coming together, they in addition practise their own shamelessness for recompense and _ finally make the attempt and come to an agreement.”

Of course here and there many kinds of local customs were in existence. Thus Plutarch relates (Questiones Grece, 2) that in Cymé the adulteress

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