"There are people, O Paula and Eustochium," exclaims the Christian Cicero, vibrant with emotion and in a burst of eloquence that recalls one of the burning philippics of Marcus Tullius, "who take offence at seeing your names at the beginning of my works. These people do not know that Olda prophesied when the men were mute; that while Barach was atremble, Deborah saved Israel; that Judith and Esther delivered from supreme peril the children of God. I pass over in silence Anna and Elizabeth and the other holy women of the Gospel, but humble stars when compared with the great luminary, Mary. Shall I speak now of the illustrious women among the heathen? Does not Plato have Aspasia speak in his dialogues? Does not Sappho hold the lyre at the same time as Alcaeus and Pindar? Did not Themista philosophize with the sages of Greece? And the mother of the Gracchi, your Cornelia, and the daughter of Cato, wife of Brutus, before whom pale the austere virtue of the father and the courage of the husband--are they not the pride of the whole of Rome? I shall add but one word more. Was not it women to whom our Lord first appeared after His resurrection? Yes, men could then blush for not having sought what the women had found."[28] Time has spared a joint letter of Paula and Eustochium to their friend Marcella--a letter which exhibits so well the rare culture and literary ability of the writers that we cannot but lament that we have not more of the correspondence which was carried on between the learned inmates of the Church of the Household on the Aventine and Paula's convent home near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Such a collection would be beyond price, as it would complete the picture of the age so well sketched by St. Jerome; and, as a contribution to the literary world, it would have a value not inferior to that of those exquisite classics of a later age--the letters of Madame Sevigne to her daughter.[29] WOMAN AND EDUCATION DURING THE MIDDLE AGES