a wedding or a funeral was passing by they might perchance be permitted to go as far as the front door of the house and, in the absence of strangers, might even enter the men's court, but such an event was unusual. The door of the woman's apartment was tightly closed against all men save the master of the house, and a few highly privileged and near relatives. The only breaks in the monotony of their lives were afforded by the great religious festivals, and then even high-born maidens walked through the streets in procession, sometimes dancing as they went. Occasionally, too, they were allowed to attend dramatic per formances. No woman could legally be a party to any contract involving an amount of greater value than a bushel and a half of barley. In all legal proceedings she had to be repre sented by a lawfully qualified agent or guar dian. As long as she remained in her father's house he was her guardian (or kurios) when he went to Hades her next male relative (according to the Athenian law of succession), became such. If she married, her husband filled that office while they lived together; if he died and she re mained in his house her sons, or their guar dian, took his place. If she returned to her original family home, owing to her husband crossing the Styx, or to her being divorced, she again came under the guardianship of her next of kin. At funerals, in Athens, the male relatives walked before the bier, the women followed after it. No woman under the age of sixty was allowed to enter the place where a corpse lay, nor to follow the bier unless she was a relative not more distant from the late departed than a first cousin once removed, nor unless she was thus related could she enter the room until some time after the dead had been removed. The Greek had a fear that the soul of the deceased might pass into the body of the woman, and thus be born again of her, and if he had to revisit
glimpses of the moon he wished to still be in his own family. In Sparta the law ordained that the girls should have a musical and gymnastic edu cation similar to the boys. They were trained in running, leaping, wrestling and throwing the spear and discus, in dancing of various kinds, and in the singing of choruses. These exercises were shared in by the Spartan youths, who were all clad almost in the fig-leaf style of garment, and these joint performances were intended to lead on to matrimony, and Plato says they " drew the young men and maidens to marriage as necessarily by the attraction of love, as a geometrical conclusion is drawn from the premises." In the days of myths and legends, when suitors were numerous, the father of the popular girl put the young men to a physi cal test: Antaeus had a race, and such a course was suggested as a means of settling the claims of- Penelope's suitors. Danaus, also, who was blessed with half a hundred daughters, had a trial of speed : the winner had first choice of the girls; the second in second pick; and so on to the last. Those who had no claimants had to wait until a second race was prepared. In Athens monogamy alone was recognized by law; no one could be married to two persons at the same time. Limitations as to choice were few; a man might not marry his mother, grandmother or great-grandmother, nor a lineal descendant, nor his uterine sister: but he might marry his niece or his aunt (if he chose), or his half sister who had the same father as himself. Near relatives often married to keep property in the fam ily. The law provided that the nearest relative whether married or not should be entitled to marry an heiress when her father died, and receive the inheritance with her. In re turn for this privilege he was obliged, if not by law, yet by custom and tradition, so soon as he had several sons, to appoint one of them to inherit the wife's property, that the
