A remarkable mildness pervades all that Homer says of women. The Greeks were monogamous, but they were so not by law, but from affection, or principle. Homer, accordingly, finds no fault with the polygamy which presents itself in the palace of Priam, King of Troy. “He had fifty sons, nineteen from the same womb, and the rest were borne to him by women in his halls.”[167] Some of these women are spoken of as if they were considered the wives of Priam--Laothoe,[168] for instance, and the beautiful Castianeira,[169] though Hecabe appears as if she were the only wife. But, in fact, there was no clear line drawn between marriage and other associations of men with women in Homeric times. Achilles calls Briseis his wife (ἄλοχος), though she was acquired by the spear.[170] And Ulysses promises that he will give wives to his slaves, Melanthius the goatherd and Eumæus the swineherd.[171] Some have supposed that the words imply that Ulysses would make them free, but there is no hint of this in Homer. The ordinary wife, or what in later times might be called the legal wife, is distinguished by the epithet κουριδίη; but there is no certainty as to the exact meaning of this word. Homeric society knows nothing of a degraded class of women. There are some instances in which what would be called concubinage occurs, but only twice in the ‘Iliad’ does the word occur (παλλακίς) which was used to designate this in later ages, both times in the same passage.[172] And it occurs once in the ‘Odyssey,’[173] in a passage in which Ulysses invents a tale about himself to prevent recognition. It is evident that the word involved no idea of blame or reproach. Still more evident is this gentleness in the treatment which the children of these women experienced. When a name is assigned them they are called nothoi (νόθοι), but the name, whatever its meaning might be, had, as Eustathius points out,[174] and the facts show, no depreciatory association. The children whose mothers were not the ordinary wives were still treated as children of the house. When Helen had no hopes of a son, Menelaus had a son born to him from a slave,[175] and he married this son to the daughter of Alector with great festivities. Medesicaste is described as the daughter of Priam nothen (νόθην). She was married to Imbros, a great warrior who lived with Priam, and that king “honoured him equally with his sons.”[176] Pedaios was a nothos to Antenor, “but the divine Theano reared him with great care, like to her dear children, to please her husband.”[177] Agamemnon addresses the Telamonian Teucros thus: “Telamonian Teucros, dear head, ruler of peoples, strike thus if you are to become a light to the Greeks and to your father Telamon, who reared you when you were little, and though you were a nothos (νόθος) took care of you in his own house.”[178] Medon the nothos (νόθος) of Oileus was a leader among the Greeks, and brother of Ajax.[179]