d, does she venture to appear in
their midst, and then shyly and timidly, hoping to hear a little of what
is going on in the great world outside. Ah, indeed! we women thirst for
knowledge too, and there are certain branches of learning at least, which
it cannot be right to withhold from those who are to be the mothers and
educators of the next generation. What can an Attic mother, without
knowledge, without experience, give to her daughters? Naught but her own
ignorance. And so it is, that a Hellene, seldom satisfied with the
society of his lawful, but, mentally, inferior wife, turns for
satisfaction to those courtesans, who, from their constant intercourse
with men, have acquired knowledge, and well understand how to adorn it
with the flowers of feminine grace, and to season it with the salt of a
woman's more refined and delicate wit. In Egypt it is different. A young
girl is allowed to associate freely with the most enlightened men. Youths
and maidens meet constantly on festive occasions, learn to know and love
one another. The wife is not the slave, but the friend of her husband;
the one supplies the deficiencies of the other. In weighty questions the
stronger decides, but the lesser cares of life are left to her who is the
greater in small things. The daughters grow up under careful guidance,
for the mother is neither ignorant nor inexperienced. To be virtuous and
diligent in her affairs becomes easy to a woman, for she sees that it
increases his happiness whose dearest possession she boasts of being, and
who belongs to her alone. The women only do that which pleases us! but
the Egyptian men understand the art of making us pleased with that which
is really good, and with that alone. On the shores of the Nile,
Phocylides of Miletus and Hipponax of Ephesus would never have dared to
sing their libels on women, nor could the fable of Pandora have been
possibly invented here!"

[Simonides of Amorgos, an Iambic poet, who delighted in writing
satirical verses on women. He divides them into different classes,
which he compares to unclean animals, and considers that the only
woman worthy of a husband and able to make him happy must be like
the bee. The well-known fable of Pandora owes its origin to
Simonides. He lived about 650 B. C. The Egyptians too, speak very
severely of bad women, comparing them quite in the Simonides style
to beasts of prey (hyenas, lions and panthers). We find this
sentence