Aristotle, with his unerring acumen, made this observation: “That all warlike races are prone to the love of women,” and also that they tend to “fall under the dominion of their wives.”[385] Undoubtedly this is the instinct of the soldier, and, in martial ages, women are idealized. When a foreigner asked the wife of Leonidas, “Why do you Lacedæmonian wives, unlike all others, govern your husbands?” the Spartan answered, “Because we alone are the mothers of men.” When at Rome Tiberius killed the male serpent, thereby devoting himself to death to save Cornelia, Plutarch, telling the story, remarked, “that Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable, in choosing to die for such a woman; who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown, and would have married her, refused it, and chose rather to live a widow.”[386] In the Middle Ages, that greatest of martial and imaginative epochs, marriage developed into the most solemn of sacraments, and the worship of women became the popular religion. In France, especially, the centre of thought, enthusiasm, and war, from the mighty fane of Paris downward, the churches were dedicated to Mary, and the vow of chivalry bound the knight to fight for God and for his lady. “It hath bene through all ages ever seene That with the praise of armes and chevalrie The prize of beautie still hath ioyned beene.”[387] It might almost be said that the destinies of France have been moulded by men’s love for women, and that this influence still prevailed down to the advent of the usurers after the rout of Waterloo. On the other hand, nature bred a type of woman fit to mate with the imaginative man. The devotion of Saint Clara to Saint Francis is one of the most exquisite lyrics of the Church, and for six hundred years Héloïse remained an ideal of the West. Perhaps, indeed, that strange blending of tenderness and enthusiasm, which was peculiar to the mediæval mind, never found more refined and exalted expression than in the simple hymn which Héloïse is said to have composed and sung at the grave of Abélard:-- “Tecum fata sum perpessa; Tecum dormiam defessa, Et in Sion veniam. Solve crucem, Due ad lucem Degravatam animam.”