Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/403

 GYMNASTIC TRAINING. 337 Herodotus) married two wives, and inhabited two family-hearth^ a proceeding unknown at Sparta;" 1 yet the same privilege which, according to Xenophon, some Spartan women enjoyed without reproach from any one, and with perfect harmony between the inmates of both their houses. O. MullerS remarks and the evidence, as far as we know it, bears him out that love-mar- riages and genuine affection towards a wife were more familiar to Sparta than to Athens; though in the former, marital jealousy was a sentiment neither indulged nor recognized, while in the latter, it was intense and universal. 3 To reconcile the careful gymnastic training, which Xenophon and Plutarch mention, with that uncontrolled luxury and relaxa- tion which Aristotle condemns in the Spartan women, we may perhaps suppose that, in the time of the latter, the women of high position and wealth had contrived to emancipate themselves from the general obligation, and that it is of such particular cases that he chiefly speaks. He dwells especially upon the increasing tendency to accumulate property in the hands of the women, 4 which seems to have been still more conspicuous a century after- wards, in the reign of Agis the Third. And we may readily imagine that one of the employments of wealth thus acquired would be to purchase exemption from laborious training, an object more easy to accomplish in their case than in that of the men, whose services were required by the state as soldiers. By what steps so large a proportion as two-fifths of the landed prop- erty of the state came to be possessed by women, he partially explains to us. There were (he says) many sole heiresses, the dowries given by fathers to their daughters were very large, and the father had unlimited power of testamentary bequest, 1 Herodot. v. 39-40. Merd 6e ravra, yvval'caf l%uv 6i<o. digue lariaf O'IKEC, iroieav ovtiafiii ^TrapTnjTiKu. (Agis, c. 20; KJeomenes, c. 37-38,) of the conduct of Agesistrata and Kra- tesikleia, the wives of Agis and Kleomenes, and of the wife of Panteus (whom he does not name) on occasion of the deaths of their respective hus- bands, illustrate powerfully the strong conjugal affection of a Spartan woman, and her devoted adherence and fortitude in sharing with her husband the last extremities of suffering. 3 See the Oration of Lysias, De Csede Eratosthenis, Orat. i. p. 94. teq 4 Plutarch, Agis, c. 4.
 * Miiller, Hist of Dorians, iv. 4, 1. The stories recounted by Plutarch,