[97] Andr. 205 seqq.
[98] The early Greek view of “love” is put here with almost revolting crudeness. Hermione’s devotion to her husband and Helen’s desertion of hers, are due to one and the same cause—sensual passion.
[101] πᾶσα γὰρ δούλη πέφυκεν ἀνδρὸς ἡ σώφρων γυνή.—Fr. 545 (Oedipus).
[102] Cp. Andromache in Tro. 642 seqq. Other instances are numerous. This view and that as to jealousy evidently hang together, for it must be admitted that if a wife considers it her duty to become so supremely uninteresting and stupid as such a method of life must inevitably make her, it is also her duty to be lenient to her husband if he occasionally seeks for entertainment outside the domestic circle.
[104] Tro. 1012 seqq.; cp. Hipp. 419 seqq.
[105] i.e. her means of livelihood.
[106] Fr. 402 (Ino).
[107] Cp. Andr. 1279 seqq.; Fr. 215 (Antiope), &c.
[109] To what extent it also figured in that strange play, the Protesilaus, cannot now be known, but it is only probable that it was prominent there also.
[110] Here again one almost marvels at the way in which Euripides misses an opportunity. The contrast between the joy of Alcestis at saving Admetus’ life, and her grief for her ruined ideal, would have furnished as splendid a conflict of emotions as any dramatist could desire. Athenian taste, however, preferred that she should die congratulating him on having had such a wife, while he stands by expressing his deep regret that he cannot accompany her, as Charon does not issue return tickets. For a further examination of the motives of Admetus, however, see p. 101.
[111] It must be admitted that Jason has a higher opinion of his own influence (Med. 942 seqq.), if, indeed, this be the right way to take the passage.
[112] This seems to have been still more the case in the first version of the play, where Hippolytus appears actually as a βουκόλος, or ascetic worshipper of Artemis, and where he is promised immortality as the reward of his constancy. See Reitzenstein, Epig. u. Skol. p. 210 seqq. and Excursus D.
[114] One may argue, of course, that Hippolytus, as a devotee of Orpheus, etc., would be naturally more prone to ignore the “love-element” than a person of more human passions, and that this strange disproportion in his speech is a mark of his character. Personally I doubt this, as, firstly, the characters of the Athenian drama, when making their set speeches, generally quite forget who they are—indeed, the wonder is they don’t sometimes slip into an ἄνδρες δικασταί—and, secondly, if Hippolytus had been meant to slur over an important part of his subject, his reasons for so doing would have been more definitely explained. The conclusion seems to me inevitable, that neither Hippolytus nor Theseus thought the possibility of the former’s having been in love with Phaedra worthy of serious discussion.
[115] Mahaffy, Class. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 370.
[116] It is true that, later on, the magnificent heroism of Iphigeneia extorts from Achilles what is perhaps one of the earliest declarations of love from a man to a woman that we know:
But this utterance, made under such exceptional circumstances, cannot counteract the effect of what has gone before; and, anyhow, it is a curiously isolated expression, and rather a qualified one.
[117] Worthy of notice is the excellent touch which makes this man, though poor, yet a member of a good family. (l. 37.) As Euripides knew well enough, a son of the soil would have been incapable of even this much refinement of feeling. We may observe, by the way, that Orestes expresses himself as very sceptical of the whole story—anyhow as far as motives go. (l. 253 seqq.)
[118] Hel. 566 seqq. Still more offensive, of course, are the suggestions of Ion to his mother (Ion 1523 seqq.); but there the offence is against decency, not against romance.
[119] Except occasionally, as already noticed, in the case of close blood-relations.
[120] Such erotic legends as he does introduce are treated with strangely little sympathy. The best (in the extant odes) is that of Pelops and Hippodameia (Olymp. 1), where the writer has, perhaps, been roused to a little warmth by the story of Pelops and Poseidon that has immediately preceded. The legend of Peleus and Hippolyte (Nem. 5) is noticeable as being, strangely enough, the only one in which the woman is represented as taking the initiative; but this is doubtless to be explained by the fact that nearly all these stories are descriptive of the amours of gods. The story of Jason and Medea is utterly spoiled in Pyth. 4. In that of Apollo and Coronis (Pyth. 3) only the unfaithfulness of the nymph and her punishment are dwelt upon. The other erotic stories told—i.e. those of Apollo and Euadne (Olymp. 6), Apollo and Cyrene (Pyth. 9), Zeus and the daughter of Opoeis (Olymp. 9), Ixion and Hera (Pyth. 2), are merely concerned with seductions of the most commonplace kind. The story of Rhoecus and the Hamadryad (Fr. 165) is the only one of importance alluded to in the fragments; but here it is uncertain how far Pindar told the story, and how far he merely alluded to it.
[121] [On the position occupied by women in the Old Comedy compare Women in Greek Comedy, § 3, 4.]
[122] Cp. Theocr. vii. 39.
[123] One or two points are perhaps worth noticing in this connection. It is usual to assume that the Battis of Philetas was an Hetaera; but the evidence seems rather to suggest that she was his wife. The way in which she is spoken of in Ovid, Trist. i. 6, 2, Pont. iii. 1, 57, (in the former place coupled with the Lyde of Antimachus,) seems to support this view; and, at any rate, there does not appear to be any evidence to the contrary. The personal character of Philetas, as we learn it from various notices of him, seems also rather to point in the same direction; though this is not, of course, an argument that can be pressed. (It would be interesting to know whether the fact that Philetas is apparently never alluded to under a nickname, like so many others of the Alexandrian writers, was due to this austerity of character.)
Whether these elegies were as sober and as little sensual in tone as those of Antimachus (cp. infra, p. 110), it is impossible now to say; though the two passages cited from Ovid both seem indirectly to imply that they were, and there is certainly nothing in the fragments of Philetas which would lead one to infer that they were not. It need hardly be added that the passage in Ovid, Ars Amat. iii. 329 seqq. proves nothing, for the “lascivia” there ascribed to Sappho is obviously not meant to apply to all the other poets mentioned in the list, or Vergil’s name would hardly appear in it.
[124] In the poems of Theognis, which are practically epigrams, in the later sense of the word. The epigrams of Plato, if genuine, would be another even more striking instance.
[125] Whether the words are to be taken as really seriously meant is, of course, doubtful, though one’s instinctive distrust of their sincerity is perhaps misplaced; for, after all, this is very primitive poetry of its kind. That such words should have been written at all is the remarkable point about them.
[126] [Cp. p. 81, n. 1.]
[127] Vide e.g. Anth. Pal. v. 158.
[129] xii. 153 is further interesting as one of the very few of the earlier epigrams, which profess to describe the woman’s feelings.
[130] In the Antilais; vide Meineke, Com. Fr. iii. p. 365.
[131] The above instances may serve to give some idea of the prevailing character of Asclepiades’ epigrams; on the wonderful grace and charm of this new love-poetry, it is needless to dwell. The best and truest description of Asclepiades and his followers ever given, is that of Meleager, when he calls them the wild-flowers in his Garland.
[132] Those who do not care to read the proof of this really self-evident fact, can skip the next 28 pages, and pick up the thread again on p. 103.
[133] Vide Rohde, Der griech. Roman, p. 42.
[134] His sorrow for Briseis does not, of course, as already observed, go very deep, as is sufficiently shown by the little effect which her restoration has on him; and his indignation at her loss is doubtless due to wounded self-love, more than to love of any other description. But, none the less, the introduction of such an incident shows clearly how little the purely military hero was in sympathy with Greek ideas.
[135] There is an elaborate analysis of this erotic element in Max. Tyr. xxiv. 8: καὶ τὸν ἀνδρεῖον (ἔρωτα) ἐπὶ τῷ Πατρόκλῳ, τὸν πόνῳ κτητόν καὶ χρόνῳ, καὶ μέχρι θανάτου προερχόμενον, νεῶν καὶ καλῶν ἀμφοτέρων, καὶ σωφρόνων, τοῦ μὲν παιδεύοντος, τοῦ δὲ παιδευομένου, ὁ μὲν ἄχθεται, ὁ δὲ παραμυθεῖται, ὁ μὲν ᾄδει, ὁ δὲ ἀκροᾶται. ἐρωτικὸν δὲ καὶ τὸ τυχεῖν ἐθέλοντα ἐξουσίας πρὸς μάχην, δακρῦσαι ὡς οὐκ ἀνεξομένου τοῦ ἐραστοῦ· ὁ δὲ ἐφίησι, καὶ τοῖς αὐτοῦ ὅπλοις κοσμεῖ, καὶ βραδύνοντος περιδεῶς ἔχει, καὶ ἀποθανόντος ἀποθανεῖν ἐρᾷ, καὶ τὴν ὀργὴν κατατίθεται. ἐρωτικὰ δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐνύπνια, καὶ τὰ ὀνείρατα, καὶ τὰ δάκρυα, καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον δῶρον ἤδη θαπτομένῳ ἡ κόμη.
It need hardly be pointed out that this central pair is not an isolated phenomenon. Ajax and Teucer (of whom we shall have occasion to speak again, p. 99), Idomeneus and Meriones, Diomed and Sthenelus, are obvious examples of similar relations among the subordinate characters.
[136] Its prevalence among the Lacedaemonians, in spite of the influential position of women in that state, is vouched for by the usage of the word λακωνίζω. Vide Meineke, Com. Fr. ii. pp. 200, 1088. (The derivation mentioned by Photius, Meineke l.c., seems due to Aristophanes, and need not be taken seriously.)
[137] Athen. xiii. 561 E. On this principle, the Ἱεpὸς Λόχος founded by Epaminondas was composed entirely of youths and their lovers, παιδικῶν γὰρ παρόντων ἐραστὴς πᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἕλοιτ’ ἂν παθεῖν ἢ δειλοῦ δόξαν ἀπενέγκασθαι. Athen. xiii. 602 A, cp. 561 F; Max. Tyr. xxiv. 2.
[138] Athen. xiii. 561 D. Cp. Paus. ix. 31, p. 771.
[139] Athen. xiii. 609 F.
[140] Schol. ad Theocr. xii. 29.
[141] This view was, of course, especially prominent at Athens, where Harmodius and Aristogeiton had become well-nigh the ‘patron saints’ of the democracy. Very interesting in this connection is the remark in Ath. xiii. 562 A, that the Peisistratidae, after their expulsion, were the first persons who ventured to slander this form of intimacy. Cp. too Max. Tyr. xxiv. 2. The important part that it played in, at any rate, the old-fashioned Athenian education is shown by more than one passage in Aristophanes, of which the most striking is perhaps Nubes, 972 seqq.; cp. 1002 seqq.
[142] Athen. xiii. 602 D. διὰ τοὺς τοιούτους οὖν ἔρωτας οἱ τύραννοι (πολέμιοι γὰρ αὐτοῖς αὗται αἱ φιλίαι) τὸ παράπαν ἐκώλυον τοὺς παιδικοὺς ἔρωτας, πανταχόθεν αὐτοὺς ἐκκόπτοντες.
[143] The gymnasium is always a prominent feature in this connection. Cp. Catull. lxiii. 64; Anth. Pal. xii. 123; Ach. Tat. ii. 38, πάσης δὲ γυναικῶν μωραλοιφίας ἥδιον ὄδωδεν ὁ τῶν παίδων ἱδρώς.
[144] Athen. loc. cit.
[145] Athen. xiii. 561 D. σεμνόν τινα τὸν Ἔρωτα καὶ παντὸς αἰσχροῦ κεχωρισμένον. Very characteristic in this respect is the story of Agesilaus, related in Xen. Ages. v. 4, 5; cp. Max. Tyr. xxv. 5, xxvi. 8. Other noticeable instances will appear in the next few pages.
[146] Demosth. 1401.
[147] Hence it is not without significance that, according to a common story, the originator of this form of intimacy was said to be Orpheus. See Ovid, Met. x. 83; Phanocles, Fr. 1.
[148] Antimachus already seems to have been inclined to ridicule the story of Heracles and Hylas. (Vide Fr. 8.) Plato and “Platonic” love are, of course, stock subjects throughout the Middle Comedy. (Vide e.g. Amphis, Dithyramb. Fr. 2; Meineke, Com. Fr. iii. p. 307.) The nature of this general attack on the philosophers must not be misunderstood. It is an error to suppose that the more old-fashioned among the Athenians disapproved, in the first instance, of the philosophers because they were paederasts; it would be truer to say that they turned against paederasty because it was so intimately associated with philosophy.
[149] The poems of Strato form, of course, an exception; but then the incidents on which they are based are professedly the product of his own, not always very charming, imagination. Cp. Anth. Pal. xii. 258. A further fact worth noticing is that abstract love-poems (e.g. xii. 50) are regularly placed among the Παιδικά.
[150] The reader will perhaps be thinking of another love “passing the love of women.” One might write many pages on the differences between these two similar emotions.
[151] Whatever opinion one may have as to Homer’s own intention, it cannot be denied that this was the Greek view of the relation between Achilles and Patroclus from a very early period. This is clearly shown by the fact that Aeschylus of all people treated it in this way in his Myrmidones. That the attachment was further regarded as a perfectly pure one might be equally proved from the fragments of that tragedy, if indeed proof were necessary. Insinuations like those elaborated at the end of Lucian’s Amores are a much later aftergrowth.
[152] Vide supra, pp. 21, 22.
[154] Theocr. xxix. and xxx.
[155] E.g. the image of Time with wings on his shoulders (xxix. 29). For this reason I have not cared to urge the expression Ἀχιλλέϊοι φίλοι in xxix. 34, as a proof that Alcaeus took this view of the relation between Achilles and Patroclus. (Vide supra, p. 82.)
[156] Thus Maximus Tyrius (xxiv. 9) compares the love of Sappho to that of Socrates. ὁ δὲ τῆς Λεσβίας (ἔρως) ... τί ἂν εἴη ἄλλο, ἢ ἡ Σωκράτους τέχνη ἐρωτική; δοκοῦσι γάρ μοι τὴν κατὰ ταυτὸ ἑκάτερος φιλίαν, ἡ μὲν γυναικῶν, ὁ δὲ ἀρρένων, ἐπιτηδεῦσαι.
[158] Cp. Theocr. xxix. 10,
[159] A striking record of temptation resisted is to be found in l. 949 seqq., but this is almost certainly by a later hand.
[160] l. 237 seqq.
[161] For an examination of the Second Book of Theognis, vide Excursus E.
[162] Athen. xv. p. 694 seqq. This number excludes the poems of Hybrias and Aristotle, which are different in character from the rest.
[163] Of the remaining ten, the first four are religious, and only three contain any mention of women, two of these being coarse.
[165] For, as we have seen, one of the first of these canons was that the public expression of private emotions was an offence against art no less than against decency, and this would tend to exclude from the stage all forms of love equally. In the case of woman-love there were, of course, special objections; that was why the Myrmidones was the first erotic play of any kind produced; but this is beside the present issue.
[166] For the story in Aelian, Var. Hist. ii. 21, as to the relation between Euripides and Agathon, does not seem to be more than a vague piece of scandal.
To this must be added the fact that the earlier part of the century was the time when such a subject would most readily have appealed to the Athenian imagination. Later on, and especially from the fourth century onwards, the changed position of women was beginning to make itself felt in the way we have seen.
[167] Athen. xiii. 601 A, where it is further noted that these plays were received with applause.
[168] According to Schol. Ar. Ran. 911, first of all, μέχρι τριῶν ἡμερῶν οὐδὲν φθέγγεται.
[169] The reader must be careful here to give the proper sense to σέβας ἁγνόν, translating “ne sancta quidem reverentia qua casta atque intemerata tua femora servavi, te movit, ingrate, etc.” Fr. 136, whether genuine or not—it reads very like a misquotation of its predecessor—must obviously mean the same, in spite of Theomnestus and Lucian.
[170] Athen. xiii. 601 B.
[171] Startling as it appears at first sight, this is probably the simplest way of understanding Athenaeus’ τὸν τῶν παίδων (sc. ἔρωτα). Those who have properly appreciated what such ἔρως meant to the early Greeks, will not be surprised to find the term applied to the affection of an elder for a younger brother.
[172] Plut. Amor. 17, p. 760 D, τῶν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους Νιοβιδῶν βαλλομένων καὶ θνησκόντων ἀνακαλεῖταί τις οὐδένα βοηθὸν ἄλλον οὐδὲ σύμμαχον ἢ τὸν ἐραστήν.
[173] Cp. Aristoph. Vesp. 579.
[174] The marked differences in the versions of the legend, and the fact that it appeared in the Theogamia of the pseudo-Peisander—a writer who seems to have drawn his materials in most cases from early sources—seem to show that it must have been of a certain antiquity, and anyhow was not a pure invention on the part of Euripides. The evidence of Aelian (N. H. vi. 15), though of little value, is to the same effect: Λάϊος δὲ ἐπὶ Χρυσίππῳ, ὦ καλὲ Εὐριπίδη, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔδρασεν, καίτοι τοῦ τῶν ἀρρένων ἔρωτος, ὡς λέγεις αὐτός, καὶ ἡ φήμη διδάσκει, Ἑλλήνων πρώτιστος ἄρξας.
[175] The remark of the Scholiast that the behaviour of Laius to Chrysippus was parallel to that of Zeus to Ganymede, like the similar remark in Cicero (loc. cit.), belongs of course to an age when the primitive meanings of the legends had long been forgotten. The allusion to the legend in Aristoph. Pelargi, Fr. 1 is too general to give evidence either way. See Meineke, Com. Fr. ii. p. 1126 seq.
[176] That this is the relation between Ajax and Teucer in Homer already, is pretty clear. Vide e.g. Il. ix. 266 seqq.; cp. Schol. Theocr. xii. 29. This, no doubt, accounts for the frequent mention of Ajax in the Scolia (cp. p. 90).
[177] Supposing Tecmessa appeared as champion for the dead Ajax, everyone would acknowledge this, and no one would find the situation dull: only people will not understand that Teucer meant as much, and more, to the Greeks, than Tecmessa would to us.
[179] Vide Call. Hymn. in Apoll. 49; Panyasis, Fr. 15 (Dübner); Schol. ad Eur. Alc. 2; Lact. i. 10, 3.
[180] Cp. supra, pp. 24, 31.
[181] When the Scholiast (ad Eur. Alc. 1) says that the version of the story of Apollo’s servitude given in the Prologue is the usual one (ἡ διὰ στόματος καὶ δημώδης), he need mean no more by this than the fact that this was the case at the time of writing, when the influence of Euripides had naturally superseded all others. The Scholiast cannot be taken as throwing light on the state of feeling in Athens at the time when the Alcestis was produced.
[182] I am not concerned here to write an apology for Admetus, or I might add much that would militate against the ordinary, somewhat flippant, view taken of his character. One point, however: many readers do not seem to notice that the original question of dying or not is never in the play left to Admetus at all, but is settled by Apollo on his own responsibility. Cp. Eur. Alc. 11 seqq., 32 seqq.
[183] Cp. Eur. Alc. 10, etc.
[184] Cp. the lengthy comments on the play in Lucian, Amores 47, vol. ii. p. 450.
[186] An exception to this general rule is, perhaps, Theocritus; whether, or how far, this was due to the influence of Aratus is an interesting question, but one for the discussion of which the evidence has yet to be collected.
[187] Fr. 125.
[188] And the interval is in reality even longer, for but little of the later work of Aristophanes has survived.
[189] For an examination of the fragments of the Middle Comedy, vide Excursus F.
[190] It may not be out of place to emphasise here once more the difference that exists between regarding women as an object of interest or importance, and regarding them as an object of love; for the two have been confused by many, not only in estimating the influence of Euripides (cp. supra, pp. 40, 50), but also in considering the events of the earlier part of the fourth century. Thus many have pointed to the agitation in favour of “women’s rights” satirised in the Ecclesiazusae, or to the great social importance of the Hetaerae (as illustrated in the Middle Comedy, &c.), or to the generally ameliorated condition of women of every class, as proofs of the existence at this period already of the romantic feeling. But to those who care to consider the matter clearly, it must be apparent that all these things are really beside the question. The improved state of women and their increasing power may have helped, and doubtless did help, to spread the romantic feeling when once it had originated; but they were in the first instance entirely independent of it. One does not ipso facto feel a romantic attachment for people because one is compelled to recognise them socially, while in these days of extended franchises it is surely not necessary to repeat that political recognition is not the same as love.
[191] Cp. Quint. x. 1, 53; Anth. Pal. vii. 409, &c.; vide Dübner, Asii &c. Frag. p. 28 seqq. (at the end of Didot’s Hesiod).
If the epigram attributed to Antimachus in Anth. Pal. ix. 321, be really his, he must further be regarded as one of the originators of the Dedicatory Epigram. Cp. Reitzenstein, Epig. u. Skol. p. 131.
[192] For a full account of it, vide Bach, Philetas, &c., Epimetrum iii. (p. 240); Dübner, op. cit. p. 40.
Ἀντίμαχος ὁ ποιητὴς, ἀποθανούσης τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ Λύδης, πρὸς ἢν φιλοστόργως εἶχε, παραμύθιον τῆς λύπης αὑτῷ ἐποίησε τὴν ἐλέγειαν τὴν καλουμένην Λύδην, ἐξαριθμησάμενος τὰς ἡρωϊκὰς συμφορὰς, τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς ἐλάττω τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ποιῶν λύπην. (Plut. Cons. ad Apoll. p. 106 B.)
The very important detail that he married her is confirmed by the passage in Athen. xiii. 597A, where the Lyde of Antimachus is expressly contrasted with τὴν ὁμώνυμον ταύτης ἑταῖραν Λύδην.
Cp. too Ovid, Trist. i. 6, 1: