Every inducement was offered to encourage matrimony, and bachelors were the objects of general scorn and derision. "Those who continued bachelors," says Plutarch, "were in a degree disfranchised by law; for they were excluded from the sight of the public processions in which the young men and maidens danced naked, and in the winter-time the officers compelled them to walk naked round the market place, singing, as they went, a certain song to their own disgrace, that they justly suffered this punishment for disobeying the laws." Furthermore, at a certain festival the women themselves sought to bring these misguided individuals to a proper sense of their duty by dragging them round an altar and continually inflicting blows upon them. Without doubt, the maidens were all inclined to matrimony, as it enhanced their influence and enabled them to fulfil their mission; and the rulers were ever ready to provide husbands for them. A kind of disgrace attached to childlessness. Men who were not fathers were denied the respect and observance which the young men of Sparta regularly paid their elders. On one occasion, Dercyllidas, a commander of great renown, entered an assembly. A young Spartan, contrary to custom, failed to rise at his approach. The veteran soldier was surprised. "You have no sons," said the youth, "who will one day pay the same honor to me." And public opinion justified the excuse. The effects of the athletic training upon the physical nature of woman were most commendable. The Spartan maiden was renowned throughout Greece for preeminence in vigor of body and beauty of form. Even the Athenian was impressed by this. Lysistrata, in the play of Aristophanes, in greeting Lampito, the delegate from Sparta, who has come to a women's conference, speaks thus: "O dearest Laconian, O Lampito, welcome! How beautiful you look, sweetest one! What a fresh color! How vigorous your body is! What beautiful breasts you have! Why, you could throttle an ox!" To this greeting comes the reply: "Yes, I think I could, by Castor and Pollux! for I practise gymnastics and leap high." Ideals of beauty differ in different ages and countries, and there is no doubt that Lampito was a magnificent specimen of woman; yet it may be doubted whether such masculine vigor is consonant with the highest moral and spiritual development, which, after all, is the chief factor in womanly charm. Spartan women were in demand everywhere as nurses, and were universally respected for their vigor and prowess; yet it was the equally healthy, but more graceful, Ionian woman who was chosen as the model of the statues of the goddess of love and beauty. Spartan discipline produced beautiful animals, but any system which dulled the sensibilities could hardly inculcate that grace and sweetness and warmth of temperament which are essential to beauty.