The paucity of material, probably no great loss either in an artistic or a moral sense, has obscured the facts, but there seems little doubt that in this period literature was definitely used for the first time to degrade the position of women. The iambic metre was invented for the express purpose of satirical calumny, and the three chief iambic poets of the Alexandrian canon, Archilochus, Simonides, and Hipponax, in their scanty fragments all agree on one point: the chief object of their lampoons is—woman. At the beginning of this period the two sexes are fairly equal in their opportunities; at the end the female is plainly the inferior. Sappho and Erinna mark the turning-point in literature. Living at a time when it had not been made impossible for women to write, they showed that a woman could equal or surpass the male poets of her day. The few fragments of Erinna’s verse that we possess, _e.g._, the epigram on the portrait of Agatharchis and the pathetic elegy on the dead Baucis, reveal a talent at least as fine and strong as that of Alcæus; while of all the Greek lyrists, Sappho, both in reputation and as far as we can judge in actual achievement, holds by far the highest place. Later ages, indeed, found it difficult to believe that Sappho was a woman at all. The scandal of male gossip was inspired by a genuine and pathetic belief that such a genius as hers must at least have been touched with masculine vices. But in Sappho’s writings, which are our only real evidence, there is nothing distinctively ‘mannish’: she is neither gross nor tedious. In the technique of her art, metrical skill, the music of verse, she is at least the equal of any poet who has lived since her day; in thought and diction she is far superior to all her contemporaries. In dealing with the Ionian poetry, exact dates are impossible, but the lyric age extends roughly from the middle of the seventh to the middle of the sixth century. The earliest writer in order of time, and in some ways the most important, is Archilochus, the Burns or Villon of Greece—outlaw, soldier of fortune, poet, the first man to introduce his own personal feelings into literature. Archilochus has his own special reasons for hating women—‘Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo’—and, as he says, he had learned the great lesson, ‘If anyone hurts you, hurt her in return.’ Betrothed to Cleobule, the daughter of a wealthy citizen of Paros, he found his marriage forbidden by the lady’s father, Lycambes. The father’s reasons may be guessed, even from the few fragments of Archilochus that still remain. But the poet turned abruptly from amorist to misogynist, and spent the rest of his life in railing against his lost mistress and womankind in general.