The face is not altogether beautiful according to Greek ideas. It has an expression of earnest and deep thought; but what strikes one most of all is the perplexed and baffled look which the whole face presents--as of some life-long anguish, resulting from some contest which no mortal could wage successfully--not without a touch of exquisite sweetness, tenderness, and charity. Could it be the struggle in behalf of her own sex? If ever there was a case which might have suggested to the Athenians the propriety of extending the sphere of marriageability, surely it was this case of Aspasia. But we cannot affirm that any one thought of this. The Athenian women, even the citizens, had no political standing. They were always minors, subject to their fathers, or to their husbands, or to some male. Aristotle always classes women and children together. But such was the force of character of these companions, or such their hold on powerful men, that not unfrequently their sons were recognized as citizens, and attained to the full rights of citizenship. This could take place in three ways. There might exist between Athens and another Greek or foreign state a right of intermarriage (ἐπιγαμία), established by treaty. Strange to say, there is no clear instance of such a treaty in the history of the Athenians. There was no such treaty between Athens and Sparta, or Argos, or Corinth, or any other of the famous towns of Greece. The privilege was indeed conferred on the Platæans, but it was when they became citizens of Athens, and were likely in a generation or two to become undistinguishable among the rest of the Athenian citizens. A passage in Lysias[56] has been taken to intimate that the right of intermarriage was ceded to the Eubœans, but the passage occurs only in a fragment preserved in the writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.[57] The text exhibits marks of corruption, and the entire history of the relations between Athens and Eubœa speaks strongly against the possibility of the establishment of such a treaty.[58] Mention is also made of the proposal of such a treaty between Athenians and Thebans in the speech of Demosthenes on the Crown,[59] but the decree is unquestionably spurious, as Grote has most conclusively shown and as is now universally acknowledged. It is now agreed that all the decrees in the speech on the Crown are forgeries.[60] In that same speech a decree is quoted in which the Byzantines bestow on the Athenians the right of intermarriage, and it is likely that other States would confer the same privilege on the Athenians, but there is no proof that they ever returned the favour.