century, composed in the same strain an epigrammatic satire on woman. It
is manifestly an imitation of the tirade of Semonides.

"The tribe of women," says he, "is of these four kinds,--that of a dog,
that of a bee, that of a burly sow, and that of a long-maned mare. This
last is manageable, quick, fond of gadding about, fine of figure; the
sow kind is neither good nor bad; that of the dog is difficult and
snarling; but the bee-like woman is a good housekeeper, and knows how to
work. This desirable marriage, pray to obtain, dear friend."

The bitterest of all the observations against woman by the iambic
writers, however, is that of Hipponax, a brilliant satirist of the sixth
century before Christ, He says:

"Two happy days a woman brings a man: the first, when he marries her;
the second, when he bears her to the grave."

Theognis is another of the poets of Greece who took a gloomy view of
life, and was not happy in his matrimonial ties. He laments that
marriages in his native town of Megara are made for money, and avers
that such marriages are the bane of the city. Says Theognis:

"Rams and asses, Cyrnus, and horses, we choose of good breed, and wish
them to have good pedigrees; but a noble man does not hesitate to wed a
baseborn girl if she bring him much money; nor does a noble woman refuse
to be the wife of a base but wealthy man, but she chooses the rich
instead of the noble. For they honor money; and the noble weds the
baseborn, and the base the highborn; wealth has mixed the race. So, do
not wonder, Polypaides, that the race of the citizens deteriorates, for
the bad is mixed with the good."

To sum up this cursory survey of the iambic poets, we find that in their
period woman is still regarded as the determining factor of man's weal
or woe, but that there exists in the sex every variety of woman which
lack of education and, especially, lack of appreciation can produce.
Woman is prized by man only for her domestic virtues; and any endeavor
she may make to step beyond the narrow circle of the home is resented by
the lords of creation. Man looks down on her as his inferior, and gives
her no share in his larger life. Among the aristocratic the bane of
wealth has entered, and marriages of convenience are the prevailing
custom.

When we pass from the iambic to the elegiac poets, we begin to note the
causes why wedded life, especially among the Ionian Greeks, does not
present the beautiful pictures of domestic bli