and a good housekeeper; she urges them to
cultivate their minds so that they may be equal in mental dignity with
the men who love them. Aspasia may thus be regarded, as Havelock Ellis
suggests, as "a pioneer in the assertion of woman's rights." "She
showed that spirit of revolt and aspiration" which tends to mark "the
intellectual and artistic activity of those who are unclassed or
dubiously classed in the social hierarchy."

It is even probable that the movement to raise the status of the
Athenian women, which seems to have taken place in the fourth century
B.C., was led by Aspasia, and perhaps other members of the _hetairae_.
Ivo Bruns, whom Havelock Ellis quotes, believes that "the most certain
information we possess concerning Aspasia bears a strong resemblance
to the picture which Euripides and Aristophanes present to us of the
leaders of the woman's movement."[289]

It was this movement of awakening which throws light on the justice
which Plato accords to women. He may well have had Aspasia in his
thoughts. Contact with her cultivated mind may have brought him to see
that "the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes," and
therefore "all the pursuits of man are the pursuits of woman also, and
in all of these woman is only a weaker man." Plato did not believe
that women were equally gifted with men, only that all their powers
were in their nature the same, and demanded a similar expression. He
insists much more on woman's duties and responsibilities than on her
rights; more on what the State loses by her restriction within the
home than on any loss entailed thereby to herself. Such a fine
understanding of the need of the State for women as the real ground
for woman's emancipation, is the fruitful seed in this often quoted
passage. May it not have arisen in Plato's mind from the contrast he
saw between Aspasia and the free companions of men and the restricted
and ignorant wives? A vivid picture would surely come to him of the
force lost by this wastage of the mothers of Athens; a force which
should have been utilised for the well-being of the State.

Sexual penalties for women are always found under a strict patriarchal
regime. The white flower of chastity, when enforced upon one sex by
the other sex, has its roots in the degradation of marriage. Men find
a way of escape; women, bound in the coils, stay and waste. There is
no escaping from the truth--wherever women are in subjection it is
there that the