keeping a constant watch upon the storeroom, and finally in attending
to the manufacture of nearly all the family clothing, she is not
likely to rust in busy idleness, or sit complaining of her lot. At
the many great public festivals she is always at least an onlooker
and often she marches proudly in the magnificent processions. She
is allowed to attend the tragedies in the theater.[+] Probably,
too, the family will own a country farm, and spend a part of the
year thereon. Here she will be allowed a delightful freedom of
movement, impossible in the closely built city. All in all, then,
she will complain of too much enforced activity rather than of too
much idleness.

[*]The custom of wearing sandals instead of shoes of course aided
the developing of beautiful feet.

[+]Not the comedies--they were too broad for refined women. But
the fact that Athenian ladies seem to have been allowed to attend
the tragedies is a tribute to their intellectual capacities. Only
an acute and intelligent mind can follow Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides.

Nevertheless our judgment upon the Athenian women is mainly one
of regret. Even if not discontented with their lot, they are not
realizing the full possibilities which Providence has placed within
the reach of womanhood, much less the womanhood of the mothers of
the warriors, poets, orators, and other immortals of Athens. One
great side of civilization which the city of Athens might develop
and realize is left unrealized. THIS CIVILIZATION OF ATHENS IS
TOO MASCULINE; it is therefore one sided, and in so far it does not
realize that ideal "Harmony" which is the average Athenian's boast.