naïvely asked to see one who was punished for keeping up his dignity. Life was materialized, and all fine ideals were destroyed save the single one of national glory, for which they willingly stifled personal feeling and personal talent. Things of the intellect and spirit were quite ignored. But the Doric women had to some extent the tastes of the Æolians, and were as a rule far better educated than their husbands. We hear of clubs or associations of women for the cultivation of the mind, and for teaching girls after the fashion of the time. In music they excelled. Aristophanes introduces in “Lysistrata” choruses of Spartan and Athenian maidens who sing in friendly rivalry. Many of the _parthenia_, or processional hymns, were written by foreign poets for these young girls, whose spiritual aspirations found vent in that way. They did not give voice to personal emotions, but to great religious or patriotic enthusiasms. Whatever education may have been given to women, it is not likely that their intellectual standards were very broad or very high; at least, we have no visible evidence of it, as we find no living trace of their talents for some centuries after the brief poetic flowering that followed Sappho, and even then not in Sparta. It was among the Dorians of a later time, and mainly in the colonies, that the feminine taste for literature revived, but it took a didactic or philosophical form, and they wrote in prose. The talent of the Spartan women was largely executive, and they were noted for judgment, as well as for heroism. As nurses they were in great demand in other parts of Greece. A strong proof of their gifts of administration is found in the fact that they had equal rights of inheritance with men, and came in time to own two fifths of the land and a large share of the personal property. This gave them a dignity and influence not accorded to their sex elsewhere. Aristotle did not like their freedom and power. He claimed that they ruled their husbands too imperiously; also, that they were liable to be troublesome in times of war, as it was impossible to bring them under military discipline. If they ruled the rulers, he thought that the results would be the same as if they ruled in their own right. Plutarch tells us that “the Spartans listened to their wives, and women were permitted to meddle more with public business than men with the domestic.” Again he says that “women considered themselves absolute mistresses in their houses; indeed, they wanted a share in affairs of State, and delivered their opinions with great freedom concerning the most weighty matters.” But freedom is relative, and a little of it goes a great way where there has been, as a rule, none at all. It does not seem that any fears on this subject were realized, as their influence, so far as we know, was conservative, and they were subordinate in theory if not always in fact. “When I was a girl I was taught to obey my father, and I obeyed