But to go through the details of Isæus’ cases would be merely tedious. In all of them we see that moral degradation and absence of social rectitude which was the natural result of the inferiority of women in the eyes of the Attic law. Women, like children, cannot legally enter into a contract, even if it is only to purchase a bushel of corn; the son of a brother has a stronger claim to an intestate property than the son of a daughter, for the law says, ‘males must prevail’; a daughter cannot inherit in her own person; she is only an intermediary by whom the estate is transmitted through marriage to a male of the same blood as her father. A woman’s disabilities are painfully plain in Isæus: as for her legal rights, it is hard to discover from his speeches how far they have any actual existence. The orator, at least, when his male clients seem to have the law against them, does not hesitate to appeal to the natural sympathies of the male jurymen; and in the tenth oration we see how shamefully an heiress, in spite of the law’s formal protection, could be despoiled by her guardian and her brother. It is generally assumed that this male superiority before the law had a religious sanction, the necessity of keeping up the family worship, which could only be done by a man. If we were speaking of a primitive society the argument would have some force, but the Athenians of the fourth century were at the end rather than the beginning of their national life: religion was dead, and the foundations of morality undermined; only the law remained unaltered, that women were the inferior sex. How far women contributed themselves to their degradation may be studied in all the orators’ speeches, but two cases are especially significant: Antiphon’s murder speech ‘Against the stepmother,’ and Lysias’ ‘Defence for the murder of Eratosthenes.’