That Solomon was the author of the _Iliad_, Poggio the author of the _Annals_ of Tacitus, and Bacon the author of Shakespeare’s plays, are hypotheses scarcely less monstrously absurd than the thesis propounded in this volume. Mr. Benecke’s main contentions are “that a pure love between man and woman seemed to the early Greeks” (that is, to those who lived before the latter end of the Peloponnesian War) a sheer impossibility; that “in extant Greek poetry there is no trace of romantic love poetry addressed to women prior to the time of Asclepiades and Philetas”; that “in the works of these writers this element suddenly appears not in the nature of an experiment but as a leading motive”; that the appearance of this element was due to the influence of Antimachus, “who was the first man who had the courage to say that a woman was worth loving, and who may thus be regarded as the originator of the romantic element in literature.” As we have not space to refute this nonsense in detail, we will give some examples of the way in which it is supported. First come misrepresentations and blunders. To emphasize the degradation of women, passages in translation are twisted and perverted almost beyond recognition. Thus the couplet of Catullus-- “Tunc te dilexi, non tantum ut vulgus amicam, Sed pater ut natos diligit et generos”-- is actually paraphrased “I loved you, not as a man loves a woman, but as a man loves a youth.” The couplet in which Antigone says, “If my husband died, I could get another, and were I deprived of him too, I could be a mother by another man”-- ποσις μεν αν μοι, κατθανοντος, αλλος ην και παις απ’ αλλου φωτος, ει τουδ’ ημπλακον--