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And so the fragment ends.
All this is pure misogyny; but it is interesting to notice the especial faults which our poet imputes to womankind. They are chiefly the two vices which a surly master will always find in his servants, gluttony and idleness; they work too little and eat too much. We are far removed in this world from our 'Feed the brute,' and it must be remembered that in a Greek household the work was hard, monotonous, and continual. There were no labour-saving appliances, for the hard work was chiefly done by women. Every mouthful of bread or porridge eaten in a Greek home had come into the house as a sack of dirty grain. First it was winnowed, and cleaned by hand; then the grain was put into a small hand-mill, and by a laborious process of pestle and mortar it was ground into flour; the flour was then made into dough, kneaded and baked; every process being attended with the maximum of manual labour and general inconvenience, borne by the women of the house, while the master strolled about the city.
So also with the clothes and household fabrics:[38] every operation in their manufacture was done at home by the women. The master contented himself with buying the sheep-skins---and, as Theocritus lets us see, often did that very badly---which he then handed to his wife. First, the skins had to be washed and dried; then the wool was cut off and carded; then by a laborious process of spinning the wool was turned into yarn, and finally on a hand-loom the yarn was woven into cloth: the same piece of stuff, so excellent was the workmanship, often serving for coat, blanket and shroud.
It is obvious, then, that an idle wife---if such a thing existed---or a wife who ate more than her share of the laboriously prepared bread, would be a great grief to her lord and master, who was himself too busy with the higher work of politics to attend to such things, and that the machinery of the household would be put very much out of gear. It may well be that Simonides was unfortunate in his choice of a helpmate, for as Hipponax, the third of this company, mournfully complains, 'It is hard to get a wife who will both bring you a good dowry and then do all the work.' Hipponax, if we may judge him by some forty short fragments, was a thoroughly disagreeable person; he is always asking and being refused; he varies complaints with abuse or downright threats.
'Hold my coat,' he cries, 'and I will knock out his eye. I've got two right hands, and I never miss when I[39] throw.' On the subject of women he does not say so much as the other two, for the range of his thought is almost confined to carnal delights. A fair sample of his style is this fragment: 'There are only two days in your life that your wife gives you pleasure: the day you marry her and the day you bury her.'
This insistence on the physical side of love runs through all the elegiac and lyric poetry of the age. Love to Mimnermus is a thing of secret kisses, of chambering and wantonness, and it depends alone on physical attractions. A young man is happy, for he is handsome and desirable; an old man is wretched, to women an object of scorn. The satiety that comes from excess of sensual pleasure is the main cause of the melancholy pessimism that broods over much of Ionian literature. Of Alcus and his Lycus, Anacreon and his Bathyllus, Theognis and Cyrnus, it is unnecessary now to speak, but it is difficult to believe such amiable apologists as Mr. Benecke when they try to show that a fine idealism was the inspiration of these relationships. Neither the character of the men's writings nor that of their time and country give much ground for such confidence, and if we seek the purity of love's passion we must turn to Sappho.
Among all the foulness of her time Sappho shines out like a star. No loss in literature is so lamentable as the loss of the nine books of her poems that the[40] Alexandrian library possessed; no treasure in literature is quite so precious as the fragments that various chances have preserved for us. And, luckily, the number of those fragments is still increasing, as will be seen by a comparison of the two best studies of Sappho in recent years, the exquisite collection of translations issued by Mr. Wharton in 1886, and the brilliant monograph on the new fragments by Mr. J. M. Edmonds in 1912. Even since that date fresh poems have come to light, and we do not know what Egypt may have yet in store.
In all the fragments, new or old, there is an indefinable quality of personal feeling. Sappho, it has been said, has left us only a fragment of her work, but it is a fragment of her soul. Her friend and rival, Alcus, is a great poet, but he lacks the fiery intensity of her inspiration, which gives life even to the briefest phrase that some grammarian has quoted for a rare word. Take the lines that Rossetti adapted:
Or, again, this other:
Mr. Edmonds, in his translations, has kept much of the simple charm of the Greek:
And this, a portion of a new fragment:
This tender simplicity is the soul of Sappho, and in her verse even a few words will suggest a picture:
