What the author of this book, and what others who are fond of generalizing about the Greeks, forget, is, that of a once vast and voluminous literature we have only fragments. That portion of their poetry which would have thrown light on the subject here discussed has perished. It is certain, for example, that of their lyric poetry a very large portion was erotic, of that portion exactly one poem has survived in its entirety, while a few hundred scattered lines, torn from their context, represent the rest that has come down to us. We know, again, that in some hundreds of their dramas, in the Middle and New Comedy that is to say, the plots turned on love--of these dramas not a single one is preserved. But the reflection of some twenty of them in Terence and Plautus, and several scattered fragments, clearly indicate, that the passion between the sexes involved as much sentiment and romance as it does in our Elizabethan dramatists. In what respect do Charinus and Pamphilus in the _Andria_ and Antipho in the _Phormio_--mere replicas, of course, of Greek originals--differ from modern lovers? What could be more romantic than the love story which formed the plot of the _Phasma_ of Menander? It is fair to our author to say that he fully admits this, in the only tolerably satisfactory part of his book, the chapter on Women in Greek Comedy. The great blot on Greek life, to which Mr. Benecke gives so much prominence, has probably had far too much importance attached to it, partly, perhaps, owing to its accentuation in the writings of Plato, and partly owing to that rage for scandalous tittle-tattle, so unhappily characteristic of ancient anecdote-mongers from Ion to Athenæus. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 40: Agis, xvii., xviii.] [Footnote 41: De Mulierum Virtutibus.] [Footnote 42: See particularly lines 180-185.] MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS’ POEMS[43] [Footnote 43: _Poems._ By Stephen Phillips. London and New York John Lane.]