statuary might have copied, without the aid of imagination, the form and features of naked beauty.*

In proportion as this latitude of principle and of practice was indulged in Greece, the respectable portion of the sex were degraded more and more by the jealous tyranny of legal vigilance and restraint. They became literally the appendages of the family inheritance, and were held in a state of rude and perpetual tutelage. If they were deprived of their husbands by death, the authority which he had exercised was transferred to her son; if the son died, the controul was exercised by the next of kin; and this superintendence, whether of the son or of the next of kin, was maintained, there is reason to think, with a roughness and rigour† which implied the insulting suspicion which was entertained of the frailty of the sex.

Every thing, indeed, was contrived to remind the sex of the duties of their servitude. The letter of the law, and the authority of the husband, were insufficient, it was thought, for their direction and restraint. They were also to be instructed, by emblems publicly displayed and of an expressive character; and the bird of night, a pair of reins, and a bandage for the lips, impressed them with the humiliating lesson that they were expected to watch over their husband's property with the vigilance of the owl, to place upon their tongue the restraint of silence, and to guide their menials with the dexterity of a charioteer at the public games.

• Appendix, Note D. D. D.

Ne sis mihi patruus oro, was a frequent supplication of the widow to her guardian. The guardian was denominated xvgios, an emphatic term.

The happiness of domestic life was, in fact, considered, in Greece, as of little moment. The state was every thing; the wife, but as she gave robust citizens to the state, was nothing. In Sparta she might seek, without shame or dishonour, to remedy an unfruitful union, by a temporary departure from her husband; and her husband might not only transfer her, for the same reason, and against her inclination, as freely as he might lend a tripod or a vase, but invite into his house the auxiliary husband whom he was to impose on the obedient acceptance of his wife*. If she bore a sickly child, her maternal feelings were to be outraged; and the infant, because likely to become a burden to the public, was to be cast into a cavern to perisht. If her child proved to be healthy and robust, it was considered as the property of the state, and unfeelingly removed from the superintendence of her fondness and her caret. In her earlier days she had been regarded only as an instrument of political advantage. She was required to mingle in the public exercises of wrestling, of the quoit, and of the race, for the purpose of increasing her stature and her strength; and, in order to extinguish the weakness of jealousy by which society is so much disturbed, and to provoke young men to marriage, that they might become more serviceable to the commonwealth, she was taught to exhibit herself without reserve in the naked dance, and, at all times, to robe her person in a manner that might best disclose the beauty and symmetry of her limbs ||. After her

Plutarch. In Lycurg.

+ Id. ib.

↑ Id. ib.

Plutarch. In Lycurg. expatiates on these exercises with evident pleasure; and that they produced the intended effect is pro

marriage she was to be no less instrumental to public purposes. Her value was to be estimated by the addition which she made to the sound and robust population of the state; and, on this principle, the right of her husband to her exclusive fidelity, was to be measured only by the political rule of public benefit.

At Athens and at Rome many of these degrading institutions were adopted or extolled. It has been already observed that the profound and accomplished Plato approved of the community of women, of the naked dance, and of the exposure of children *; and Pericles, devoted to the charms of Aspasia, is said not only to have repudiated his wife, but to have transferred her to another. The Roman rivalled the Greek in these flagrant violations of decorum and of justice. The grave and formal moralist, the dignified senator, the distinguished statesman, they who were

bable. The lady Lampito, in the play of Aristophanes, is extolled by her associates for her various merits; but it is mentioned as her chief glory, that she possessed strength and vigour enough to fell a bull. Aristoph. Lysistrat.

The sage of Cheronæa is as much pleased with the naked dance, and the managed robe, as with the exercises imposed on the Spartan girls; and he admits, that the indecent drama was represented in the presence of the whole public, and that the young men joined in the dance with an equal contempt of the incumbrances of dress. He does not tell us that the young women were to escape the taint of the licentiousness they inspired.

In modern times, philosophic inquirers, as they are called, have repeated and approved of the sentiments of Plutarch. "Dans le gymnase, les jeunes filles, depouilleés de leurs habits, et parées de leur vertu, comme le plus honorable des vetemens, disputerent le prix des exercises aux jeunes garçons leurs emules." L'Analyse De Repub. de Plat. par L'Abbe Barthelemi. Bibliotheque de l'homme public, par Condorcet, vol. iii.

the judges, and they who were the makers, of the laws, admitted and practised the Spartan doctrine, by which the husband was authorized to dispose of the person of the wife *. The unfortunate matron was sometimes to be consigned, without divorce, to the temporary possession of her husband's friend, and to be again received by her wedded master, only to be again exposed to the same indignity. With similar barbarity her child was to be exposed, whenever the prudence or parsimony of the father should incline him to prevent the increase of his family, and, what was yet more execrable, she might be commanded and compelled by her legal tyrant, to become herself the murderer, on its birth, of her unoffending infant t.

This subjection of the sex was maintained by various provisions of the laws; and they who were left without restraint by their religion, were surrendered to the vigilant superintendence not only of their husbands but of the state. Where love, says

* Hortensius the orator, after having supplicated the permission of Cato to cohabit with his daughter Porcia, then the wife of an illustrious senator, and found that the fastidiousness of the husband was likely to throw some difficulty in his way, proceeded, with inimitable coolness, to solicit his philosophic friend to confer on him the temporary possession of his wife Marcia. To this modest proposal there was, of course, no objection to be made. Not only Cato consented, but the father of Marcia deemed the proposal quite reasonable; and the happy orator received from their hands the object of his fugitive passion. Plut. In Vit. Caton. See also Grot. De Verit. Christian. lib. ii. § 13. Bayle talks of lending a wife, and of lending a book, as equally permitted by the law of nature and reason. Nouvelles Lettr. Contr. Maimbourg, Lett. 17.

† See chap. vi. sect. i.

Montesquieu, appeared solely in a shape which displayed the profligacy of the times, and marriage itself was considered as nothing more than a union of convenience, dissoluble at will*, it might have been thought more necessary to guard the chastity by political regulation, which was not defended by higher sanctions. The female, accordingly, who, in a seraglio, would have been attended by slaves, flexible, perhaps, to a bribe, was in Greece to submit to the yet more rigorous inspection of magistrates appointed by the state. These men were invested with an authority scarcely inferior to that of the tribunal which was early established at Rome †; and they might punish the wife, not merely for the deeper crime of incontinence, but for every departure, however slight, from that reserved and punctilious gravity which she was required to maintain. She was thus to live in a state of perpetual and unworthy coercion, while her husband might transfer his love, without blame, to the seductive charms of the more fortunate courtezan. All her virtues were prescribed or compelled. She was to boast no merit of voluntary performance; and if the jealousy and despotism which drew around her so tyrannically the circle of suspicion, might sometimes provoke the crime which

• L'Esprit De Loix, lib. vii. c. 9.

+ This tribunal took cognizance of the manners as well as of the guilt of women. It was invested with ample powers to punish every deviation from the grave and retiring modesty required of the sex; and the punishment, as it was discretionary, might be readily adapted to the nature of the crime, or the indiscretion of the accused. When this tribunal did not act, the husband himself sat as judge, and pronounced the verdict on the frailty or indecorum of his wife, in the presence of her relations. Dionys. Halicarn. lib. ii. p. 96. Ulpian. Tit. vi. § 9, 12, 13. Livy, lib. xxxix.