When at length her husband confesses that he was wrong, she is ready at once to receive him back into her affection, and restore him all the old love. The resemblance between her character and some of the circumstances of her life and those of Desdemona has struck some critics, and is worth examination. Both Molière and Dryden have imitated the ‘Amphitruo’ of Plautus, but there cannot be a doubt that the play of the Roman is the purest of the three and that of the Englishman the most impure, and that the character of Alcmena is not improved by Molière, if not deteriorated, and is certainly made worse by the handling of Dryden. There is another wife in Plautus whose character is very beautiful, so far as we have a glimpse of it. In the opening scenes of the ‘Stichus,’ there are two married sisters, bearing the names of Panegyris and Pinacium in the old editions, but those of Philumena and Pamphila in the Ambrosian palimpsest. Their husbands have been a considerable time away from them, and their father thinks that they might now come under his protection, and marry again according to a liberty allowed by law in the case of absconding husbands. Pamphila (Pinacium) has strong affection for her husband, and refuses. She thus urges her sister to continue faithful:-- “It is reasonable, in my opinion, that all wise people should attend to and do their duty. Wherefore, I, though I am younger than you, warn you to remember your duty; and if our husbands should be wicked, and should act otherwise than is right, so much the more, by Pollux, does it become us to remember to do our duty with might and main.”[245] She is resolved also to be firm towards her father, but at the same time, as she has a true affection for him and respect for his authority, she will not have recourse to any other means than earnest entreaty. Unfortunately Pamphila disappears from the play after the introductory scenes, or if she appeared again, that portion of the play has been lost. There is one other free woman who deserves special notice--the priestess of the Temple of Venus in the ‘Rudens.’ Priestesses, as Benoist has remarked, had much more liberty of movement than ordinary matrons, and could appear in public on many occasions on which the others could not. When Palæstra and Ampelisca flee to her temple for refuge, she is astonished to find that they have not come in white garments, and with victims, as visitors to a temple should; but no sooner does she learn the real state of the case than she remembers mercy, and not sacrifice, and gives them a hearty welcome. With all the power she possesses she will defend and help them.