the
women of the poorer classes, but queens and princesses carried water
from the well; washed their linen in the stream; doctored and nursed
their households; manufactured the clothing for their families; and, in
addition to these labors, performed a share of the highest social
functions as priestesses and prophetesses.

These were the women who became the mothers of the heroes, thinkers and
artists, who laid the foundation of the Greek nation.

In the day of toil and struggle, the race prospered and grew, but when
the days of ease and idleness came upon Greece, when the accumulated
wealth of subjugated nations, the cheap service of slaves and subject
people, made physical labor no longer a necessity; the women grew fat,
lazy and unconcerned, and the whole race degenerated, for the race can
rise no higher than its women. For a while the men absorbed and
reflected the intellectual life, for there still ran in their veins the
good red blood of their sturdy grandmothers. But the race was doomed
by the indolent, self-indulgent and parasitic females. The women did
not all degenerate. Here and there were found women on whom wealth had
no power. There was a Sappho, and an Aspasia, who broke out into
activity and stood beside their men-folk in intellectual attainment,
but the other women did not follow; they were too comfortable, too well
fed, too well housed, to be bothered. They had everything--jewels,
dresses, slaves. Why worry? They went back to their cushions and rang
for tea--or the Grecian equivalent; and so it happened that in the
fourth century Greece fell like a rotten tree. Her conqueror was the
indomitable Alexander, son of the strong and virile Olympia.

The mighty Roman nation followed in the same path. In the days of her
strength, and national health, the women took their full share of the
domestic burden, and as well fulfilled important social functions.
Then came slave labor, and the Roman woman no longer worked at
honorable employment. She did not have to. She painted her face, wore
patches on her cheeks, drove in her chariot, and adopted a mincing
foolish gait that has come down to us even in this day. Her children
were reared by someone else--the nursery governess idea began to take
hold. She took no interest in the government of the state, and soon
was not fit to take any. Even then, there were writers who saw the
danger, and cried out against it, and were not a bit more beloved than
the