rtune of orphanhood as little sad to them as possible.

Plato, seeing the disorder into which half the human race had fallen at
Athens and Sparta, is minded to frame for them a new rule of life. He
renounces his fanciful theory of communism, but still desires to place
women as far as possible on an equality with men. They were to be
trained in the use of arms, they are to live in public. Their time was
partly taken up with gymnastic exercises; there could have been little
family or private life among them. Their lot was to be neither like that
of Spartan women, who were made hard and common by excessive practice
of gymnastic and the want of all other education,--nor yet like that of
Athenian women, who, at least among the upper classes, retired into a
sort of oriental seclusion,--but something better than either. They were
to be the perfect mothers of perfect children, yet not wholly taken up
with the duties of motherhood, which were to be made easy to them as far
as possible (compare Republic), but able to share in the perils of war
and to be the companions of their husbands. Here, more than anywhere
else, the spirit of the Laws reverts to the Republic. In speaking of
them as the companions of their husbands we must remember that it is an
Athenian and not a Spartan way of life which they are invited to share,
a life of gaiety and brightness, not of austerity and abstinence, which
often by a reaction degenerated into licence and grossness.

In Plato's age the subject of slavery greatly interested the minds of
thoughtful men; and how best to manage this 'troublesome piece of goods'
exercised his own mind a good deal. He admits that they have often
been found better than brethren or sons in the hour of danger, and are
capable of rendering important public services by informing against
offenders--for this they are to be rewarded; and the master who puts
a slave to death for the sake of concealing some crime which he has
committed, is held guilty of murder. But they are not always treated
with equal consideration. The punishments inflicted on them bear
no proportion to their crimes. They are to be addressed only in the
language of command. Their masters are not to jest with them, lest they
should increase the hardship of their lot. Some privileges were granted
to them by Athenian law of which there is no mention in Plato; they
were allowed to purchase their freedom from their master, and if they
despaired of being liberated