Although under Draco, the predecessor of Solon, the political degradation of the citizens of Greece may be said to have reached its height, and although the uprising of the masses against the usurpation of power by the few marks an era in the history of the Greeks, it was not until the dawn of the Periclean age that women had gained sufficient freedom to enable them to exercise any direct influence on thought, or on the principles underlying human conduct. We must bear in mind the fact that for five or six centuries the inferiority of women had been systematically and religiously taught. Ever since the rule of Cecrops, at which time doubtless the manner of reckoning descent began to be changed from the female to the male line, woman’s influence in Athens had gradually declined. The religio-physiological doctrine that in the office of reproduction the mother plays only an insignificant part had not only been proclaimed by Apollo but had been sanctioned also by Athene. It is recorded of Cecrops that “he instituted marriage and established a new religion.” Just here may be observed the key to the gradually declining position of the female element in the deity, and to the finally accepted dogma that the female is inferior to the male. Through the private ownership of land and the consequent dependency of women upon men, the way had been paved for this assumption—an assumption which had the effect to create in Ionian men the supreme and lofty contempt for women which is observed throughout their literature and laws. From the age of Solon to that of Pericles, the overwhelming degree of superiority assumed by Athenian men over women had uprooted in the former every vestige of restraint, at the same time that it had deprived them of the last trace of that respect for womanhood which under earlier and more natural conditions had been entertained. It has been frequently remarked that women took little or no part in the intellectual development of Greece; that during the most rapid progress of Greek men, there was no corresponding improvement in the position occupied by Greek women. From what is recorded relative to Athenian women from the time of Cecrops to that of Solon, one would scarcely expect to find them competing with men for the prizes of life. Later, however, that a considerable number of them did assert their independence, and that, defying the customs and traditions by which they were bound, did prove themselves the equals of men, may not be doubted.