PREFACE ix 



This thought it was that started the train of reflections on the 

 intellectual achievements of women which eventually gave rise 

 to the idea of writing a book on woman's work in things of the 

 mind. 



The following day, as I was entering the University of Athens, 

 I noticed above the stately portal a large and beautiful paint- 

 ing which, on inspection, proved, to my great delight, to be 

 nothing less than a pictorial representation of my musings the 

 night before on the portico of the Parthenon. For there was 

 Aspasia, just as I had fancied her in her salon, seated beside 

 Pericles, and surrounded by the greatest and the wisest men of 

 Greece. "This," I exclaimed, "shall be the frontispiece of my 

 book; it will tell more than many pages of text." Nor did I 

 rest till I had procured a copy of this excellent work of art. 



Shortly after my journey through Greece I visited the chief 

 cities and towns of Italy. I traversed the whole of Magna 

 Grsecia and, to enjoy the local color of things Grecian and 

 breathe, as far as might be, the atmosphere which once en- 

 veloped the world's greatest thinkers, I stood on the spot in 

 Syracuse where Plato discoursed on the true, the beautiful and 

 the good, before enthusiastic audiences of men and women, and 

 wandered through the land inhabited by the ancient Bruttii, 

 where Pythagoras has his famous school of science and philos- 

 ophy a school which was continued after the founder's death 

 by his celebrated wife, Theano. For in Crotona, as well as in 

 Athens, and in Alexandria in the time of Hypatia, women were 

 teachers as well as scholars, and attained to marked distinction 

 in every branch of intellectual activity. 



As I visited, one after the other, what were once the great 

 centers of learning and culture in Magna Gra3cia, the idea of 

 writing the book aforementioned appealed to me more strongly 

 from day to day, but it did not assume definite form until after 

 I had tarried for some weeks or months in each of the great 

 university towns of Italy. And as I wended my way through 

 the almost deserted streets of Salerno, which was for centuries 

 one of the noblest seats of learning in Christendom, and recalled 

 the achievements of its gifted daughters those wonderful 

 mulieres Salernitance, whose praises were once sounded through- 

 out Europe, but whose names have been almost forgotten I 



