But it is yet a thousand-fold more painful to feel that the love which
every woman has a right to possess for herself alone, must be shared with
a hundred others!"

"There speaks the jealous wife!" exclaimed Amasis. "Would you not fancy
that I had often given her occasion to doubt my faithfulness?"

"No, no, my husband," answered Ladice, "in this point the Egyptian men
surpass other nations, that they remain content with that which they have
once loved; indeed I venture to assert that an Egyptian wife is the
happiest of women.

[According to Diodorus (I. 27) the queen of Egypt held a higher
position than the king himself. The monuments and lists of names
certainly prove that women could rule with sovereign power. The
husband of the heiress to the throne became king. They had their
own revenues (Diodorus I. 52) and when a princess, after death, was
admitted among the goddesses, she received her own priestesses.
(Edict of Canopus.) During the reigns of the Ptolemies many coins
were stamped with the queen's image and cities were named for them.
We notice also that sons, in speaking of their descent, more
frequently reckon it from the mother's than the father's side, that
a married woman is constantly alluded to as the "mistress" or "lady"
of the house, that according to many a Greek Papyrus they had entire
disposal of all their property, no matter in what it consisted, in
short that the weaker sex seems to have enjoyed equal influence with
the stronger.]

Even the Greeks, who in so many things may serve as patterns to us,
do not know how to appreciate woman rightly. Most of the young Greek