There were two principal divisions in the interior of the houses, the one for the men and the other for the women, the women's apartments being back of the men's. The rooms were built around one or more open courts, by means of which light and air were admitted to the house. The homes were furnished with chairs and tables and couches and lamps and other household furniture and the kitchens were provided with pots and pans and bowls and sieves and many other articles. =Girls and Women.= In the heroic age of Greece, women were accorded much freedom. Yet it would seem that their lot was not much above that found with women in savagery. They had the heavy household cares and duties of savage women. They had the management of the provisions--the grinding of the grain, the preparing of the meals, etc. They had to look after the clothing, doing the spinning and the weaving and the making of the garments. They carried the heavy burdens of domestic life along with the care of the children. Yet the women were well respected and had high standing with the men of that time. In Sparta the state was everything. Strong and vigorous men were needed to protect the state and so must be provided for military life, and the mothers who were to bear them must be strong and courageous. The girls and women were allowed much greater freedom than in other parts of Greece. The girls received vigorous training, such as was given to the boys, having contests among themselves and even sometimes with the boys. In some of these contests the girls had to divest themselves of their apparel and appear thus before the public. This coming in contact with the males, the great freedom allowed to them, and the vigorous training did not spoil the purity of the girls, for adultery was scarcely known in Sparta. Nor did the training impair their physical appearance, as the Spartan women were noted for their beauty of person, although on account of the vigorous physical training this beauty was somewhat of a masculine type. Women in Athens were treated quite differently to what they were in Sparta. There was seemingly a contempt by the men for the women and especially so among the leaders and rulers. "The most enlightened of the Greeks limited the duties of a good wife, housewife, and mother, to the following points: 1. That she should be faithful to her husband. 2. That she should go abroad and expose herself to the view of strangers as little as possible. 3. That she should take care of what the husband acquired, and spend it with frugality; and, 4. That she should pay maternal attention to the younger children of both sexes, and keep an incessantly watchful eye upon her grown-up daughters."[155]