encer and Gillen tell us
(556), the women sometimes take the initiative, thus inducing a man to
elope with them.

WERE HEBREW AND GREEK WOMEN COY?

The English language is a queer instrument of thought. While coyness
has the various meanings of shyness, modest reserve, bashfulness,
shrinking from advances or familiarity, disdainfulness, the verb "to
coy" may mean the exact opposite--to coax, allure, entice, woo, decoy.
It is in _this_ sense that "coyness" is obviously a trait of primitive
maidens. What is more surprising is to find in brushing aside
prejudice and preconceived notions, that among ancient nations too it
is in this second sense rather than in the first that women are "coy."
The Hebrew records begin with the story of Adam and Eve, in which Eve
is stigmatized as the temptress. Rebekah had never seen the man chosen
for her by her male relatives, yet when she was asked if she would go
with his servant, she answered, promptly, "I will go." Rachel at the
well suffers her cousin to kiss her at first sight. Ruth does all the
courting which ends in making her the wife of Boaz. There is no
shrinking from advances, real or feigned, in any of these cases; no
suggestion of disguised feminine affection; and in two of them the
women make the advances. Potiphar's wife is another biblical case. The
word coy does not occur once in the Bible.

The idea that women are the aggressors, particularly in criminal
amours, is curiously ingrained in the literature of ancient Greece. In
the _Odyssey_ we read about the fair-haired goddess Circe, decoying
the companions of Odysseus with her sweet voice, giving them drugs and
potions, making them the victims of swinish indulgence of their
appetites. When Odysseus comes to their rescue she tries to allure him
too, saying, "Nay, then, pat up your blade within its sheath, and let
us now approach our bed that there we too may join in love and learn
to trust each other." Later on Odysseus has his adventure with the
Sirens, who are always "casting a spell of penetrating song, sitting
within a meadow," in order to decoy passing sailors. Charybdis is
another divine Homeric female who lures men to ruin. The island nymph
Calypso rescues Odysseus and keeps him a prisoner to her charms, until
after seven years he begins to shed tears and long for home "because
the nymph pleased him no more." Nor does the human Nausicaea manifest
the least coyness when she meets Odysseus at the river. Though he