Note 291 — Women in Greek Comedy

Ter. And. ii. 1, 15 and 25. [The author is assuming that the words “quam vellem!” in the latter passage, are spoken by Charinus, not by Pamphilus: the editors differ on this point.] This curious passage furnishes a further instance, if further instances be needed, of the fact that what the Greek required of a woman for a love-match was not so much physical purity as constancy to a particular lover. Hence we find that by far the greater mass of Greek romantic love-poetry is addressed, not to virgins, but to women to whom the writer is, in one way or another, married. Thus, too, in the romance of Xenophon Ephesius, the adventures of the lovers all take place after marriage (the wedding occurs already in chapter viii of book I.), and in this the Ephesiaca are at least as Greek as, if not more so than the Pastoralia of Longus, or the novel of Eumathius, where the most ridiculous and desperate expedients have to be resorted to in order that the heroine may preserve her virginity till the end of the last chapter. But this whole matter will be more fully discussed when we come to consider the Callimachean ideal of woman. [The reference is to a part of the work which was not completed.]