Note 120 — FIRST SECTION.

Demosthenes, Orat. in Neaeram, edit. Wolf, p. 534., τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἑταίρας ἡδονῆς ἕνεκ’ ἔχομεν, τὰς δὲ παλλακὰς τῆς καθ’ ἡμέραν θεραπείας τοῦ σώματος, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας τοῦ παιδοποιεῖσθαι γνησίως καὶ τῶν ἔνδον φύλακα πιστὴν ἔχειν. (for hetaerae—lady-companions—we keep for our pleasure, but concubines for the daily service of the person, and wives for the procreation of lawful children and to have a trusty guardian of household matters). The same sentence is quoted from Demosthenes by Athenaeus, Deipnos., bk. XIII. ch. 31., but with the difference that he says παλλακὰς τῆς καθ’ ἡμέραν παλλακείας (concubines for daily concubinage). Comp. Plutarch, Praecept. Coniugal., ch. 16. 29. It is true this purely moral view, as it was originally, of marriage, came in times subsequent to just the flourishing period of Greece to contrast so sharply with the rest of the Greeks, full and imaginative as it was, that it appears an exceedingly homely bit of prose, and one is led away to pass a not exactly favourable judgement as to the position of Greek married women and their level of culture. But is this quite fair?