In the second attempt to restore the prestige of the falling State, Cratesiclea rivals the great heroines of the dramatists in her noble self-surrender. Ptolemy demanded, as the price of his alliance, that Cleomenes should send his mother and son to Egypt as hostages. When she heard of it she smilingly said: “Was this the thing you have so long hesitated to tell me? Send this body of mine at once where it will be of the most use to Sparta, before age renders it good for nothing.” She went without tears, saying that no one must see them weep. Finding afterward that the king was hampered by the fear that some ill might befall them, she sent him word to do what was best, and never mind what became of an old woman and a little child. This enterprise, too, was a futile one, but the women who had inspired men with their own courage and devotion died as bravely as they had lived. It is a touching scene where the young and beautiful wife of Panteus pays the last offices to her dead friends, then, folding her robe modestly about her, tranquilly tells the executioner to do his work. “In women too there lives the strength of battle,” says Sophocles, and nowhere could he have found such heroic examples as among the rugged hills of Sparta. Out of such material, Antigones and Iphigenias are created. Beneath a discipline of the affections so severe that it seems as if they must have been crushed altogether, we sometimes fall upon unsuspected depths of tenderness. Chelonis left her husband in his day of power, to care for her father, who had been deposed and was in disgrace and need. When the political tables were turned, and her father was again on the throne, she pleaded with eloquence and tears for her husband’s life. Her wise and tactful words saved him, but he was exiled. She was urged by her family to stay and enjoy the fruits of their victory, but, turning sorrowfully away, she took her children, kissed the altar where they had found a sanctuary, and went out with her disgraced husband to poverty and obscurity. We cannot measure these Spartan women by the standards of to-day. They did not belong to the age of university courses, society functions, and Christian ideals. Love as we understand it played a small part in their lives, and of romance there is little trace, though examples of conjugal affection are not rare. Of what we call learning they probably had very little, and of esthetic taste still less, but of clear judgment, solid character, and fearless courage, they had a great deal. They were trained as companions and helpers of men, not as their toys, though they were always subject to them. It was a simple life they led--a life with few graces and few of our complexities. They were the Puritans of the classic world, without the Puritan conscience or moral sense, but with more than Puritan courage and fortitude. THE ATHENIAN WOMAN, ASPASIA, AND THE FIRST SALON