CHAPTER VII
WOMAN'S POSITION IN THE GREAT CIVILISATIONS OF ANTIQUITY
I.--_In Egypt_
The importance of estimating woman's position in the great civilisations of the ancient world--The Egyptian civilisation--Women more free and more honoured than in any country to-day--The account given by Herodotus--The Egyptian woman never confined to the home--No restraint upon her
## actions--She entered into commerce in her own right and made
contracts for her own benefit--Abundant material in proof of the high status of Egyptian women--Marriage contracts--Their importance and interest--Numerous examples--The proprietary rights of the wife--An early period of mother-rule--Property originally in the hands of women--The marriage contracts a development of the early system--The Egyptians solved the difficult problem of the fusion of mother-right with father-right--The statement of Dioderus that among the Egyptians the woman rules over the man--The conditions of marriage dependent on the birth of children--M. Paturet's view the Egyptian woman the equal of man--The high status of woman proved by the fact that her child was never illegitimate--The position of the mother secure in every relationship between the sexes--This made possible by the free conditions of the marriage contracts--Polygamy allowed--This practice in Egypt very different from polygamy in a patriarchal society--The husband a privileged guest in the home of the wife--The high ideal of the domestic relationship--Illustrations from the inscriptions of the monuments--Reasons which explain this civilised and human organisation--The Egyptians an agricultural and a conservative people--They were also a pacific race--The significance of the Maxims of the Moralists--Honour to the wife and the mother strongly insisted on--The health and character of the Egyptian mother--Some reflections in the Egyptian Galleries of the British Museum.
II.--_In Babylon_
Traces of mother-right in primitive Babylon--The honour paid to women--The position of women in later Babylonian history, though still at an early period--Their rights more circumscribed--The marriage code of Hammurabi--Polygamy permitted, though restricted, by the code--The exacting conditions of divorce--The position of the wife as subject to her husband--The later Neo-Babylonian periods--The position of women continuously improving--They obtain a position equal in law with their husbands--Their freedom in all social relations--They conduct business transactions in their own right--Illustrations from the contract tablets--Remarks and conclusion.
III.--_In Greece_
Traces of mother-right traditions in Greek literature and history--The women of the Homeric period--Dangers arising from the patriarchal subjection of women--Illustrations and various reflections--Historic Greece--The social organisation of Sparta--Their marriage system--The laws of Lycurgus--The freedom of the Spartan girls--The wise care for the health of the race--Plato's criticism of the Spartan system--He accuses the women of ruling their husbands--The Athenian women--Their subjection under the strict patriarchal rule--The insistence on chastity--Reasons for this--The degraded position of the wife--The _hetairæ_--They the only educated women in Athens--Aspasia--She leads the movement to raise the position of the Athenian women--Plato's estimate of women--Remarks on the sexual penalties for women that are always found under a strict patriarchal regime--The ideal relationship between the wife and the husband--Euripides voices the sorrows of women--He foreshadows their coming triumph.
IV.--_In Rome_
Little known of the position of women in Rome in prehistoric times--Indications of an early period of mother-rule--The patriarchal system formerly established when Roman history opens--The Roman marriage law--The woman regarded as the property first of her father and afterwards of her husband--The patrician marriage of _confarreatio_--The form known as _coemptio_--Marriage by _usus_--The inequality of divorce--The subjection of the woman--The terrible right of the husband's _manus_--The way of escape--The development of the early marriage by _usus_--The new free marriage by consent--Free divorce--A revolution in the position of women--The patriarchal rule of women dwindled to a mere thread--They gained increasingly greater liberty until at last they gained complete freedom--The public entry of women into the affairs of State--Illustrations to show the fine use made by the Roman matrons of their freedom--An examination into the supposed licentiousness of Roman women--This opinion cannot be accepted--The effect of Christianity--The view of Sir Henry Maine--Some concluding remarks on the position of women in the four great civilisations examined in this chapter.
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