Conjugal tenderness and the other family affections appear; indeed, to
have been known and cherished by the Greeks at all times, in the days of
Athenian supremacy, when women were kept in entire seclusion, no less
than in Homeric times, when they seem to have enjoyed more liberty of
action. Plutarch tells us in his _Conjugal Precepts_ that “With women
tenderness of heart is indicated by a pleasing countenance, by sweetness
of speech, by an affectionate grace, and by a high degree of
sensitiveness;” and Mr. Lecky thus eloquently sums up the evidence that
the Greeks appreciated the various forms of domestic affection:—
“The types of female excellence which are contained in the Greek poems,
while they are among the earliest, are also among the most perfect in
the literature of mankind. The conjugal tenderness of Hector and
Andromache; the unwearied fidelity of Penelope, awaiting through the
long revolving years the return of her storm-tossed husband, who looked
forward to her as the crown of all his labours; the heroic love of
Alcestis, voluntarily dying that her husband might live; the filial
piety of Antigone; the majestic grandeur of the death of Polyxena; the
more subdued and saintly resignation of Iphigenia, excusing with her
last breath the father who had condemned her; the joyous, modest, and
loving Nausicaa, whose figure shines like a perfect idyll among the
tragedies of the _Odyssey_—all these are pictures of perennial beauty,
which Rome and Christendom, chivalry and modern civilisation, have
neither eclipsed nor transcended. Virgin modesty and conjugal fidelity,
the graces as well as the virtues of the most perfect womanhood, have
never been more exquisitely portrayed.”