to the custom in other Grecian towns, especially Athens, whose princes in early times, as Megacles, Miltiades, &c., frequently contracted marriages with foreigners. 4. The domestic relation of the wife to her husband among the Dorians was in general the same as that of the ancient western nations, described by Homer as universal among the Greeks, and which existed at Rome till a late period; the only difference being, that the peculiarities of the custom were preserved by the Dorians more strictly than elsewhere. It formed a striking contrast with the habits of the Ionic Athenians, with whom the ancient custom of Greece was almost entirely supplanted by that of the east.(1372) Amongst the Ionians of Asia, the wife (as we are informed by Herodotus(1373)) shared indeed the bed, but not the table of her husband; she dared not call him by his name, but addressed him with the title of lord, and lived secluded in the interior of the house: on this model the most important relations between man and wife were regulated at Athens. But amongst the Dorians of Sparta, the wife(1374) was honoured by her husband with the title of mistress (δέσποινα),(1375) (a gallantry belonging to the north of Greece, and also practised by the Thessalians(1376)), which was used neither ironically nor unmeaningly. Nay, so strange did the importance which the Lacedæmonian women enjoyed, and the influence which they exercised as the managers of their household, and mothers of families, appear to the Greeks, at a time when the prevalence of Athenian manners prevented a due consideration for national customs, that Aristotle(1377) supposed Lycurgus to have attempted, but without success, to regulate the life of women as he had that of the men; and the Spartans were frequently censured for submitting to the yoke of their wives.(1378) Nevertheless Alcman, generally a great admirer of the beauty of Lacedæmonian women, could say, “It becomes a man to say much, and a woman to rejoice at all she hears.”(1379) In accusing the women of Sparta, however, for not essentially assisting their country in times of necessity, Aristotle has in the first place required of them a duty which even in Sparta lay out of their sphere, and in the second place, his assertion has been sufficiently contradicted by the events of a subsequent period, in the last days of Sparta, which acquired a surprising lustre from female valour.(1380) On the whole, however, little as the Athenians esteemed their own women, they involuntarily revered the heroines of Sparta, such as Gorgo the wife of Leonidas, Lampito the daughter of Leotychidas, the wife of Archidamus and mother of Agis;(1381) and this feeling is sometimes apparent even in the coarse jests of Aristophanes.