the
letter of the law, the flexible jurisprudence of the Rabbis, in
harmony with the growth of culture, accorded an ever-growing
measure of sexual justice and equality to women (D.W. Amram, _The
Jewish Law of Divorce_).

Among the Arabs the tendency of progress has also been favorable
to women in many respects, especially as regards inheritance.
Before Mahommed, in accordance with the system prevailing at
Medina, women had little or no right of inheritance. The
legislation of the Koran modified this rule, without entirely
abolishing it, and placed women in a much better position. This
is attributed largely to the fact that Mahommed belonged not to
Medina, but to Mecca, where traces of matriarchal custom still
survived (W. Marcais, _Des Parents et des Allies Successibles en
Droit Musulman_).

It may be pointed out--for it is not always realized--that even
that stage of civilization--when it occurs--which involves the
subordination and subjection of woman and her rights really has
its origin in the need for the protection of women, and is
sometimes even a sign of the acquirement of new privileges by
women. They are, as it were, locked up, not in order to deprive
them of their rights, but in order to guard those rights. In the
later more stable phase of civilization, when women are no longer
exposed to the same dangers, this motive is forgotten and the
guardianship of woman and her rights seems, and indeed has really
become, a hardship rather than an advantage.

Of the status of women at Rome in the earliest periods we know little or
nothing; the patriarchal system was already firmly established when Roman
history begins to become clear and it involved unusually strict
subordination of the woman to her father first and then to her husband.
But nothing is more certain than that the status of women in Rome rose
with the rise of civilization, exactly in the same way as in Babylonia and
in Egypt. In the case of Rome, however, the growing refinement of
civilization, and the expansion of the Empire, were associated with the
magnificent development of the system of Roman law, which in its final
forms consecrated the position of women. In the last days of the Republic
women already began to attain the same legal level as men, and later the
great Antonine jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law,
reached the concepti