Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/400

 384 US TORY OF GREECE. that nearly half (Le landed property of Laconia had come tc belong to them. The exemption of the women from all control, formed, in his eye, a pointed contrast with the rigorous discipline imposed upon the men, and a contrast hardly less pointed with the condition of women in other Grecian cities, where they were habitually confined to the interior of the house, and seldom appeared in public. While the Spartan husband went through the hard details of his ascetic life, and dined on the plainest fare at the Pheidition, or mess, the wife (it appears) maintained an ample and luxurious establishment at home ; and the desire to provide for such outlay was one of the causes of that love of money which prevailed among men forbidden to enjoy it in the ordinary ways. To explain this antithesis between the treatment of the two sexes at Sparta, Aristotle was informed that Lykurgus had tried to bring the women no less than the men under a system of discipline, but that they made so obsti nate a resistance as to compel him to desist. 1 The view here given by the philosopher, and deserving of course careful attention, is not easy to reconcile with that of Xenophon and Plutarch, who look upon the Spartan Avomen from a different side, and represent them as worthy and homo- geneous companions to the men. The Lykurgean system (as these authors describe it) considering the women as a part of the state, and not as a part of the house, placed them under training hardly less than the men. Its grand purpose, the main- tenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, determined both the treatment of the younger women, and the regulations as to the intercourse of the sexes. " Female slaves are good enough (Lykurgus thought) to sit at home spinning and weaving, but who can expect a splendid offspring, the appropriate mission and duty of a free Spartan woman towards her country, from mothers brought up in such occupations ?" 2 Pursuant to these views, the Spartan damsels underwent a bodily training analogous to that of the Spartan youth, being formally exercised, and contend- ing with each other in running, wrestling, and boxing, agreeably to the forms of the Grecian agones. They seem to have worn a 1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 5, 8, 11. 1 Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i. 3-4 ; Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13-14.