the art of writing verse
that 'bit into the live man's flesh like parchment,' that sent him
wandering, branded and forever shamed, about his native fields and
streets."

Archilochus's verses indicate that, in the eighth century before our
era, there was in Greece a certain freedom of intercourse between the
sexes, and that love was, at times at least, the basis for betrothal; it
also shows the absolute control of the father over the hand of his
daughter. The poet's story is also the earliest we have of love
betrayed, and the name of Neobule is inextricably intertwined with the
rise of satiric verse.

A different note is struck by Archilochus's contemporary, Semonides of
Amorgus, who takes up and continues the tradition of Hesiod in speaking
of woman in tones of contempt and disparagement. He composed a
celebrated satire on woman, in which her various temperaments are
ascribed to a kinship with different domestic animals,--the hog, the
fox, the dog, the ass, the mare, the ape,--or are compared to mud, sea
water, and the bee.

Semonides first deals with the class of women of the hog variety: "God
made the mind of woman in the beginning of different qualities; for one
he fashioned like a bristly hog, in whose house everything tumbles about
in disorder, bespattered with mud, and rolls upon the ground; she,
dirty, with unwashed clothes, sits and grows fat on a dungheap."

The woman like mud is thus satirized: "This woman is ignorant of
everything, both good and bad; her only accomplishment is eating: cold
though the winters be, she is too stupid to draw near the fire."

Here is the poet's picture of the woman who resembles the sea: "She has
two minds; when she laughs and is glad, the stranger seeing her at home
will give her praise--there is nothing better than this on the earth,
no, nor fairer; but another day she is unbearable, not to be looked at
or approached, for she is raging mad. To friend and foe she is alike
implacable and odious. Thus, as the sea is often calm and innocent, a
great delight to sailors in summertime, and oftentimes again is
frantic, tearing along with roaring billows, so is this woman in her
temper."

The woman who resembles a mare offers other disagreeable qualities: She
is "delicate and long-haired, unfit for drudgery or toil; she would not
touch the mill, or lift the sieve, or clean the house out! She bathes
twice or thrice a day, and anoints herself with myrrh; then she wears
her hair co