The women of Athens fulfilled their duties with becoming modesty, so far as we know. They were respectably ignorant, and did not encroach upon the time-honored privileges of men. It is true that Elpinice, the sister of Cimon, was a trifle strong-minded, and, taking the Spartan women as models, went about alone; but we do not hear that she had any following. Unpleasant things were said about her, which we are safe in doubting, as unpleasant things have always been said of women who presumed to have opinions of their own, or to walk outside of the straight line of tradition. At all events, a rich Athenian fell in love with her, and was glad to take her without a dowry and pay the fine of her distinguished father. But it is certain that no appreciable number of Attic ladies were disposed to incur the odium of public opinion so distinctly expressed in these words: Good women must abide within the house; Those whom we meet abroad are nothing worth. Why in the face of such reverent submission were they so contemptuously spoken of? We are often told to-day that women cannot expect any privileges when they want rights. It may be pertinent to ask, in the name of consistency, why they had no privileges when they sat humbly at the feet of their husbands and demanded no rights? But it was among these women that the great dramatists lived and created the masterpieces of the world. It may be that they saw and felt the cheerless side of so fettered a life, and that is why they painted their heroines in such somber colors, too often innocent victims of men’s misdeeds, and doomed to suffering with the sad inevitability of fate. But the noble character and fine intelligence given to so many of them must have had some counterpart in reality. Did the city that produced Antigone, Iphigenia, and Alcestis, have no great women, or did their creators look elsewhere for the moral dignity that made them possible? And where were the models found? Not, surely, among the hetæræ whose power, whatever it may have been, was not a moral one. Not even among the goddesses, who were notoriously vain, selfish, crafty, and cruel. We know that a thousand untold tales of virtue and heroism are hidden behind closed doors, and we may well believe they were not without precedent among these apparently colorless and pent-up lives.