In silence and perfect composure, she looked after every one that was slain, and laid out the bodies as decently as circumstances would permit. And then, after all were killed, adjusting her own robe so that she might fall becomingly, she courageously submitted to the stroke of the executioner. Thus ended the second great movement for the reformation of Sparta, and henceforth Sparta, as an independent State; disappears from history. The story of the fall of Sparta owes its human interest chiefly to the women involved, and Plutarch recognizes this fact when, in concluding his story of Cleomenes, he, with the Greek dramatic contests before his mind, says: "Thus Lacedaemon, exhibiting a dramatic contest in which the women vied with the men, showed in her last days that virtue cannot be insulted by fortune." Chilonis, Agesistrata, Agiatis, Cratesiclea, the wife of Panteus,--what a pity that we do not know her name!--constitute the most admirable feminine group that Greek history offers us. What especially charms us is that they unite with the strength and self-abnegation of the ancient Spartan matron a sweetness, a tenderness, a womanliness, which we have not been accustomed to attribute to Spartan women. They are Spartans, but they are, above all, women. VIII THE ATHENIAN WOMAN Divergent views have been entertained by writers who have discussed the social position of woman at Athens and the estimation in which she was held by man. Many scholars have asserted that women were held in a durance not unlike that of the Oriental harem, that their life was a species of vassalage, and that they were treated with contempt by the other sex; while the few have contended that there existed a degree of emancipation differing but slightly from that of the female sex in modern times. As is usually the case, the truth lies in the golden mean between these two extremes; and a careful perusal of Greek authors, with the judgment directed to the spirit of their references to women rather than to a literal interpretation of disparate passages, will show that the status of the freeborn Athenian woman, while by no means ideal or conforming to our present standards, was far better than is usually conceded by the writers upon Greek life. It cannot be denied, however, that the social position of the Athenian woman was far inferior to that of the woman of the Heroic Age, and that, despite the boasted democracy and freedom of thought of the period, woman's status in the years of republican Athens was a reproach to the advanced culture and love of the good and the beautiful of which the city of the violet crown was the exponent. There had been a revolution in the habits of life of the Greeks since the days when Homer sang of the women of heroic Greece, and the student does not have to search far to discover the principal causes of the change.