Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/122

86 strong and true"; the best example is that of Hector and Andromache. Wives were held to fidelity: Penelope was a heroine; Clytemnestra "led to bitter words against all women." The fidelity of women is a duty on account of the rights which their masters have acquired in them by capture or purchase; if they violate it the paramour must pay a fine. No divorce occurs in Homer. The gods and goddesses present a picture of another community marked throughout by disreputable conduct as compared with the human community. The quarrels of Zeus and Hera give us a picture of conjugal life which is more distasteful than any presented as of men. The pair are vain, frivolous, and jealous, and give cause for jealousy; their love-making is not dignified; they live like a couple in a French novel, who have decided to get on by not demanding too much of each other. It is a mistake to think that the custom of "purchase" degraded women; we find that, in barbarism, purchase is explained as a remuneration to the father for the expense of rearing the girl — she is not "bought" like a slave. Purchase also runs down through all grades of ceremony and survival. Then, too, the woman's father gave her a dowry-like gift, a transaction which shows that the purchase idea no longer characterizes the relation of the parties, but is a survival by the side of a new conception of marriage. From a pecuniary point of view the two gifts were incongruous, but as regards the sentiments which determined their meaning, they could well continue together. The wooing in Homer is simple and natural, open and straightforward, though the language is often naïve and to our usage unrefined. The mores are not clearly defined because of the military and heroic plane on which the poems move.