With all their mannish tendencies, the Spartan women are said to have been noted for purity of character. It is safe perhaps to take with a degree of reservation the assertion that immorality according to their standards was practically unknown. We might at least justly find fault with the standards, and object to the material view taken of relations which we are in the habit of investing with a delicate halo of romance. It was an affair of the State, however, rather than of the individual, and it is a nice point to decide as to the morality of women who accepted from necessity certain prescribed modes of living in which they had no choice. So peculiar were the general notions of decorum that it was considered disgraceful for a bridegroom to be seen in the company of his wife; yet he could exchange her at will or at the command of the rulers, and jealousy was laughed at as a “vain and womanish passion.” But it was the pride of the Spartans that no invasion of the sanctity of the home was ever heard of! They excused themselves for what we should call moral delinquencies of the worst sort--if indeed they thought any excuse needed, which is not probable--by the convenient maxim that the end justifies the means. The interests of the State were above any moral law whatever. No doubt the arbitrary manner in which women were often disposed of for the public good, or at the caprice of their lords, seemed to them a better sort of fate than living in seclusion, as their Attic sisters did, under the roof of a man who gave them no liberty, and no society, not even his own. They certainly were not troubled with an excess of sentiment; but marriages were, on the whole, happy, and love was often a factor in them, which was rarely the case among their more civilized neighbors. It was not in the nature of these practical people to look at things from an esthetic point of view. Their notions were confessedly utilitarian. To-day we should call many of them scientific. Happily, modern science has not yet meddled quite so far with the rights of the individual, though clearly headed in that direction.