lished is not merely an institution founding society, but a secret picture and pledge of the dealing of the Creator with the race created. From the beginning the natural covers and includes the supernatural, and what is last executed is first intended.

II. Let us now pass over an interval of several thousand years from the first foundation of human society, and having seen what it was in its origin, how it was constructed, and by whom, take a short review of the actual state of woman in the various countries of the western world during the last years of Augustus.

In Greek life the original position of woman was honourable.* The wife was man's companion, not, as in eastern countries of Asia, his slave. It was only because the Greeks had a true family life grounded upon monogamy that they possessed a sound and well-ordered political life. Polygamy was foreign to them; bigamy extremely rare. Polygamy only presents itself in the monarchs of the Macedonian kingdoms, who had been infected by eastern customs. In Greece woman was not kept under lock and key in harems; still less was she guarded by eunuchs. Her position was in many respects secured by law and custom, and provided with defined rights. Within her home she ruled as a mistress over slaves and children.

This was the fair side of the picture; but, on

· Döllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, p. 679.

the other hand, the wife was looked upon not as the human creature, man's like and companion, but as means to an end, as an evil which could not be escaped, in order that there might be house and children. Her intellectual education was disregarded, and so her influence over husband and children was slight; even the rich and noble were not brought up in accomplishments which might form the charm of a home. Thus we find Socrates admitting that the society of the wife was the last thing sought after by the husband. If he invited a guest, the wife did not dine with him. She was left to the solitude of her own apartments, never entered by a stranger. But with all this, there were accomplished women at Athens, whose society was sought after even by statesmen; remember only that these had lost the first ornament of their sex. Aspasia and Phryne represent a class which play a great part in Greek history, and lower prodigiously the standard of their domestic life. While with these the relation was free and intermittent, marriage, on the contrary, in Athens had to be made compulsory, as a duty to the state for the propagation of its citizens, a duty which, as Plato admits, was most unwillingly performed. This on the man's side; while on the woman's, the condition of voluntary virginity was utterly without religious motive and competent position, and therefore unknown; but if involuntary, it was considered a great calamity. As for Sparta, marriage

was there accounted a mere institution for producing healthy and vigorous citizens. Its moral sacredness was unknown; or the state of things which every where else was considered to be adultery was not there so considered. Wives were lent. The whole state was a breeding-place for human cattle.

But besides these defects in the relation of the sexes, the whole domestic life of the Greeks was eaten out by that fearful miasma of unnatural immorality which seemed like the curse of the race. The extent of this evil it is scarcely possible to exaggerate; on its details it is impossible to dwell.*

We have further the remarkable fact, that from the time of the Peloponnesian war a great moral

*For both of these, for the incredible state of public opinion and manners on the subject, for the conduct and judgment of the highest names in Grecian literature-Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, &c.-see Döllinger, Heid. und Jud. pp. 684-691, sect. 32-40, especially sect. 33. "Bei den Griechen tritt das Phänomen mit allen Symptomen einer nationalen Krankheit, gleichsam eines ethischen Miasma auf; es zeigt sich als ein Gefühl, das stärker und heftiger wirkte, als die Weiberliebe bei andern Völkern, massloser, leidenschaftlicher in seinen Ausbrüchen war, &c.-In der ganzen Literatur der vorchristlichen Periode ist kaum ein Schriftsteller zu finden, der sich entschieden dagegen erklärt hätte.-So geschah es dass in zahlosen Stellen der Griechischen Dichter, Redner, Philosophen, wo von Liebe die Rede ist, an ein Weib nicht einmal gedacht wird, dass vor einem Gerichtshofe ein Liebeshandel mit einem Junglinge mit der selben Offenheit oder Schamlosigkeit verhandelt wurde, als ob von einer Hetäre die Rede wäre.-S. 34. Platon hatte unter dem Einflusse der Epidemie so sehr den Sinn für Frauenliebe verloren, dass er in seinen Schilderungen des Eros, des himmlischen wie des gemeinen, nur der Knabenliebe gedenkt.-S. 35. Den Sklaven hatte die Solonische Gesetzgebung die Männerliebe verboten, die also überdies noch als ein den Freien gestattetes Vorrecht erschien."

deterioration sets in, which continues without a break down to the time of Plutarch. Families became extinct, through the desire to have few children. This was a result seen and deplored by Polybius a hundred and fifty years earlier. Speaking of the beginning of the Roman dominion over them, he says: "It is the accordant opinion of all that Greece now enjoys the greatest comfort of life, and yet there is want of men, desolation of cities, so that the land begins to lose its fruitfulness through want of cultivation. The reason is, out of softness, love of comfort and of ease, men, even if they live in the state of marriage, will bring up no children, or only one or two, in order to have a good inheritance. Thus the evil becomes ever greater, as if war or sickness takes away the one child, the family dies out."*

Thus if we consider the wide-spread dislike of marriage, and even in those who married, of large families, the condition of the slave population, and the terrible prevalence of unnatural immorality, it would appear, says an historian, that no people in history had laboured more effectually for its own gradual extinction than the Greeks.†

The Romans possessed originally a domestic life of a yet higher standard than that of the Greeks. Not only was it based upon monogamy, but marriage had with them a certain sanctity, and

*Polybius, Exc. Vatic. ed. Geel, p. 105, quoted by Döllinger, p. 693. † Heid. u. Jud. p. 691.

the wife was taken into the communion of joys and sorrows for the whole life. She possessed all the goods of her husband, even to the participation with him in sacrifice; and the more solemn form of marriage was a quasi-sacramental rite confirmed with religious sanctions. If what is said be true, that even for five hundred years there was no instance of divorce at Rome, then the Romans would rank before any nation of antiquity in their estimation of the marriage-bond. Their great strength would appear to have consisted for many ages in the force and purity of the domestic life, wherein the ideas of duty, obedience, and reciprocal respect were conspicuous. On these, first exercised within the family, the foundations of their civil polity seemed to rest. They were noble husbands and fathers before they became conquerors. But from the second Punic war at latest a great deterioration commences. It advances with the progress of external conquest. In the time of Augustus the very mention of the ancient Roman virtues in domestic life would seem a bitter satire upon the actual corruption. Conquest had inundated Rome with slaves, and the license engendered by slavery had infected every relation of the family. There was no pure and high religious belief to preserve the weaker sex from this contagion, and so all the evils which we have seen debasing Grecian life existed in full force here. Even the poor excuse presented by the sensitive and artistic temperament of the