s fancy, yet men and
women like Agamemnon and Helen must once have lived and loved and
suffered on Greek soil.

Furthermore, great movements in the world's history are brought about
only by great men and great women. The great epics of the world tell the
stories of national heroes, not as they actually were, but idealized and
deified by generations of admiring descendants. Hence, behind all the
marvellous stories in myth and legend were doubtless actual figures of
men and women who influenced the course of events and left behind them
reputations of sufficient magnitude to give at least a basis for the
heroic figures of epic poetry.

To appreciate the elements from which the immortal types of Greek Epic
were composed, a comparison with the Book of Judges is apposite. In
Judges we have represented, though in disconnected narrative, the heroic
age of Ancient Israel, and from material such as this the national epic
of the Hebrew people might have been written. In such an epic, women
like Deborah and Jephthah's Daughter and Delilah would be the idealized
heroines, as are Penelope and Andromache and Helen in Homeric poems. It
is not unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that in the Achaean Age there
lived actual women, of heroic qualities, who were the prototypes of the
idealized figures presented by Homer and the dramatic poets.

Woman must have played a prominent role in the childhood of the Greek
world, for much of the romantic interest which Greek legend inspires is
derived from the mention of the women. Helen and Penelope, Clytemnestra
and Andromache, and the other celebrated dames of heroic times, stand in
the foreground of the picture, and are noted for their beauty, their
virtues, their crimes, or their sufferings. Thus, a study of the history
of woman in Ancient Greece properly begins with a contemplation of
feminine life as it is presented in the poems of Homer.

Homer's portrayal of the Achaean Age is complete and satisfactory,
largely because he devotes so much attention to woman and the conditions
of her life. His chivalrous spirit manifests itself in his attitude
toward the weaker sex. Homer's men are frequently childish and
impulsive; Homer's women present the characteristics universally
regarded as essential to true womanhood. They even seem strangely
modern; the general tone of culture, the relation of the sexes, the
motives that govern men and women, present striking parallels to what we
find in modern tim