Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/112

 mere banal tradition of the feminine power to dazzle and awaken a passing admiration that we learn this. The hetairais' influence was no mere Cleopatra triumph aided and made possible mainly by sensuous accessories. No. The power of the hetairai was witnessed in the fact that their age was more prolific in ideas than any other, and that from their presence went forth troops of thinkers, artists, politicians, philosophers. Terrible as it may appear, these abandoned women were doing more for the world, and infinitely more for their sex, than were the poor respectable ladies hidden in their darkened homes. They showed the beauty of human life expanding unhindered. It blossomed, it is true, this life, in the path of the lava stream, but it blossomed. Not on the lava-swept slope, neither is it in the dark, unwholesome languor of the gynacée can the Human Garden be planted. The divorce between Virtue and Power ended, as we know, very badly. The poor undeveloped woman of the home was well avenged. Neither she, nor her husband, failed in gentleness. It was in the Virtue of Equals—Justice—that they failed. The civilisation perished which supplied the elements of a noble human life, but let them fall only on stony ground or fire-swept wildernesses.

Their conquerors, the Romans, warned by the fate of the fallen, installed woman in the home, and gave her serious and important duties. The Romans probably knew nothing of the nature of that feminine influence which drew forth the glowing and delicate flower of the national genius of the neighbouring