him,” said a woman, when asked to do something of doubtful propriety; “and when I became a wife I obeyed my husband; if you have anything just to urge, make it known to him first.” A clever if not very chivalrous writer of the time says: “It becomes a man to talk much, and a woman to rejoice in all she hears”--a comfortable arrangement for dull husbands, who would be sure at least of an appreciative audience at home. But we find instances of heroic devotion among these hardy women, for which we look in vain among the ignorant and secluded wives of Athens. It is a pity that Plutarch did not give some of them a distinct place in his gallery of celebrities. He had a superior wife himself, a well-bred woman of dignity, tenderness, great mental vigor, simple taste, and distinguished virtues, who was above the vanities of her time, and bore sorrow like a philosopher. He loved her devotedly, praised her fortitude, and admired her strength. This perhaps accounts for the fact that he was kindly disposed toward women in general, and thought that their fame should be known, since love of glory was not confined to one sex. But if he did not set them on a pinnacle of their own, he has shown us by various anecdotes that they could counsel like seers and die like heroes. In the decline of Sparta, when Agis planned to restore the old simplicity it had lost with the coming of luxury and foreign ways, he asked the aid of his mother, the brave Agesistrata, a woman of great wealth and influence. She thought the division of property he proposed neither wise nor practicable, and advised him against it. But when she found his heart set upon it as a means of winning glory, as well as bringing back the people to virtue and simpler manners, she consented not only to give up her own great fortune, but to induce others to join her. As the wealth of Sparta was largely in the hands of women who were less disinterested and did not care to lose either their luxuries or their power, this socialistic movement failed, and its self-sacrificing leaders were put to death. When Agesistrata was led into the prison to see her son, he lay strangled before her. She tenderly placed her own dead mother by his side, and baring her neck with calm dignity, said: “May this prove for the good of Sparta.”