herself in order to secure the rest of a dear one’s soul—­which alone might have partly excused her heartless and unromantic ignoring and desertion of her lover—­is bereft of all its nobility by her equally heartless declaration that she would not have thus given her life for a husband or a child.  These Greek poets knew so little of true femininity that they could not draw a female character without spoiling it.

[304] The unduly extolled [Greek:  Epos] chorus in the Antigone expresses nothing more than the universal power of love in the Greek conception of the term.

[305] In Mueller’s book on the Doric race we read (310) that the love of the Corinthian Philolaus and Diocles “lasted until death,” and even their graves were turned toward one another, in token of their affection.  Lovers in Athens carved the beloved’s names on walls, and innumerable poems were addressed by the leading bards to their favorites.

[306] Compare Ramdohr, III., 191 and 124.

[307] I have before me a dictonary which defines Platonic love as it is now universally, and incorrectly, understood, as “a pure spiritual affection subsisting between the sexes, unmixed with carnal desires, a species of love for which Plato was a warm advocate.”  In reality Platonic (i.e.  Socratic) love has nothing whatever to do with women, but is a fantastic and probably hypocritical idealization of a species of infatuation which in our day is treated neither in poems nor in dialogues, nor discussed in text-books of psychology or physiology, but relegated to treatises on mental diseases and abnormalities.  In fact, the whole philosophy of Greek love may be summed up in the assertion that “Platonic love,” as understood by us, was by Plato and the Greeks in general considered an impossibility.

[308] In the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus (III., Bk.  XII.) we find some other information of anthropological significance:  “Hermippus stated in his book about lawgivers that at Lacedaemon all the damsels used to be shut up in a dark room, while a number of unmarried young men were shut up with them; and whichever girl each of the young men caught hold of he led away as his wife, without a dowry.”  “But Clearches the Solensian, in his treatise on Proverbs, says:  ’In Lacedaemon the women, on a certain festival, drag the unmarried men to an altar and then buffet them; in order that, for the purpose of avoiding the insults of such treatment, they may become more affectionate and in due season may turn their thoughts to marriage.  But at Athens Cecrops was the first person who married a man to one woman only, when before his time connections had taken place at random and men had their wives in common.’”