Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/124

88 Attica. In the time of Cecrops an olive tree suddenly appeared at one place and water burst forth at another. The oracle explained the portent to mean that the people must choose between Minerva (the olive tree) and Neptune (the spring) as patron of their new city, Athens. Cecrops summoned all the people, male and female, for women then voted, to make their choice. The men voted for Neptune and the women for Minerva, and the latter triumphed by a majority of one; at this Neptune was angry and inundated Attica. The Athenians punished the women by taking from them the right to vote, by abolishing the usage that children took their names from the mother, and by depriving them of the name of Athenian women. This story seems to be a myth embodying a tradition of the mother-family and accounting for the change from it to the father-family, with a decline in the societal position of women. There are two obscure but very interesting Greek myths in which women rebel against marriage. The daughters of Prœtus treated with contempt the temple of Hera, patroness of marriage. Aphrodite punished them with madness, but after wandering about they were cured in the temple of Artemis. Their example led Argive women to forsake their husbands and slay their children; similarly the women on Lemnos despised Aphrodite and slew their husbands. The myths suggest that the marriage institution was such that women revolted against it.

In the seventh and sixth centuries a series of lyric poets (Sappho, Anacreon) developed a strong erotic conception of love which was passionate and, according to later standards, vicious. Such a sentiment the Greeks always understood by "love." They felt a great joy in