Woman, know That silence is a woman’s noblest part, says the ill-tempered Ajax to his amiable wife. This gentle Tecmessa wishes to die with him, for “Why should I wish to live if you are dead?” He only tells her to mind her own affairs and be silent. Telemachus orders his faithful mother not to meddle with men’s business, but it was precisely because she did meddle with it, and tried, by various simple arts, to bring order into the chaos men had raised, that his royal father had any home to return to, or any kingdom to leave to his ungracious son. IV So far as we can gather from Homer, women of the better sort had a degree of consideration in the heroic age which they lost at a later period. When men fought or tilled the soil, it was in the natural order of things that they should stay at home to look after their children and households. The division of duties was fair enough. In a reign of brute force they needed protection, and though it was pretty well settled that men were born to rule and women to be ruled, there was evidently a great deal of pleasant companionship in family life. Compared with the seclusion of the Oriental harem, the position of these women was one of freedom, and it lasted to historic times. Their supreme distinction was a moral one. Books they had not. Of literature nothing was known beyond the verses and tales of wandering minstrels. Art was little more than a handicraft. If men worked in marble or in metal, women designed patterns for weaving and embroidery. Men had not begun to put their thoughts or speculations into enduring form, and women were not excluded from a large part of their lives. But so perfectly did many of them realize the world’s ideal of feminine virtues that we ask no more. They stand upon pedestals, like the masterpieces of Greek sculpture, noble in their simplicity and lovely in the repose of their surpassing strength.