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    388 THE INFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL LITERATUR...

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    We Give These Extracts From An Excellent...

    literature Public op history inion then general flows reading out of and these the streams proverbial ; out wisdom of classical of all

    , , , These lands ; stream out of s set social one conventions Onlindividual and customs influences and newspapers remain , to .

    way . y stem their united force . We must treat of them more at length , and first of the classics .

    made Greek Until , very to or have lat Roman ely more there mythology or were less no meaning . proper It was hel according ps studied to the to stud by the the y of teacher letter Egyp , tian who and ,

    interpreted it . Lempriere had no room for moral deductions or symbolic indications , his columns read like a criminal report in the

    " New York Herald . " The Egyptian mythology "was doubtless the mother of the other two . Many of its ceremonies , its symbols , and

    its idols , must be confused by the uninstructed mind with realities of the lowestperhaps we should not be far wrong if we said ,

    them of the , present most very revolting a singular , stamp mixture . The of Greek influences classics , but so where far as woman I know is

    concerned , the lowest certainly preponderate . I should be sorry to lose Homer and EschlusHerodotusThucidydesand Xenophon

    from , my library ; but of y poets , and dramatists , , from the , few . fragments of Pindar and Anacreon down through the tragic poets , —down , very

    far down , indeed , to Aristophanes , —can -we say as much ? There need be no doubt about Aristophanes . The world would be

    the purer and all women grateful , if every copy of his works , and every coarse inference from them , could be swept out of existence

    to-morrow . When we find a noble picture in Xenophon , it had a noble original like Panthea in Persia , as old perhaps as that fine

    saying in the Heetopades which all the younger Veds disown . When we find an ignoble thought , it seexas to have been born out of his

    Greek experience . Transported by a fair ideal , Plato asks in his Republic " Should not this sexwhich we condemn to obscure duties ,

    be destined , to functions the most , noble and elevated ? " But it was onlto take back tlie words in his Timceusand in the midst of a

    society y that refused to let the wife sit at table , with the husband , and whose wives were not " tame" enough to speak to their

    husbands young , if we may believe the words of Xenophon , until after months of marriage . When Jscomachustlie model of an Athenian

    , husbandand the friend of Socrates , asked his wife if she knew , whether he had-married her for love , "I know nothing , " she replied ,

    " but to be faithful to you , and to learn what you teach . " Pie responded ban exhortation on " staying at home" which ., has come

    down to posterit y y , and left her , with a kiss , for the , saloon of Aspasia ! Pindar and Anacreoneven when they find no better representatives

    _, than Dr . Wolcott and , Tom Moorestill continue to crown the wine and impart a certain to , unmanly orgies . A late _French

    cup , grace writer goes so far as to call Euripides a " woman hater , who could not pardon Zeus for having made woman an indispensable agent in

    the preservation of the species . " In his portraits of Iphigenia and

    388 The Influence Of Classical Literatur...

    388 THE INFLUENCE OF _CLASSICAL LITERATURE ;

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1860, page 388, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021860/page/28/