Next in privilege and position to the "lady" is the mistress, the woman who is selected by the ruling class man, not primarily to bear his children, but to entertain and divert him. She may, of course, bear children also. In barbaric societies, and up to quite recent times, the importance of the ruling class man was indicated by the number of concubines he had, and the position of these women was hardly inferior to that of the wife or queen. In the days of the French monarchy, the king's mistress was frequently more important than the queen; she was a woman of ability, maintaining her supremacy in the intrigues of the court. In ancient Greek society, the "hetairae" were a recognized class, and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was the most brilliant and most conspicuous woman in Athens. In modern France, the position of the mistress is recognized by the phrase "demi-monde," or half-world. The American plutocracy has developed upon a superstructure of Puritanism, and therefore, in America, hypocrisy is necessary. But in the great cities of America, the vast majority of the ruling class men keep mistresses before marriage, and a great many keep them afterwards; and these mistresses are coming to be more and more openly flaunted, and to acquire more and more of what is called "social position." It is possible now in the "smart set" for a lady to accept the status of mistress, delicately veiled, without losing caste thereby, and actresses and other free lance women who got their start in life by taking the position of mistress, are coming more and more to be recognized as "ladies," and to be received into what are called the "best circles." There remains to be considered the position of the lower class women. In barbarous society these women were very little different from slaves. They had no rights of their own, except such rights as their master man chose to allow them for his own convenience. They were sold in marriage by their parents, and they went where they were sold, and obeyed their new master. They became his household drudges, and reserved their affections for him; if they failed to do this, he stoned them to death, or strangled them with a cord and tied them in a sack and threw them into the river.