As we should expect we find little evidence of affection between the Athenian husband and wife. The entire separation between their work and interests would necessarily preclude ideal love. Probably Sophocles presents the ordinary Greek view accurately, when he causes one of his characters to regret the loss of a brother or sister much more than that of a wife. "If a wife dies you can get another, but if a brother or sister dies, and the mother is dead, you can never get another. The one loss is easily reparable, the other is irreparable."[277] We could have no truer indication than this as to the degradation into which woman had fallen in the sexual relationship. That once, indeed, it had been far otherwise with the Athenian women the ancient legends witness. Athens was the city of Pallas Athene, the goddess of strength and power, which in itself testifies to a time when women were held in honour. The Temple of the Goddess, high on the Acropolis, stood as a relic of matriarchal worship. Year by year the secluded women of Athens wove a robe for Athene. Yet, so complete had become their subjection and their withdrawal from the duties of citizens, that when in the Theatre of Dyonysus men actors personated the great traditional women of the Greek Heroic Age, no woman was permitted to be present.[278] What wonder, then, that the Athenian women rebelled against the wastage of their womanhood. That they did rebel we may be certain on the strength of the satirical statements of Aristophanes, and even more from the pathos of the words put here and there into the mouths of women by Euripides-- "Of all things upon earth that breathe and grow A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day To buy us some man's love, and lo, they bring A Master of our flesh. There comes the sting Of the whole shame."[279] The debased position of the Athenian citizen woman becomes abundantly clear when we find that ideal love and free relationship between the sexes were possible only with the _hetairae_. Limitation of space forbids my giving any adequate details of these stranger-women, who were the beloved companions of the Athenian men. Prohibited from legal marriage by law, these women were in all other respects free; their relations with men, either temporary or permanent, were openly entered into and treated with respect. For the Greeks the _hetaira_ was in no sense a prostitute. The name meant friend and companion. The women to whom the name was applied held an honourable and independent position, one, indeed, of much truer honour than that of the wife.