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142 the women hold solemn debate upon the crimes of the poet. He has vilely slandered the sex, and made them objects of ridicule and suspicion. One of their number puts in a claim of special damages against him; she had maintained herself and "five small children" by making wreaths for the temples, until this Euripides began to teach people that "there were no gods," and so ruined her trade. The disguised Mnesilochus rises to defend his relative. But the apology which the author puts into his mouth is conceived in the bitterest spirit of satire. He shows that the tragedian, far from having slandered the ladies, has really dealt with them most leniently. True, he has said some severe things of them, but nothing to what he might have said. And he proceeds to relate some very scurrilous anecdotes, to show that the sex is really much worse than the poet has represented it. He is repeatedly interrupted, in spite of his protests in behalf of that freedom of speech which is the admitted right of every Athenian woman. How was it, asks one of the audience, that Euripides never once took the good Penelope as the subject of a tragedy, when he was always so ready to paint characters like Helen and Phædra? Mnesilochus answers that it was because there are no wives like Penelope nowadays, but plenty of wives like Phædra.

His audience are naturally astonished and indignant at this unexpected attack from one of their own number. Who is this audacious woman, this traitress to her sex? No one knows her, of course: and it is whispered that there is a man among them in disguise.