Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle — Aristotle — John Shaqi
Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle
Aristotle · en
Coming now to the second class, that of grown men, we get three main
types: there is the mean man, the blusterer, and the simpleton. Jason
and Admetus are mean men: mean, selfish and cowardly: capable of asking
a woman to save their lives at the risk of her own, but incapable of
gratitude. Still they are handsome, good company, and quite unconscious
of their own shortcomings. Menelaus is a worse type and one that the
poet especially disliked. He adds to meanness the vices of cruelty and
treachery and is the slave of passion. In the Orestes he is coldly
treacherous, in the Andromache treacherous and cruel, in the other plays
where he appears merely despicable. Then come the blusterers: Agamemnon
and Heracles, Lycus and Eurystheus. The first two are the ordinary
sensual man: brave enough and capable of great deeds, but unfaithful,
untruthful and self-indulgent: they seem to be strong, and they are
strong in body; but they have no strength of mind. Lycus and Eurystheus
are men of a lower type, mere bullies depending solely on force, and
Euripides does not attempt to make them interesting. Lastly, there
are the simpletons: Xuthus, Thoas and Theoclymenus—an easy prey for
the clever women—the Priestess, Iphigenia, Helen who use them as they
will. They are the men who with advancing age will be such as Ægeus and
Amphitryon. And they almost exhaust the list in our second class. There
remain only Theseus, a patriotic abstraction, the male counterpart of
Athena; Creon, ‘the King’—the name is given to more than one person—an
official rather than a living character; and some few persons in the
second plan of action: such as the herald Talthybius and the peasant
farmer in the Electra. These two latter occupy very subordinate
positions, but they are in every way more manly, more generous, more
lovable than the great men whom they serve. If we except them, there is
not a grown man in the whole theatre of Euripides who can be regarded
with sympathy.