The strength and vigor of the Homeric types reappear in the Spartan woman, but without their sweetness and charm. Was this charm the subtle touch of the poet’s imagination, or was it due in part to the setting that brought into relief their most lovable qualities? Their central point of character was a domestic one, and round this clustered all the gentler virtues. The central trait of the Spartan woman was patriotism, and to this even the tenderest affections were subordinate. The colder light of history shows them in outlines that are hard and stern. The fine symmetry of an ideal womanhood was lost in the excess of a single virtue that overshadowed all the others. Some one tells a mother who is waiting for tidings of a battle that her five sons have perished. “You contemptible slave,” she replies, “that is not what I wish to know. How fares my country?” On learning that it was victorious, she says, “Willingly then do I hear of the death of my sons.” “A glorious fate!” exclaims another, to a friend who offered her sympathy for the loss of her boy in war. “Did I not bear him that he might die for Sparta?” Here lay the first and last duty of these women. Natural affection, private interest, inclination, everything we deem sacred, even to life, was at the bidding of the State, which strangled itself and its citizens with petty tyrannies in the name of liberty. They were dedicated to the State, ordered to rear men for the State, sacrificed to the State. This destiny they accepted without a murmur, finding in it their glory and their pride. Even as children the Spartan women caught the spirit of civic devotion, which was to be the dominant one in their lives. An anecdote in point is told of the little Gorgo, who was afterward the wife of the brave Leonidas. When a child of eight years, she happened to be in the room one day while a messenger was trying to bribe her father to aid the Persians. He offered ten talents at first, and gradually raised the sum until the child, suspecting danger, said: “Go away, father; this stranger will corrupt you.” It is pleasant to record that her advice was laughingly taken. When she was grown to womanhood, she rendered great service to her country, and proved her own sagacity, by finding a message of vital concern so concealed in a wax tablet that no one had suspected it. “You Lacedæmonians are the only women in the world to rule men,” said a foreigner to her. “We are the only women who bring forth men,” was the ready reply. When her distinguished husband went away to his last battle, with forebodings of his fate, he could find no better parting words than these: “Marry nobly and bear brave sons.” We might regard the consolation as questionable, but it shows the inexorable tyranny of a single idea.