Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/138

102 women were present; and if the latter were hetæræ the case might be worse. We miss the evidence of the refined taste and æsthetic sense of limits with which the Greeks have been credited. Every woman had a "lord" and was under tutelage. No respectable woman would appear at table with men, even with her husband's guests in his own home, and it was a great breach of propriety for a man to enter another man's house when the women were there and the man away. There were strict rules of propriety of conduct and language in the presence of women, but the motive was respect for the men to whom they belonged, not for themselves. In spite of all this, adultery of wives is spoken of as a familiar fact; also women often ruled. In Sparta they were said to do so commonly; but this was in part because the system concentrated land and other property in their hands. In the fourth century there were some women who were distinguished for the kind of learning which was current in the period. One woman of good birth at Athens, about 320 B.C., married a cynic for love and followed him into his "beggar-life"; her parents disapproved but did not forbid. There were also some women in that period who wrote poetry. After the conquest of Alexander there is nothing more to be said about the sex mores of Greece, for in the general relaxation of all mores, all social energy, and all national traditions, the family fell into the general form which prevailed throughout the Hellenistic world. The facts which we have found show that the Greek family would easily undergo modification toward the Oriental form.