WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 3 



rested, while man, as in the modern language of Darwin, 

 was a woman, whose evolution had been completed. 



When such views prevailed, it was inevitable that, so 

 long as physical force was the force majeure, a woman 

 should be relegated to the position of a slave or to that of 

 ' ' a mere glorified toy. ' ' Every man then said, in effect, if 

 not in words, of the woman who happened to be in his 

 power what Petruchio said of Katherine: 



"I will be master of what is mine own, 

 She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, 

 My household stuff, my field, my barn, 

 My horse, my ox, my ass, my everything." 



Even after civilization had superseded savagery and bar- 

 barism, it was still inevitable, so long as such views found 

 acceptance, that woman should continue to be held in vas- 

 salage and ignorance and to suffer all the disabilities and 

 privations of "the lesser man." She was studiously ex- 

 cluded from civic and social functions and compelled to 

 pass her life in the restricted quarters of the harem or 

 gyneceum. This was the case among the Athenians, as 

 well as among other peoples ; for, during the most brilliant 

 period of their history, women, when not slaves or hetaerae, 

 were considered simply child-bearers or housekeepers. 1 A 

 girl's education, when she received any at all, was limited 

 to reading, writing and music, and for a knowledge of these 

 subjects she was dependent on her mother. From her 

 earliest years the Athenian maiden was made to realize 

 that the great fountains of knowledge, which were always 

 i Demosthenes In Necercm, 122. Tds fdv y&p era/pas ijdovijs tveS 



ToO 7rai5o7roiet(T0cu yvi]<rl<as Kal rCtv evdov 



As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as 

 members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes 

 Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment: 

 ' ' More than a thousand women is one man 

 Worthy to see the light of life." 



