[267] That the ψενδοκόρη, as the Athenian stage-managers rather quaintly called her—a class of character sufficiently common, it must be admitted—differs toto caelo from the regular Hetaera, is almost too obvious to need mention.
[269] Of the Casina, which would appear at first sight to belong to this class, we shall speak in another place. [The Excursus, dealing with this subject, seems not to have been written; comp. Excursus K.]
[270] It is hard for us, in our generation, to realise what the first dawn of pure love for women must have meant to the men who saw it. It needs a conscious effort of will to clean away from one’s eyes and one’s heart the dust of the centuries, and to look back clearly; but if once the effort be successfully made, it is no longer hard to understand why, at the end of the fourth century, the pure girl was a more inspiring ideal than “the woman with a past,” and why the παρθένος; could stir depths of passion that the ἑταίρα had left untouched.
[271] These last lines are very suggestive of Theocr. viii. 53. It is worth noticing that in this play (v. 2, 72) the girl is specially asked whether she is willing to marry.
[273] Probably by Menander. At any rate, Cistell. i. 1, 90 seqq. is a translation of Menand. Incert. 32.
[275] e.g. Ter. And. i. 5, 36 seqq., iv. 2, 11 seqq.
[276] In the Adelphi of Menander, this feature was, in all probability, even more prominent than it is in Terence’s contaminated version.
[277] Ter. Adelph. iii. 2, 34 seqq.; cp. iii. 4, 23 seqq.
[278] Plaut. Aulul. iv. 10.
[279] Cp. Ter. Eun. iv. 4, 26.
[280] Ter. Adelph. iv. 5, 62 seqq.
[281] Cp. Plaut. Aulul. iv. 7 and 10; the conclusion of the play, in which the marriage of the hero was finally settled, is lost.
[282] Ter. And. iv. 2, 14.
[283] Here, too, there can be little doubt that in the original (the Philadelphi of Menander), this erotic element was more prominent than it is in the Latin.
[284] Cp. Plaut. Trin. v. 1, 1 seqq.; 2, 64.
[285] Some further interesting evidence on this subject will be discussed later. [Cp. p. 189; but the reference seems to be to a part of the work which was not written.]
[286] In Tragedy, of course, the faithful and loving wife was not so entirely unknown. The Athenian might accept an Alcestis, who lived in prehistoric and heroic times, though even here his natural tendency was to jeer (cp. Aristoph. Equit. 1251); but, imagine such a character in Comedy, which was taken from real contemporary life? The idea was preposterous.
[287] It is of course obvious that characters such as Clitipho in the Heauton Timorumenus, or Lesbonicus in the Trinummus, do not regard matrimony with much enthusiasm, but, in all these cases, the reasons for their objection are so apparent that no one would consider them as real exceptions to the general rule that the young man of the New Comedy looks on marriage with favour.
[288] And here one may remark at once that the incontinence of women, which is one of the favourite subjects both of Aristophanes and of Euripides, is nowhere emphasised in New Comedy.
[289] Cp. Fr. 10.
[290] Cp. Ter. Eun. v. 4, 21 seqq.
[291] Ter. And. ii. 1, 15 and 25. [The author is assuming that the words “quam vellem!” in the latter passage, are spoken by Charinus, not by Pamphilus: the editors differ on this point.] This curious passage furnishes a further instance, if further instances be needed, of the fact that what the Greek required of a woman for a love-match was not so much physical purity as constancy to a particular lover. Hence we find that by far the greater mass of Greek romantic love-poetry is addressed, not to virgins, but to women to whom the writer is, in one way or another, married. Thus, too, in the romance of Xenophon Ephesius, the adventures of the lovers all take place after marriage (the wedding occurs already in chapter viii of book I.), and in this the Ephesiaca are at least as Greek as, if not more so than the Pastoralia of Longus, or the novel of Eumathius, where the most ridiculous and desperate expedients have to be resorted to in order that the heroine may preserve her virginity till the end of the last chapter. But this whole matter will be more fully discussed when we come to consider the Callimachean ideal of woman. [The reference is to a part of the work which was not completed.]
[292] Ter. Hec. v. 1, 24 seqq.; cp. i. 2, 82.
[293] The Casina (of Diphilus) and the Orge of Menander seem equally emphatic on the point, but as both these plays belong, strictly speaking, to Middle Comedy, which had other and less romantic reasons for decrying adultery, they need not be further noticed here.
[294] Cp. Ter. Heaut. Tim. ii. 4, 1 seqq.
words which raise strange memories of a well-known passage in the Dame aux Camélias.
[295] Cp. inter alia, v. 1, 30; 3, 35.
[296] ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν ἄειδε τοιαύτην, θεά, κ.τ.λ.
[297] “haec. (sc. Thais Menandri) primum iuvenum lascivos lusit amores;” where lusit must almost certainly mean “parodied” or “ridiculed,” and lascivos amores “Hetaera-loves” as opposed to the more orthodox amours of which the New Comedy proper treats.
[298] In any case, however, it is tempting to read in Prop. ii. 6, 3:
[299] E.g. Plaut. Cist. i. 1, 66.
[300] E.g. Plaut. Trin. ii. 1, 15 seqq. etc., etc.
Cp. Arrian, Dissert. Epictet. iv. 1.
[302] Cp. Fr. 10, 11.
[304] Vide Arrian, loc. cit. where the whole subject of Thrasonides is discussed.
[305] This is the view taken of the case by Diogenes Laertius (vii. 130), when he is discussing the Stoic doctrine of love.
εἶναι δὲ τὸν ἔρωτα ἐπιβολὴν φιλοποιΐας διὰ κάλλος ἐμφαινόμενον· καὶ μὴ εἶναι συνουσίας, ἀλλὰ φιλίας. τὸν γοῦν Θρασωνίδην, καίπερ ἐν ἐξονσίᾳ ἔχοντα τὴν ἐρωμένην, διὰ τὸ μισεῖσθαι ἀπέχειν αὐτῆς. εἶναι οὖν τὸν ἔρωτα φιλίας. κ.τ.λ.
[306] One need merely think of Thais, the ideal Hetaera, μηδενὸς ἐρῶσαν.
[307] That this is no mere coincidence is shown by the characters, of Stratophanes in Menander’s Sicyonius, and others, of whom we shall speak presently. [p. 182.]
[308] Plut. de Cupid. Div. 524 F.
[καίτοι πῶς οὐ μανικὸν οὐδὲ οἰκτρὸν τὸ πάθος, εἴ τις ἱματίῳ μὴ χρῆται διὰ τὸ ῥιγοῦν, μηδὲ ἄρτῳ διὰ τὸ πεινῇν, μηδὲ πλούτῳ διὰ τὸ φιλοπλουτεῖν; ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς Θρασωνίδου κακοῖς ἐστίν·
ὡς οἱ ἐμμανέστατα ἐρῶντες,
[309] Misumenus, Fr. 6.
[310] Cp. Athen. xiii. 603 C, where not only is his continence emphasised, but also his treatment of his captives as if they were free. Cp. Menand. Sicyon. Fr. 3.
[311] Mimnermus, Anacreon, and Antimachus were all, of course, natives of Greek Asia, where the cult of women seems always, from the earliest times onwards, to have been more developed than in Greece itself. There is a certain grim irony in the tradition that would make Anaxandrides, too, a native of Colophon.
[312] Vide Fr. 3.
[313] Plaut. Epid. i. 2, 7.
[314] Cp. v. 1, 45, where the lover’s regrets are promptly answered by the assertion that there is another woman ready who will do just as well or better:
[315] That the character of the soldier belonged essentially to erotic comedy is further shown by Plaut. Capt. prolog. 57:
[316] This doubtless refers to some lines, now lost, which preceded the passage subsequently quoted.
[317] This is, of course, nothing but a versified version of the doctrine of the Stoic, Euclides. Cp. Diog. Laert. ii. 108.
[318] Mi. etiamne (a me didicisti) ut ames eam, quam nusquam tetigeris? nihil illuc quidem est.
Ag. deos quoque edepol et amo et metuo, quibus tamen abstineo manus. (i. 2, 69.) A remark in v. 4, 49, is similar in spirit.
[319] Plaut. Curc. i. 1, 50 seqq. Further moralisings on the power of a kiss (which almost suggest Daphnis in Longus’ Pastoralia, i. 18) occur in Menand. Incert. 7.
[320] Ter. Hec. i. 2, 60 seqq.; 85 seqq.
[321] e.g. the “Geta” in Menander’s Misumenus, Milphio in the Poenulus of Plautus, &c.
[322] Such a passage as Alexis, Incert. 35, would belong to this date. It is very different to the ribald remarks in the Philometor of Antiphanes.
[324] Ibid. p. 171.
[325] The “mater indulgens” is mentioned in Apuleius, Florid. 16, as one of the stock characters in Philemon.
[326] Menand. Incert. 109, 114, 115, are all equally to the point.
[327] Vide Ter. Hec. iv. 2, 1 seqq., a passage of great interest.
[328] Some further remarks on the family relations in New Comedy will be found in Excursus K.
[Frequent reference is made in these pages to Plautus and Terence, as illustrating the New Comedy. The justification of such reference was to have been dealt with in an Excursus. The author was of opinion that the Latin comedians might be cited to illustrate plot and subject, though we could not be certain that the actual words or expressions in any given passage were due to Greek originals.]
[329] That there was no romantic element in Greek tragedy has already been shown at length. [See above, pp. 37-67.]
[330] The claims of Diphilus need not be considered. His leanings towards Middle Comedy are generally admitted; in his fragments there is no suggestion of any romantic treatment of women. In fact, the only real reason for assigning him to New Comedy at all is, perhaps, the story of the Rudens, which, Arcturus states in the Prologue, is derived from this writer. Of the Casina we shall speak elsewhere. [See page 165, note 2.]
[331] Poeta fuit hic Philemon, mediae comoediae scriptor; fabulas cum Menandro in scenam dictavit, certavitque cum eo, fortasse impar, certe aemulus. namque eum etiam vicisse saepenumero, pudet dicere. reperias tamen apud ipsum multos sales, argumenta lepide inflexa, agnatos lucide explicatos, personas rebus competentes, sententias vitae congruentes, ioca non infra soccum, seria non usque ad cothurnum. rarae apud illum corruptelae, et, uti errores, concessi amores. nec eo minus et leno periurus et amator fervidus et servulus callidus et amica illudens et uxor inhibens et mater indulgens et patruus obiurgator et sodalis opitulator et miles proeliator; sed et parasiti edaces et parentes tenaces et meretrices procaces. Apul. Flor. 16.
[332] A curious instance of this feeling is his often-expressed opinion that animals are happier than men. Cp. Incert. 3, 4, 8, etc.
[333] Cp. inter alia Apul. Flor. 16.
[334] Among many expressions to this effect, we need only mention that of Quintilian: atque ille quidem (sc. Menander) omnibus eiusdem operis auctoribus abstulit nomen et fulgore quodam suae claritatis tenebras obduxit. Inst. x. 1, 72.
[335] To take an instance from modern times. M. Daudet is said to have written his Sappho with the expressed object of showing that he, too, could produce a work which could not be left lying about. Similarly, M. Zola may be imagined to have produced La Rêve, in order to prove that even he could be decent if he tried. But any attempt to judge of the general character of these authors by the two books mentioned would be obviously futile. In like manner, in the case of Philemon, one has to consider how much of the romantic element in his comedies is due to conviction, and how much to a desire to show that romantic love-stories were a game two could play at.
[336] Platon. de Com. p. 30. ad fin. The passage distinctly suggests that these ninety-seven plays were not all that Philemon actually wrote. σώζεται δὲ αὐτοῦ (Φιλήμονος) δράματα ἑπτὰ πρὸς ἐνενήκοντα. Μένανδρος ... γέγραφε δὲ πάντα δράματα ρη΄.
The view that the total number of his plays was greater than ninety-seven seems to acquire further probability from the fact that he lived well-nigh twice as long as Menander, and continued to write up to the day of his death. Cp. Apul. Flor. 16.—It need hardly be remarked that if plays of Philemon were already lost in the time of Platonius, such plays were, in all probability, Middle rather than New Comedies.
[337] I have reserved the detailed proof of this fact, and the similar one concerning Menander, for another place, in order that the sequence of the argument may not be disturbed. Vide Excursus. [This Excursus does not appear to have been written.]
[338] It is hard to speak so positively of Philemon if, as is probable, he was merely the imitator and rival of Menander in this respect; but, of course, if it be granted that his romantic plays are subsequent to Menander’s introduction of the subject, it is a matter of indifference for the present argument whether he afterwards reverted to the older style or not.
[339] [Supra, p. 107 seqq.]
[340] The Scholiast here, and others, go so far as to assert that Theocritus was a pupil of Asclepiades as well as of Philetas.
[341] Φιλητᾶς ... ὢν ἐπί τε Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου. Suidas s.v.
[342] Cp. Anth. Pal. xii. 46.—The fact that Asclepiades was tired of life at twenty-one is, of course, no proof that he died early. Many people, especially poets, who were very anxious for death in their youth, have developed a wonderfully tenacious hold upon life as they grew older.
[344] The fact that Menander called one of his plays Samia, a title which had not been used since the time of Anaxandrides, is one of those interesting coincidences that prove nothing at all.
[345] Ὑσμίνῃ παρθένῳ τῇ θυγατρὶ Σωσθένης οἰνοχοεῖν ἐγκελεύεται· ἡ δὲ ἀνεζώσατο τόν χιτῶνα, ἐγύμνωσε τὼ χεῖρε μέχρις ἀγκῶνος κ.τ.λ. Eumath. i. 8.
[346] ἔπιε μὲν οὖν ὁ Σωσθένης· οὐκ ἔπειθε γάρ με αὐτοῦ προπιεῖν. εἶτα καὶ ἡ Πανθία (ἡ τῆς Ὑσμίνης μήτηρ) συνέπιεν· ἐμὲ δὲ τρίτον εἶχεν ἡ πόσις. id. ibid.
[347] καὶ πίνων τὸν πόδα θλίβω τῆς κόρης, πόδα κατεπιθεὶς τὸν ἐμόν· ἡ δὲ σιγῶσα τῇ γλώττῃ, τῷ σχήματι λαλεῖ, καὶ λαλοῦσα σιγᾷ κ.τ.λ. id. iv. 1.
[348] “Und wie er (Euripides) in diesen alten Heroensagen die Liebe stark in den Vordergrund gerückt hatte, so wurde namentlich das alte Märchen von Perseus und Andromeda unter seinen Händen zu einem der glänzendsten Beispiele ritterlicher Liebe, &c.” Rohde, Der griechische Roman, p. 33.
[349] The dirtiness of his clothes, &c., is made a great point of. Cp. Hesych. περισχαδόν· τὸν ὑποκρινόμενον τόν Περσέα ὡς πτωχὸν καὶ φθισίμορφον. This too lends force to Lucian’s ὠχρῶν ἁπάντων καὶ λεπτῶν τῶν ἑβδομαίων ἐκείνων τραγῳδῶν. (De Conscr. Hist. 1, vol. 2, p. 2. Vide Nauck, Trag. Frag. pp. 392-3.)
Cp. Athen. vi. 270 C. Similar passages are very common—in fact, the view may be said to be a universal one; it arises, of course, from that purely sensual manner of regarding love, on which so much has already been said. Indeed, those who have read the early Greek literature with any attention, need perhaps hardly be reminded of how utterly foreign to the Greek of Euripides’ day is the conception of the “galante Ritter” setting out in search of ladies that want rescuing.
At the same time, it may not be amiss to emphasise a fact which, though sufficiently obvious, is yet often ignored. The fact that the Andromeda was looked upon as a romantic play some centuries later, even if it can be proved, is no proof that it was intended as such by its author, or so understood by its original audience. If Hermesianax could infer from the Odyssey that Homer was in love with Penelope, one may excuse the contemporaries of Lucian if they inferred from Euripides that Perseus was in love with Andromeda, but one need not necessarily regard their inference as a true one.
[351] One naturally thinks of Odysseus and Nausicaa, of Menelaus in the Helena (427 seqq.), &c.
[352] Fr. 129. The fact that this line was afterwards quoted ἐρωτικῶς (vide Nauck, ad loc.), is no proof that it had any such meaning in its original context.
[353] Fr. 132. There is no real objection to putting this fragment after his encounter with the monster, as the words τὰ ἐχόμενα (vide Fr. 129 Nauck) do not necessarily mean that it followed immediately after Fr. 129.
[354] i.e. πρὸς Ὄλυμπον, a very natural remark when one considers the manner of Perseus’ first arrival.
[355] Fr. 133. ἀλλ’ ἡδύ τοι σωθέντα μεμνῆσθαι πόνων.
[356] A very interesting parallel to this scene is furnished by the dream of Medea (Apoll. Rhod. iii. 625 seqq.); the resemblance is almost too great to be merely accidental. There too, of course, it need hardly be remarked, the initiative is on the side of the woman.
[357] [The reading λείπεις has considerable MS. authority, and is adopted by the majority of editors; the author is contrasting it with λείποις, the text of Dindorf, Nauck, and some others.]
[358] The MS. gives ουτοςετουταδικων (Bergk). Various readings of this have been given. The present one is mine.
[359] ἀπιὼν rather than ἀπεὼν. Cp. Prop. iii. 25, 7: flebo ego discedens.
[360] Altogether the resemblance between these poems and the Παιδικά of Theocritus is very marked. Even in the interesting passage (1367 seqq.), where the love of a boy is actually contrasted with that of a woman, the great charm of the former is said to lie not in κάλλος, but in χάρις, just as in Theocr. xxx. 4. Whether this resemblance is due to anything more than the similarity of subject is a difficult question, which need not be discussed here.
[361] Similarly, I may add, if anyone cares to regard the epigrams ascribed to Plato as genuine, he will find nothing in them but confirmation of what has already been gathered from works of less questionable authenticity.
[362] With comedy this is, of course, especially the case, for comedy appeals, in the main, to a lower intellectual class than tragedy, and is therefore compelled to be even more conservative.
[364] Is it merely a coincidence that this pioneer of a love-element, of a sort, in comedy, was a native of Colophon?
[365] The view that this erotic element was in no respect romantic, but dealt purely with the sensual side of the matter, is supported by (1) its inherent probability; (2) the absence of any evidence to the contrary, not only in the fragments of this writer, but also in those of Antiphanes and Alexis, who are known to have imitated him; (3) the epithet παμμίαρος applied to Anaxandrides. (Vide Meineke, Com. Fr. i. p. 369.) Though the general sense of Suidas’ words seems plain, their exact meaning is not so clear. Probably ἔρωτας refers to the introduction of ἑταῖραι and their admirers, whose mutual struggles de nocte locanda would then provide the action of the play. The sense of παρθένων φθοράς is even less evident; but the fact that it is mentioned specially, and after the word ἔρωτας, certainly seems to imply that the φθορά formed the climax of the action. In other words, the motive of the plot was the same as in the previous case, with the exception that the woman in question was a παρθένος instead of an ἑταίρα. If this were so, then these stories would, of course, differ toto caelo from those of the New Comedy, where the φθορά is an act of unpremeditated indiscretion which has taken place before the play begins, and is atoned for by the hero’s subsequent behaviour.
[366] Cp. Xenarchus, Pentathl. 1, where the same idea is developed. When one reads such lines as these, one is tempted to agree with Aristophon, that “love had been exiled from heaven.” (Pythag. Fr. 2.)
[367] There is, of course, plenty of grumbling at marriage in the New Comedy, but there the characters who give vent to it are the old men, who belong to the previous generation, and whose relations with their wives had consequently not come under the influence of romance.
[368] [This Excursus was originally written for the first Essay; the New Comedy is discussed in the second Essay. See above p. 163.]
[369] [The author is following Meineke i. 404: the name “Amphis” is a conjectural emendation in the latter passage.]
[370] Cp. supra, p. 227. This feeling is, of course, common enough; cp. Alexis, Manteis, γυναιξὶ δοῦλοι ζῶμεν ἀντ’ ἐλευθέρων, κ.τ.λ.
[371] Plaut. Asin. i. 1, 53 seqq. (patres ut consueverunt, ego mitto omnia haec, l. 64); Bacch. v. 2, 89 seqq. (hi senes, nisi fuissent nihil iam inde a adulescentia, non hodie hoc tantum flagitium facerent canis capitibus, etc.) Of course, if anyone prefers to believe that these apologies are due to the Latin author, no one can very well contradict him.