WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 15 



But, notwithstanding the beneficent influence which 

 Aspasia ever exerted on those about her, notwithstanding 

 the heroic efforts she had made to liberate her own sex 

 from the restrictions that had so long harassed and de- 

 graded it, the wives and daughters of the citizens of 

 Athens were still kept in almost absolute seclusion and 

 denied the opportunities of mental culture which were so 

 generously accorded the free-born hetaerae from Asia Minor 

 and the islands of the Mgean. Socrates, as we learn from 

 Xenophon, asserted woman's equality with man, while 

 Plato taught that mentally there was no essential differ- 

 ence between man and woman. He concluded, accordingly, 

 that women of talent should have the same educational ad- 

 vantages as men. In The Republic as well as in the Laws, 

 when he refers to education which he would make com- 

 pulsory for l ' all and sundry, as far as possible ' ' his views 

 are far in advance of those which have been entertained 

 until the last half century. He would have girls as well 

 as boys thoroughly instructed in music and gymnastic 

 "music for the mind and gymnastic for the body." 1 



In the Laws he contends that "women ought to share, 

 as far as possible, in education and in other ways with men. 

 For consider : if women do not share in their whole life 

 with men, then they must have some other order of life." 



Again he asserts "Nothing can be more absurd than 

 the practice which prevails in our own country of men and 

 women not following the same pursuits with all their 



tes and Plato's Menexenus. Among the most valuable of modern 

 works on the same subject is Aspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de 

 Fouquieres, Paris, 1872. Cf. also Aspasie et le Siecle de Pericles, 

 Paris, 1862; Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bievre, 

 Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt's Sur I' Age de Pericles, 1877-79. 



1 Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included 

 reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony. 

 It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music 

 and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul. 



