It is the natural pathos and the artistic charm of the family groups which adorn the majority of the tombs of ancient Athens, which strongly impress all visitors to that beautiful city, even visitors to whom most of the works of Greek sculpture do not convey any strong emotion. There is scarcely any one, however hardened by Puritanic training or the ubiquitous ugliness of modern surroundings against what is simple and true and lovely in art, who does not feel, through the hard shell of Philistinism, some touchings of sympathy and delight, if he spends a morning in the Cerameicus, or an afternoon in the sepulchral rooms of the National Museum. The influence of ancient Athens has made the cemetery of modern Athens, in spite of many incongruities, one of the most beautiful in the world. If, with the remembrance of Athens still fresh, we visit the great cemeteries of London, it is impossible to express the feeling of ugliness and bad taste, of jejuneness in design and poverty of execution with which they oppress the spirits. Religious hope and consolation are among us, a chill resignation was the natural attitude of the Greeks in the presence of death; and yet we counterbalance the superiority of our religion by the inferiority of our taste and perceptions. It is very notable how complete in all these representations is the predominance of women, and how domestic is their tone. This fact can only be explained when we consider that these monuments belong, in the great majority of cases, to the time after the political greatness of Athens had been shattered at the battle of Aegospotami. In ancient Greece generally, and more especially at Athens, men gave to their wives and families only such time and care as they could spare from more engrossing occupations. By nature the Athenians were intensely political. And while Athens was a ruling power, and every citizen had a part in the game of politics played on a great scale, it was to public life that their thoughts and energies were directed, and the life of the home remained very much in the background. Every scholar is familiar with the contemptuous language applied by Aristophanes and Euripides to women; and Xenophon in his _Oeconomics_ regards that girl as best bred who had seen and heard the least, and had but the virtue of modesty. Secluded homes like these were not likely to claim very much of the life of the man whose whole soul was bent on the extension of the Athenian Empire. The fact is that all noble deeds in the world are bought at a price, and part of the price paid for the unrivalled burst of public splendour at Athens in the fifth century was the seclusion of women and the institution of slavery.