There probably has never been a time since the dominion of man began when the more sensitive and better endowed among women have not secretly rebelled against the tyranny exercised over them, and, throughout the ages, whenever an opportunity has been offered, large numbers of these women, have never failed to make known their discontent. Greek women were no exception to this rule. Their first step toward liberty was to free themselves from the galling chain imposed upon them by marriage, a position in which, as has been shown, wives were simply household slaves, tools of their imperious and degenerate masters. Greek women, in the Periclean age, simply assumed the control of their persons and by so doing provoked the maledictions of future ages, ages in which sensualism still reigned supreme. For reasons which have already been explained, the foremost women in Greece, and in fact all women who during the Periclean age were engaged in art, literature, philosophy, and statesmanship, belonged to the class known as the hetairai, a term which, through the excessive growth or sensuality and superstition, subsequently became a term of reproach. Whatever may have been the importance of the services rendered by these women to society, such services would have been ignored, or, if not altogether ignored, would have been reflected upon, or appropriated by, the opposite sex. To say that the hetairai were free is equal to saying that they have been misunderstood, hence the calumnies which for more than two thousand years have been heaped upon them. That the hetairai of Greece in the Periclean age included a class of women who were the intellectual compeers of the ablest statesmen and philosophers is a fact which may not by those who have paid close attention to this subject be denied. That they taught rhetoric and elocution, that they lectured publicly and established schools of philosophy at the same time that they wielded a powerful influence on the state and on the drift of current thought are facts which mediæval scholasticism has not been able to conceal. I think one may not investigate the various schools of philosophy which arose during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., without noting the peculiarly altruistic principles involved in them, and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that, hitherto, extreme selfishness or egoism had constituted the prevailing character observed in Athenian society.