they give--a good gift; for there is nothing mightier and nobler than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house, a grief to their foes, and to their friends great joy, but their own hearts know it best." The view taken of adultery is a good test of the position of woman in society. In Homeric times, adultery was regarded as the violation of a property right. There are few harsh words in the Iliad against Helen; all the anger of the Greeks was concentrated against Paris, who had violated the bond of guest friendship, and had alienated his host's property. Menelaus readily pardoned Helen, when material reparation had been exacted; there is no moral reprehension of the adultery itself. Clytemnestra was violently condemned, less because she yielded to the seductions of AEgisthus than because her crime led to the murder of her husband. There seems to have been also a natural perpetuity of the marriage contract. To the Greeks, Helen was always the wife of Menelaus. The ideal for the wife was single-hearted loyalty toward her husband; faithfulness and submission were the principal virtues of women. Moral lapses by men were frequent, and the same standard of marital rectitude was not required from them as from the women of the heroic days. The social manners of the time, and especially the elevated position of the matron, may be gathered from Homer's account of Telemachus's reception at the palace of King Menelaus in Sparta. He and his friend Pisistratus are conducted into the great hall, where, after having bathed and anointed themselves and put on fresh raiment, they are received by their host, Menelaus. They are placed on chairs beside him, and a repast is brought, of which they are invited to partake. Menelaus does not yet know who his guests are, but he has observed that Telemachus weeps when Odysseus is mentioned in conversation. While he is pondering on this, Helen comes forth into the hall from her "fragrant vaulted chamber" in the inner or woman's part of the house. With her are three handmaids, one of whom sets for her the well-wrought chair, a second brings a rug of soft wool, while the third places at her side a silver basket on wheels, across which is laid a golden distaff charged with wool of violet blue. Helen immediately takes a leading part in the entertainment of the guests, one of whom, with woman's intuition, she is the first to recognize, and they converse far into the night. Then good cheer is spread before them, and Helen casts into the wine whereof they drink "a drug to lull all pain and anger and bring forgetfulness to every sorrow." Presently Helen bids her handmaids show with torches the guests to their beds beneath the corridors, where bedsteads have been set with purple blankets and coverlets and thin mantles upon them.