The information about these women comes out in the inscriptions which have been collected in the various towns and provinces of Asia Minor. M. P. Paris has brought together the facts that can be obtained from these inscriptions in his thesis “Quatenus feminæ res publicas in Asia Minore, Romanis imperantibus, attigerint, Parisiis, 1891.” M. Paris is inclined to think that the magistracies during the Imperial times had no important duties assigned to them except those of religion, and that therefore women could well perform them. If there were civil duties, he thinks that they were not asked to discharge these. He is guided much in this opinion by his sense of what it becomes a woman to do, but in the end of his thesis he has to acknowledge that women did take part in political and civil matters, though these were not becoming to them. He allows that at least one woman did discharge all the duties of a magistrate. The inscription recording the fact is as follows: “The senate and people honoured Aurelia Harmasta, also called Tertia, the daughter of Medon and chaste wife of Artemas, of the highest birth, who acted as priestess of Hera the Queen, and as demiourgos, and as chief priest, and did all that was usual in such occasions. Aur. Arteimianus Dileitrianus Arteimas, her husband, erected the statue.”[253] The demiourgos was one of the chief magistrates. M. Paris draws special attention to these inscriptions which he himself and M. Radet discovered at Sillyium, in which a woman of the name of Menodora is praised. The first inscription begins: “The senate and people honoured her as a priestess of all the gods and a hierophantis for life and a decaprote, also as demiourgos and gymnasiarch.” Then the inscription details the extraordinary gifts which she bestowed on her native city, including a large sum for the maintenance of children. The other two inscriptions are of a similar nature. M. Paris can find no other explanation of the activity of woman in Asia than in the altered and decaying state of affairs in that country during the Roman Empire. But it is remarkable that the matriarchate existed in Lycia longer than in most places.[254] (2) THE SPEECH OF AUGUSTUS ON MARRIAGE.