Charlotte Higgins - let's see if i can pull this off despite my zapped optic nerve. ive forgotten how to edit in blogger so it might be patchy. i've scored a facebook hit with my  posting of the wonderful Balliolene higgins' use of euripedes' medea. not hard to understand when my faithful followership is so largely blighty babes hitched to adonoi griks: i quote me: "i read to mrs R from charlotte higgins' wonderful 'its all greek to me', from euripedes medea. mrs R has had her share of new laws etc. she sits in bemused silence. "give me that book!" she says finally. 

Let euripedes speak: http://www.amazon.com/Its-All-Greek-Me-Hippocratic/dp/1906021430

"a foreign woman coming among new laws, New customs, needs the skill of magic to find out what her home could not teach her. How to treat the man whose bed she shares. And if in this exacting toil we are successful and our husband does not struggle under the marriage yoke, our life is enviable. Otherwise, death is better. If a man grows tired of the company at home, he can go out and find a cure for tediousness, we wives are forced to look to one man only. And they tell us we at home live free from danger, they go out to battle : fools! i'd rather stand 3 times in the front line than bear one child." The delightful ms higgins adds her own author comment - "Go sister!". such a good book