Some foreign women said to Gorgo, wife of king Leonidas, “You Spartans are the only women that govern men.” “Because we are the only women who give birth to men,” she replied. This answer was in allusion to their own strength and vigor, and to the pains they took to make their boys bold and hardy. The Lacedæmonian women seem to have had a share in all the concerns of the commonwealth; and during the early portions of their history they appear to have been well worthy of the respect paid to them. When a new senator was chosen, he was crowned with a garland, and the women assembled to sing his domestic virtues and his warlike courage. At the public feast given in honor of his election, he called the female relative for whom he had the greatest esteem and gave her a portion, saying, “That which I received as a mark of honor, I give to you.” When Cleomenes, king of Sparta, was beset with powerful enemies, the king of Egypt agreed to furnish him with succors, provided he would send his mother and his children as hostages. Filial respect and tenderness made the prince extremely unwilling to name this requisition. His mother, perceiving that he made an effort to conceal something from her, persuaded her friends to tell her what it was. As soon as she heard it, she laughed outright, and said, “Was this the thing you so long hesitated to communicate? Put us on board a ship, and send this old carcase of mine wherever you think it may be of the most use to Sparta, before age renders it good for nothing, and sinks it into the grave.” When everything was ready for departure, she, being alone with her son, saw that he struggled hard with emotion. She threw her arms around him, and said, “King of the Lacedæmonians, be careful that we do nothing unworthy of Sparta! This alone is in our power; the event belongs to the gods.” When Cleombrotus rebelled against his wife’s father, in spite of her entreaties, and usurped the kingdom, Chelonis left her husband and followed the fallen fortunes of her parent; but when the tide turned, and Cleombrotus was in disgrace and danger, she joined her husband as a suppliant for royal mercy, and was found sitting by him, with the utmost tenderness, with her two children at her feet. She assured her father that if his submission and her tears could not save his life, she would die before him. The king, softened by her entreaties, changed the intended sentence of death into exile, and begged his daughter to remain with a father who loved her so affectionately. But Chelonis could not be persuaded. She followed her husband into banishment. Such was the character of Spartan women in the earlier periods of their history; but in later times their boldness and immodesty increased to such a degree that they became a by-word and a reproach throughout Greece.