caprices of a master, who looks upon female beauty.as subservient to the purposes of animal enjoyment only, the will of the unhappy object of his lust must be his; since resistance in the Harem would be fatal, and flight from it impossible.

Plutarch, in speaking of the Persians, has noticed the severe treatment of their wives, in such terms as would justify us in concluding that it equally met with his disapprobation and that of his countrymen; but the domestic institutions of the Greeks inform us, that the notions they entertained of the female character, were scarcely more just and liberal than those of the people whom the philosopher of Cheronœa styles barbarians. The Greek, like the Persian women, were excluded from society, and shut up in sequestered apartments, and when they left them to go abroad, an indulgence but rarely granted, their faces were covered by veils; while, upon no occasion whatsoever, were they permitted to appear at public entertainments. The wives who had been prolific, experienced, perhaps, a greater portion of liberty than that which fell to the share of the new-married woman, and the virgin; yet still they had just reason to complain of the bolts and bars placed in their chambers by the jealousy or

tyranny of their lords*. The possibility, however, of escaping from the hands of their oppressors, was presented to them by a divorce; but that could not be effected without the consent of both parties. In this manner the wife of Pericles gained her freedom+.

There was a wide contrast, in the condition of the Athenian, and their neighbours the Lacedæmonian, women. The laws of Lycurgus did not establish such a cruel distinction between the sexes, as existed in those of Solon; for they authorized women to quit that privacy which Pericles deemed so essential to the preservation of their character, and to frequent solemn festivals and sacrifices. In their fashions too we may espy the same difference, as in their manners. The Lacedæmonian virgins went abroad with their faces uncovered, while the married women invariably appeared

Ταις γυναικωνίτισιν

Σφραγίδας ἐπιβαλλεσιν ήδη, και μουλες

Τηρώντες ήμας και προσεῖι Μολοτικός

Τρέφεσι, μορμολυκεία τοις μοιχοις, κύνας.

See Aristophanis Comad. Thesmophor, ver. 414-417.

+ See Plutarch in Vita Periclis.

See his Speech in Thucydides, Lib. ii.

with their veils. This custom was defended on the very natural and justifiable principle, of the former wishing to get husbands, and of the latter to keep those which they already possessed. But many will be inclined to think, that their practice of dancing naked, at those entertainments, before a concourse of male spectators, was well suited to encourage a general state of promiscuous intercourse between the sexes. It does, however, appear, that while the Spartans continued to pay that profound veneration to the statutes of their celebrated lawgiver, as to fulfil them without hesitation or reserve, adultery was a crime so rare among them, that no punishment was assigned for it*: but when the stern virtues of their ancestors were no longer inscribed upon their minds, the licentiousness of the women arose to such an extravagant pitch, that they

* In Plutarch, the judge and panegyrist of so many illustrious men, we read that Geradas, a primitive Spartan, being asked by a stranger what punishment their law had for an adulterer? replied, that it would be just as possible to find one in Sparta, as it would be to meet with a bull, whose neck should be so long as to reach over the mountain Taygetas, and drink of the river Eurotas, that lay on the other side.-See Vita Lycurg. From this speech, we are not, then, of course, to suppose the invitations which the Spartans were accustomed to give to handsome men, to share the favour of their wives, from the patriotic principle of supplying the state with a robust progeny, are to be ranked under the name of adultery.

were even stigmatized by writers with the epithet ἀνδρομανεις*.

In surveying the condition of women in the states of Greece, especially in Athens, our attention cannot fail to be arrested by the pomp and splendour assumed by the courtezans, and the honours to which they openly aspired, and which they received; while the married females, as we have already shewn, were subjected to the most mortifying inferiority, and esteemed only worthy to perform the meanest functions of domestic œconomy. Various causes have been suggested to account for that curious and important fact; but the following perhaps will be admitted by the philosopher as the most satisfactory and conclusive.

It is well known, that in many of the Greek colonies of Asia, temples were erected to Venus, in which voluptuousness and superstition equally concurred, not only to protect harlots, but even to raise them to the rank of priestesses of that meritricious divinity. In Grecian story, the people of Corinth were noted even to a proverb, for indulging their sensual passions without reserve; and that city was the first which in

It

*This term, which may be interpreted, running mad after men, strongly paints the unbounded lasciviousness of the Spartan women. was given them by Euripides, and is cited by Plutarch in Vita Numæ.

troduced a colony of those aspiring females from the East. We are told by an historian*, whose authority is deservedly of great weight, that Corinth could number at one time a thousand females, who prostituted their charms for hire in the temple of the goddess of beauty. Upon the efficacy of their prayers to Venus, these strumpets seem to place the firmest reliance; for they had recourse to them in every situation of difficulty and danger. Miltiades and Themistocles were even supposed to have become the saviours of Greece, because these votaries of lust had invoked their tutelary deity for the success of their armies.

*See Strabo, Lib. viii. p. 581.

† Οὐ παντος ἀνδρος ἐς Κορινθον ἐσθ ̓ ὁ πλες,—This proverb, so common in Greece, which Horace has thus translated, "Non cuivis hominum contingit adire Corinthum," is generally supposed to have taken its rise from some of these harlots admitting none to their embraces, but those who could afford to pay the most exorbitant price. It is recorded that Demosthenes visited Corinth for the express purpose of passing a night with the famous strumpet Laïs but the enormous tax which she exacted for that pleasure, ten thousand drachmas, in our money about three hundred pounds, produced this exclamation from the mouth of the orator, ¿x, αναιμαι μυρίων δραχμων μεταμέλειαν. See Aulus Gellius, Noctes Attica, Lib. I. cap. viii.

The magistrates of that republic even ordered their portraits to be painted at the public expence, in gratitude for their powerful intercessions.-See Athenæi Deipnosophist. Lib xiii.