But Archilochus at least has once loved a woman. Our next poet, Simonides of Amorgos, seems to have been a misogynist from birth. His work now only exists in fragments, but it is so significant of a frame of mind that the two longest passages that survive deserve a verbatim translation. The first runs thus: Women, they are the greatest evil that God ever created. Even if they do appear to be useful at times, they usually turn out a curse to their owners. A man who lives with a wife never gets through a whole day without trouble, and it is no easy matter for him to drive away from his house that fiend abhorred, the foul fiend, Hunger. Moreover, just when a man is thinking to be merry at home—by God’s grace or man’s service—the woman always finds some ground of fault and puts on her armour for battle. Where there is a wife, you can never entertain a guest without fear of trouble. Again, the woman who seems to be most virtuous, mind you, may well be the most mischievous of all. Her husband gapes at her in admiration, but his neighbours laugh to see him, and the mistake he is making. Every one will praise his own wife—men are shrewd enough for that—and then will talk scandal about his neighbour’s, and all the time we do not realise that we are all in the same plight, for, as we said before, this is the greatest evil that God ever created. The other fragment, the catalogue of women, is longer and better known. It begins: From the first God made women’s characters different. Into one kind of woman He put the mind of a pig, lank and bristly, and in her house everything lies about in disorder, bedraggled with mud and rolling on the floor, while she herself, unwashed, in dirty clothes sits in the mire and waxes fat. The second woman God made out of a mischievous fox. She is cunning in all things alike; she knows everything, all that is bad and all that is good; often her speech is fair, but often it is evil, and her mood changes every day. The third sort of woman was made out of a dog, and she is the true child of her mother, ever restless. She wants to hear and know about everything; she is always peering about and roaming around, growling even though there is no one in sight. A man cannot stop her with threats; no, not even if in sudden anger he break her teeth with a stone. Soft talk is useless, too; it is all the same even if she happen to be sitting among strangers: a man finds her a continual and hopeless nuisance. The fourth woman the gods in heaven made out of mud—or rather they half made her—and then gave her to man. Such a one knows nothing, good or bad; the only business she has sense enough for is eating. Even if God sends a bitter winter’s day and she be shivering, she never will draw her chair closer to the fire.