Existing fragments of the works of "Pythagorean Women" indicate their lofty views of moral perfection and harmony, and their practical judgment in everyday affairs. _Sophrosyne_ is constantly commended as the chief feminine virtue, a term connoting moderation, self-containedness, modesty, and wifely fidelity--in a word, all that is essentially womanly. The Neo-pythagorean philosopher, Iamblichus, in his biography of Pythagoras mentions fifteen celebrated women of the School. Other writers name other female adepts in Pythagorean philosophy, who lived during and after the time of Pythagoras. The number was so large that the comic poets Alexis and Cratinus the Younger, who, like most Athenians, had a genuine contempt for blue-stockings, made them the object of much drollery and ridicule. Of all the Pythagorean Women, none attained such exalted rank as Pythagoras's wife, the high-minded Theano. She combined virtue and wisdom in such perfect harmony that she was regarded in antiquity not only as the foremost representative of feminine scholarship, but also as the brilliant prototype of true womanhood. Of the life of Theano we know only a few characteristic incidents, and these give insight into her character mainly by relating "sayings" uttered by her on certain occasions. She was once asked for what she wished to be distinguished. She replied by quoting a verse of Homer (II. 1:31): "Minding the spindle and tending my marriage bed." Another time, she was asked what most became a wife; she answered: "to live entirely for her husband."--Again, she was asked what was love; "the sickness of a longing soul," was her answer. Once, while she was throwing off her mantle, it happened that her arm was exposed. A gentleman, struck by its beauty and shapeliness, exclaimed: "What a beautiful arm!" "But not for the public gaze," replied the wise Theano, while she hastily adjusted her robes. This remark has been quoted by Plutarch, by two Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Theodoret, and by the Byzantine authoress Anna Comnena, as a noteworthy apothegm, tending to promote womanly modesty and reserve. Theano was both prose writer and poetess. Of a long epic poem written by her in hexameters we have not even a fragment; of her philosophical works, there are still extant three letters of great charm and a fragment of a philosophic and didactic work _On Piety_. This fragment is too short for us to distinguish in it anything more than the highly developed reasoning power of the author; in her letters, however, discussing the rearing of children, the treatment of servants, and the suppression of jealousy, the sentiments are forceful, and the style has a familiar grace and tenderness. The relics that we have abound in axiomatic expressions, emphasizing womanly virtues and manifesting the lofty morality and high culture of the writer.