Chapter II: Part 2

Among the dithyrambic writers, Licymnius tells the story of the treachery of Nanis, but the sort of legends which seem to interest him more are those of Hypnus and Endymion, Hymenaeus and Argynnus, and the like. The same was perhaps true of Cydias. But one interesting figure these writers do supply; that is the Cyclops of Philoxenus. A good deal has been written about this “romantic” conception, and it has been generally considered as a proof of how strongly the romantic feeling must have been already developed that it was possible to represent Polyphemus as in love with Galatea. Those who have considered what has already been said may perhaps be tempted to come to a somewhat different conclusion. The barbarous and boorish Polyphemus spends his time in singing of his love to Galatea, because no one who was not a barbarian and a boor would be such a fool as to waste so much time about a woman. This view spoils the idyllic charm of the picture rather, perhaps, but it may be the true one for all that.[66]

In the foregoing examination of the remains of the lyric writers, it was always necessary to regard, not only the date of each writer, but also the country to which he belonged; for, as we have already had occasion to notice, the social position of women differed widely in different parts of Greece, and this fact could not fail to be, to a certain extent, reflected in such literature as dealt with them.

In examining the work of the tragedians, this necessity will no longer be present. Early Greek tragedy is entirely under the influence of Athens. The only tragedians whose works have been to any considerable extent preserved were Athenians; and such fragments of the non-Athenian dramatists as have survived do not in any way lead one to suppose that their work was in any essential characteristic different from that of their Athenian contemporaries.

At Athens the social position of women was, on the whole, a very low one, and consequently the relations between men and women were not on a particularly high level. The men cared very little either for or about the women, and there is nothing therefore surprising in the generally admitted fact that the love-element as between the sexes plays but a very unimportant part in the early tragedians. Aeschylus seems well-nigh to have ignored it; in Sophocles it played a prominent part in but two, or at most three tragedies;[67] even in Euripides the proportion of plays in which love of any sort supplies the main interest is very small.[68]

But one question may very naturally be asked. Assuming that the way of regarding women at Athens rendered it difficult or impossible to interest an Athenian audience with a love-story, as between man and woman, why should not the tragedians have made more use of the many stories that told of the love of men for men? If, it may be argued, this form of love was really so important an element in the life of the time, if it really occupied that place in the hearts of men as a whole that is now occupied by the love of women, why did Aeschylus and Sophocles only devote a couple of plays between them to its treatment?[69] Sophocles, at any rate, ought to have understood all about it.

The answer is probably to be found in the fact that the passion of love, in any shape or form, is foreign to the true spirit of Greek tragedy. The taste of the Greeks, refined in this as in most other things, considered love as essentially unfitted for the stage. That two people should stand up and make love to one another with a crowd looking on was, to the Greek mind, essentially unfitting. Love was an emotion which concerned individuals; it was an emotion which ought to be controlled in public, and only find expression in private.

The whole history of Greek poetry is so much commentary on this one fact. The love-poems of Sappho or Anacreon, just like the later love-poems of Asclepiades or Poseidippus, were meant to be sung by a single singer to a small and select audience. In the choral poetry, which required a number of performers, and was listened to by a large audience, the personal love-element is well-nigh non-existent. The attempt of Ibycus to introduce it, and his failure to find imitators, we have already noticed.

And in the choral poetry sung in honour of Dionysus, from which tragedy had its rise, it is obvious, when one considers the intimate connection between the rites of Dionysus and Artemis, and the ascetic principle underlying their worship, how especially out of place a love-element would have been.

The fact, therefore, that love as between man and man does not play any very prominent part in the early tragedies, must simply be explained by the Greek dislike to the public display of violent private emotions. It took a long time to overcome this old-fashioned prejudice, and establish the love-element as an integral part of tragedy; and it is not uninstructive to observe how the movement began. The earliest love-story admitted on the Greek stage was the story of Achilles and Patroclus.[70]

But before entering upon the more detailed examination of the relations between the sexes, as illustrated by the Attic tragedians, it is necessary once more to call attention to, and warn against, a very fertile source of confusion.

It is above all things necessary that the reader should carefully distinguish between two very different things, two very different ways of regarding women, which are not uncommonly confused—woman as an object of interest, and woman as an object of love. As objects of interest, we find the female characters of the tragedians steadily developing throughout the fifth century; as objects of love, we do not find them develop at all. The relations between women and men are, in reality, as far from the modern in the last plays of Euripides as in the first of Aeschylus. Towards the close of the century, a very considerable proportion of the tragedies concern themselves with studies of female character in its various phases; the power of women for good and evil (especially the latter) is very generally acknowledged; their passions and their emotions are carefully analysed and elaborately discussed; and yet in all this analysis and discussion the love-element, in any modern sense of the word, plays no part whatever. By this time, woman at Athens held an important place in the mind of man; as yet she held no place in his heart at all. From end to end of the three great tragedians, there can hardly a single passage be quoted which so much as suggests the possibility of an unselfish and unsensual attachment between man and woman, playing at all an important part in the life of either; and this important fact it will be the object of the following pages to make clear.

Aeschylus, as has been said often enough, never brought on the stage a woman “in love.”[71] That he should never have brought on the stage a man in such a condition went of course without saying; even Euripides was never accused of that. Indeed, Aeschylus’ characters do not think much of women at all. That girls should not misbehave, if left to themselves, even their own father finds it hard to believe;[72] that in any sort of difficulty they should be a hindrance rather than a help, is only what one would expect.[73] Women are certainly not worth fighting about;[74] what really acquits Orestes is the fact that, after all, it was only a woman he killed.[75]

An apparent exception to all this is of course Clytemnestra. Why should Aeschylus, having so poor an opinion of women, have given so prominent a place to Clytemnestra in the murder of Agamemnon? The answer is doubtless to be found in the very significant fact that between Homer and Aeschylus the story had been treated by Stesichorus, to whom the prominence of Clytemnestra was beyond all reasonable doubt due.[76]

Aeschylus, then, has little enough to say about women; but in Sophocles there is fortunately somewhat more to be found; indeed, it is probably the female characters of Sophocles that are most generally appreciated by modern readers. And yet, for all the great part played by women in the Sophoclean drama, the part played by women’s love is wonderfully small.

Take a woman like Deianira; the man who can listen to her without feeling a positive shock must be more in sympathy with Athens than I ever wish to be.

She guesses the truth from Lichas about Heracles and Iole (_Trach._ 436), and begs him to tell her all, for she is no coward, nor yet is she the sort of woman who would refuse to admit a husband’s right to an occasional infidelity.

οὐ γὰρ γυναικὶ τοὺς λόγους ἐρεῖς κακῇ,
οὐδ’ ἥτις οὐ κάτοιδε τἀνθρώπων, ὅτι
χαίρειν πέφυκεν οὐχὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεί.

“Love is irresistible,” she says; “if I were to blame my husband or this woman for falling victims to it, I should be a fool. Do not be afraid to tell me all. Has not Heracles often done this sort of thing before without making me jealous? Why should he make me jealous now? And as for the woman, why, I can only pity her, when I see how her beauty has made her lose her home and her home comforts, for which, _expertae crede_, the love of Heracles is hardly a sufficient compensation.”

ᾤκτειρα δὴ μάλιστα προσβλέψασ’ ὅτι
τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς τὸν βίον διώλεσεν.[77]

When this is Sophocles’ ideal wife, one can hardly wonder that Haemon owes the only word of sympathy he gets from his Antigone to the editors.[78]

But even Deianira has her human moments, and in one of these she utters that wonderful lament of hers for the joys of her lost maidenhood, and the sorrows of her married life (_Trach._ 144 _seqq._), a passage which may well be compared with one from the _Tereus_. (_Fr._ 524, Nauck). Both these dwell sympathetically on the slavery of married life, and almost make one think at first sight that the poet must have felt what a mockery his “ideal wife” really was. But a little further examination will show clearly enough that Sophocles is not expressing his own views in either of these two passages. The protest in the _Tereus_ is merely the direct outcome of the decidedly exceptional circumstances in which Procne finds herself—a woman who has just cooked her only son is hardly likely to have unprejudiced views on matrimony—and as such it is not meant to be more than one of those outcries against irresistible destiny, which one may pity if one likes, or even pardon, but which one cannot pretend to treat seriously. For a girl to complain of having to marry was as reasonable as for a man to complain of having to die.

τί ταῦτα δεῖ
στένειν, ἅπερ δεῖ κατὰ φύσιν διεκπερᾶν;

As for the passage from the _Trachiniae_, that seems to be simply an echo from Sappho, and Sappho’s views on marriage were naturally different from those of Sophocles.[79]

To suppose from these passages that Sophocles saw anything inappropriate in the existing conditions of married life, or that he would have welcomed any change in them, is an unjustifiable inference.[80]

But the one play of Sophocles which is generally considered to be of supreme importance for this particular subject is the _Phaedra_. This play, which is supposed to have been the model for the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides, is generally looked upon as the first “love-tragedy” of the Greeks. But was it a “love-tragedy” at all, in any sense in which the words are now understood? To judge by analogy, there is every reason to suppose that it was not.

The fragments unfortunately prove little, for no very important ones are preserved, and the one or two of them that do speak of love, merely speak of it in the regular Sophoclean way, not as a human passion, but as an unavoidable kind of disease, something like measles or distemper.[81]

But in spite of the paucity of the fragments, the main principle on which the legend (of which we have already spoken)[82] was treated, is sufficiently clear; and this principle is such as is, I venture to submit, incompatible with the presence in the play of any real love-element.

Phaedra’s love is not passion but madness, it is not an emotion but a disease. Aphrodite treats her in exactly the same way as Athene treats Ajax. Her love is so entirely outside her control, it is so entirely the result of external influences, that while one can perhaps pity her, one certainly cannot sympathise with her, for the simple reason that her misfortune is entirely outside human experience. She loves Hippolytus, as Oedipus kills Laius, for no earthly reason except that the story said the god made her do so. The Phaedra of Sophocles, like the Clytemnestra of Aeschylus, is made an instrument of divine vengeance for reasons which do not concern her personally in the least; one pities her, not as an unhappy lover, but as the victim of fate. She is no longer a human being influenced by human emotions; she is simply a tool in the hands of a relentless deity. In other words, she is never in love with Hippolytus at all, in any commonly-accepted sense of the term.

And thus it must be sufficiently clear to anyone who is able to get rid of preconceived ideas on the matter, that the _Phaedra_ was in reality no more “romantic” than the _Trachiniae_ or the _Antigone_. Like the rest of the plays of Sophocles, it merely drew the usual picture of the gods playing shove-halfpenny with human souls; the fact that Aphrodite for once took a hand in the game gave it on this occasion a peculiar character of its own, but of anything in any way resembling a modern love-element there is no more trace here than there is anywhere else.[83]

But what really affords a more conclusive proof than any other of how utterly anything of the nature of modern love between man and woman was unknown to Sophocles, is the remarkable prominence given in his plays to the affection between brother and sister.[84] The relations between Electra and Orestes, or Antigone and Polynices, are absolutely those of modern lovers; but Sophocles could not conceive of such relations as existing between people whom he would have called “lovers,” and, therefore, he had to think of the parties to them as brother and sister. He wished to draw a picture of pure, noble, and unselfish devotion existing between man and woman; the only conditions under which such a thing seemed to him possible were that the man and the woman should be close blood relations.

There are those who complain of the indifference of Electra to Pylades, or of Antigone to Haemon, and think that a little love infused into these heroines would make them more human. These people have overlooked the fact that Electra and Antigone are in reality quite as much in love as ever woman was; but they are in love with their brothers. They did not know it perhaps; Sophocles did not know it; but the fact remains. Antigone despises love—what she and her audience thought was love. Between Polynices and Haemon there is never a moment’s hesitation; almost her last words are an exclamation of the bitterest contempt for marriage: “If my husband had died, I could have married another; if he had failed to get me children, I could have committed adultery; but—my brother is dead!”[85]

And yet, Antigone comes far nearer to a modern lover than Phaedra ever does.

This is a fact of the greatest importance in the present connection, and one that cannot be too much emphasised. The relation of the sexes was such among the early Greeks that a pure love between man and woman seemed to them a sheer impossibility, and yet their instinct told them that pure love was not really an impossible thing. The ways in which the difficulty was surmounted were various. Of the love of man for man and of woman for woman we have already spoken; in Sophocles a third alternative is suggested. The lovers are made man and woman, but the possibility of sensuality is first removed by making them brother and sister. A woman who loves a man may love him purely, says Sophocles, if she is in such a position that she cannot love him otherwise.[86]

In the first two of the Athenian dramatists there are then, as we have seen, practically no traces whatever to be found of a love-element in any real sense of the term. But this, it may be said, is nothing wonderful. This everyone will admit. For the love-element one looks to Euripides. In the following examination of Euripides, I hope to show that not only is love, in any modern sense, quite unknown to his characters, but also that the whole “romantic” element of his plays, on which it is the custom to lay such stress, is much less pronounced than is generally supposed; in other words, that his men take really very little interest in his women.

But before discussing what Euripides did not do, it is well to have a clear conception of what he did do; for he did do a great deal. The great service of Euripides to art was that he emphasised unmistakably the importance of women. He seems to have been the first emphatically to enunciate that doctrine of _cherchez la femme_, which has been the groundwork of all modern art. He was not the first man to discover it; the men who made the story of Troy knew it as well as he did; but he was the first, as far as we know, consciously to adopt it as an artistic canon. He was the first deliberately to maintain that the highest artistic effects were to be obtained by the contrast of the sexes. The women of the earlier tragedians, as far as they are of any interest, are merely women, as it were by accident; they are men in everything but their dress. The women of Euripides, however unpleasant they may be, are always intensely feminine. The emphasis which Euripides laid on the feminine as opposed to the masculine element is at once his chief characteristic and his chief merit.

The ways in which he emphasises the importance of women are various. Everyone knows the stress he lays on their power of doing harm; the “misogyny” of Euripides need hardly be illustrated here.[87] At the same time, he is fully aware of their power for good.[88] He dwells on their cleverness repeatedly: “If supremacy were a matter of brains, and not of brute force, men would not have a chance.”[89] He is convinced of their heroism: Iphigeneia goes to her death with far more dignity than Antigone. He is even convinced, in a way that not all his successors have been, of their reasonableness: there are few men who could discuss their own deaths as calmly and clearly as Phaedra[90] or Polyxena.[91] It would be easy to multiply instances if there were any need to do so.

All this Euripides did. He made his women powerful, intelligent, heroic, reasonable. He did not make them loved or loveable. In this Euripides is well-nigh as old-fashioned as any of his predecessors. In all the extant plays there is not a single instance of a man in love with a woman; there is no evidence, except perhaps in one isolated case,[92] of such a character in any of the plays that have been lost. So far from Euripides being the poet of love between man and woman, there are numerous situations in his plays where it seems simply extraordinary to the modern reader how such obvious opportunities for the introduction of such love can have been missed or ignored.[93]

A detailed examination of some of the plays will bring this out clearly; but before proceeding to this, it would be well to observe certain of the more general features of the Euripidean conception of the relations, other than social and intellectual, existing between men and women.

The first point to be noticed is that Euripides, too, just like Sophocles, speaks of love as a sort of irresistible madness or disease,[94] which seizes on its victims without any particular reason, and can only be cured or borne by being allowed to have free course. It is, as I have said before, exactly like measles; the only proper treatment is to help it as much as you can to “come out,” as then it is less painful at the time, and less likely to have serious consequences. Instances of this view are sufficiently numerous. It forms the chief framework of the _Hippolytus_, and all attempts to interpret the emotions of that play in accordance with more modern notions, are without success. The same was still more the case in the _Phoenix_, as Suidas distinctly implies by his use of the words τῷ υἱῷ ἐπέμηνε τὴν παλλακήν in this connection.[95] It is enunciated by Jason to Medea in the _Medea_ (526 _seqq._) as a proof that he owes nothing to her, as she was not responsible for her actions in saving him; by Helen to Menelaus in the _Troades_ (945 _seqq._) as a perfect excuse for her conduct with Paris.

Now it is just here, one may as well notice at once, that the difference between Euripides and modern writers, with the Alexandrians at their head, is so striking. The lovers in Euripides, as far as they are lovers at all, are carried along by a forcible external impulse, the direction of which is entirely sensual and entirely selfish. If, or as soon as, they fail in achieving the gratification of their sensual desires, their “love” immediately turns to hate. The idea of devotion or self-sacrifice for the good of the loved person, as distinct from one’s own, is absolutely unknown. “Love is irresistible,” they say, and, in obedience to its commands, they sit down to reckon how they can satisfy themselves, at no matter what cost to the objects of their passion.

Love is irresistible still, one knows, as irresistible now as ever it was in Greece, but the impulse it gives has a different direction. To put it perfectly crudely, the Euripidean woman who “falls in love” (it is of women we are speaking now) thinks first of all, “How can I seduce the man I love?” The modern woman thinks, “How can I die for him?” This is the difference between ancient and modern love, and in Euripides the old is still untouched by the new.[96]

It is this sensual, this well-nigh mechanical view of love which makes possible that conception of the ideal wife, of which we have already spoken in the case of Sophocles’ Deianira, and which is so strongly insisted upon in the Andromache of Euripides.

Andromache regularly appears as the model wife, not only in the play which bears her name, but also in the _Troades_. Her views on married life have, therefore, a peculiar weight of their own.

οὐ τὸ κάλλος, ὦ γύναι,
ἀλλ’ ἁρεταὶ τέρπουσι τοὺς ξυνευνέτας,

she explains to the youthful Hermione.[97] “Now the greatest of these virtues is, to be content with your husband and not to be jealous. You are jealous of me. What would you do, supposing you were married to a Thracian king with twenty wives instead of only two? You would murder them all, I suppose, in your jealousy, _showing thereby how utterly unbridled was your lust_. I was never jealous; _I used to act as foster-mother to Hector’s illegitimate children_.

καὶ ταῦτα δρῶσα τἀρετῇ προσηγόμην
πόσιν.

“But you, you are afraid to let a drop of rain fall on your husband’s head.

μὴ τὴν τεκοῦσαν τῇ φιλανδρίᾳ, γύναι,
ζήτει παρελθεῖν.”

φιλανδρία![98]

This is not irony; it is just sober earnest, the sober earnest morality of respectable Athens. The view is by no means confined to Andromache. It is deliberately propounded by Electra to her mother,[99] and Jason twice taunts Medea with her failure to live up to its level.[100] Indeed, it may be said to colour, to a certain extent, the whole conception of married life. For a woman to wish to keep her husband to herself was a sign that she was at once unreasonable and lascivious.

This doctrine of the absolute subjection of the wife[101] is emphasised in various ways. That a really respectable wife not only always stays at home, but also never sees visitors, is more or less of an axiom.[102] To give a woman her head is dangerous in the last degree, and if you do, you will probably get murdered for your pains.[103] Suicide for a husband’s sake is only respectable on the part of a woman,[104] for her husband is her life.[105]

But where is one to find such a model wife? for marriage is such a lottery that one ought really to be allowed, if one can afford it, to have several tickets, in case the first doesn’t turn out well.[106] The only chance is to marry a woman of good family; in other words, the only thing worth marrying for is rank.[107] To prefer to marry for love is not only foolish, but unfair on one’s children.[108]

It is this view of married life, this devotion to an ideal of drudgery on the part of the woman, and the calm acceptance of such devotion as a matter of course on the part of the man, which explains such a play as the _Alcestis_.[109] The woman is devoted to the man, not because he is himself, but because he is her husband. For the man she does not care in the least, but for the husband—for the ideal of the family—she is perfectly ready to die. It is this which at once makes the story of Alcestis possible, and robs it of half its pathos. Had Alcestis loved Admetus as a man, she could not but have felt the bitterest disappointment at his accepting her offer. As it is, she seems to regard his conduct almost as much as a matter of course as he does.[110]

The brief examination of one further point in the Euripidean view of women may serve as introduction to the more detailed discussion of the romantic element in his plays, or, rather, of its absence. Euripides speaks frequently as if there were a sort of freemasonry existing among women, which makes one woman always ready to side with another as against a man. Instances of this are common, especially in the relations between the heroine and the Chorus, when the latter, as mostly in Euripides, consists of women.

Thus Medea, when asking the Chorus not to reveal her plans, says—

λέξῃς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν ἐμοὶ δεδογμένων,
εἴπερ φρονεῖς εὖ δεσπόταις γυνή τ’ ἔφυς. (_Med._ 822.)

Similar in spirit is a line from the _Alope_ (_Fr._ 108):

γυνὴ γυναικὶ σύμμαχος πέφυκέ πως,

or l. 329 of the _Helen_:

γυναῖκα γὰρ δὴ συμπονεῖν γυναικὶ χρή.

In this same play, too, Menelaus decides that _his wife_ is the proper person to go and ask help of Theonoe:

σὸν ἔργον, ὡς γυναικὶ πρόσφορον γυνή. (_Hel._ 830.)

A “romantic” writer might have thought that the prayers of Menelaus himself would have been more effectual with a lady.[111]

The most important of the extant plays of Euripides is, for the student of the development of the romantic tendency, undoubtedly the _Hippolytus_. But, in thinking of this play, the reader must first of all guard against a very common and, for a modern, very natural mistake. He must remember that the interest of the piece is intended to centre, not on Phaedra, but on Hippolytus. The main interest of the plot is the struggle between asceticism and self-gratification, as personified in the maiden Artemis and the sensual Aphrodite.[112] Phaedra is only made to fall in love with Hippolytus in order that he may reject her advances, and thereby irritate her into working his ruin. As has already been pointed out, she is dragged into a quarrel which does not concern her, for a purpose which does not interest her personally in the least.[113]

Bearing this in mind, the reader will be able to understand that combination of passionate desire and cold-blooded reasoning which marks the utterances of Phaedra. She has come to the conclusion, she says at last (l. 391 _seqq._), that love is an irresistible disease; and since her position as a married woman makes impossible the only means of cure with which she is acquainted, she decides that, _for the sake of her husband and children_, she had better die. She will never dishonour her children, for, next to money, there is nothing so valuable as a good name.

To this the Nurse replies (l. 433 _seqq._) that of course love is irresistible, and there is only one way to cure it; but she points out that this way may perfectly well be adopted. The fact that Phaedra is married need not be any obstacle, for husbands are used to seeing more than they say.

“ἀλλ’, ὦ φίλη παῖ, λῆγε μὲν κακῶν φρενῶν,
λῆξον δ’ _ὑβρίζουσ’_: οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο πλὴν ὕβρις
τάδ’ ἐστὶ, κρείσσω δαιμόνων εἶναι θέλειν,
τόλμα δ’ ἐρῶσα· θεὸς ἐβονλήθη τάδε.”

“Leave the matter to me, and if women can’t effect a cure, perhaps men can.”

Phaedra protests. The Nurse answers with a little very natural impatience (l. 490)

“τί σεμνομυθεῖς; οὐ λόγων εὐσχημόνων
δεῖ σ’, ἀλλὰ τἀνδρός.”

Phaedra admits this, but insists that it would be more respectable to die. The Nurse, however, persuades her to try a love-potion first, and with this excuse leaves her to look for Hippolytus. Hippolytus, as one knows, rejects the Nurse’s proposals, and Phaedra takes refuge in suicide, making, as she dies, one last desperate attempt to save her own good name at the expense of the man she is supposed to love (l. 715).

This, then, is the story of Phaedra. Where in all this is there a trace of what we now call love? Where is there a single expression of affection for Hippolytus, a single expression to show that she thinks of him otherwise than of one who has done her a great and irretrievable injury? She seems to think of him as one would think of a man from whom one had caught the cholera. “Love is all bitterness,” she says (l. 349); “and he is the cause.” The catastrophe comes, and she walks off quietly to murder him,

“ὥστ’ εὐκλεᾶ μὲν παισὶ προσθεῖναι βίον,
αὐτή τ’ ὄνασθαι πρὸς τὰ νῦν πεπτωκότα.”

If this is love, the world must be a poorer place than I gave it credit for.

Then follows the great argument between Hippolytus and his father, which to the Athenians was doubtless the chief point of the play. On the speech of Theseus we need not dwell, though it is perhaps just worth noticing the way in which he enunciates, as a sort of great discovery which his own experience and observation have enabled him to make, the theory that it is possible for the initiative in a criminal liaison to come from the side of the man (l. 966 _seqq._).

The answer of Hippolytus, however, is well worth study. For the first 24 of his 52 lines he describes in general terms his own blameless character, and it is only at the 25th that he condescends to discuss the particular incident. “But you do not perhaps believe all this about my chastity,” he says (l. 1007); “but do tell me, then, what was the temptation in this particular instance? Was this woman’s body so especially beautiful? (1½ lines.) Or did I wish by my conduct to become your heir? (2½ lines.) Or to become king? (3 lines.) Surely you know my only interest is in athletics.” (5 lines.) Then, having finished the arguments which he is able to bring forward, he proceeds to swear, and so concludes. In other words, in a speech of 52 lines, the suggestion that he might have been in love with Phaedra, even in the most rudimentary sense of the words, is contemptuously dismissed in a line and a half, and no one seems to think that this part of the subject ought to have been treated at greater length. Now this one fact seems to me in itself almost a sufficient proof that “romantic” ideas, even as they were understood at the end of the fourth century, were utterly foreign to Euripides.[114]

To come to another play. There are probably few things in all literature so strange, not to say comic, to modern ideas, as the relations between Achilles and Iphigeneia in the _Iphigeneia in Aulis_.

Clytemnestra has been trapped into bringing her daughter to Aulis, on promise of marriage with Achilles, and when, in the scene which begins at l. 801, she discovers the truth, she appeals to him for protection. Achilles, “the nearest approach to a modern gentleman of all the Greek tragic characters,”[115] replies as follows (l. 919 _seqq._):

“I am a person of the highest breeding, and therefore you may trust me to give you the correct answer under the circumstances. Your daughter, having been betrothed to me, shall not be killed; it would reflect discredit on me if she were, and that I cannot permit. No one shall so much as touch the hem of her garment. _It is not, of course, for her sake that I undertake to do this_, but because I consider that Agamemnon has treated me shamefully. He used my name to trap you into coming here without asking my consent; _of course I should have allowed him to use it if he had asked me_, for I always put patriotism before everything; but he did not ask me. I feel grossly insulted, and he will touch Iphigeneia at his peril.”

“Your sentiments, Achilles,” remarks the Chorus, “are worthy alike of you and of your divine descent.”

“How can I thank you enough,” replies Clytemnestra, “for all the trouble you have promised to take in this matter, which cannot interest you personally in the least?”

There is a moment’s pause; then she suggests timidly, “But would you like the girl to come to you herself?”

“God forbid!” exclaims Achilles with horror. “How can you suggest anything so improper?” Then after a little he adds, “You must first of all go and argue the case with Agamemnon.”

“Why that?” asks Clytemnestra. “There is no chance there.”

“Perhaps not,” he answers, “but still I wish you to try; _for I should very much prefer, if possible, that my name should be kept out of the business altogether_.”

“What you say does you credit,” she answers. “I will do my best to obey you.”

For the modern reader who studies this scene, and then leans back and thinks a little what he would have done or thought in Achilles’ place, comment is, I imagine, superfluous.[116]

Or look at Andromache’s speech in the _Andromache_. (l. 184 _seqq._) She is accused of occupying too high a place in the favour of Neoptolemus. “Tell me,” she answers to Hermione, “what reason could I possibly have for wishing to stand well with your husband? Do I wish to reign in your place, or to have more children, or to make my children kings? Or what reason could he possibly have for preferring me? Is my native city so powerful? Have I such influential friends?” &c. &c. As in the _Hippolytus_, the idea that there may be love on either side is dismissed without discussion.

Or look at the character of the Autourgos in the _Electra_. He has married Electra, but refuses to touch her, and why?

αἰσχύνομαι γὰρ ὀλβίων ἀνδρῶν τέκνα
λαβὼν ὑβρίζειν, οὐ κατάξιος γεγώς. (l. 45.)

He is distressed that the daughter of such wealthy parents should have made so poor a match. It is pity for the house of Agamemnon that affects him, not pity for Electra.[117]

Hecuba again, in the play that bears her name, does not think that it is much use to appeal to the “romantic” feelings of Agamemnon.

καὶ μὴν ἴσως μὲν τοῦ λόγου κενὸν τόδε,
Κύπριν προβάλλείν κ.τ.λ. (l. 824.)

In the _Phoenissae_ there is not much love lost between Antigone and Haemon (cp. l. 1672 _seqq._). In the _Orestes_ the only incident which causes Pylades to take the slightest interest in Electra is her suggestion that they should murder Hermione. (l. 1191 _seqq._) In the _Helena_ the first exclamation of Menelaus, when his wife assures him that she has really been faithful to him all the time, is, “How can you prove it?”[118] In the _Medea_ again the absence of the love-element is a distinct loss. No one can doubt that the character of Medea would have gained at once in probability and in pathos, if she had been allowed to recur, if only for a moment, to the memory of her early love for Jason.

If more plays had been preserved, it would, doubtless, have been easy still further to multiply instances; but what has been said already is perhaps enough to show that the romantic element in Euripides is really most conspicuous by its absence. And this cannot be a surprise to anyone who cares to go to the root of the matter. That relation between men and women which we call the “romantic” is founded upon sentiments and ideas which are entirely distinct from the sexual emotions. Euripides, as we have had occasion to notice again and again, though he had carefully studied the sexual instinct in all its workings, had never been able to conceive of a relation between man and woman which had not this for its basis.[119] Without pure—I had almost said Platonic—love for its fundamental principle, romance is an impossibility. The romantic Alexandrian writers may not have themselves loved purely, but they knew what pure love was, and such love was their ideal. With Euripides it was not so, and this one fact is enough to show that he belongs to the old literature and not to the new. That Euripides, by the emphasis which he laid on the female character, contributed largely towards preparing men’s minds for the growth of romance and what we now call love, cannot be denied; but that he himself had more than the very faintest glimmerings of what such love really was, cannot be maintained by anyone who has ever read his works.

* * * * *

And here we may close this first part of our enquiry. The foregoing examination of the Greek writers, though it has made no mention of various well-known names, has yet been for our present purpose a practically complete one. Pindar was prevented by the nature of his works from dealing to any large extent with the position of women or their relations with men;[120] and even where he has an opportunity of so doing (as, _e.g._, _Fr._ 122), the result is very disappointing, especially in view of his Boeotian origin. The fragments of the early tragedians, other than the three discussed, are strangely deficient in references to women. Nor need the old Attic Comedy detain us. The general spirit of this thoroughly Athenian product is sufficiently summed up in what profess to be the earliest words of it extant, the fragment of Susario,

ἀκούετε λεῴ· Σουσαρίων λέγει τάδε,
υἱὸς Φιλίνον Μεγαρόθεν Τριποδίσκιος·
κακὸν γυναίκες,

while it may be doubted whether in the whole course of this literature a female character was ever introduced on the stage, except with the view of leading up to some form of indecency.[121]

The net results of this examination, though chiefly negative, are yet fairly clear. It has, I hope, been shown that—

(1) That relation between men and women which is now called “love” was, as far as can be gathered from literature, non-existent among the Greeks down to the end of the fifth century.

(2) The position occupied by women in the consideration of men was so unimportant, that even the sensual relation of the sexes was but little treated of in literature till a comparatively late period, and was always, down to the end of the fifth century, looked upon by a considerable section of society as unfitted for public discussion and representation. In other words, love-poetry in the modern sense is non-existent in classical Greek literature; while love-poetry in any sense, addressed to women, is a far more insignificant element in that literature than is commonly supposed.

That what has just been said does not hold good of the “Alexandrian” poets is so obvious that it hardly needs to be stated. Equally true, however, and not equally obvious, is the fact that, from the very first, these writers talk of women and women’s love in an entirely different tone to that adopted by those of whom we have hitherto been speaking. The line of cleavage between, say, Asclepiades and Euripides, is in reality quite as marked as that between Euripides and Apollonius. On this subject, therefore, it is perhaps worth while to say a few words, though the terribly mutilated condition in which the works of the earlier Alexandrians especially have come down to us, makes it very difficult to point to striking examples of what has been said.

The first representatives of the “Alexandrian” school of poets—that is, of the school of women-lovers—are Asclepiades and Philetas;[122] and in both cases the mere nature of their works (quite apart from their tone) is sufficiently striking when compared with the literature that had gone before.

Whether Philetas actually gave the title of Battis to a collection of his poems is difficult to say—it is, perhaps, on the whole, not improbable that he did—but in any case there can be no doubt that a considerable number of his elegies were either actually addressed to Battis, or else treated of her. The erudite and elaborate style of these poems is equally indisputable. Now, whatever may have been the actual tone of address in these elegies—the fragments unfortunately tell us nothing, and such other evidence as there is on the subject is of the scantiest description[123]—the two facts above-mentioned form of themselves a combination quite without parallel in the Greek literature of which we have hitherto been speaking. That anyone should have taken the trouble to devote erudition and elaboration to the praise of a woman, would have been an unheard-of thing in early Greece.

Asclepiades is an equally striking figure in the early Alexandrian literature; for it was he who was the first to introduce woman-love into the epigram—the first, in fact, to give it that social recognition which we have seen already accorded to boy-love, well-nigh two centuries before.[124]

But what renders Asclepiades particularly important for us just now—far more so than Philetas—is the fact that some forty of his epigrams have been preserved, and that it will therefore be possible, by examining these, to study at close quarters the points in which the tone of this new love-poetry differs from that of the old.

In the epigrams of Asclepiades we find, for the first time, love for a woman spoken of as a matter of life and death:—

οἴχομ’, ἔρωτες, ὄλωλα, διοίχομαι· είς γὰρ ἑταίραν
νυστάζων ἐπέβην, ἠδ’ ἔθιγόν τ’ Ἀΐδα.[125]

_Anth. Pal._ v. 162, 3-4.

Here, for the first time, such love appears as an end in life—as an object for which a man may well brave death:—

νῖφε, χαλαζοβόλει, ποίει σκότος, αἶθε, κεραύνου,
πάντα τὰ πορφύροντ’ ἐν χθονὶ σεῖε νέφη.
ἢν γάρ με κτείνῃς, τότε παύσομαι· ἢν δὲ μ’ ἀφῇς ζῆν,
καὶ διαθεὶς τούτων χείρονα, κωμάσομαι.

_Anth. Pal._ v. 64, 1-4.

Similar in spirit to this is the epigram in _Anth. Pal._ xii. 166:—

τοῦθ’ ὅ τι μοι λοιπὸν ψυχῆς, ὅ τι δή ποτ’, Ἔρωτες,
τοῦτό γ’ ἔχειν, πρὸς θεῶν, ἡσυχίην ἄφετε.
εἰ μή, ναὶ τόξοις μὴ βάλλετέ μ’, ἀλλὰ κεραυνοῖς·
ναὶ πάντως τέφρην θέσθε με κἀνθρακίην.
ναί, ναί, βάλλετ’ Ἔρωτες· ἐνεσκληκὼς γὰρ ἀνίαις,
ὀξύτερον τούτων εἴ γ’ ἔτι, βούλομ’ ἔχειν.

or another—perhaps the most beautiful of all his poems that we know—so like, and yet so utterly unlike, the elegies of Mimnermus:—

πῖν’, Ἀσκληπιάδη· τί τὰ δάκρυα ταῦτα; τί πάσχεις;
οὐ σὲ μόνον χαλεπὴ Κύπρις ἐληΐσατο,
οὐδ’ ἐπὶ σοὶ μούνῳ κατεθήξατο τόξα καὶ ἰοὺς
πικρὸς Ἔρως· τί ζῶν ἐν σποδιῇ τίθεσαι;
πίνωμεν Βάκχου ζωρὸν πόμα· δάκτυλος ἀώς·
ἢ πάλι κοιμιστὰν λύχνον ἰδεῖν μένομεν;
πίνωμεν γαλερῶς· μετά τοι χρόνον οὐκέτι πουλὺν,
σχέτλιε, τὴν μακρὰν νύκτ’ ἀναπαυσόμεθα.

_Anth. Pal._ xii. 50.[126]

The love of Mimnermus was hardly of a kind to bring tears to the eyes!

Yet, though this love has reached to such a passionate height, it does not forget to be gallant and courteous;[127] and there is a striking absence of that jealousy and that savage spirit of revenge which may almost be said to be the one motive of the “lovers” in Euripides. A remarkable instance of this most un-Greek willingness to forgive, is the epigram in _Anth. Pal._ v. 150:—

ὡμολόγησ’ ἥξειν εἰς νύκτα μοι ἡ ’πιβόητος
Νικώ, καὶ σεμνὴν ὤμοσε Θεσμοφόρον·
κοὐχ ἥκει, φυλακὴ δὲ παροίχεται· ἆρ’ ἐπιορκεῖν
ἤθελε; τὸν λύχνον, παῖδες, ἀποσβέσατε.

while the sudden bathos of _Anth. Pal._ v. 7, is quite in the same spirit. Even where a more real punishment is suggested, its execution is put off into a very vague and distant future:—

ταὐτὰ παθοῦσα
σοὶ μέμψαιτ’ ἐπ’ ἐμοῖς στᾶσά ποτε προθύροις.[128]

_Anth. Pal._ v. 164, 3-4.

Striking, too, is the note of resignation that marks poems like _Anth. Pal._ v. 189, xii. 153.[129] Still more striking, to those who remember the brutality of Epicrates’ attack upon Lais,[130] is the tone in which the aged courtesan is spoken of in _Anth. Pal._ vii. 217. The two little pictures of happy lovers, so suggestive of the Acme and Septimius of Catullus, in _Anth. Pal._ v. 153, xii. 105, are also very far indeed away from anything of the kind that had ever gone before.[131]

We are thus confronted by a very remarkable fact. That way of regarding women which we may call the romantic feeling—a feeling which we have noticed to be conspicuous by its absence in Euripides—appears suddenly developed to a high degree, in what is practically the first poetry extant after him. The full meaning of this fact we shall come to consider later; but before it is possible to do this, it will be necessary to institute some further preliminary enquiries.

* * * * *

Attention has already been sufficiently drawn to the almost entire absence from the early Greek literature of love-poetry of any kind addressed to women; at the same time, it has been briefly pointed out more than once that love-poetry addressed to boys or men is a very common phenomenon in this literature. This mere fact in itself would be one requiring some investigation, in an examination of this kind; but when the nature of this love-poetry comes to be considered, it will be seen how particularly important, in the present connection, is this phase of the Greek mind. For it is a fact which becomes immediately apparent, and grows more and more evident, the more the matter is looked into, that while such little love-poetry as does exist, addressed by men to women, is entirely concerned with the purely sensual aspect of the matter, in the very considerable volume of poetry addressed by men to men, this aspect is well-nigh entirely ignored. But obvious though this fact must be to everyone who reads the early Greek poetry with open eyes, the influence of our present methods of thought and training has been so strong, that not only has its importance been strangely ignored by modern writers, but even the fact itself has been questioned or denied. Under these circumstances, it will not be superfluous to go into the matter at some length, for reasons which will appear more clearly when the truth has been established.[132]

The story of the _Iliad_ is a story without a heroine, a feature which makes it well-nigh unique among national legends. This fact has struck various people, and has been accounted for in various ways, the favourite explanation, perhaps, being that the Greek imagination was severer and more self-controlled, more statuesque, one may almost say, than that of other primitive peoples, and was therefore content with a hero whose sole inspiration lay in love of glory and love of battle, apart from any gentler emotion whatever.[133] This estimate of the Greek imagination is no doubt a just one, but there is none the less a strong objection to seeking in it an explanation of the peculiarities of the _Iliad_. To regard the Achilles of Homer as a person animated solely by ambition and military enthusiasm, is, in face of the facts of the case, impossible. As is well known, Achilles sulks because deprived of Briseis, and is only roused again by the death of Patroclus; that is to say, his two main actions are influenced entirely by motives outside of those which are looked upon as his chief characteristics.[134] In other words, Achilles is not a military hero at all; the interest one feels in him is due almost entirely to the emotional side of his character. But while this much is clear, the question still remains: Why has this emotional hero no corresponding heroine? for, of course, one cannot regard Briseis as such.

The answer to this is one that will not please a certain class of modern minds, but that is no proof that it is not true. There is a heroine in the _Iliad_, and that heroine is Patroclus. The Achilleis is a story of which the main motive is the love of Achilles for Patroclus.[135] This solution is astoundingly simple, and yet it took me so long to bring myself to accept it, that I am quite ready to forgive anyone who feels a similar hesitation. But those who do accept it, cannot fail to observe, on further consideration, how thoroughly suitable a motive of this kind would be in a national Greek epic. For this is the motive running through the whole of Greek life, till that life was transmuted by the influence of Macedonia. The lover-warriors Achilles and Patroclus are the direct spiritual ancestors of the Sacred Band of Thebans, who died to a man on the field of Chaeronea.

Those who have made any study of the social life of early Greece, will hardly need to be reminded how important a part this relationship between older and younger men played there. In some states, such as Megara, it was specially patronised by the government. Among the Cretans, and to a certain extent also among the Lacedaemonians,[136] it formed the basis of the military organisation.[137] At Thespiae, the festival of the Erotidia was consecrated to this form of love.[138] At Elis there was a periodical beauty-competition among the youths, the prizes consisting of arms and armour.[139] A somewhat similar contest took place every spring at the tomb of the hero Diocles at Megara.[140] Nor was this all. In many states this relationship came to be looked upon as well-nigh an emblem of constitutional liberty;[141] so much so, that the tyrants used to regard it as a standing menace to themselves, and actually took steps to suppress it.[142] Thus Polycrates destroyed the gymnasium[143] at Samos ὥσπερ ἀντιτείχισμα τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἀκροπόλει, and others are said to have behaved in a similar way.[144]

But while the social importance of this relationship cannot be questioned, its character is equally unmistakable. In principle, and also in practice, it was pure. Its first and most striking feature, a feature specially emphasised by almost every ancient writer who alludes at all to the subject, is its perfect purity. The very idea of sensuality in connection with it is almost invariably vigorously repudiated,[145] and the author of the “Erotic Oration” of Demosthenes is but expressing the universal convictions of his predecessors when he says, δίκαιος ἐραστὴς οὔτ’ ἂν ποιήσειεν οὐδὲν αἰσχρὸν οὔτ’ ἀξιώσειεν.[146]

How entirely this was the case will be still more apparent when we come to examine the writers who dealt with the subject. Here it may suffice to remark that, apart from that main sewer, the Old Attic Comedy, there are, in all the Greek poetry extant down to the end of the fifth century, but a couple, or at most three, passages in which sensuality is so much as suggested in this connection.[147]