condition in primitive Judea, in early Greece, in republican Rome, or
among the Germans who invaded southern Europe in the third and fourth
centuries of our era.

[16] _Proverbs_ xxxi, 10.

Man's jealousy of his woman as a source of pleasure and honor to
himself, and to his family, must have always acted to limit woman's
freedom, even while it gave her protection and a secure position in
society. With the development of settled government in city states, like
Athens or early Rome, the necessity for defining citizenship made the
family increasingly a political institution. A man's offspring through
slave women, concubines, or "strangers" lived outside the citizen group,
and so were negligible; but the citizen woman's children were citizens,
and so she became a jealously guarded political institution. The
established family became the test of civic, military, and property
rights. The regulations limiting the freedom of girls and women were
jealously enforced, since mismating might open the treasures of
citizenship to any low born or foreign adventurer.[17]

[17] T.G. TUCKER, _Life in Ancient Athens_, Chapter VIII, Macmillan Co.,
1906.

In the ancient Orient, in Greece, Rome, and in later Europe, these
stages have been repeated again and again. Woman is first a slave,
stolen or bought, protected by sexual interest to which is later added
social custom and religious sanction. Early civilization centers around
the woman, so that she becomes in some degree the center of the
home-staying group. In primitive civilization man takes over woman's
most important activities; but she gains a fixed position, protected,