in which there is no conception of the tremendous importance to a lover of having this or that particular girl and no other, or what I have called individual preference.  Benecke puts this graphically when he remarks (25) regarding Mimnermus:  “‘What is life without love?’ he says; he does not say, ‘What is life without your love?’” Even in Sappho, I may add here, in spite of the seeming violence of her passion, this quality of individual preference is really lacking or weak, for she is constantly transferring her attention from one girl to another.  And as Sappho’s poems are addressed to girls, so are Anacreon’s and those of the other poets named, to boys, in most cases.  The following, preserved by Athenaeus (XIII., 564D), is a good specimen: 

[Greek:  “O pai parthenion blepon, dixemai se, su d’ ou koeis, ouk eidos hoti taes emaes psuchaes haeniocheueis.”]

Such a poem, even if addressed properly, would indicate nothing more than simple admiration and a longing which is specified in the following: 

     [Greek: 
     Alla propine
     radinous, o phile, maerous.]

It would hardly be worth while, even if the limitations of space permitted, to subject the fragments of the other poets of this period to analysis.  The reader has the key in his hands now—­the altruistic and supersensual ingredients of love pointed out in this volume; and if he can find those ingredients in any of these poems, he will be luckier than I have been.  We may therefore pass on to the great tragic poets of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.

WOMAN AND LOVE IN AESCHYLUS

In the Frogs of Aristophanes, Aeschylus is made to declare that he had never introduced a woman in love into any of his plays—­[Greek:  ouk oid’ oudeis haentin erosan popt’ epoiaesa gunaika].  He certainly has not done so in any one of the seven plays which have survived of the ninety that he wrote, according to Suidas; and Aristophanes would not have put that expression in his mouth had it not been true of the others, too.  To us it seems extraordinary that an author should boast of having kept out of his writings the element which constitutes the greatest fascination of modern literature; but after reading his seven surviving tragedies we do not wonder that Aeschylus should not have introduced a woman in love, or a man either, in plays wherewith he competed for the state prize on the solemn occasions of the great festivals at Athens; for love of an exalted kind, worthy of such an occasion, could not have existed in a community where such ideas prevailed about women as Aeschylus unfolds in the few places where he condescends to notice such inferior beings.  The only kind of sexual love of which he shows any knowledge is that referred to in the remarks of Prometheus and Io regarding the designs of Zeus on the latter.