[Footnote 98: See this remarkable argument--Republic, v. pp. 453-456--[Greek: gunai=kes me/ntoi pollai\ pollô=n a)ndrô=n belti/ous ei)s polla/; to\ de\ o(/lon e)/chei ô(s su\ le/geis. Ou)de\n a)/ra e)sti\n e)pitê/deuma tô=n po/lin dioikou/ntôn gunaiko\s dio/ti gunê/, ou)/d' a)ndro\s dio/ti a)nê/r, a)ll' o(moi/ôs diesparme/nai ai( phu/seis e)n a)mphoi=n toi=n zô/oin, kai\ pa/ntôn me\n mete/chei gunê\ e)pitêdeuma/tôn kata\ phu/sin, pa/ntôn de\ a)nê/r; e)pi\ pa=si de\ a)sthene/steron gunê\ a)ndro/s] (p. 455 D). It would appear (from p. 455 C) that those who maintained the special fitness of women for certain occupations and their special unfitness for others, cited, as examples of occupations in which women surpassed men, weaving and cookery. But Plato denies this emphatically as a matter of fact; pronouncing that women were inferior to men (_i.e._ the best women to the best men) in weaving and cookery no less than in other things. We should have been glad to know what facts were present to his mind as bearing out such an assertion, and what observations were open to him of weaving as performed by males. In Greece, weaving was the occupation of women very generally, whether exclusively or not we can hardly say; in Phoenicia, during the Homeric times, the finest robes are woven by Sidonian women (Iliad vi. 289): in Egypt, on the contrary, it was habitually performed by men, and Herodotus enumerates this as one of the points in which the Egyptians differed from other countries (Herodot. ii. 35; Soph. Oed. Kol. 340, with the Scholia, and the curious citation contained therein from the [Greek: Barbarika\] of Nymphodorus). The process of weaving was also conducted in a different manner by the Egyptians. Whether Plato had seen finer webs in Egypt than in Greece we cannot say.] [Footnote 99: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A.] [Side-note: His arguments against the ordinary doctrine.]