In the early, less militant societies we see that certain rights of women were recognized. In Egypt “the husband appears to have entered the house of his wives rather than the wives to have entered his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the Greeks were deceived by it. They affirmed that the women were supreme in Egypt; the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her, and entered into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands.”[13] Hobhouse says, “It is very possible that the preservation of relics of mother-right was among the forces tending to the better condition of women in Egypt. These were augmented toward the close of the independent history of Egypt by the rise of free contract and the important part taken by women in the industrial and commercial life. In these relations and in social intercourse generally it is allowed on all hands that their position was remarkably free.”[14] In Babylonia there were times when women held a position of independence and authority. “The wife could act apart from her husband, could enter into partnership, could trade with her money and conduct lawsuits in her own name.” Sayce says further, “Women, as well as men, enjoyed the advantages of education. This evidence from the Babylonian contract-tablets, in which we find women appearing, as well as men, as plaintiffs or defendants in suits, as partners in commercial transactions, and as signing, when need arose, their names. There was none of that jealous exclusion of women in ancient Babylonia which characterizes the East of today, and it is probable that boys and girls pursued their studies at the same school.”[15] Among the Greeks of the Homeric age, women held a position of respect and dignity but in the age of Pericles “little pains were taken with their education. Before their marriage, they managed their households and seldom left their dwellings.”[16] In spite of paternal authority so firmly established by custom all through early history we find individual women conspicuous by virtue of their cleverness, intelligence or charm giving them power in affairs of state. When Rome was at its height, there were men solicitors acting in behalf of women in litigation and in the management of their property. In fact, “the mass of capital which was collected in the hands of women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the testamentary nomination of women as heirs, and even sought by highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of those collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament.”[17] The Roman family was absolutely controlled by the father. His jurisdiction extended not only to the women and children of his household but to his grown sons after they had established a household of their own.[18]