bout thee, call upon thy name, and think I
hold my dear wife in my embrace.... Take me, O take me, I
beseech, with thee 'neath the earth;"

and so on, _ad nauseam_--a sickening display of sentimentality,
_i.e._, fond words belied by cowardly, selfish actions.

The father-in-law of Alcestis, in his indignation at his son's
impertinence and lack of filial pity, exclaims that what made Alcestis
sacrifice herself was "want of sense;" which is quite true. But in
painting such a character, Euripides's chief motive appears to have
been to please his audience by enforcing a maxim which the Greeks
shared with the Hindoos and barbarians that "a woman, though bestowed
upon a worthless husband, must be content with him." These words are
actually put by him into the mouth of Andromache in the play of that
name. Andromache, once the wife of the Trojan Hector, now the
concubine of Achilles's son, is made to declare to the Chorus that "it
is not beauty but virtuous acts that win a husband's heart;" whereupon
she proceeds to spoil this fine maxim by explaining what the Greeks
understood by "virtuous acts" in a wife--namely, subordinating herself
even to a "worthless husband." "Suppose," she continues, "thou hadst
wedded a prince of Thrace... where one lord shares his affections with
a host of wives, would'st thou have slain them? If so, thou would'st
have set a stigma of insatiate lust on all our sex." And she proceeds
to relate how she herself paid no heed in Troy to Hector's amours with
other women: "Oft in days gone by I held thy bastard babes to my own
breast, to spare thee any cause for grief. By this course I bound my
husband to me by virtue's chains." To spare _him_ annoyance, no matter
how much his conduct might grieve _her_--that was the Greek idea of
conjugal devotion--all on one side. And how like the Hindoos, and
Orientals, and barbarians in general, is the Greek seen to be in the
remarks made by Hermione, the legitimate wife, to Andromache, the
concubine--accusing the latter of having by means of witchcraft made
her barren and thus caused her husband to hate her.

With the subtle ingenuity of masculine selfishness the Greek dramatist
doubles the force of all his fine talk about the "virtuous acts" of
wives by representing the women themselves as uttering these maxims
and admitting that their function is self-denial--that woman is
altogether an inferior and contemptible being. "How strange it is,"
exclaims Andro