For several centuries, owing to her peculiar discipline, Sparta was, excepting Athens, the foremost State of Greece. But time is an enemy often not taken sufficiently into consideration by men who establish peculiar systems. And Lycurgus, who wished to make his system perpetual, did not fully consider the disintegrating effects which time exerts on all things temporal. "_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_ [You may repress natural propensities by force, but they will be certain to reappear]," says Horace, the wisest of Roman satirists; and the Spartan polity had attempted to repress nature in men and women and to control it by law. The great fault in the Lacedaemonian constitution was in effect the violation of the eternal laws which assign to each creature his role in the harmony of the world. Men are made for war, but they are made for peace as well. Therefore, as Lycurgus made the city an armed camp, in periods of peace the Spartan man "rusted like an unused sword in its scabbard," and in idleness at home or in garrison duty abroad fell an easy victim to avarice and lust. In his legislation concerning women, Lycurgus violated natural propensities to an even greater extent than he had in his laws governing the conduct of men. Woman was destined primarily for domestic life. She was created to bear children; but her kingdom is the home, with its manifold duties, and rearing children is as much her function as bearing them. Yet the Spartan lad was taken forcibly from his mother at the tender age of seven, and the Spartan maiden, while living at home, was subject to stringent regulations formulated and enforced by the State. Woman is intuitively interested in domestic duties, in housekeeping and clothes mending, and in caring for the innumerable wants of husband and children. Yet the _Syssitia_, or public meals, deprived her of the society of husband and sons, and took from her domestic cares because they were deemed too menial for a free Spartan. "Female slaves," averred Lycurgus, "are good enough to sit at home spinning and weaving; but who can expect a splendid offspring--the appropriate mission and duty of a free Spartan woman toward her country--from mothers brought up in such occupations?"