s for Egypt so soon after they
had been married, though she eagerly desired it, and her father had shut
her up and kept her forcibly at home. But she found means of escape. A
few days after Panteus's departure, she slipped out by night, mounted a
horse and rode to Taenarum, and there embarked on a vessel sailing for
Egypt, where she soon found her husband, and with him cheerfully endured
all the sufferings and hardships that befell them in a hostile country.
She was now the moral support of the whole company of helpless women.
She moved about among them, comforting and consoling. She gave her hand
to Cratesiclea, as the latter was being led out by the soldiers to
execution, held up her robe, and begged her to be courageous, being
herself not in the least afraid of death, and desiring nothing else than
to be killed before the children were put to death. When they reached
the place of execution, the children were first killed before
Cratesiclea's eyes; and afterward she herself suffered death, with these
pathetic words on her lips: "O children, whither are you gone?"
Panteus's wife, as her husband did for the men, performed the last
offices for the women. In silence and perfect composure, she looked
after every one that was slain, and laid out the bodies as decently as
circumstances would permit. And then, after all were killed, adjusting
her own robe so that she might fall becomingly, she courageously
submitted to the stroke of the executioner.

Thus ended the second great movement for the reformation of Sparta, and
henceforth Sparta, as an independent State; disappears from history. The
story of the fall of Sparta owes its human interest chiefly to the women
involved, and Plutarch recognizes this fact when, in concluding his
story of Cleomenes, he, with the Greek dramatic contests before his
mind, says: "Thus Lacedaemon, exhibiting a dramatic contest in which the
women vied with the men, showed in her last days that virtue cannot be
insulted by fortune."

Chilonis, Agesistrata, Agiatis, Cratesiclea, the wife of Panteus,--what
a pity that we do not know her name!--constitute the most admirable
feminine group that Greek history offers us. What especially charms us
is that they unite with the strength and self-abnegation of the ancient
Spartan matron a sweetness, a tenderness, a womanliness, which we have
not been accustomed to attribute to Spartan women. They are Spartans,
but they are, above all, women.

VIII