It would not be easy to pass judgment on Greek women in general, as differences of race have considerable influence. Nor can we place much confidence in our literary authorities, least of all in Aristophanes, who says in the _Thesmophoriazusae_ that the men could place no trust whatever in their wives, and were obliged to keep them under lock and key, and keep Molossian hounds on purpose to frighten away their lovers, while they deprived them even of the keys of the storeroom. This is, of course, exaggerated invention, as is also the statement that all the suspicion of the women is due to the calumnies of Euripides. The poets of the Old Comedy directed the arrows of their wit only at women of ill fame; and the Newer Attic Comedy chooses most of its heroines from among the hetaerae (though a favourite _dénoûment_ was the discovery that these were really long-lost legitimate daughters of citizens); and consequently the women are generally treated from their worst side, and the men represented as poor victims. The aim of comedy, which is to provoke laughter, is more easily attained by the representation of characters whose morality is not unimpeachable; and it would be equally unfair in our own time to form a picture of modern morals based on the representations of the stage. Undoubtedly, the Athenian women were far inferior to the Spartan in morality, and in some towns--especially Corinth and Byzantium--female morality seems to have been at a very low ebb; but we must not on that account condemn all Greek women indiscriminately. One reproach is too often heard, and too clearly proved to be discredited, and that is inclination to drink. This vice was so common that in some places women were actually forbidden to drink wine, and it was this that sometimes compelled husbands to take the keys from their wives.