Κουριδίη ἄλοχος in all probability means the wife who belonged by birth to the predominant and free race to which the husband also belonged. She was κουριδίη in opposition to the stranger and slave, who however, might have belonged to an equally free and predominant race in their own country,[187] and who might be, as Agamemnon says of Chryseis,[188] “not inferior to the regular wife in form or stature or in mind and skill in works.” The word does not signify, as many of the scholiasts influenced by later customs suggested, the lawfully wedded wife, as there was no law, but only custom, in Homeric times. In the same way the word nothos (νόθος) was afterwards taken to mean, and in later Greek did mean, illegitimate and spurious. But it could not mean illegitimate in Homeric times, for there was no law in regard to offspring. And it is doubtful if it could be spurious, for as Hruza has pointed out in the passage referred to, the Homeric Greeks, like some later Greeks mentioned hereafter, were probably of opinion that the son partook of the substance of the father and derived nothing essential from the mother, her function in birth being conceived to be very much that of the modern incubator. The sons were therefore always the genuine sons of their fathers. The word γνήσιος which in later Greek signified genuine, occurs only once in the ‘Iliad’[189] and once in the ‘Odyssey.’[190] Both passages may be later interpolations and the text of the passage in the ‘Odyssey’ is uncertain, for the Harleian MS. of the scholia has “born of wives” instead of “born of a wife.” It also contains a word which occurs nowhere else in Homer, ἰθαιγενής, “born in the straight line,” probably meaning born of a mother who belonged to the predominant race or, as moderns would say, to the good society of her city or country. The chance of text corruptions in this matter is seen in a passage in the ‘Iliad’[191] where one transcriber, not being able to understand the words καβησόθεν ἔνδον, altered them into Ἑκάβης νόθον υἱόν: “the nothic son of Hecabe”! (2) THE DARKER SIDE OF THE QUESTION. Some students of Homer may think that I have drawn too mild a picture of the life and character of Homeric women. They would base their criticism on some passages of which I have not taken note. These would be the following:-- In the ‘Odyssey’ a number of women behave badly. They take the side of the suitors, and act insolently to Ulysses on his return. Especially the slave Melantho, to whom Penelope had been particularly kind, is shameless and forward, and Ulysses applies to her epithets that express strong contempt. But such cases are exceedingly few, and are well accounted for by special circumstances.