ot apparent in the Athenian matrons
themselves, who remained for the most part in primitive seclusion; and
though, I think, it will be shown hereafter that modern writers have
greatly exaggerated both the want of mental culture and the degree of
domestic confinement to which the Athenian women [214] were subjected,
yet it is certain, at least, that they did not share the social
freedom or partake the intellectual accomplishments of their lords.
It was the new class of "Female Friends" or "Hetaerae," a phrase ill
translated by the name of "courtesans" (from whom they were
indubitably but not to our notions very intelligibly, distinguished),
that exhibited the rarest union of female blandishment and masculine
culture. "The wife for our house and honour," implies Demosthenes,
"the Hetaera for our solace and delight." These extraordinary women,
all foreigners, and mostly Ionian, made the main phenomenon of
Athenian society. They were the only women with whom an enlightened
Greek could converse as equal to himself in education. While the law
denied them civil rights, usage lavished upon them at once admiration
and respect. By stealth, as it were, and in defiance of legislation,
they introduced into the ambitious and restless circles of Athens many
of the effects, pernicious or beneficial, which result from the
influence of educated women upon the manners and pursuits of men.
[215]

III. The alteration of social habits was not then sudden and
startling (such is never the case in the progress of national
manners), but, commencing with the graces of a polished tyranny,
ripened with the results of glorious but too profitable victories.
Perhaps the time in which the state of transition was most favourably
visible was just prior to the death of Cimon. It was not then so much
the over-refinement of a new and feebler generation, as the polish and
elegance which wealth, art, and emulation necessarily imparted to the
same brave warriors who exchanged posts with the Spartans at Plataea,
and sent out their children and old men to fight and conquer with
Myronides.

IV. A rapid glance over the events of the few years commemorated in
the last book of this history will suffice to show the eminence which
Athens had attained over the other states of Greece. She was the head
of the Ionian League--the mistress of the Grecian seas; with Sparta,
the sole rival that could cope with her armies and arrest her
ambition, she had obtained a