y were also a pacific race--The
significance of the Maxims of the Moralists--Honour to the wife
and the mother strongly insisted on--The health and character
of the Egyptian mother--Some reflections in the Egyptian
Galleries of the British Museum.

II.--_In Babylon_

Traces of mother-right in primitive Babylon--The honour paid to
women--The position of women in later Babylonian history,
though still at an early period--Their rights more
circumscribed--The marriage code of Hammurabi--Polygamy
permitted, though restricted, by the code--The exacting
conditions of divorce--The position of the wife as subject to
her husband--The later Neo-Babylonian periods--The position
of women continuously improving--They obtain a position equal
in law with their husbands--Their freedom in all social
relations--They conduct business transactions in their own
right--Illustrations from the contract tablets--Remarks and
conclusion.

III.--_In Greece_

Traces of mother-right traditions in Greek literature and
history--The women of the Homeric period--Dangers arising
from the patriarchal subjection of women--Illustrations and
various reflections--Historic Greece--The social organisation
of Sparta--Their marriage system--The laws of Lycurgus--The
freedom of the Spartan girls--The wise care for the health of
the race--Plato's criticism of the Spartan system--He accuses
the women of ruling their husbands--The Athenian women--Their
subjection under the strict patriarchal rule--The insistence
on chastity--Reasons for this--The degraded position of the
wife--The _hetairae_--They the only educated women in
Athens--Aspasia--She leads the movement to raise the position
of the Athenian women--Plato's estimate of women--Remarks on
the sexual penalties for women that are always found under a
strict patriarchal regime--The ideal relationship between the
wife and the husband--Euripides voices the sorrows of
women--He foreshadows their coming triumph.

IV.--_In Rome_

Little known of the position of women in Rome in prehistoric
times--Indications of an early period of mother-rule--The
patriarchal system formerly established when Roman history
opens--The Roman marriage law--The woman regarded as the
property first of her father and after