Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/127

Rh tion sought in conversation, sexual passion gratified in dissipation with courtesans. This ran through the society according to wealth. In an oration against Neæra it is said: "We have courtesans for pleasure, concubines for daily companions, wives for mothers of legitimate children and for housekeepers." This expressed exactly the mores of that time. In discussing the reasons for the headlong descent of the Greeks in the third and second centuries, it is to be remembered that they were breeding out their nationality by begetting children with foreigners and slaves, and by family and social mores which selected against the women of full blood.

The Greeks thought that a wise man would never confide entirely in his wife; therefore he never had complete community of interest with her. The reason was the same which would keep him from community of interest with children. He looked to women for the joy of life in all its higher and lower forms.

In the tragedies of the fifth century general statements about women often occur. They are almost always disparaging. In Æschylus's Suppliants the king says: "A woman's fears are ever uncontrolled," and the female chorus answers: "A woman by herself is nothing worth." In the Agamemnon Ægisthus says: "Guile is the woman's function." Women have no judgment, but are persuaded before the facts are known. In the Seven against Thebes Eteocles declares women to be a nuisance in trouble and prosperity. They are arrogant when they have power, while in war-time they get frightened and flutter about doing no good, but helping the enemy. Let them be kept out of affairs. "Oh, Zeus, what a tribe thou gavest us in women!" In the Ajax Tecmessa, a captive, says to her lord: "Since the hour that made me thine I live