In Athens, while the citizen wives were unable to throw off the
restrictions of the laws which kept them at home, the great number of
_hetera_, or stranger women, were the glory of the "Golden Age." The
homes of these women who were free from the burden of too many
children became the gathering places of philosophers, poets, sculptors
and statesmen. The _hetera_ were their companions, their inspiration
and their teachers. Aspasia, one of the greatest women of antiquity,
was such an emancipated individuality. True to the urge of the
feminine spirit, she, like Sappho, the poetess of Lesbia, sought to
arouse the Greek wives to the expression of their individual selves.
One writer says of her efforts: "This woman determined to do her
utmost to elevate her sex. The one method of culture open to women at
that time was poetry. There was no other form of literature, and
accordingly she systematically trained her pupils to be poets, and to
weave into the verse the noblest maxims of the intellect and the
deepest emotions of the heart. Young pupils with richly endowed minds
flocked to her from all countries and formed a kind of Woman's
College.

"There can be no doubt that these young women were impelled to seek
the society of Sappho from disgust with the low drudgery and
monotonous routine to which woman's life was sacrificed, and they were
anxious to rise to something nobler and better."

Can there be any doubt that the unfortunate "citizen wives" of Athens,
bound by law to their homes, envied the brilliant careers of the
"stranger women," and sought all possible means of freedom? And can
there be any doubt that they acquiesced in the practice of infanticide
as a means to that end? Otherwise, how could the custom of destroying