and the famous twelve
Ionian cities along the coast of Asia Minor. The chief city of the
Dorians was Sparta; but Sparta had a form of government peculiar to
itself, which must not be taken as representing all the Dorian States.
Yet among the Dorian States in general there was much the same degree of
freedom enjoyed by women as in Sparta, though they were not subjected to
the same harsh discipline.

The Ionian cities of Asia Minor were greatly influenced by Asiatic love
of ease and luxury, and they introduced into Greece many aspects of the
civilization and art of Asia. There is a tradition that when the Ionians
migrated from Hellas to Asia Minor they did not take their wives with
them, as did the Dorians and AEolians, and, consequently, they were
compelled to wed the native women of the conquered districts. As they
looked upon the wives thus acquired as inferior, they were glad to shut
them up in the women's apartments, following the Oriental custom, and to
treat them as domestics rather than as companions. Thus is supposed to
have arisen the custom of secluding the women of the household, which
rapidly spread among Ionian peoples, even in Continental Greece.

Athens was the chief city among the Ionian peoples, but it developed a
civilization peculiarly its own, known as the Attic-Ionian, combining
much of the rugged strength and vigor of the Dorians with the
refinement, delicacy, and versatility of the Ionians. Yet the status of
woman in the city of the violet crown was a reproach to its otherwise
unapproachable preeminence. Nowhere else in entire Hellas were Greek
women in like measure repressed and excluded from the higher life of the
men as among the Athenians. Consequently, the name of no great Athenian
woman is known to us. But the Ionian repression of women of honorable
station led to the rise of a class of "emancipated" women, who threw off
the shackles that had bound their sex and united their fortunes with men
in unlawful relations as hetaerae, or "companions." Owing to their pursuit
of the higher learning of the times and their cultivation of all the
feminine arts and graces, the hetaerae constituted a most interesting
phenomenon in the social life of Greece, and played an important role in
Greek culture, especially in Athens. As the centre of culture for
Hellas, and as the exponent of literature and art for the civilized
world, Athens demands especial attention in its treatment of women.

The classical per