thongs of ox-hide through the prostrate
Hector's feet, bound him to his chariot, lashed his horses to speed,
and dragged him about in sight of the wailing wife and parents of his
victim. This he repeated several times, aggravating the atrocity a
hundredfold by his intention--in spite of the piteous entreaties of
the dying Hector--to throw his corpse to be eaten by the dogs, thus
depriving even his spirit of rest, and his family of religious
consolation. Nay, Achilles expresses the savage wish that his rage
might lead him so far as to carve and eat raw Hector's flesh. The
Homeric "hero," in short, is almost on a level in cruelty with the red
Indian.

But it is in their treatment of women--which Gladstone commends so
highly--that the barbarous nature of the Greek "heroes" is revealed in
all its hideous nakedness. The king of their gods set them the example
when he punished his wife and queen by hanging her up amid the clouds
with two anvils suspended from her feet; clutching and throwing to the
earth any gods that came to her rescue. (_Iliad,_ XV., 15-24.) Rank
does not exempt the women of the heroic age from slavish toil.
Nausicaea, though a princess, does the work of a washerwoman and drives
her own chariot to the laundry on the banks of the river, her only
advantage over her maids being that they have to walk.[296] Her
mother, too, queen of the Phoeaceans, spends her time sitting among
the waiting maids spinning yarn, while her husband sits idle and "sips
his wine like an immortal." The women have to do all the work to make
the men comfortable, even washing their feet, giving them their bath,
anointing them, and putting their clothes on them again (_Odyssey,_
XIX., 317; VIII., 454; XVII., 88, etc.),[297] even a princess like
Polycaste, daughter of the divine Nestor, being called upon to perform
such menial service (III., 464-67). As for the serving-maids, they
grind corn, fetch water, and do other work, just like red squaws; and
in the house of Odysseus we read of a poor girl, who, while the others
were sleeping, was still toiling at her corn because her weakness had
prevented her from finishing her task (XX., 110).

Penelope was a queen, but was very far from being treated like one.
Gladstone found "the strongest evidence of the respect in which women
were held" in the fact that the suitors stopped short of violence to
her person! They did everything but that, making themselves at home in
her house, unbidden and hat