d
these dances, which, as Plutarch adds with characteristic Greek
naivete, were "a strong incentive to marriage." The erudite C.O.
Mueller, in his history of the Doric race (II., 298), while confessing
that in all his reading of Greek books he had not come across a single
instance of an Athenian in love with a free-born woman and marrying
her because of a strong attachment, declares that Sparta was somewhat
different, personal attachments having been possible there because the
young men and women were brought together at festivals and dances; but
he has the acumen to see that this love was "not of a romantic
nature."[309]

AMAZONIAN IDEAL OF GREEK WOMANHOOD

Romantic love, as distinguished from friendship, is dependent on
sexual differentiation, and the highest phases of romantic love are
possible only, as we have seen, where the secondary and tertiary
sexual qualities, physical and mental, are highly developed. Now the
Spartans, besides maintaining all the love-suppressing customs just
alluded to, made special and systematic efforts to convert their women
into Amazons devoid of all feminine qualities except such as were
absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the species. One of the
avowed objects of making girls dance naked in the presence of men was
to destroy what they considered as effeminate modesty. The law which
forbade husbands to associate with their wives in the daytime
prevented the growth of any sentimental, sympathetic attachment
between husband and wife. Even maternal feeling was suppressed, as far
as possible, Spartan mothers being taught to feel proud and happy if
their sons fell in battle, disgraced and unhappy if they survived in
case of defeat. The sole object, in brief, of Spartan institutions
relating to women was to rear a breed of healthy animals for the
purpose of supplying the state with warriors. Not love, but
patriotism, was the underlying motive of these institutions. To
patriotism, the most masculine of all virtues, the lives of these
women were immolated, and what made it worse was that, while they were
reared as men, these women could not share the honors of men. Brought
up as warriors, they were still despised by the warriors, who, when
they wanted companionship, always sought it in association with
comrades of their own sex. In a word, instead of honoring the female
sex, the Spartans suppressed and dishonored it. But they brought on
their own punishment; for the women, being l