It has been very frequently observed that, especially in Asia Minor, women in St. Paul's day were attaining in non-Christian society positions of great influence and dignity. We find them {227} very commonly holding priesthoods and public offices and magistracies. It would appear, however, that too much may be made of this. The populations of the Asiatic towns loved to be entertained with expensive games and largesses of money and grain, and to have temples built and endowed for them. Wealthy women of noble families were elected to priesthoods and offices where they could exercise their acceptable liberality in these ways. But the offices were rather of dignity than of practical government, and were closely associated with priesthoods. There is no evidence that women in Asiatic cities could assist at assemblies, or give votes, or speak in public, or serve on legations, or enter into political relations with the Roman authorities. There were women among the Asiarchs, but probably only when they were associated in an honorary manner with their husbands. In the early Christian church the influence of women was put to far nobler uses than in Asiatic cities; but their position relatively to men was not far different from what would have been recognized in the general society of that region[24]. In other parts of the empire the {228} women of the Christian church were conspicuously in advance of those outside. In somewhat later days of the Church there was some resentment at the high and free position assigned to women in the New Testament documents. Thus one celebrated MS. of the New Testament[25]--the Codex Bezae--changes 'not a few of the honourable Greek women and of men' (Acts xvii. 12) into 'of the Greeks and the honourable, many men and women.' In xvii. 34 it cuts out Damaris. And in xvii. 4 it changes the 'leading women' into 'wives of the leading men.' The spirit which prompted these changes in an early Christian scribe and reviser, has not been wanting in much later ages, though it had not a chance of tampering with our sacred texts. B. PARENTS AND CHILDREN. VI. 1-4. [Sidenote: _Parents and children_]