I have already remarked that no one claimed political rights for either the citizen-women or the strangers. I must make a slight exception, and I am not sure but the exception may be owing to the influence of Aspasia. We have seen that she was said to be the teacher of Socrates. Indeed, Socrates appeals to her as his teacher in the ‘Memorabilia.’[62] She was one of the great characters in the Socratic dialogues. She appeared several times in those of Æschines; and in the Menexenus, a Socratic dialogue, if not a Platonic, she prepares a model funeral oration. Is it not likely then that she influenced the opinions of Plato; and in the ‘Republic’ of Plato we have the strongest assertion of the equality of woman with man. Plato, and many others with him who lived after the ruin of Athens at Ægospotami, had become discontented with the Athenian form of government, and probably with the treatment of the women. Accordingly, in his ideal State, which, however, still remained a city-State he took for his groundwork the Spartan system of education. The State was to be all in all. He went so far as to remove the monogamy which formed the barrier in the Spartan system to communistic principles, and he recommended the same mode of gymnastic exercises for both sexes. But he went further. He affirmed that there was no essential difference between man and woman. “‘And so,’ he says, ‘in the administration of a State neither a woman as a woman nor a man as a man has any special function, but the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, and in all of them woman is only a lesser man.’ ‘Very true.’ ‘Then are we to impose all our enactments on men and none of them on women?’ ‘That will never do.’ ‘One woman has a gift of healing, another not; one is a musician and another is not?’ ‘Very true.’ ‘And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military exercises, while another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics?’ ‘Beyond question.’ ‘And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy of philosophy; one has spirit and another is without spirit?’ ‘That is also true.’”[63]