No one, I think, who is acquainted with the recently developed facts relative to human growth, can carefully read _The Iliad_ without observing the similarity existing between the position occupied by the women of Greece in Homer’s time, and that of the women among the tribes and races in a somewhat lower stage of development. On board the “roomy ships” of the Greeks, the prizes parcelled out to the chiefs were women. We observe that even the daughters of influential and wealthy priests, like the oracle of Apollo, might be “carried off”—an act for which there was absolutely no redress except perhaps an appeal to the gods. Briseis also was a captured prize assigned to Achilles by the Greek warriors. Notwithstanding the fact that wives were still captured, we frequently find women possessed of both wealth and influence. Helen, although the wife of Meneluas, had vast treasure which she was able to take away with her when she was carried off by Paris—treasure over which neither of her husbands seems to have had any control. Laothoë, the aged wife of Priam, had gold and brass of her own with which to ransom her sons,[179] and Andromache, the wife of Hector, who came to Ilium from “among the woody slopes of Placos,” brought with her not only wealth but sufficient influence to secure for her the respect of the king’s household.[180] [179] _The Iliad_, book xxii. [180] _Ibid._, book vi. We have seen that in an earlier age, at a time when women were free, wives had to be captured from foreign tribes; but later, after the _ba’al_ form of marriage had become established, wives were for the most part selected from the ranks of native-born women, while foreign women were usually utilized as concubines. It is true that in the Homeric age, foreign women sometimes became the wedded wives of their captors, but unless they possessed great wealth, or unless they were the daughters of kings, they were unable to command that degree of consideration due to those who were native-born. The practice, during the early history of the Greeks, of securing foreign women for concubines is doubtless the source whence sprang the custom among the Athenians of later times, of importing all classes of “kept women” from other countries, Athenian women only being reserved for wives. During the latter stage of barbarism a marked change in the government and in the fundamental principles regulating human conduct had taken place. A review of the facts connected with the history of Greek society during the ages between Homer and Solon shows that coeval with the decline of the cardinal principles of the gens, namely, justice, equality, and fraternity, there had been also a corresponding change in the relations of the sexes; that during the time in which egoism or selfishness had gained the ascendancy over the early altruistic principles developed in human society, woman’s influence had steadily declined.[181]