Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/111

The European woman emerges first of all in Greece—the cradle of art, philosophy, and culture, and among a race of men who above all others perhaps deserved to be called "civilised." For the Greek, Justice was the supreme virtue, but it was a virtue practised between equals, and it did not even occur to the citizen of Athens that the sexes could be regarded as deserving of equal civic rights! Incapable of brutality, he did indeed offer new rights to all inferiors, to slaves, to women, and children, but it was not the love of justice, but the spirit of gentleness that inspired this generosity. And how little the highest culture of man could supply the place of opportunity for the development of her own powers to woman was well illustrated in ancient Athens! The gynacée was no "home," no theatre of choice at all for the respectable matron or girl. It was a mere shelter and hiding-place. The home of the citizen was the city. His life was lived in the public places, the courts, the groves, the public dining-places. There he discussed, and learned, and acted; there was his true home, and there too he enjoyed, among other privileges, the intellectual stimulus supplied in the company and conversation of abandoned but highly educated women. It has been said that of all modern women the French-woman supplies the most powerful intellectual stimulus, that even the dullest man becomes keen and intelligent in talking to her. In any case there is little doubt that the element in intellectual life supplied by the hetairai was appreciated by the greatest sages and philosophers. It is through no