These are only some of the points in which the Greeks differed widely from us, and we must realize the difference before we can read the history aright. But this history has to face other difficulties. The influence of woman is often exercised most powerfully in such a quiet and unobtrusive manner that no historian can take note of it. Who, for instance, could narrate the action of beauty and of beautiful ways upon thousands of hearts? The influence is silent, but not the less potent. We have this additional difficulty in Greece, that almost all we know of women is derived from men. Now, men rarely write dispassionately of women. They either are in love with them, or hate them, or pretend to hate them. They have had sweet or bitter experience of them. And when they do write about them, they write according to that experience. But not only is the history of Greek women written by men, but it was written for men. This fact must be specially remembered when we have to deal with the utterances of the comic poets, for women did not act in the plays, nor is it probable that they were even present at the comedies during the best days of Athens. But men taking the parts of women are sure to act them with all the exaggeration and licence which are natural to such representations. No great stress must, therefore, be laid on the wild abuse of women which can be culled in large abundance from Greek writers. One early satirical poet[6] (Simonides of Amorgos) divides women into ten classes, of which only one is good. And he proceeds with his invective very much as if woman did not exist. “Listen, O people,” says Susarion, who may be called the inventor of comedy. “Susarion says this: Women are an evil, but nevertheless, O countrymen, it is not possible to have a househould without evil, for to marry is an evil and not to marry is an evil.”[7] (Stob. 69, 2). A satiric poet (Hipponax)[8] gives it as his opinion that “a man has only two very pleasant days with his wife--one when he marries her, the other when he buries her.” A comic poet (Philemon) says pithily, “Woman is an immortal necessary evil.”[9] Euripides says:-- “Terrible is the force of the waves of the sea, terrible the rush of river and the blasts of hot fire, terrible is poverty, and terrible are a thousand other things; but none is such a terrible evil as woman. No painter could adequately represent her: no language can describe her; but if she is the creation of any of the gods, let him know that he is a very great creator of evils and a foe to mortals.” (Stob. 73, 1.)