ss and conjugal
comradeship so attractive in heroic times. The martial elegists show
how woman could still inspire man to deeds of valor, but the erotic
poets give us glimpses of the root of the evil that was undermining the
very foundations of domestic life. The Greek woman did not develop under
enlarged conditions with the same rapidity as the Greek man; the wife
was expected to be merely the mother of her husband's children and the
keeper of his house; for companionship and pleasure he looked elsewhere.
The free woman, or the hetaera, has entered upon the stage. Poets were
inspired by love, but romantic love between husband and wife is being
replaced by the love of the beautiful and highly educated "companion,"
or the natural place of the highborn woman is being invaded by the baser
passion for "those fair and stately youths, with their virgin looks and
maiden modesty "--two classes that were to play so large a role in
society in the greatest days of Greece, and who were to bring about its
downfall.

In the fragments of Alcman are many allusions to his passion for his
sweetheart Megalostrata; and many of the elegies of Mimnermus are said
to have been addressed to a flute player, Nanno, who, according to one
account, did not return his passion. The following, translated by
Symonds, shows the intensity of his love:

"What's life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
When to the gold-haired goddess cold am I,
When love and love's soft gifts no more delight me,
Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die!
Ah! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth;
On man and maids they beautifully smile:
But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth,
Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile.
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
Scarce serve the very sunshine to behold--
Unloved of youths, of every maid the scorn--
So hard a lot gods lay upon the old."

Even from Solon the Sage, maker of constitutions, we possess some
amorous verses, of so questionable a character that it would hardly be
fitting to present them in this volume. They are ascribed to his early
youth. They afforded much comfort to the libertines of antiquity, who
were glad to be able to cite so respectable an exemplar; but the good
people were scandalized by these couplets.

Ibycus resembles Sappho in the intensity of his passion and in his
conception of Eros as a concrete exist