‘It was at midnight that ruin came. Dinner was over and upon men’s eyes sweet sleep began to spread. All the songs had been sung: my lord had done with the sacrificial feast and its revelry and was lying in my bower, spear on peg, for no longer had he to keep watch against the throng of shipmen who had set foot on our Ilian land of Troy. As for me, one ringlet of hair I had still to bring to order under my tight-bound snood, and I was gazing into the infinite reflections of my golden mirror ere I should throw myself upon the pillows of my bed. But lo! a cry went through the city and a cheer rang out in Troy-town—“Sons of the Greeks—when, ah when, will you sack the watch tower of Ilion and get you home at last?” Then I fled from my dear couch, with only my smock upon me, like some Dorian maid, and crouched by Artemis’ holy shrine. But woe is me, no help found I there. My own man, my bed-fellow, I saw slain before me; and then I was dragged down to the sea shore, and in anguish swooned away.’ Sometimes it is a vivid description of outdoor life, such as the picture of the washing-place, where the humbler sort of women could meet and enjoy a little leisure, ‘that pleasant evil,’ and gossip together. ‘There is a rock that drips, men say, with water from the Ocean’s bed and sends from the cliff an ever-running stream, for us to catch in our pitchers. There I met a friend who was washing pieces of fresh-dyed cloth in the river water and laying them in the warm sun upon the flat stones. From her lips first this news of my lady came to me.’ Every mood of a woman’s mind is represented: now sad— ‘Discordant is the music of a woman’s life: pitiable helplessness is her lot, an evil housemate, indeed. There is the trouble of child birth, the trouble of woman’s weakness.’—(_Hippolytus._) or— ‘A censorious thing is womankind. If women get a small basis for scandal they soon add more. Women take a kind of pleasure in talking insincerely about one another.’—(_Phoenissae._) now triumphant— ‘Children, promise of children’s children to be, Children to help their sorrow, to make more sweet their pleasure, To speak with their enemy! Rather, I say, than gold, than a palace of pride, Give me children at home, right heritors of my blood. Let the miser plead for the childless side: I will none of it. Wealth denied, Children given, I bless them and cleave to the better good’ —(_Ion. Verrall’s translation._) or— A strange and wondrous thing for women are the children they bear in travail. Womankind loves a baby.—(_Phoenissae._) All the questions of sex are considered and judged with clearest sense.