Probably the condition of women in Athens had much to do with the decay of that city. The effort which Aspasia made to rouse the Athenian wives to higher mental exertions must have lost much of its effect after her death. The names of these wives are not to be found in history. But the influence of the Companions came more and more into play. Almost every famous man, after this date, has one Companion with whom he discusses the pursuits and soothes the evils of his life. Plato had Archeanassa, Aristotle Herpyllis, Epicurus Leontium, Isocrates Metaneira, Menander Glycera, and others in like manner. And some of them attained the highest positions. Princes can do as they like. In the earlier days of Athens, when tyrants ruled, princes frequently married foreigners. And now again princes married their Companions, and several of them thus sat on thrones. The beauty of some, especially of Phryne, the most beautiful woman that ever lived, attracted the eyes of all Greece; Apelles painted her, and Praxiteles made her the model for the Cnidian Aphrodite, the most lovely representation of woman that ever came from sculptor’s chisel. Some were renowned for their musical ability, and a few could paint. They cultivated all the graces of life; they dressed with exquisite taste; they took their food, as a comic poet remarks, with refinement, and not like the citizen-women, who crammed their cheeks, and tore away at the meat. And they were witty. They also occupied the attention of historians. One writer described one hundred and thirty-three of them. Their witty sayings were chronicled and turned into verse. Their exploits were celebrated, and their beauty and attractiveness were the theme of many an epigram. But it must not be forgotten that hundreds and thousands of these unprotected women were employed as tools of the basest passions; that, finding all true love but a prelude to bitter disappointment, they became rapacious, vindictive, hypocritical ministrants of love, seeking only, under the form of affection, to ruin men, and send them in misery to an early grave. Nothing could be more fearful than the pictures which the comic poets give of some of these women. But what else could have been expected in the circumstances? There was no reason in the nature of the women themselves why they should not have been virtuous, unselfish, noble beings; but destiny was hard towards them; they had to fight a battle with dreadful odds against them. They succumbed; but which of us could have resisted?