Greece had run the normal course that I have traced for the earlier powers. In its pre-civilised stage its men and women seem to have stood on a common level, with the military rulers over all. As it advances from the gloom into the lit territory of history, we find that the men have asserted a crude supremacy in private as well as public life. In this Greece differed from Egypt and Assyria, and a proportionately keener struggle set in. We find many traces of that struggle from the moment when Greece reaches its height of culture; and the intense pre-occupation with moral problems, which begins with Socrates, culminates in the extraordinary feminism of Plato's _Republic_. The movement increases as culture rises. But decay has set in, from a variety of causes, and the problems of civilisation are cast on other shoulders. I do not suppose that even the most determined of anti-feminists will venture to connect the decay of Athens with the stirring of its women. The causes have been too often and too clearly traced. The cry of the Athenian feminists dies away because the frame of the superb city is palsied and beset. Another vigorous race fills the stage of the world, and we pass over to Italy for the next phase in the development of woman's position. CHAPTER V. WOMAN IN ANCIENT ROME THE history of woman's position in ancient Rome is one of the most interesting chapters in the entire story of her development. It affords the most conspicuous illustration of the law we have formulated--that nations generally come into the light of history with their women in subjection, and that the women rebel as conscience and culture prevail over tradition. There was a special reason why the subordination of woman soon fell under discussion at Rome. The culture of Greece had culminated in the establishment of a number of philosophical schools, which speculated on moral problems with complete freedom from the restraints that always hamper such speculation in religious bodies. One of the finest of these schools of morality, the Stoic system, was adopted by cultivated Romans, and eventually by the Emperors, and thus questions of social justice received earnest attention. The position of woman (as well as that of the slave, the child, and the feeble) secured in this way a consideration to which we can only find a parallel in quite recent times. How the promising development was broken off, and women had to wait 1,500 years for a re-consideration of their claims, we shall see presently.