'The poet was a cynic,' said Glaucus, 'and hated women.'

'He spoke according to the customs of his country, and that country is
your boasted Greece.'

'To different periods different customs. Had our forefathers known
Ione, they had made a different law.'

'Did you learn these pretty gallantries at Rome?' said Arbaces, with
ill-suppressed emotion.

'One certainly would not go for gallantries to Egypt,' retorted Glaucus,
playing carelessly with his chain.

'Come, come,' said Ione, hastening to interrupt a conversation which she
saw, to her great distress, was so little likely to cement the intimacy
she had desired to effect between Glaucus and her friend, 'Arbaces must
not be so hard upon his poor pupil. An orphan, and without a mother's
care, I may be to blame for the independent and almost masculine liberty
of life that I have chosen: yet it is not greater than the Roman women
are accustomed to--it is not greater than the Grecian ought to be.
Alas! is it only to be among men that freedom and virtue are to be
deemed united? Why should the slavery that destroys you be considered
the only method to preserve us? Ah! believe me, it has been the great
error of men--and one that has worked bitterly on their destinies--to
imagine that the nature of women is (I will not say inferior, that may
be so, but) so different from their own, in making laws unfavorable to
the intellectual advancement of women. Have they not, in so doing, made
laws against their children, whom women are to rear?--against the