Woman; Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome, and Among the Early Christians

(1) ON THE CHARACTER OF SAPPHO.

In 1816 Welcker published a pamphlet entitled ‘Sappho von einem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreyt,’ in which he endeavoured to show that the principal accusation against the poetess was totally unfounded. It was republished in his ‘Kleine Schriften.’[215] He carried most of the scholars of his own day with him. But Col. Mure renewed the accusations in his ‘History of Greek Literature,’[216] and especially in an article in the ‘Rheinisches Museum.’[217] Mure was much influenced by what he had seen of society in the courts of European capitals, where, according to him, the courtly ladies were stained with every vice. The German scholar Kock (1862) defended the same opinions as those of Mure. Welcker replied to both critics, but especially to Kock, in an article in the ‘Rheinisches Museum’ (1863), which was afterwards republished in his ‘Kleine Schriften.’[218] Since that time judgment has generally been given in favour of Sappho, though the subject has been noticed rather than discussed in most treatises on Sappho and her works. Among those who have examined the subject carefully, Kublinski and Brandt deserve special attention. Kublinski subjects to minute criticism the notices in ancient writers regarding those historians and critics who were the first to concern themselves with Sappho. Some of these flourished at a very early date, and were natives of Mytilene. They all speak of her poetry and her virtue in the highest terms. The Mytileneans honoured her though she was a woman,[219] and it was said that she united splendour and grace of diction with all that was honourable.[220] Brandt in his charming book on Sappho brings vividly before us the spirit and the life of the poetess. He refuses to discuss the details of the accusations against her, which he describes as the “chatter of a later, unpoetic and degenerate period,” “because through Welcker’s excellent treatise the honour of the poetess has been vindicated, and we are firmly convinced that the accusations are untenable.” Then he shows how the writers of the later age were incapable of appreciating the warmth of her friendships, her passionate love of beauty, and her delight in all that is fair and lovely in this lovely world.

The vile insinuations of the later times against Sappho arose from the misrepresentations which the writers of the new comedy made of her. She was one of their stock characters. Kock[221] quotes one play called ‘Sappho,’ written by an ancient comic writer, and five by writers of the new comedy. Unfortunately, the fragments are meagre in the extreme, and do not furnish us with any idea of the contents of the plays. They show, however, that the writers paid no regard to chronology, for one of them represented the poets Archilochus (700 B.C.) and Hipponax (546 B.C.) as in love with Sappho. In other plays also, named ‘Leucadia,’ Sappho was the subject, and in one of these Menander describes the poetess as madly in love with Phaon, and in consequence, throwing herself from the Leucadian rock. This is no doubt a pure invention, and it is likely that all the late stories about Sappho owed their origin to the unbridled and loose imaginations of the comic poets. Some of these stories are embodied in a Latin letter from Sappho to Phaon. This letter has been attributed to Ovid, and appears in the modern editions of the ‘Heroides.’ But its genuineness has been rejected by many scholars. It does not appear in the best MSS. of the ‘Heroides.’ It imagines Sappho to be furiously in love with Phaon, and in her passion she throws away all sense of self-respect and decency. But it does not support the contentions of Col. Mure and Kock. The two scholars who have lately defended the ascription of it to Ovid[222] insist that the verses of the letter which give a colour to the accusations have been wrongly interpreted, and that on the contrary they imply that she was entirely innocent.

(2) ASPASIA.

Schmidt believes these statements, and attributes the making of Pericles and Socrates to Aspasia. Similar opinions are expressed by Filleul, who will not allow that she was a courtesan. And Lloyd is equally emphatic on her merits. Only one voice, as far as I know, has been raised against her, that of Ulrich von Wilamowitz in his ‘Aristoteles und Athen.’ In a note in vol. ii. p. 99, he uses extraordinary language in regard to Aspasia, calling her a prostitute, and strangely describing the ideas about her salon, and about her being in a kind of way the wife of Pericles, as the invention of German romantic Philhellenism. He is equally contemptuous towards Phidias, whom he describes as a low mechanic, and Pericles, who he asserts had no friends, guests, or concubines after he separated from his wife. In a later production[223] he employs less coarse language, and tries to defend the historical position which he assumes. But it seems to me that a complete answer to his assumption is to be found by anticipation in Müller, ‘Attisches Bürgerrecht.’[224] Meyer and Bruns have discussed his opinions on this subject adversely.

(3) PORTRAITS OF SAPPHO AND ASPASIA.

There is, as is usual in matters connected with art, no end of differences of opinion. The two principal monographs on the portraits of Sappho are those of Jahn and Comparetti. Comparetti remarks on the image of Sappho on the Girgenti vase, “Sappho is here anything but small in stature; she is as tall as Alcæus.” But both writers are inclined to regard the figures as ideal. Even if they, however, should be ideal, they represent the notions of the poetess prevalent at the time of their production. There is much discussion about the coins. Those of them which have the name stamped on them belong to the period of the empire. Some have supposed that the head on an early Lesbian electrum and another on an autonomous bronze of Mytilene are those of Sappho, but Wroth, who has gone into the subject carefully, agrees with Furtwängler that the head is probably that of Aphrodite. Furtwängler thinks that the bust assigned to Aspasia is also really that of a goddess.[225]

(4) RIGHT OF INTERMARRIAGE—ἐπιγαμία.

The corruptions in the text of Lysias as quoted by Dionysius, are well seen in the recent edition of Dionysius’s minor works by Usener and Radermacher.[226] The words also may mean only “We were for granting the right of intermarriage with the Eubœans.” It is the imperfect that is used, and the context suggests this meaning of the imperfect.

No mention is made of ἐπιγαμία with the Eubœans elsewhere. One might have expected notice of it in some decree, but the decrees referring to the Eubœans are of such a nature that the existence of an epigamic agreement is rendered doubtful.[227] From the extract from Lysias, Philippi[228] infers that the ἐπιγαμία was given to the Eubœans without citizenship. Otto Müller, also on the strength of the same extract, believes that there was ἐπιγαμία granted by the Athenians to the Eubœans[229] not only before 404, but before the failure of the Sicilian expedition, but he does not argue the question.

(5) ATHENIAN CITIZENSHIP.

Doubts have been raised[230] as to whether Pericles was the author of this law, because a supposed Solonian law decreed that he only should be a citizen who was the child both of a citizen and of a citizeness, and it is maintained that Pericles merely insisted on the observance of the law. But Aristotle[231] says distinctly that it was on the motion of Pericles that the Athenians resolved that no one should partake of citizenship unless both his parents were citizens. He further states that the law was passed on account of the great number of citizens (451 B.C.). In c. 42, in describing the constitution of Athens as it existed at the time of the composition of the book, Aristotle says that they partake of the citizenship who are born of parents both of them citizens. Aristotle nowhere mentions that there was any suspension or alteration of this law from 451 B.C. to his own time. Müller thinks that there was an alteration, and no doubt the aristocratic party would be inclined to abrogate it. But probably they thought it sufficient to treat the law as obsolete when it suited them, and then it was renewed in 403 by Aristophon or Nicomenes.[232]

The importance of this law of Pericles in the history of women cannot well be overestimated. It practically led to the distinction which is expressed in the Oration against Neæra, attributed to Demosthenes. “For we,” it says, “have the Companions (Hetairae) for the sake of pleasure, the concubines for the daily care of the body, and the wives that genuine children may be born to us, and that we may have a trustworthy guardian of our household property.”[233] At the time no moral stain was attached either to Hetairae or to the concubines. Their position was one that could not but arise out of their destiny and the law of Pericles. But these two classes were not treated with the same respect as the women who were citizens. The Romans adopted the same law as that of Pericles. They did not encourage concubines, and the Companions were for the most part degraded women or slaves. The Church subsequently followed the practice of the Romans, the restrictions on marriage, however, leading to the frequency of concubinage among the clergy. But what had formerly been regarded as the result of inevitable destiny was now deemed proof of a depraved disposition.

The law also produced distinctions in the male population. They were divided into two classes—citizens to whom many privileges were assigned—and outcasts who had no rights nor privileges. This was a great change from the Homeric times. The subsequent history of the two classes of men is curious and suggestive, but this is not the place to deal with it. Morillot in his treatise on the subject exclaims, “Strange circumstance! It is nearly always on the person of the infants that the law strikes those who transgress its ordinances.” This is true of the Christian era; but at first the law looked solely to the interests of the citizens who made it, and did not suggest culpability on the part of those who were not citizens.

(6) DATE OF ‘ECCLESIAZUSÆ.’

The date of the comedy is clearly ascertained within two years. The date of the ‘Republic’ cannot be so definitely ascertained. Accordingly there have always been writers who have maintained that Aristophanes held up to ridicule the communistic ideas of Plato expressed in the ‘Republic.’ In recent times Chiappelli[234] has advocated this opinion, and Rogers, in his edition of the ‘Ecclesiazusæ,’[235] supports it by appealing to the exact resemblances in the words used by both. But Platonic scholars have generally held strongly that the ‘Republic’ is considerably later than the play. The date of the play must be somewhere between 390 and 393. But Stallbaum, in his ‘Prolegomena to the Republic,’[236] adduces what seem to me convincing arguments that that work could not have been published before 385 B.C. Lutoslawski, in his ‘Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic,’[237] maintains that all the parts of the ‘Republic’ except the first book were written after the ‘Phædo,’ which he places between 384 and 383 B.C., and that they occupied Plato for about six years up to nearly his fiftieth year. He and others have remarked that the coincidences between Aristophanes and Plato are slight and that the comedy does not really deal with the special proposals of the philosopher. The ideas in the comedy are too general.

The date of the comedy is discussed fully in Kaehler’s ‘De Aristophanis Ecclesiazuson tempore et choro Quæstiones Epicriticæ.’ Jenæ, 1889, which gives the literature and history of the discussion. He holds that there is no connexion between the play and the ‘Republic.’ Prof. Ritchie[238] says of the ‘Republic,’ “Probably written at various times between 387 and 368 B.C.”[239]

(7) THE WOMEN OF PLAUTUS.

Perhaps we can best see the representations of the Greek new comedy[240] in the plays of Plautus, for no complete Greek comedy of this class has come down to us. Terence no doubt transferred more literally from these plays, but his selections do not bring us so closely into contact with the life of the period. It is difficult, however, in Plautus to know whether his pictures refer to Greek or to Roman life—for he unquestionably introduced many allusions to the habits of his Roman audience.

Most of the women that appear in the pages of Plautus belong to the slave class. Often, when the Greeks took a city, they razed it to the ground, killed nearly all the men, and carried off the women to be slaves in lands far away from their own homes. These women had to submit to the greatest cruelties and indignities. Plautus borrows his scenes from Greek plays—and accordingly most of his women have become slaves in this way. There can be no doubt, however, that the Romans trafficked in female slaves as well as the Greeks—and thus the picture of the female slaves in the one nation will hold good for the other. When superior officers made these women captive they generally kept them in their own houses; but as such slaves brought a large sum, there were men who made a livelihood by stealing them away. These sold them to persons whose occupation was again to sell them to the rich inhabitants of the cities, sometimes lending them only for a year, and sometimes giving them up for life. The laws regulated the conveyance, if I may so speak, of these women-slaves, and one of the plays turns upon a scoundrel of a slave pretending to be an Eastern, and coming to the slave-dealer’s house with the daughter of another man, a parasite, and selling her at an enormous loss, but without a legal form. The parasite goes at once to the slave-dealer and claims back his illegally sold daughter. These slave-women were employed in various ways. Sometimes they were kept as household servants, sometimes as nurses; but most frequently they were used at banquets to dance before the festive gentlemen, and to sing, play the lyre, and amuse them with witty sayings. They were often, therefore, highly cultivated, conjoining the accomplishments of our most expert acrobat with those of an opera singer and an educated lady. Some of them descend to the lowest degree of coarseness in Plautus; while a few are exceedingly sweet, modest, and gentle.

The women of the plays of Plautus are naturally divisible into two classes: those who were free, and those who were or had been slaves. It is important to keep in mind that this distinction reached far into all the social relations. The slave-girl, however nobly descended she might be, could not marry a free citizen. The free man could only marry the daughter of a free fellow-citizen. In consequence of this the choice of a wife was narrowly restricted, and a large class of women were necessarily thrown out beyond the social pale. The women who could marry were closely confined. They grew up in the recesses of the women’s quarter of the house. They had seldom opportunities of seeing any one but their most intimate relatives. They rarely gazed upon the general public except when they marched in some religious procession and took part in religious festivals. Their higher education was neglected, and for the most part their society was despised. Their marriages were arranged by the fathers. They had no voice in the matter themselves, and frequently the main question was as to the dowry which they could bring to their future husbands. In these circumstances we could not expect to see marriageable young girls in the Plautine plays. They did not appear in public or mingle in society. Only one is to be found acting a part in the plays of Plautus, and that, too, in extraordinary circumstances. Her father is the parasite in the ‘Persa.’ This wretch is ready to do anything for the sake of a good dinner, and his daughter is a small matter if placed in competition with that. So he compels her to play the part of slave-girl. She objects very strongly. She sees that it is not a proper act for her. She sees also that it will damage her prospects of marriage. But the authority of a father was paramount. He commands and she must obey, and obeys gently and meekly. Mention is made of other marriageable girls. In the ‘Trinummus,’ the good youth Lysiteles seeks the hand of the sister of Lesbonicus the spendthrift. His father, Philto, undertakes to see Lesbonicus on the subject, and an interesting dialogue ensues. Lesbonicus cannot believe that Philto is in earnest in asking a portionless daughter, and when at last he is convinced that Philto is not making a fool of him, he states that he will part with the only remaining little property he has in order to give some dowry to his sister. It would be such a disgrace to him, if she were to bring nothing to the family stock. Another marriageable girl appears in the ‘Aulularia.’ Her father, the miser Euclio, is very glad to get her off his hands without dowry, and the man who wishes to marry her prefers to have an undowried wife. His reasons for this preference are notable. Megadorus, the suitor, is rich. He has lived with his widowed sister for some time, but she thinks that he ought now to marry. She is not, however, very favourable in her account of women. “We are,” she says, “deservedly regarded as very garrulous, and people strongly affirm that not a single silent woman has been found in any age up to this day.” She further informs him that there is no chance of his getting a good wife: he can merely have a selection out of bad: “alia alia pejor, frater, est.” However, she ends with recommending one whom she knows and deems suitable in age and circumstances. He does not accept her proposal, but says that he wishes to marry the daughter of Euclio, and he is very glad that she is so poor. The dowried wives have become wildly extravagant and insolent, and if the rich were to do as he intends, that is, marry undowried wives, there would be more concord in the state; the women would pride themselves more on their manners than their dowry, they would have less reason to fear punishment than they now have, and the husbands would have less expense. In one word, “the undowried wife is in the power of her husband, the dowried one tortures and ruins him.” In the course of this discussion Megadorus expatiates on the extravagances of the women of his day. “They must have purple and gold given them, maidservants, mules, mule-drivers, attendants, salutation boys, and carriages.” And then he gives a list of the various artisans who wait upon the matrons. Here it is in the Latin, for an exact translation would require a dissertation:[241]—

The extravagance of the women is rather a favourite subject of attack with Plautus. Adelphasium, in a beautiful passage in the ‘Pœnulus,’ describes how the whole day is frittered away in bathing, polishing, painting, and such operations, and in ‘Epidicus’ we have an enumeration of the vast variety of dresses which they wore. It may be questioned how far these descriptions were taken from the Greek, and how far they are applicable to Roman women. Wagner supposes that the passage in the ‘Aulularia’ refers to Roman women, and bases on it an argument for the date of the play. It is scarcely possible to imagine that Plautus would have introduced such passages if they did not tell, but it would be difficult to fix the date of the commencement of extravagance among the Roman ladies. All we can affirm with certainty is that there must have been extravagance in some shape or other, and it is interesting to note how, at this early stage of it, it had already begun to frighten men from marriage. Here are the reasonings of a bachelor, somewhat compressed from ‘Miles Gloriosus’:[242]—

The wives, then, in Plautus, are not represented in the most amiable colours. The old men stand in most awful dread of their old girls, as they called them. Dæmones, for instance, is afraid to look at Palæstra and Ampelisca, lest his wife fly upon him. Menæchmus gives a most vivid picture of the prying propensities of his wife. And some of them have wonderful command of abusive language, and rate their husbands in no measured terms. They even play most insolent tricks on them, as in the ‘Casina.’ But bad as some of these wives may have been with their extravagance and their tongues, they are not accused of unfaithfulness. The Romans and Greeks agreed with the French in making the fathers select the wives for their sons, but they differed from them in having divorce procurable on comparatively easy terms. And this circumstance makes a wide difference in the plots of their respective dramas. The plot of such a piece as ‘La petite Mariée’ would be as utterly repulsive to a Roman audience as to an English. There is not one instance throughout the twenty plays of Plautus in which the virtue of a married woman is assailed. We might except, from a modern and an early Christian point of view,[243] Jove’s amour with Alcmena, but in the Roman opinion Alcmena and her husband were honoured by this marked token of a god’s favour. There is one instance in which the man himself, the braggart soldier, supposes that he has committed the crime. He is led to believe that a courtezan is really a married woman and that she is dreadfully in love with him, and he yields to the deception. He is severely punished for it in the end, and acknowledges that he has well merited what he has received.

The absence of freedom before marriage is not, however, without its evil consequences. The young men had generally got attached to some handsome slaves before they married, and the old men seemed very much inclined to renew their youthful recollections by pranks of a similar nature. This is the cause of the most serious quarrels between husband and wife. In one passage the unfairness of the position of husband and wife in this respect is set forth, though not by a wife, but by a slave:—

When the wife thinks that she is badly used, she generally sends for her father. She expects him either to effect a reconciliation, or procure the return of her dowry and a divorce. In some cases, as in that of Menæchmus, the father takes the side of the husband and counsels submission.

Though there are some bad wives, there are also some very good. Foremost among these is Alcmena in the ‘Amphitruo.’ She is a true, loving, faithful wife. She greets her supposed husband on his return from war with the kindliest welcome. She is never impure even in any single thought, but is simply chaste throughout, even in scenes which might have tempted the poet to pander to his rough audience. She is astonished and amazed at the suspicions of her real husband, but no consideration will make her confess to a crime which she has not committed. She always retains the dignity of stainless purity. But if jealousy is to rule his soul, she is willing to part from him, and asks her dowry:—

When at length her husband confesses that he was wrong, she is ready at once to receive him back into her affection, and restore him all the old love. The resemblance between her character and some of the circumstances of her life and those of Desdemona has struck some critics, and is worth examination. Both Molière and Dryden have imitated the ‘Amphitruo’ of Plautus, but there cannot be a doubt that the play of the Roman is the purest of the three and that of the Englishman the most impure, and that the character of Alcmena is not improved by Molière, if not deteriorated, and is certainly made worse by the handling of Dryden. There is another wife in Plautus whose character is very beautiful, so far as we have a glimpse of it. In the opening scenes of the ‘Stichus,’ there are two married sisters, bearing the names of Panegyris and Pinacium in the old editions, but those of Philumena and Pamphila in the Ambrosian palimpsest. Their husbands have been a considerable time away from them, and their father thinks that they might now come under his protection, and marry again according to a liberty allowed by law in the case of absconding husbands. Pamphila (Pinacium) has strong affection for her husband, and refuses. She thus urges her sister to continue faithful:—

She is resolved also to be firm towards her father, but at the same time, as she has a true affection for him and respect for his authority, she will not have recourse to any other means than earnest entreaty. Unfortunately Pamphila disappears from the play after the introductory scenes, or if she appeared again, that portion of the play has been lost.

There is one other free woman who deserves special notice—the priestess of the Temple of Venus in the ‘Rudens.’ Priestesses, as Benoist has remarked, had much more liberty of movement than ordinary matrons, and could appear in public on many occasions on which the others could not. When Palæstra and Ampelisca flee to her temple for refuge, she is astonished to find that they have not come in white garments, and with victims, as visitors to a temple should; but no sooner does she learn the real state of the case than she remembers mercy, and not sacrifice, and gives them a hearty welcome. With all the power she possesses she will defend and help them.

A truly Christian woman, and not merely, as Benoist makes her, “Fere Christiana et Christianis sensibus animata.”

The second class of women were practically outcasts from society, and they knew it, and acted accordingly. Some might take to spinning and other feminine occupations; but a large number were either definitely set apart by the slave-dealers for the pleasure of men, or applied themselves to the trade as the easiest means of livelihood. Very frequently they strove to attain their liberty, and through their influence with their lovers they often succeeded. But they could not marry, and therefore continued to live the life in which they had been trained, or dealt in slave-girls. The whole mode of life of such women could not but brutalize them. And some of the characters which Plautus gives us exhibit the lowest coarseness and utter and irredeemable selfishness. They looked upon men as their victims. Men are the sheep that they have to fleece. The courtezan woman who would dream of being faithful to one man is a fool. She must have money. As soon as a man is ruined he must be turned out of doors; and the next rich idiot that comes must be fleeced in a similar manner. Such sentiments are common to the whole class; but there are shades of differences in the characters. Some are absolutely mercenary. They have no heart, and know and allow that they have none. They are fond of coarse language. They are strongly addicted to wine; and they have almost no interest in anybody. Others, on the contrary, are fond of one man above another, so long as he has money. They are cultivated and witty. They know how to dress well, and have studied all the arts that can attract. They can give nice little dinner-parties; they take an interest in their serving-maids; they have kindly feelings towards those who have brought them up. But there is still, in Plautus’s portraiture of them, a radical hardness of heart. They are selfish to the backbone, fond of dress, and inclined to wine, and will probably end like the others in becoming free, drunken, and traffickers in young slave-girls.[247]

There is one curious and notable series of exceptions to this degradation. The Greeks viewed these outcasts from society with a very friendly eye. They recognized the fact that it was their destiny that had put them into the difficult circumstances with which they had to struggle. And when these women happened to have great powers of mind, or were particularly pleasing, the Greeks chose them as companions for life, and if they could not make them their wives, they treated them as such, and were very kind to them. Thus Pericles lived with Aspasia, and Sophocles with the mother of the father of his favourite grandson. But in Plautus there is not one instance of such a connexion. There are, however, three or four beautiful characters among the slave-girls—Selenium, Planesium, Adelphasium, and Palæstra. They are modest and kindly. They wish to live with one man. Like the Mirah of ‘Daniel Deronda,’ they move about in bad society, and are exposed to every temptation, but by a miraculous providence they remain pure. M. Benoist, probably touched by compassion, thinks that Palæstra is the most lovely of these characters. We are inclined to give the palm to Adelphasium in the ‘Pœnulus,’—though perhaps she is somewhat prim—because we can judge her better, since the play affords more scope for the development of her character. All these girls are found in the end to be freeborn. They have been exposed or stolen in early childhood. Marks of identification go with them in their wanderings. And at last the happy father recognizes his long-lost child, and the lover is delighted with the thought that he can marry.

These, then, were the girls with whom the young Greeks and the young Romans had to fall in love, and fall in love they did. But this love was rarely anything else than a mad, headstrong, and even bestial passion. Rarely could the Romans have come in contact with such women that they could realize the fine remark of Steele, “To have loved her was a liberal education.” And indeed the Romans seem to have looked on love as one of those fits which come upon a man once or twice in his life, and which, like too much wine, made him stagger and reel for a time, and then left him in his older years a more sedate and indifferent person. Some such love intrigue occurs in almost every play of Plautus. There are three plays in which no female character appears—the ‘Captivi,’ the ‘Pseudolus,’ and the ‘Trinummus’; but even into two of these love is introduced. In the second the whole play is concerned with the acquisition of a courtezan girl, and in the ‘Trinummus’ Lesbonicus has lost his property through love, and Lysiteles has one or two long speeches on the ruin that attends the lover.

Several writers have adduced many passages from Plautus to show that he did not think it a wrong thing for a young, or even for an old man, on a rare occasion, to have intrigues with these courtezans.[248] The fact cannot be denied. But it is also true that Plautus uniformly represents the residences of these women as the jaws of ruin. The ‘Truculentus’ is throughout a powerful representation of the utter selfishness of the class. The young man Diniarchus wastes his means on them, is ruined, and receives no pity from them. And the upright pedagogue, Lydus, in the ‘Bacchides,’ describes the house of the courtezans in language which might have suggested to Dante his inscription over the portals of hell. “Unbar and throw open quickly this gate of hell (Orcus), I beseech you, for I deem it no other, for no one comes here but he whom all hopes have abandoned of being virtuous.”[249]

We may take a glance at the mode in which love-making went on in those days. Gaston Boissier thinks that Plautus is peculiarly happy in his portrayal of a lover’s feelings. He appeals to a passage in the ‘Curculio’ where Phædromus, a young man, thus addresses the door of his sweetheart’s house:[250]—

Or the language of Diniarchus when Phronesium appears:[251]—

He affirms that such passages justify the opinion of Ælius Stilo that if the muses wished to speak Latin, they would have used the language of Plautus.

I shall quote two of the passages in which Plautus exhibits love-making. The one is from the ‘Asinaria’ (664), and gives the epithets which women used towards men.

A slave, Leonidas, has contrived to get possession of a sum of money which a slave-girl requires, in order that she may be permitted to have interviews with his young master. The slave is conscious of his power over the girl, and wishes to tease her by keeping the money from her for some time. So she says to him:—

And so the slave goes on bantering her. The last expression I may explain by the way. It refers to a curious mode of kissing practised by Greeks and Romans. When a person wished to give a good hearty kiss to one very dearly beloved, he seized her by the ears and performed the operation with more comfort and heartiness. Another slave, partner with Leonidas, afterwards asks her to call him by some other sweet names. The girl addresses him, “My Libanus, my golden little eye, the gift and glory of love, if you please, I’ll do what you wish: only do give me the money.” “Just then,” he says, “call me your duckling, your dove, your puppy, your swallow, your jackdaw, your little sparrow, your little boy.” Such were the endearing epithets which the young women addressed to the young men. Now for those addressed to the young women by the young men. In the scene I am to adduce, a young man has asked his slave to try to gain for him the affections of a slave-girl of whom he is enamoured. The slave sets to work at once. The young man Agorastocles asks Milphio the slave,[252]

The girl here says, addressing Agorastocles:—

The bashful lover utters the sad ejaculation:—

And then, bethinking him of his ambassador and spokesman, he says to Milphio:—

Milphio begins the attack thus:—

Agorastocles can’t stand this, and he can’t help speaking to himself:—

Milphio goes on:—

Agorastocles turns to Milphio in a rage:—