--Ares being ever susceptible to the wishes and inclinations of
Aphrodite. And the result is the same, he adds, "whether women rule or
the rulers are ruled by women." He also attacks the courage of the
women, stating that in a Theban invasion they had been utterly useless
and caused more confusion than the enemy. He finds them prone to
avarice, and regrets that, owing to the inequality of the laws governing
property, more than two-fifths of the whole country was already in the
hands of women.

Nature in the end asserted herself, and the evils inherent in the
Lycurgan system brought about the fall of the State. Sparta had
sacrificed the liberties of her citizens, she had despised the laws of
nature in the destiny and education of women, she had banished the arts,
and had sought to keep out every humanizing influence. Consequently,
when that constitution, inflexible and in certain respects immoral and
unnatural, was impaired, her decline was rapid. Sad it is that Aristotle
should have perceived in the immorality, the greed, the misconduct, of
the women, one of the causes of the fall of Sparta!

Sparta had become degenerate, but she was not to die without a final
struggle. In the middle of the third century before Christ, two kings of
Sparta, inspired by the stories of her early days, endeavored to
overcome the luxury and vice that were rampant and to restore the State
to its primitive simplicity and greatness. In their meritorious efforts
to accomplish the impossible, they enlisted the efforts of noble women,
who by their self-sacrificing devotion cast a momentary radiance over
the dying State.

The earliest of these two kings was the young and gentle Agis. In the
corrupt state of society he saw need of reforms, and wished to begin at
the root of the evil by annulling debts and redistributing the land. One
of the first counsellors whom he consulted in his projected reforms was
his mother, Agesistrata, a woman of great wealth and power, who had
many of the Spartans in her debt and would be seriously affected by the
change. Yet, becoming conscious of the need of reforms, she, with the
grandmother of the young king, entered heartily into his plans to
restore the greatness of Sparta. Agesistrata urged other aristocratic
women to join in the movement, "knowing well that the Lacedaemonian wives
always had great power with their husbands." These, however, violently
opposed the scheme, because at this time most of the money of