Athens, however, bigamy, though uncommon, was not a punishable offence.[1] There was some scandal about one or other or both of these ladies; probably, if there were any ground for it, it applied to Melitto, since Euripides lived for many years with Chœrilla upon, so far as is known, ordinary connubial terms. Athens, however, it must be recollected, in justice to both ladies, was a very gossiping city; nothing (we have it on the authority of St Paul, seconded by that of Demosthenes) pleased them so much as to tell and to hear news, and any news about Euripides was certain of welcome to those who had laughed at the representation of him in the "Acharnians." If it be fair to draw inferences from the wedded happiness of "the laureate fraternity of poets," it might appear that Euripides would have fared better had he remained a bachelor. Dante complains that Gemma, his wife, held him in subjection; Shakespeare was not quite comfortable, it would seem, at home; Milton's start in married life was unlucky; Wycherley and Addison were fearfully henpecked. If Christian husbands
- ↑ Hume, in his 19th Essay, writes:—"I have somewhere read that the republic of Athens, having lost many of its citizens by war and pestilence, allowed every man to marry two wives, in order the sooner to repair the waste which had been made by these calamities. The poet Euripides happened to be coupled to two noisy vixens, who so plagued him with their jealousies and quarrels that he became ever after a professed woman-hater; and is the only theatrical writer, perhaps the only poet, that ever entertained an aversion to the sex." The "good David," though sceptical enough on some subjects, was rather credulous on the score of anecdotes of this sort.
