romantic or conjugal love, but is simply the story of the adulterous and incestuous infatuation of Phaedra for her stepson Hippolytus.  It is at the same time one of the many stories illustrating the whimsical, hypocritical, and unchivalrous attitude of the early Greeks of always making woman the sinful aggressor and representing man as being coyly reserved (see Rohde, 34-35).  The infatuation of Phaedra is correctly described (fr., 611, 607 Dind.) as a [Greek:  Theaelatos nosos]—­a maddening disease inflicted by an angry goddess.

Among the seven extant tragedies of Sophocles there are three which throw some light on the contemporary attitude toward women and the different kinds of domestic attachment—­the Ajax, the Trachiniae and Antigone.  When Ajax, having disgraced himself by slaughtering a flock of sheep and cattle in the mad delusion that they were his enemies, wishes he might die, Tecmessa, his concubine, declares, “Then pray for my death, too, for why should I live if you are dead?” She has, however, plenty of egotistic reasons for dreading his death, for she knows that her fate will be slavery.  Moreover, instead of being edified by her expression of attachment, we are repelled when we bear in mind that Ajax slew her father when he made her his concubine.  The Greeks were too indelicate in their ideas about concubines to be disturbed by such a reflection.  Nor were they affected disagreeably by the utter indifference toward his concubine which Ajax displays.  He tells her to attend to her own affairs and remember that silence is a woman’s greatest charm, and before committing suicide he utters a monologue in which he says farewell to his parents and to his country, but has no last message for Tecmessa.  She was only a woman, forsooth.

Only a woman, too, was Deianira, the heroine of the Trachiniae, and though of exalted rank she fully realized this fact.  When Hercules first took her to Tiryns, he was still sufficiently interested in her to shoot a hydra-poisoned arrow into the centaur Nessus, who attempted to assault her while carrying her across the river Evenus.  But after she had borne him several children he neglected her, going off on adventures to capture other women.  She weeps because of his absence, complaining that for fifteen months she has had no message from him.  At last information is brought to her that Hercules, inflamed with violent love for the Princess Iole, had demanded her for a secret union, and when the king refused, had ravaged his city and carried off Iole, to be unto him more than a slave, as the messenger gives her to understand distinctly.  On receiving this message; Deianira is at first greatly agitated, but soon remembers what the duty of a Greek wife is.  “I am well aware,” she says in substance, “that we cannot expect a man to be always content with one woman.  To antagonize the god of love, or to blame my husband for succumbing to him, would be foolish.  After all, what does it amount to?