Note 1057 — Chapter I · WOMEN IN THE HEROIC AGES.

Describing the beauty of Hippodameia, daughter of Anchises, Homer says, she excelled all the maidens of her age in beauty, skill in female accomplishments, and endowments of the mind, for which reason Alcathoos, the noblest man in Troy, chose her to be his wife.—Iliad, ε. 480. sqq. He must necessarily, therefore, have enjoyed opportunities of studying her character. Another illustration of the freedom of heroic female manners is furnished by the author of the Little Iliad, who relates that, when Aias and Odysseus were contending for the armour of Achilles, the Greeks, by the advice of Nestor, sent certain scouts to listen beneath the battlements of Troy to the conversation of the virgins who, in the cool of the evening, it may be presumed, were wont to walk upon the ramparts and converse frankly of the exploits of their illustrious enemies.—Sch. Aristoph. Equit. 1051. Cf. Il. ζ. 239.