THE GROWTH OF THE TIE 23 



describe. Whether among wives or concubines or 

 courtesans, it is little more than a rivalry of interests. 

 The Andromache of Euripides seutentiously reminds 

 Hector that for his sake she has loved the women 

 that he loved, and even suckled the children they have 

 had by him. Hermione's jealousy of Andromache is 

 inspired less by Pyrrhus's attentions to his distin- 

 guished captive than by the threatened loss of her posi- 

 tion as the head of his household. As much may be 

 said of the jealousy of Dejanira in the Trachinice of 

 Sophocles. It does not manifest itself until she learns 

 that the captive lole is not an ordinary concubine of 

 her husband's, but one respecting whom he has special 

 views. In the comedies of Menander, who flourished 

 late, love and jealousy found fuller expression than 

 in the ancient tragedies, judging by the fragments of 

 his work that remain and the Latin adaptations of 

 his plays by Plautus and Terence. But his stories 

 deal chiefly with the amours of young libertines and 

 courtesans, from which anything like elevated senti- 

 ment is necessarily excluded. 



The supremacy of the courtesan in Athenian society 

 is easily accounted for. The wife held her position 

 by virtue of the law regulating the pure national 

 extraction of children, and marriages were arranged 



