The spirit of this invective is derived in a great measure from Hesiod, whose myth of Pandora marked his estimate of women, and whose precepts concerning the choice of a wife must have depressed the Boeotian bachelors with the certainty that nine women out of ten would prove a curse. This is precisely the proportion of bad to good that Simonides establishes. His tenth and virtuous wife is praised because she is industrious and quiet, and the mother of many children. We here get the primitive ideal of the helpmeet for man. Modern theorists would condemn it as the model of a slave. And it is certain that, as Greek civilization advanced, without a corresponding elevation of the conception of wifehood, the chivalrous sentiment of the Greeks sought other channels than that of sexual love, exalting a form of passionate friendship between men as the real source of heroic action and inspiring thought.[74] The outline traced by Simonides was filled in by subsequent satirists. Susarion, the comic poet, makes this grandiloquent proclamation: "Hear, O ye people! These are the words of Susarion of Tripodiscus, Philinus's son, of Megara: Woman is a curse!" Aristophanes in his plays the _Lysistrata_, the _Thesmophoriazusæ_, and the _Ecclesiazusæ_, gives to the Athenian women all the attributes of the hog, the ape, the clay, the sea, and the fox; in the _Clouds_ he draws the picture of one who is like the old blood-mare; but he does not hint, even by way of parody, that there existed any bees. The Greeks never learned the art of making women their companions in the noblest sense. It must, however, be borne in mind that the Ionians were less civilized in this respect than the Dorians, who had a higher regard for the excellences of women, and allowed them greater liberty.[75] Simonides is expressing Ionian rather than Dorian sentiments, and at the same time may be reasonably supposed to be overstraining them for the sake of a burlesque effect.