The monogamous Greeks were not often guilty of such atrocities, but their custom (nearly universal and not confined to Athens, as is often erroneously stated) of locking up their women in the interior of the houses, shutting them off from almost everything that makes life interesting, betrays a kind of jealousy hardly less selfish than that of the savages who disposed of their wives as they pleased.  It practically made slaves and prisoners of them, quite in the Oriental style.  Such a custom indicates an utter lack of sympathy and tenderness, not to speak of the more romantic ingredients of love, such as adoration and gallantry; and it implies a supreme contempt for and distrust of, character in wives, all the more reprehensible because the Greeks did not value purity per se but only for genealogical reason, as is proved by the honors they paid to the disreputable hetairai.  There are surprisingly few references to masculine jealousy in Greek erotic literature.  The typical Greek lover seems to have taken rivalry as blandly as the hero of Terence’s play spoken of in the last chapter, who, after various outbursts of sentimentality, is persuaded, in a speech of a dozen lines, to share his mistress with a rich officer.  Nor can I see anything but maudlin sentimentality in such conceits as Meleager utters in two of his poems (Anthology, 88, 93) in which he expresses jealousy of sleep, for its privilege of closing his mistress’s eyes; and again of the flies which suck her blood and interrupt her slumber.  The girl referred to is Zenophila, a common wanton (see No. 90).  This is the sensual side of the Greek jealousy, chastity being out of the question.

The purely genealogical side of Greek masculine jealousy is strikingly revealed in the Medea of Euripides.  Medea had, after slaying her own brother, left her country to go with Jason to Corinth.  Here Jason, though he had two children by her, married the daughter of the King Creon.  With brutal frankness, but quite in accordance with the selfish Greek ideas, he tries to explain to Medea the motives for his second marriage:  that they might all dwell in comfort instead of suffering want,

“and that I might rear my sons as doth befit my house; further, that I might be the father of brothers for the children thou hast borne, and raise these to the same high rank, uniting the family in one—­to my lasting bliss.  Thou, indeed, hast no need of more children, but me it profits to help my present family by that which is to be.  Have I miscarried here?  Not even thou wouldst say so unless a rival’s charms rankled in thy bosom.  No, but you women have such strange ideas, that you think all is well so long as your married life runs smooth; but if some mischance occur to ruffle your love, all that was good and lovely erst you reckon as your foes.  Yea, men should have begotten children from some other source, no female race existing; thus would no evil ever have fallen on mankind.”