has aptly said, the feminine character is strongly
marked; but, as he himself is obliged to admit, "by no means on its
higher side." Regarding Minerva, he remarks with equal aptness that
"she is a goddess, not a god; but she has nothing of sex except the
gender, nothing of the woman except the form." She is the goddess,
among other things, of war. Diana spends all her time hunting and
slaughtering animals, and she is not only a perpetual virgin but
ascetically averse to love and feminine tenderness--as unsympathetic a
being as was ever conceived by human imagination--as unnatural and
ludicrous as her devotee, the Hippolytus of Euripides. She is the
Amazon of Amazons, and was represented dressed as an Amazon. Of course
she is pictured as the tallest of women, and it is in regard to the
question of stature that the Greeks once more betray their
ultra-masculine inability to appreciate true femininity; as, for
example, in the stupid remark of Aristotle _(Eth. Nicom_., IV., 7),
[Greek: to kallos en megalo somati, hoi mikroi d' asteioi kai
summetroi, kaloi d' ou.]--"beauty consists in a large body; the petite
are pretty and symmetrical, but not beautiful."[311]

ATHENIAN ORIENTALISM

Both Diana and Venus were brought to Greece from Asia. Indeed, when we
examine Greek life in the light of comparative _Culturgeschichte_, we
find a surprising prevalence of Oriental customs and ideas, especially
in Athens, and particularly in the treatment of women. In this respect
Athens is the antipode of Sparta. While at Sparta the women wrestled
naked with the men, in Athens the women were not even permitted to
witness their games. The Athenians moreover had very decided opinions
about the effect of Spartan customs. The beautiful Helen who caused
the Trojan war by her adulterous elopement was a Spartan, and the
Athenian Euripides makes Peleus taunt her husband Menelaus in these
words:

"Thou who didst let a Phrygian rob thee of thy wife,
leaving thy home without bolt or guard, as if forsooth
the cursed woman thou hadst was a model of virtue. No!
a Spartan maid could not be chaste, e'en if she would,
who leaves her home and bares her limbs and lets her
robe float free, to share with youth their races and
their sports--customs I cannot away with. Is it any
wonder that ye fail to educate your women in virtue?"

The Athenian, to be sure, did not any more than the Spartan educate
his women in virtue