From these premises he draws the conclusion that the women endowed with the higher gifts should have the same education as the gifted men, and that they should have the same duties, even to fighting in defence of their country, only that in the distribution of labour the lightest tasks should be assigned to the women, as being naturally weaker in body. Some think that Plato’s community of wives was ridiculed the same year that it was propounded, by Aristophanes, in his comedy of the ‘Ecclesiazusæ or Parliament of Women’; but it is far more probable that the comedy was exhibited before Plato’s ‘Republic’ was written.[64] In fact there is a likelihood that woman’s position was a subject much agitated. Clemens Alexandrinus quotes a line from the ‘Protesilaus’ of Euripides, in which community of women seems to be indicated.[65] Xenophon certainly puts into the mouth of Socrates a decided assertion of woman’s equality with man. “Woman’s nature,” he says,[66] “happens to be in no respect inferior to man’s, but she needs insight and strength.” And it is likely that many others held the same opinion, and proposed methods for elevating the position of women. It was some communistic theory of the day that Aristophanes attacked, but he was not bitter in his ridicule. It has always to be remembered that it was the business of the Dionysiac priests, as we may call the comic poets, to show the laughable side of even the most solemn things, and often little harm was meant by these merry outbursts. Aristophanes, moreover, had changed greatly from what he was in the time when, in the ‘Acharnians,’ he had bitterly attacked Aspasia. He had become gentle to strangers. He did not dislike the Spartans and their ways. Though he said many harsh things against women, he also said many good things for them. It was through them that, in the ‘Lysistrata,’ he urged on the Athenians the duty of reconciliation and peace. And now, in the ‘Ecclesiazusæ,’ he gives a kindly picture of what the women would do if they had the reins of power in their hands. This was the only form of government that the Athenians had not tried, and as all the rest had notoriously failed, there could be no great harm in entrusting the women with the administration of affairs. The gentle spirit of women might prevail. And surely under such a government men would be happy. The women would see to it that there would be no poor in the city, theft and slander would cease, and all would be content. Plato’s speculations and Aristophanes’s fun, however, were of no use. The city-State was too small an organization for the progress of man. It was destined to give way before a more humanizing government. And so the petty States had to yield to the Empire of Alexander, and with the change began a great change in the position of women. But this change had to be carried out under another and greater rule. The Romans swept over Greece and established a firmer and more comprehensive empire than that of Alexander.