mbed out long and wavy, dressed with flowers. It follows that
this woman is a rare sight to one's guests; but to her husband she is a
curse, unless he be a tyrant who prides himself on such expensive
luxuries."

The ape-like wife is perhaps the worst of the lot: "This one, above all,
has Zeus given as the greatest evil to men. Her face is most hateful.
Such a woman goes through the city a laughing-stock to all the men.
Short of neck, with narrow hips, withered of limb, she moves about with
difficulty. O wretched man, who weds such a woman! She knows every
cunning art, just like an ape, nor is ridicule a concern to her. To no
one would she do a kindness, but every day she schemes to this end,--how
she may work some one the greatest injury."

But at last we reach the bee: "The man who gets her is lucky; to her
alone belongs no censure; one's household goods thrive and increase
under her management; loving, with a loving spouse, she grows old, the
mother of a fair and famous race. She is preeminent among all women, and
a heavenly grace attends her. She cares not to sit among the women when
they indulge in lascivious chatter. Such wives are the best and wisest
mates Zeus grants to men."

Only one woman in ten has been found in some measure desirable, and the
poet concludes with a lengthy and comprehensive dunciad of the female
sex, the gist of which is as follows: "Zeus made this supreme
evil--woman: even though she seem to be a blessing, when a man has
wedded one she becomes a plague."

How much truth is there in Semonides's views on the women of his time?
The poet agrees with Hesiod in regarding woman as a necessary evil. Nine
women out of ten he finds altogether bad, and the tenth is prized only
for her domestic virtues. Industrious, quiet, economical, the mother of
children, she is merely the good housewife, which seems to have been the
primitive ideal of the perfect woman. The poem treats of women of the
middle class, and is important in showing the freedom of movement, and
appearance in public, of the married woman. She is not shut up in the
harem; but in the use of her tongue, and in her capacity as a busybody,
there seems to be no restraint upon her. Semonides's range of vision was
narrow, and he probably knew not much beyond his own little island, but
we may credit him with expressing the prevalent views of the honest
burghers of Amorgus.

Phocylides of Miletus, a successor of Semonides by rather more than a