Note 194 — Women in Greek Poetry (continued 2)

This respect for marriage (if one extends the idea of marriage sufficiently to cover every form of union which is faithfully observed—whether actually legalised by some particular ceremony or not, is, in this connection, not very material) will, I think, be found underlying the whole Greek conception of romance. This is, of course, diametrically opposed to the view of the mediaeval barbarians, who held that the one woman in the world one could not love was one’s wife. Whether Lyde or Isolde be the higher ideal is, perhaps, a matter of taste; magno se iudice quaeque tuetur. That I personally prefer the Greek to the barbarian is perhaps due to prejudice, but it is prejudice for which I am very grateful.

A further illustration may be found in the Latin elegiac poets. Propertius, the “Roman Callimachus,” who is always calling attention to the Greek sources of his inspiration, addresses all his love-poems to the Hetaera Cynthia, to whom he remained faithful to the end. Ovid only invokes the Greeks (Antimachus in Trist. i. 6, 1; Philetas in Trist. i. 6, 2, Pont. iii. 1, 58) when addressing his wife. Tibullus and Catullus, the poets of adultery, never acknowledge in their love-poems their Greek predecessors, and Catullus even goes out of his way to abuse one of them.