But to continue. On page 27 we are confronted with the astounding statement that “it is in Anacreon that we find for the first time love-poetry addressed to a woman.” Why, Hermesianax (15, 16) distinctly states that Musæus wrote love-poetry to his wife or mistress, Antiope, and that Hesiod wrote many poems in honour of his love, Eoia (_Id._ 22-24). Alcæus notoriously wrote love-poems to Sappho, as we need go no further than the first book of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ to know; both Alcman, the lover of Egido and Megalostrate, and, probably Ibycus also wrote love-poetry to women. It is mere special pleading to contend that Mimnermus did not write poetry to the mistress of his affections, to whom, according to Strabo, his erotic poetry was addressed. Hermesianax distinctly states that Mimnermus was passionately in love with Nanno, and certainly implies that his love-poetry was addressed to her (35-38). It is true that two of the fragments of Archilochus are ambiguous, but one is not; and, if we may judge by a single line (Fr. 71), his love for Neobule expressed itself in a manner indistinguishable from Petrarch’s vein--“Would that I might touch Neobule’s hand”: ει γαρ ὡς εμοι γενοιτο χειρα Νεοβουλης θιγειν. It is clear that women had a prominent place in the poetry of Stesichorus, and in his poem entitled _Calyce_ we seem to have had an anticipation of the modern love romance. And yet, in spite of all this, we are informed that the Greeks had no love-poetry addressed to, or concerning women, before Anacreon. The methods adopted for minimizing or disguising the importance of women in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are very amusing. “The Trojan war was the work of a woman; but how very little that woman appears in the _Iliad_.” She appears quite as frequently and imposingly as the action admits, and she and Andromache are painted as elaborately as any of the _dramatis personæ_ in the poem. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that, with the exception of Achilles and Agamemnon, they leave the deepest impression on us. “A woman has been managing the affairs of Odysseus for twenty years in an exemplary fashion; but the hero of the _Odyssey_ on his return prefers to associate with the swineherd.” Comment is superfluous. Nothing could be more striking than the prominence which is given to women both in the _Iliad_ and in the _Odyssey_. To cite such writers as Simonides of Amorgus, Phocylides and Theognis, as authorities on the position of women, is as absurd, in Sancho Panza’s phrase, as to look for pears on an elm.