g the Athenians
for her virtues and simple living than was Phocion for his probity." It
happened once when the people were entertained with a new tragedy, that
the actor, as he was about to enter the stage to perform the part of a
queen, demanded to have a number of attendants, sumptuously dressed, to
follow in his train; and when they were not provided, he became sullen
and refused to act, keeping the audience waiting, till at last
Melanthius, who had to furnish the chorus, pushed him on the stage,
crying out: "What! don't you know that Phocion's wife is never attended
by more than a single waiting-woman, but you must needs be grand, and
fill our women's heads with vanity?" This speech, spoken loud enough to
be heard, was received with great applause. Phocion's wife herself once
said to a visitor from Ionia, who showed her all her rich ornaments made
of gold and set with jewels, her wreaths, necklaces, and the like: "For
my part, all my ornament is my husband Phocion, now for the twentieth
year in office as general at Athens."

Aristotle said many things which are quoted as suggesting his low
estimate of the weaker sex, but he loved with great tenderness his wife
Pythias, niece and adopted daughter of his friend Hermias, ruler of
Atarneus and Assos in Mysia. When she died after a few brief years of
wedded life, Aristotle gave directions that at his own death the two
bodies should be placed side by side in the same tomb. When his own
death came, he left behind a second wife, Herpyllis, whose virtues he
esteemed, and he besought his friends to care for her, and to provide
her with another husband should she wish to marry again.

These instances of domestic affection dissolve the cold logic of rigid
theory, and prove how, in spite of legislation and convention, love is
lord of all, and that among the Athenians happy married life was not
unknown.

Nor was the strong-minded woman altogether lacking in Athens, for there
was Elpinice, sister of Cimon, who, taking the Spartan women as her
model, went about alone, and did many other things which shocked the
staid Athenian matrons. Unpleasant remarks were made about her--as in
the case of every woman who defies convention: among them, that she was
over intimate with Polygnotus the painter, who portrayed her as Laodice
in his fresco of the Trojan women in the Stoa Poikile. But the essence
of this scandal may have been merely that she served the painter as a
model, at a time wh