two wives. All men who care to live honorable lives are content to devote themselves to one lawful love." Andromache says that for Hector she would have borne a rival, if Hera had charmed him with another woman, and that she often nursed his illegitimate children to spare him annoyance. The chorus affirms that a husband should be content with one wife and not give her rights to another. In the Electra Clytemnæstra says that she killed her husband because he brought home a captive concubine. Women are fools, but if a man humiliates his wife, let her retaliate; she is then blamed and not he. Electra answers that if a woman has sense, she will always submit to her husband; it is not befitting for her to insist on rights. In the Trojan Women Hekuba tells how she behaved in wedlock in order to describe an ideal wife. She stayed at home and did not gossip. Going abroad gives a bad reputation. She was modest and silent before her husband, and knew when to rule him and when to yield to him.
Athenæus quotes a great many writers, of whom we otherwise know nothing, in regard to love, marriage, and women. They are nearly all contemptuous, sarcastic, or hostile, except where they speak of women as a means of pleasure. In no case is conjugal affection described; there is no evidence of knowledge or appreciation of it.
Aristophanes devoted three comedies to the woman question. In the Lysistrata the women determine to bring peace, and at the end Lysistrata, having brought together representatives of Athens and Sparta, reconciles them by arguments which any modern historian would say covered the common sense of the situation and do credit to the statesmanship of Aristophanes. If it was conceivable that women could see and urge such a solution of the case, great honor was done them, and it was
