Unfortunately, talent and the virtues did not always go together, and it is impossible, at this distance, to determine with any certainty who were good and who were not. In the conservative circles of Athens, intelligence itself was a vice in women, and put them under a ban. They might pray to Athena, and offer incense to her, and embroider her robes, but it would not do to take this personification of wisdom and knowledge for a model; indeed, it is not quite clear why so dangerous a representative of the sex that was thought to have no intellect worth considering should have been chosen to preside over all the Attic divinities. There was a time, according to Varro, when it had been customary for women to take part with men in public councils. In the early ages they voted to name Athens after Athena, outvoting the men by one. Poseidon was angry, and the sea overflowed. To appease the god, the citizens imposed a punishment on their wives. They were to lose their votes, the children were to receive no more their mother’s name, and they were no longer called Athenians. Perhaps this is why they were relegated forever after to ignorance and obscurity. Athena, however, retained her power, and men still worshiped the gray-eyed goddess in the abstract, as their fathers had done, doubtless quite content that the superfluous wisdom of woman should be given a pedestal so high and remote that it was not likely to cause serious inconvenience in family relations. But their personal devotion was largely reserved for Aphrodite, who was more beautiful and facile, if not so wise, and still less fit to be held up as a worthy example for her sex. The race had not greatly changed since its men went to their death for the “divine Helen,” and thought the world well lost for a sight of her radiant beauty. The witty Phryne, whose exquisite face and form was made immortal by Apelles and Praxiteles, was given a statue of gold between two kings at Delphi. In the cypress-grove at Corinth there was a monument to the beautiful Lais, who had enriched the city with fine architecture. Lamia built a splendid portico for the people of Sicyon, and a temple at Athens was consecrated to her under the name of Aphrodite. One of the most striking and costly monuments in Greece was also erected there to Pythionice. The wit and fascination of Glycera brought her the honors due to a queen. Some of her letters to Menander were preserved, and they were said to show not only a tender and delicate sentiment, but a fine intellectual sympathy with her poet lover. No doubt the tributes offered to the notoriously dissolute women were largely the expression of a beauty-loving people who cherished “art for art’s sake.”