Although the Spartan system prescribed rigid discipline for the Spartan woman up to the time of motherhood, after that time it left her life altogether unregulated by law. Plato, who was in many respects a great admirer of the Spartans, criticises this singular defect. He found fault with a system which regarded woman only as a mother, and consequently, when children had been born and turned over to the State, did not by law provide occupation for the mothers or in any way regulate their conduct. There was nothing to restrain their luxury or keep them loyal to duty and probity. Higher culture was discouraged, intercourse with strangers was forbidden, and woman was left largely to her own devices for employment and recreation; but she was deprived in large measure of the usual feminine occupations. During the old days, when the State was the all in all of the citizens, and the mothers were urging on husbands and sons to valiant deeds, the evils of the Lycurgan system did not show themselves; but when the crisis came, and Sparta lost her supremacy in Greek affairs, then old manners gave way, vice and weakness rushed in, and men and women alike were debauched and evil. Aristotle, who was at his zenith during the latter part of the fourth century before Christ, is severe in his denunciations of the license of the Spartan women. This he regards as defeating the intention of the Spartan constitution and subversive of the good order of the State. He argues that, while Lycurgus sought to make the whole State hardy and temperate, and succeeded in the case of the men, he had not done so with the women, who lived in every sort of intemperance and luxury. He charges that the Spartan men are under the domination of their wives--Ares being ever susceptible to the wishes and inclinations of Aphrodite. And the result is the same, he adds, "whether women rule or the rulers are ruled by women." He also attacks the courage of the women, stating that in a Theban invasion they had been utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy. He finds them prone to avarice, and regrets that, owing to the inequality of the laws governing property, more than two-fifths of the whole country was already in the hands of women. Nature in the end asserted herself, and the evils inherent in the Lycurgan system brought about the fall of the State. Sparta had sacrificed the liberties of her citizens, she had despised the laws of nature in the destiny and education of women, she had banished the arts, and had sought to keep out every humanizing influence. Consequently, when that constitution, inflexible and in certain respects immoral and unnatural, was impaired, her decline was rapid. Sad it is that Aristotle should have perceived in the immorality, the greed, the misconduct, of the women, one of the causes of the fall of Sparta!