To intermix with men. But mark me well,
Whoe'er henceforth dares disobey my orders--
Be it man or woman, old or young--
Vengeance shall burst upon him, the decree
Stands irreversible, and he shall die.
War is no female province, but the scene
For men. Hence, home! nor spread your mischiefs here.
Hear you, or not? Or speak I to the deaf?"

Pericles, in his famous funeral oration over those who fell in the
Peloponnesian war, thus addresses the Athenian women: "To the wives who
will henceforth live in widowhood, I will speak, in one short sentence
only, of womanly virtue. She is the best woman who is most truly a woman,
and her reputation is the highest whose name is never in the mouths of men
for good or for evil."

Seclusion was the best thing that the most intellectual pre-Christian
republic could give to its honorable women. The freedom with which the
hetairse, who were foreigners or daughters of slaves, mingled with
statesmen and philosophers, brought them open political influence, but not
a hint of voting power or of office-holding.

For the sake of brevity, I will confine my reference to Roman custom to a
single pregnant sentence from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Empire."
He says: "In every age and country the wiser, or at least the stronger of
the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies,
however, and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of
chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a
singular exception, and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute