r better equipment for her domestic duties. Yet
even this was something gained; and if all the husbands of Athens were
as conscientious as Ischomachus in training their wives for the duties
of home, and gave them the companionship which such an education
involved, there must have been marked improvement in the social status
of woman.

Perhaps it was impossible for women to be accorded greater liberty of
action while the ancient conception of the city-state obtained. Woman's
harmonious development regularly keeps pace with her freedom, and the
intellectual possibilities of the sex are only limited by the
opportunities afforded. The men who were responsible for the system
could hurl their shafts of satire at the uncultivated women confined to
their apartments and their domestic cares; but whenever the least
liberty of action was granted those women, they proved themselves fully
equal to the men in intellectual capacity, and the Greek woman always
exceeded her brothers in moral sublimity and unselfishness. The root of
the evil was the system of government. Soon Philip and Alexander were to
put an end with their legions to the exclusiveness of the city-state,
and the Greek woman of the Hellenistic period was destined to enjoy
greater freedom and greater influence.

XII

GREEK WOMAN IN RELIGION

More spiritual by nature, more inclined to mysticism, with keener
intuitions, woman has ever taken a more prominent part in religious
matters than man. Hence, even in such a country as Hellas, where woman
was excluded from so many lines of human activity, we find that in
religious observance she had equal freedom with man, and far exceeded
him in devoutness and religious fervor. The Greeks, though they had only
the light of nature to guide them, were essentially a spiritual people.
They saw the hand of the Unseen everywhere manifesting itself in natural
phenomena: they recognized divinities in the fertility of the soil, in
the stars of the heavens, in the crystal waters of the spring, in the
rain and in the storm cloud, in the winds of the forest. They even
personified abstractions, and deified emotions and virtues. Nor were
they merely content with inward piety, but endeavored in every way by
outward observance to worship the deities which were the creations of
their own myth-making faculties; and in all the religious ceremonials of
the Greeks woman played a prominent role.

All the Greek peoples gloried in being of th