ut among the poorer classes, who were ground down by
the aristocrats, life was hard and bitter, and woman was censured as
the source of many of the ills of mankind.

The Transition Age constitutes the portal admitting to Historical Greece
proper. In most communities, the levelling process has gone on, and
democracies have taken the place of oligarchies and tyrannies. The
people have asserted themselves and are regnant. It is a noteworthy fact
in Greek history that where democracy prevailed woman was least highly
regarded and had fewest privileges. In Athens, where democracy was
all-controlling, feminine activities were confined largely to the
women's apartments of the house. In other cities, oligarchies continued
to have power, and an aristocracy was still recognized, as at Sparta;
and here the privileges and freedom of woman were very great.

The early tribal divisions among the Greeks must also be taken into
consideration. The Achaeans are closely identified with the Heroic Age;
they built up the powerful States in the Peloponnesus, and undertook the
first great national expedition of Hellas. Thus the Achaeans are the
representative Homeric people, with its monarchical life and the
prominent social status of its women. The Achaean civilization gave way
before the Dorian migration, and ceased to be a factor in Greek history.
Of the three remaining divisions, the AEolians inhabited parts of
Thessaly, Boeotia, and especially the island of Lesbos, and the Greek
colonies of Asia Minor along the shores of the North AEgean. Their most
brilliant period was during the Transition Age, when Lesbos was ruled by
a wealthy and powerful aristocracy and later by a tyranny, and when
lyric poetry reached its perfect bloom in the verses of Sappho. AEolian
culture was marked by its devotion to music and poetry and by its
richness and voluptuousness. At no other time and place in the whole
history of Hellas did woman possess so much freedom and enjoy all the
benefits of wealth and culture in so marked a degree as among the AEolian
people of Lesbos.

The Dorian and the Ionian peoples occupied the arena during the
historical period; and, representing as they did opposing tendencies,
they were continually in conflict. The Dorians mainly occupied the
Southern and Western Peloponnesus, Argos, Corinth, Megara, AEgina, Magna
Graecia, and the southern coast of Asia Minor; the Ionians inhabited
Attica, Euboea, most of the islands of the AEgean,