Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/36

20 were now no longer occupied as much with the State, consequently they could devote themselves more to women; men were now deprived of their public calling, consequently they looked for compensation in the domestic world. Thus also as playthings of the courts and favorites of despots, women are offered rich opportunities in monarchies to achieve a false importance through intrigues and in the relation of mistresses. Upon them falls the favor of the despot, and from them glory and favors radiate downwards. Thus the exaltation of women naturally has for its opposite pole the humiliation of men, and these, in such humiliation, as naturally transform their former contempt of women into that extravagant lovecult and senseless gallantry which spread from Alexandria over the Grecian world.

From the Greeks we proceed to the Romans. These treated women in a truly Spartan manner, only with a more glaring stamp of severity and brutality, in accordance with their severe character. In the most flourishing time of the Roman republic woman was little more than the slave of man. She was completely his property; he