ulous tastes
in their methods of attaining satisfaction from the women they loved.
The most common method was abduction and the women always submitted to
this without a murmur of any sort. Helen was carried off by Theseus,
after having also been abducted by Paris. The wife of Atreus was
abducted by Thyestus, and from that arose the implacable hatred between
the two families. Rape was no less common. Goddesses themselves and the
favorites of the Gods were at the risk of falling prey to strong mortals.
Pirithous, aided by Theseus, even attempted to snatch Proserpina from the
God of the under-world. Juno herself was compelled to painful submission
to the pursuit of Ixion, and Thetis succumbed despite herself, to the
assaults of Peleus. The gift of foretelling the future, with which
Apollo endowed Cassandra, did not insure her against the brutal caresses
of Ajax, son of Oileus.

In the infancy of society, there was never known any other distinction
except between the weak and the strong: the strong commanded and the weak
obeyed. For that reason, women were regarded in the light of beings
destined by nature, to serve the pleasures and even the caprices of men.
Never did her suitors express a tender thought for Penelope, and, instead
of making love to her, they squandered her property, slept with her
slaves, and took charge of things in her house.

Circe gave herself to Ulysses who desired to slay her, and Calypso, full
blown goddess as she was, was obliged to make his advances for him. The
fine sentiments that Virgil puts into the mouth of the shade of Creusa,
content with having died while serving against the Greeks, "she was a
Trojan, and she wedded the son of Venus"; the confession with which
Andromache, confronted by the murderer of her first husband, responds to
the question of AEneas; these ideas, I say, and these sentiments,
appertained to the polished century of Augustus and not to the epoch or,
scene of the Trojan War. Virgil, in his AEneid, had never subscribed to
the precepts of Horace, and of common sense:

Aut famam sequere, aut sibi convenientia finge
Horace Ars Poet. 119.

From this manner of dealing with women arose another reason for the
possession of beauty by the valiant. One coveted a woman much as one
would covet a fine flock of sheep, and, in the absence of laws, the one
in possession of either the one or the other of these desirable ob