the women of the community ignored as factors in the state to such an extent, that they rank little higher than domesticated animals.[1] In neither of these states, however, were they ever invested with any political office; and their power could only be felt indirectly by the executive as the result of their activity as wives and mothers in the family circle.[2] But outside Greece, in those wider territories more or less permeated by Hellenes, women sometimes attained to a full share of government, inherited or assumed a sovereignty on the death of their husbands, commanded armies, and even appeared in martial attire at the head of their troops. Two Ionian princesses, both of whom bore the name of Artemisia, reigned in Caria: the elder distinguished herself at sea as an ally of Xerxes in the naval battle of Salamis (480 B.C.);[3] her successor erected the magnificent monument at Halicarnassus in memory of her husband Mausolus, hence called the Mausoleum, which was admired as one of the seven wonders of the world.[4] Cynane, a daughter of Philip of Macedon, led an expedition into Illyria, and is said to have
- ↑ On the Athenian women in general, see Becker-Göll, Charicles, Excurs.
- ↑ To a female visitor from another country it seemed that the Lacedaemonian women ruled the men; Plutarch, Lycurgus; cf. Aristotle, Politics, ii, 9. He makes out that things were muddled at Sparta, owing to interference by the women.
- ↑ Herodotus, vii, 99; viii, 87, etc. Several of her ruses in war are mentioned by Polyaenus, Stratagems, viii, 53.
- ↑ Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxxvi, 5, etc. The fragments of it to a large amount are now in a special room of the British Museum, together with attempted restorations in the solid and on the flat. It was delightfully situated on the Bay of Halicarnassus, a sight in itself, and a point of sight for a splendid prospect of sea, contained in a circuit of rising coast, covered with specimens of Greek architecture. Herodotus himself hailed from this town.
