The chief occupation of women, beyond the preparing of the meals, consisted in spinning and weaving. In Homer we see the wives of the nobles occupied in this way; and the custom of the women making the necessary articles of dress continued to prevail even when the luxury of later times, together with the degeneracy of the women themselves, had made the establishment of workshops and places of manufacture for this purpose necessary. Antique art has frequently treated these domestic occupations. The Attic divinities, Athene Ergane and Aphrodite Urania, as well as the Argive Here, Ilithyia, the protecting goddess of child-bearing, Persephone, and Artemis, all these plastic art represents as goddesses of fate, weaving the thread of life, and, at the same time, protecting female endeavors; in which two-fold quality they have the emblem of domestic activity, the distaff, as their attribute. Only a few representations of spinning goddesses now remain; but many are the pictures of mortal spinning-maidens painted on walls, chiefly for female use. For the spinning, a spindle was used, as is still the case in places where the northern spinning-wheel has not supplanted the antique custom. Homer describes noble ladies handling the distaff with the spindle belonging to it. Helen received a present of a golden spindle, with a silver basket to keep the thread in. The distaff, with a bundle of wool or flax fastened to its point, was held under the left arm, while the thumb and first finger of the right hand, slightly wetted, spun the thread at the end of which hung the spindle, made of metal. The web was, from the spindle, wound round a reel, to be further prepared on the loom. [Illustration: SOCIAL ENJOYMENT OF WOMEN (_From an ancient painting._)] Akin to spinning are the arts of weaving and embroidering. We frequently see in vase-paintings women with embroidering-frames in their laps. The skill of Greek ladies in embroidery is sufficiently proved by the tasteful embroidered patterns and borders on Greek dresses, both of men and women. The vase-paintings supply many examples. Our remarks about female duties in preparing the meal must be short. The heavy parts of the duty, like grinding the corn in hand-mills, were performed by servants. In the palace of Odysseus twelve female slaves were employed all day in grinding wheat and barley in an equal number of hand-mills, to supply the numerous guests. The hand-mill consisted (like those still used in some Greek islands) of two stones, each about two feet in diameter, the upper one of which was made to rotate by means of a crooked handle, so as to crush the corn poured through an opening in it.