----- Footnote 101: Athen. xii. 74. ----- We have seen above how absolute was the authority of women over their household, and this authority likewise extended to their children. The father no doubt could exercise, when he chose, considerable influence; but as most of his time was spent abroad, in business or politics, the chief charge of their early education, the first training of their intellect, the first rooting of their morals and shaping of their principles devolved upon the mother.[102] There have been writers, indeed, to whom this has seemed a circumstance to be lamented. But their judgment probably was warped by theory. In the original discipline of the mind, great attainments and experience of the world are less needed than tact to discern, and patience to apply, those minute incentives to action which women discover with a truer sagacity than we do. In this task, ever pleasing to a true mother, the aid of nurses, however, was usually obtained; nor are we, as Cramer observes, on this account to blame the Athenian ladies, so long as they did not, as in after times was too much the fashion, consider their whole duty performed when they had delivered their children to the nurse. ----- Footnote 102: Xenoph. Œcon. vii. 12. 24. Cf. A. Cramer. de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. 9. This writer acutely remarks, (p. 13,) that the words καὶ αὐτος ὁ πατὴρ in Plat. Protag. p. 325. d. show that it was seldom the father meddled with the matter. The mother, therefore, from early habit, was held in greater love and reverence than the father. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 187. -----