No view of a peculiar civilization can on its ethical side be satisfactory, unless it include a distinct consideration of the place held in it by woman. And, besides, the position of the Greek woman of the heroic age is in itself so remarkable, as even on special grounds to require separate and detailed notice. It is likewise so elevated, both absolutely and in comparison with what it became in the historic ages of Greece and Rome amidst their elaborate civilization, as to form in itself a sufficient confutation of the theories of those writers who can see in the history of mankind only the development of a law of continual progress from intellectual darkness into light, and from moral degradation up to virtue.

The idea and place of woman have been slowly and laboriously elevated by the Gospel: and their full development has constituted the purest and most perfect protest, that the world has ever seen, against the sovereignty of force. For it is not alone against merely physical, but also against merely intellectual strength, that this protest has been lodged. To the very highest range of intellectual strength known among the children of Adam, woman seems never to have ascended, but in every or almost every case to have fallen somewhat short of it. But when we look to the virtues, it seems probable both that her average is higher, and that she also attains in the highest instances to loftier summits. Certainly there is no proof here of her inferiority to man. Now it is nowhere written in Holy Scripture that God is knowledge, or that God is power; while it is written that God is love: words which appear to set forth love as the central essence, and all besides as attributes. Woman then holds of God, and finds her own principal development in that which is most God-like. Thus, therefore, when Christianity wrought out for woman, not a social identity, but a social equality, not a rivalry with the function of man, but an elevation in her own function reaching as high as his, it made the world and human life in this respect also a true image of the Godhead.

Within the pale of that civilization which has grown up under the combined influence of the Christian religion as paramount, and of what may be called the Teutonic manners as secondary, we find the idea of woman and her social position raised to a point even higher than in the poems of Homer. But it would be hard to discover any period of history or country of the world, not being Christian, in which they stood so high as with the Greeks of the heroic age.

There are various heads under which we may inquire into the subject before us.

One is the law of marriage in the heroic age, and the state of the specific relation between the sexes.

A second is the employments assigned to women; how high did they reach, and how low did they descend?

A third is the social footing on which they stood, as tested by manners.

A fourth is the general outline of the woman’s character, as it is to be estimated from the varied specimens which Homer has set before us.

Firstly; a main criterion of the general condition of woman in a given state of society is to be found in the view which it may exhibit of the great institution of marriage. In proportion as that institution is purified and elevated by just restraint, the condition of woman is honourable, free, and happy. In proportion as it is relaxed, in accommodation to human infirmity or appetite, the condition of woman is degraded and servile; for where desire is the law, strength is its appropriate and only sanction, and the cause of the weaker fails. Just as a strict and efficient police is most important to the unprotected, so a strict law of marriage is most for the interest of the woman.

The general position of womankind in the Homeric age is high on both sides of the Archipelago; but, as respects marriage, its chiefest pillar, it is perceptibly even higher among the Greeks than among the Trojans. Among the multitude of cases, that either directly or incidentally come before us in the poems, there is nothing that at all resembles the Asiatic household of Priam, or that seems to favour polygamy. Nor have we any instance where a wife is divorced or taken away from her husband, and then made the wife of another man during his lifetime. The froward Suitors, who urge Penelope to choose a new husband from among them, do it upon the plea that Ulysses must be dead, and that there is no hope of his return: a plea not irrational, if we presume that the real term of his absence came to even half the number of years which Homer has assigned to it. The ancient law of England, while it repudiated the principle of divorce, recognised the presumption of the husband’s death, when brought near to certainty by a long term of absence, as equivalent to death itself for the purpose of exempting the wife from civil penalty in case of her marriage. Ægisthus, again, finds it extremely difficult to corrupt Clytemnestra: and his success in inducing her to marry him entails, as if a matter of course, the murder of her former husband. The crime is mentioned by Jupiter, in the Olympian Court, as consisting of the two parts, of which he by no means specifies the latter as the more atrocious[908];

The law of marriage differs from most other human laws in a very important particular. It is their excellence to impose the minimum of restraint, which will satisfy the absolute wants of society: but the aim and the criterion of a good law of marriage is to impose the maximum of restraint that human nature can be induced bonâ fide to accept. Doubtless there is here also a conceivable excess: but it would be and has been indicated by the general withholding of submission, or evasion of obedience. Up to that point, the restrictions of the marriage law are not evils to be endured for the sake of a greater good, but are good in themselves.

In order that this great institution may thoroughly fulfil its ends, it is especially requisite,

1. That it should not be contracted between more than one man and one woman.

2. That it should on both sides be, in the main and as a general rule, deliberate and spontaneous.

3. That the contract, once made, should not be dissolved.

And closely allied to these there is yet a fourth negative:

4. That nuptials should not be contracted between persons who stand within certain near degrees of relationship.

5. It is always requisite that this engagement should exclude not only the possibility of marriage for either partner with a third person, but also any other fleshly connection without marriage.

Of these propositions, the first, third, and fourth, are heads of restraint on marriage. Every one of the three was acknowledged by the Greeks of the heroic age.

The rule of conjugal fidelity was admitted, though not wholly without relaxation, to be as applicable to men as to their wives. This, and all the other restrictions, were applied to women with undeviating strictness.

1. As regards the first, it is plain, from a mass of evidence so large as to amount, in spite of its being negative, to demonstration, that the uniform practice of the Greeks required the marriage union to be single. This, however, of itself, is saying little; but it imports much besides what is on the surface: it implies, that, with due allowances, the spirit of the marriage contract is a spirit of equity and of well adjusted rights, as between those who enter into it.

2. This relation was also conceived by the Greeks in a spirit of freedom.

It held a central place in life thoroughly European, as opposed to the Oriental ideas. Nay, it approximated very much to the ideas prevailing in our own country as well as age. We do not find in the poems any instance of a marriage enforced against the will of a young maiden, or contracted when she was of years too tender to exercise a judgment. Nausicaa fears that if she is seen with Ulysses, censorious tongues will immediately put it about that she is going to be married to him. They will say, ‘Who is this tall and handsome stranger with Nausicaa?’[909] Surely she is going to become his bride. Truly she has picked up some gallant from afar, who has strayed from his ship: or some god has come down to wed her. Better it were if she found a husband from abroad, since, forsooth, she looks down upon her Phæacian suitors, though they are many and noble. Then continues this model of maidens; ‘Thus I shall come into disgrace; and indeed I myself should be indignant with any one who should so act, and who, against the will of her parents, frequented the company of men before being publicly married.’ In this remarkable passage we have such an exhibition of woman’s freedom, as scarcely any age has exceeded. For it clearly shows that the marriage of a damsel was her own affair, and that, subject to a due regard freely rendered to authority and opinion, she had, when of due age, a main share in determining it. That is to say, to the extent of choosing a mate among the competitors. The expression of giving away or promising a daughter, by parents, is often used[910], but we perceive the limits of its meaning from the passage just quoted. The more so, because similar expressions as to the proceedings of parents are applied in Homer to the marriages of sons[911]. I do not suppose it would have been open to any maiden to remain single. That all should marry, that there should be no class living in celibacy, was a kind of law for society in its infant state, even as now it may be said to be almost a law for the most numerous classes of society. Above all I suppose it to be clear that a marriageable widow could not ordinarily remain in widowhood. No reproach arises to Helen, on account of the renewal of her irregular union with Deiphobus; and when Penelope, or others in her behalf, contemplate the death of Ulysses, and her consequent release from the marriage state, that change is always treated as the immediate preface to another crisis, namely, the choice of a second husband.

Although social intercourse with man might not, as Nausicaa says, be sought by damsels, it might innocently come on occasions such as those afforded by public festivities, or by an ordinary calling[912].

But again, the persecution of Penelope by the Suitors bears emphatic testimony to the freedom of woman within the limits I have described. The utmost of their aim is to coerce her into marrying some one; even as their sin lies in bringing this pressure to bear upon her before the death of Ulysses has been ascertained. On the other hand, the pressure is a moral one: her violent removal is never thought of; and the absolute silence of the poem on the subject proves that it would have been at variance with the prevailing manners, had any cabal been formed, in order even to constrain her choice towards a particular person. The very presents, by which the profligate Suitors endeavoured to ingratiate themselves with the women of the household of Ulysses, speak favourably of the free condition of the sex, and seem to show, that it descended even into lower stations.

For the Greek in the heroic age, marriage was the pivot of life. It took place in the bloom of age: hence[913] the beautiful expression, θαλερὸς γάμος, Od. vi. 66, xx. 74. It even marks of itself the age of persons; Alcinous has five sons, three ἠΐθεοι, and two ὀπυίοντες, (Od. vi. 63): three youths or bachelors, and two married.

Presents were usually brought by the bridegroom, and dowries sometimes given with the bride. Where the two concurred, the presents may have been either in the nature of compliments, or intended to meet the expense of the wedding festivities. The absence of the former, and the occurrence of the latter, seem each to be more or less in the nature of an exception. With a wife returning to her parents, the dowry returned also[914]. On the other hand, to judge from the story of Vulcan and Venus, wherever adultery was committed, the guilty man was bound to pay a fine[915]. The poems give us several instances where personal gifts and energy served instead of wealth, as recommendations in suing for a wife[916]. The drawing of the Bow affords a conspicuous example of the prevailing ideas.

Upon the whole, then, in all that related to forming engagements by marriage, there seems to have been preserved a large regard to the freedom and dignity of woman[917]. War was doubtless in this respect her great enemy; she then became the prey of the strongest, and it is probable that this may have been the most powerful instrument in promoting the extensive introduction of concubinage into Greece.

With respect to the ceremonial of marriage, and the nature of its formal engagement, the Homeric poems furnish us with scanty evidence. There is no mention, in fact, of any promise or vow attending it. The expression δαινύναι γάμον, in Od. iv. 3, seems to contain all that would be included by us when we speak of celebrating marriage. Not that it was the mere banquet that created the conjugal relation: it was doubtless the ἀμφάδιος γάμος, the solemn public acknowledgment, to which relatives and friends, and, in such a case as that of Hermione, the public or people of the state, thus became witnesses. This subject will be further considered in connection with the case of Briseis.

3. If the mode of entry into the obligations of married life was as simple and indeterminate as we have supposed, such a want of formalities greatly enhances the strength of the testimony borne by the facts of the heroic age to what may be called the natural perpetuity of the marriage contract.

It is a very remarkable circumstance, that, of the two great poems of Homer, each should in its own way bear emphatic testimony to this great, and, for all countries that can bear it, this most precious law.

Neither poem presents us with any case of a divorced wife; of a couple between whom the marriage tie, after having once been duly formed, had ceased to subsist. And each poem in its own way raises this negative evidence to a form of the greatest cogency, from its happening to present the very circumstances under which, if under any, the dissolution of the bond would have been acknowledged.

In the Iliad, the wife of Menelaus, his κουριδίη ἄλοχος, has been living for many years in de facto adultery with Paris. The line between marriage on the one hand, and continued cohabitation together with public recognition on the other, being faintly drawn, Helen is familiarly known in Troy as the wife of Paris; so she is called by the Poet, and so she calls herself[918]. Menelaus, too, is described as her former husband[919]. Whether this was a mere acquiescence in a certain state of facts, or the regular result of more relaxed usages respecting marriage in Troy, may be doubtful. But it is clear that the view of the Greeks was directly opposite. They never speak of Paris as the husband of Helen. In their estimation, all the rights of Menelaus remained entire; and, as we shall see, it appears that, even while the possession of them was withheld from him, he acknowledged the reciprocal obligations. Nay, Hector himself seems to describe Helen as still the wife of Menelaus; γνοίης χ’ οἵου φωτὸς ἔχεις θαλερὴν παράκοιτιν[920]. The war was (so to speak) juridically founded on the fact, that the lawful marriage was not dissolved by adultery, even with the addition of all that followed: that the relation of Helen to her ancient husband was unchanged. Accordingly, Agamemnon recollects with pain, that if his brother should die, he will no longer be in a condition to demand her restoration, and to enforce it by arms, for his soldiers will forthwith return home[921].

The result is in full conformity with this view. When the war ends, Helen resumes her place as a matter of course in the house of Menelaus. She bears it with unconstrained and perfect dignity; and her relations to her husband carry no mark of the woful interval, except that its traces indelibly remain in her own penitential shame.

It is plain that the Greeks heartily detested the crime of adultery: for one of the three great chapters of accusation against the Suitors is, that they wooed the wife of Ulysses in his lifetime[922]. But it is not less plain that they knew nothing of the idea, that by that crime it was placed in the power of any person to obtain or to confer a release from the obligations of marriage.

Next to adultery, desertion or prolonged absence has afforded the most favoured plea for the destruction, so far as human law can destroy it, of the marriage bond. And indeed it is hardly possible to push the opposite doctrine to its extreme, and to say that no married person may remarry, except with demonstrative evidence of the death of the original husband or wife respectively. Probably, however, no period of the world has exhibited a more stringent application of the doctrine of indissolubility to the case of desertion, than that on which the plot of the Odyssey is founded; where, after an absence of the husband prolonged to the twentieth year, Penelope still waits his return; prays that death may relieve her from the dread necessity of making a new choice; and, thus directed by her own conscience and right feeling, likewise apprehends condemnation by the public judgment in the event of her proceeding to contract a new engagement[923].

The Heroic age has left no more comely monument, than its informal, but instinctive, and most emphatic sense, thus recorded for our benefit, of the sanctity of marriage, of the closeness of the union it creates, and of the necessity of perpetuity as an element of its capacity to attain its chief ends, and to administer a real discipline to the human character.

4. A further proof of the elevated estimate of marriage among the Greeks is afforded by their views, so far as they can be traced, of the offence termed incest.

The Homeric deities, indeed, were released in this respect, as in others, from all restraint. Eris, or Enuo[924], was both the sister and the concubine of Mars: Juno, the sister and the wife of Jupiter. Æolus[925], though called φίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν, must have been more than man; because Jupiter had made him warden of the Winds, which it was his prerogative to confine or to let loose[926]. And in virtue, I suppose, of belonging to the class of superior beings, his six daughters were, without any consciousness of offence, the wives, the αἰδοῖαι ἄλοχοι, of his six sons[927].

In Troy, Helen apparently becomes the wife of two brothers in succession. We must not overrate the force of merely negative evidence, but it will be observed that Homer does not furnish us with any trace of this usage among the Greeks. The story of Phœnix probably implies, that the connection of the same woman with a father and a son was incestuous; for the full efficacy of the remedy proposed by his mother turns on the supposition, that there would remain to his father no alternative but incest after Phœnix had gained his object, and that such an alternative would at once deter him from the love of the stranger.

In Scheria, Alcinous is married to Arete, the daughter of his elder brother Rhexenor[928]. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, and was apparently also his niece[929]. Again, we appear to find in the Iliad an example of a marriage, by one shade yet less desirable, that of a man with his aunt. Tydeus, the father of Diomed, was married to a daughter of Adrastus: and Ægialeia the wife of Diomed, as she is called Ἀδρηστίνη, was probably his aunt likewise[930].

We have also among the Trojans an example of a man’s marriage with his aunt. Iphidamas, son of Antenor[931], was brought up in the house of Cisses his maternal grandfather; and he contracted a marriage with his mother’s sister just before proceeding to the war.

At the same time, the law of incest is clearly a progressive one from the infancy of mankind onwards, and what we have to consider is not so much its precise extent, as the degree of genuine aversion with which the violation of it is regarded. Upon this subject there can be no doubt, when we read the passage in the Eleventh Odyssey respecting the μέγα ἔργον of Œdipus and Epicaste, and the fearful consequences which, though it was done in ignorance, it entailed upon them[932]. In principle, then, that restriction of the field of choice, which adds so greatly to the intimacy and firmness of the marriage tie, was fully recognised in Greece.

Neither do we want traces in Homer of that remarkable effect of the unifying power of marriage, which confers upon each partner in the union an equal and common relation to the family of the other, by a convention which has so much of the moral strength of fact. The most remarkable of all the indications upon this subject in the poems is that, which relates to the future life of Menelaus. He is said to be elected to the honour of a place in the region of Elysium after this life, not in virtue of his own merits, but as being, through his marriage with Helen, the son-in-law of Jupiter.

The recognition of relationships through the wife or husband to the husband or wife respectively, and the existence of names to describe them, is a sign of the completeness of the union effected by the marriage tie. That these terms were not merely formal and ceremonious, we may judge from the speech of Alcinous:

Now of these words we have the following;

πηὸς, for any relative by affinity;

ἐκυρὸς, πενθερὸς, father-in-law;

ἐκυρὴ, mother-in-law;

δαὴρ, brother-in-law;

γαλοὼς, sister-in-law;

γαμβρὸς, son-in-law;

νυὸς, daughter-in-law;

μητρυίη, stepmother; or the lawful wife, in relation to a spurious son. There is but one real example, Eeribœa, of a stepmother in Homer (Il. v. 389).

And, lastly, we have εἰνατεὶρ, husband’s sister-in-law, a relationship not expressed by any word in the English and many other languages. The εἰνατέρες are always separate from the γαλόῳ.

The formation of this large circle of relationships by affinity is the correlative to a well-defined strictness in the marriage law. For these relationships would mean nothing, but would simply betoken and even breed confusion, unless marriage were perpetual and incest eschewed.

Friedreich[934] truly observes, that the law of incest, instead of being tightened, was relaxed at a later period in Greece; a very decided mark of moral retrogression, which cannot be cancelled by all the splendours of her history.

5. We come now to the remaining question; how was this great obligation practically observed in the Greece of the heroic age?

Part, at least, of the answer is easy to give. By women it was observed admirably. Except only in the case of Anteia, two generations old, there is no instance in Homer of a woman who seeks the breach of it. The forcible or half forcible seduction[935], and progressive contamination, of a part of the unmarried women who belong to the household of Ulysses, is one of the three great crimes which draw down from Heaven such fearful vengeance upon the Suitors. Of the παλλακὶς, we hear but twice in the poems; nor can we say that this word meant more than a concubine[936]. Among the Greek chieftains, cases of homicide are more frequent than those of bastardy. And when such instances are mentioned, it is not in the hardened manner of later times.

It is something at least that, in such matters, a nation should be alive to shame. We have various signs that this was so in Greece. One of them is the tender expression[937]:

It must be remembered, when we touch upon these morbid parts in human life and nature, that the society of that period did not avail itself of the expedient of the professional corruption of a part of womankind in order to relieve the virtue of the residue from assault.

Among the Greek chieftains and their families, Polydore, a sister of Achilles, had a spurious son[938]. Nestor[939] sprang from a father of spurious birth. Each Ajax had a spurious brother. Only Menelaus of all the chiefs is mentioned as having himself had an illegitimate son. This son, who has the touching name of Megapenthes, was born to him by a slave, evidently after the rape of Helen; he was apparently recognised in part; his marriage was celebrated at the same time with that of his legitimate sister Hermione, but it was contracted with a person of lower station. He was τηλύγετος, the last as well as the first; though Helen, owing, as the Poet intimates, to a divine decree, had no more children, with whom to console her husband, after her return from the abduction.

The superior rank conferred by lawful birth is in every case strongly marked; and this perhaps is the reason why we never find the succession to sovereignty in Greece disturbed by illegitimate offspring.

The great majority of illegitimate births in Homer are those ascribed to the paternity of deities. It is probable that this extraction may be pleaded to cover sometimes marriages which were conceived to be beneath the station of the woman; sometimes instances like that of Astyoche[940], when war had both excited passion, and provided opportunities and victims for its gratification[941]. Setting these cases aside, the cases of illegitimacy in heroic Greece appear to be rare.

At the same time, instances are found[942] in which a spurious child (only, however, I think in the case of a son) is brought up in a manner approaching to that of the legitimate offspring: and a certain relationship is acknowledged to exist, for the wife is said to be μητρυίη, or step-mother, to the illegitimate son. In the case of Pedæus, it was Theano, Antenor’s wife, who herself educated the bastard: but it is plain that in Troas concubinage was far more fully recognised, than in Greece.

Agamemnon in the First Iliad, as we have seen, when announcing his attention to make Chryseis a partner of his bed, by no means treats this concubinage as being what it would have been with Priam, a matter of course and requiring no apology, but founds it upon his preferring her to his wife Clytemnestra[943].

In the camp before the walls of Troy it certainly appears as if by the use of the word γέρας, prize, Homer might, as it is commonly assumed, mean to indicate, for most of the principal chiefs, that they had captives taken in war for concubines. But the point is far from clear; and at any rate Menelaus, as is observed by Athenæus, forms an exception[944]. This circumstance affords rather a marked proof of Greek ideas with respect to the durability of the marriage tie; for that author is probably right in ascribing it to his being, as it were, in the presence of his wife Helen. This concubinage, however, appears to have been single in each case where it prevailed; or, if it was otherwise, Homer has at least deemed the circumstance unfit to be recorded. There is no sign that the seven Lesbian damsels of Il. ix. 128 were concubines.

Achilles, after the removal of Briseis, had Diomede[945] for the companion of his couch. But Briseis appears to have had his attachment in a peculiar degree. He calls her his ἄλοχον θυμάρεα[946]. It is said that the word ἄλοχος may mean a concubine[947]. I do not find any passage in Homer, except this of Il. ix., where it may not with the most obvious propriety be translated ‘wife.’ It has its highest force, no doubt, in such expressions as μνηστὴ ἄλοχος and κουριδίη ἄλοχος: even as we say intensively ‘wedded wife.’ But the term is the standing phrase for wife, as much as τέκνα for children; and it is impossible, consistently with what we see of the usages of marriage among the Greeks, to suppose that the same term was alike applicable to wives and concubines. Nor is it necessary to draw such a conclusion from this passage. We might be tempted to suppose, that Achilles here puts a strain as it were upon the use of the word, and for the moment calls Briseis his wife, in order to prepare the way for the tremendous and piercing sarcasm which immediately follows[948]:

But we may, I think, more justly, and without any resort to figure, observe, that the whole argument of this passage turns upon and requires us to suppose his having treated Briseis as he would have treated a wife. So likewise his declaration, that every good man loves and cares for his wife, becomes insipid, and the whole comparison with the case of Menelaus senseless, unless we are to give the force of wife to the name ἄλοχος.

Probably the explanation may be, that she was designated for marriage with him; for in the Nineteenth Book, where she utters a lamentation over Patroclus, she declares how that chief kindly encouraged her to bear up in her widowhood and captivity, promising that she should be the wife of Achilles, and that the banquets, which, with their attendant sacrifices, seem to have constituted for the Homeric Greeks the ceremonial of marriage, should be celebrated on their return to Phthia[949]. I should therefore suppose that we might with strict justice render ἄλοχος, in Il. ix. 336, ‘my bride;’ always remembering that we are dealing with a relation that was not governed by rules, and that might virtually inure by usage only.

The subsequent passage[950], in which the hero speaks of marrying some damsel of Hellas or Phthia, is quite consistent with this construction, for, as it is plain that no actual marriage had been concluded between them, his relation to Briseis terminated with her removal de facto. The same passage, as well as the custom of Greece, makes it reasonable to understand that the mother of Neoptolemus, whoever she may have been, was now dead.

Indeed it is to be remembered all along, that we are speaking of a state, rather than an act. We know nothing of a ceremonial of Homeric marriage beyond the exchange of gifts and the celebration of festivities in connection with the domicile, neither of which could ordinarily have place in the case of a captive while continuing such. She would grow into a wife in virtue of intention on the part of her lord, confirmed by habit, and sealed by a full recognition when the circumstances, that would alone admit of it, should have arrived.

The concubinage of the Greek chiefs, practised as it was during a long absence from home, bears an entirely different domestic and social character from that of Priam. It clearly constitutes, especially if the connections were single, the mildest and least licentious of all the forms in which the obligations of the marriage tie could be relaxed.

The presence of a concubine within the precinct of the family seems to have been differently viewed by the Greeks; for here, and here only, do we find the disparaging word παλλακὶς (whence the Latin pellex) applied to a person in that position. The two cases of it are as follows. In one of them Ulysses feigns a story of his having been a son of the Cretan Castor, born of a παλλακὶς, but (which he mentions as a departure from the general rule) regarded by his father as much as were his legitimate children[951]. The other is the instance of Phœnix in the Ninth Iliad. Amyntor his father had an intended or actual concubine; and, bestowing his affections on her, slighted the mother of his child. She, in resentment or self-defence, entreated her son Phœnix to cross or anticipate his father[952], and win the woman to his own embraces[953]. He complied; and thus drew down upon himself the dire wrath and curses of his father, which kindled his own anger in return; but he restrained himself from the act of parricide, and became a fugitive instead. This legend is somewhat obscure; but it appears to indicate plainly that concubinage was not a recognised institution among the Greeks, as it seems to have been among the Trojans.

So again, when Laertes had purchased Euryclea[954], we are told that he never attempted to make her his concubine, anticipating the resentment of his wife. It is plain, therefore, that this would have been an admitted offence on his part; and accordingly, that concubinage was contrary to the ideas of Greece respecting conjugal obligation.

Within the precinct of the Greek marriages, which was secured and fenced in the manner we have seen, there prevailed that tenderness, freedom, and elevation of manners, which was the natural offspring of a system in the main so sound and strict. The general tone of the relations of husband and wife in the Homeric poems is thoroughly natural; it is full of dignity and warmth; a sort of noble deference, reciprocally adjusted according to the position of the giver and the receiver, prevails on either side. I will venture to add, it is full also of delicacy, though we must be content to distinguish, in considering this point, between what is essential and what is conventional, and must make some allowance for the directness and simplicity of expression that characterized an artless age[955].

With this delicacy was combined a not less remarkable freedom in the Greek manners with respect to women. We find Penelope appearing in her palace at will, on all ordinary occasions, before the Suitors; although, on the other hand, no woman would be present where any thing like license was to be exhibited, as we may judge from the case of the lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey. The general freedom of woman is however most fully exhibited in the case of Nausicaa. She goes forth into the country with her maidens unattended. When Ulysses appears there is no fear of him as a man, or even as a stranger, but only from his condition at the moment. This difficulty she surmounts with a dignity which she could not have possessed by virtue of her personal character only, nor except in a case where great liberty was habitually and traditionally enjoyed by women.

Her arrangement of the manner in which he is to enter the city apart from her, and her regard in this matter to opinion, both rest upon the same presumption of her freedom from petty control, as does her playful demand upon Ulysses for ζωάγρια, or salvage.

Again, how remarkable it is that Alcinous, far from being surprised that his maiden daughter should have entered into conversation with a stranger, is actually on the point of finding fault with her for not having shown a greater forwardness, and brought him home in her own company: a reproach, from which Ulysses saves her by his intercession[956].