Note 23 — Women in Greek Poetry

Nor, for that matter, is the Hetaera, whom later writers manage so to idealise, treated with any more respect or courtesy than the wife. Cp. Archil. Fr. 142, 184; Hippon. Fr. 110, 111. In curious contrast to what may be called the ‘wife-poetry’ of the early Greeks is the pretty picture in Hesiod (Op. 517, seqq.) of the unmarried girl, sitting at home, in every sense of the words κακῶν ἄπειρος. But strangest of all is the touch where, falling unconsciously into a manner of speech that dated from a very different social state, he calls her