" Plato says: "A woman's virtue may be
summed up in a few words: for she has only to manage the house well,
keeping what there is in it, and obeying her husband." Again, in further
proof of the low estimation in which he held women, he says: "Of the men
that were born, such as are timid and have passed through life unjustly
are, we suppose, changed into women in their second generation."
Plutarch tells us that women "were compelled to go barefoot, in order to
induce them to keep at home."
The Spartan women were better off than their neighbors; and, in
consequence, we get glimpses of a higher type of womanhood. The Spartan
mother has furnished a theme for the pen of every ancient Greek
historian. Under the Lycurgean system, women were considered "as a part
of the State," and not simply household articles belonging to their
husbands--chattels to be disposed of according to the supreme pleasure
of their masters. Free women were trained for the service of the State
with scarcely less severity than men. Lycurgus remarks: "Female slaves
are good enough to sit at home, weaving and spinning; but who can expect
a splendid offspring--the appropriate mission and duty of free Spartan
women toward their country--from mothers brought up in such
occupations?" But though, like the Egyptian women, and indeed in advance
of them, the Spartan women were treated with, for the times, a marked
degree of attention and respect, still, even in Sparta, there were laws
in force by which women suffered grievous injustice.
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