done to a member of the
family community by the members of another tribe. In defence of the
women the men are spurred to highest valor. Thus did the effects of the
mother-right, gyneocracy, manifest themselves in all the relations of
life among the peoples of antiquity--among the Babylonians, the
Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, before the time of the Heroes;
among the peoples of Italy, before the founding of Rome; among the
Scythians, the Gauls, the Iberians and Cantabrians, the Germans of
Tacitus, etc. Woman, at that time, takes in the family and in public
life a position such as she has never since taken. Along these lines,
says Tacitus in his "Germania": "They (the Germans) even suppose
somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the female sex;
and, therefore, neither despise their counsels, nor disregard their
responses;" and Diodorus, who lived at the time of Caesar, feels highly
indignant over the position of women in Egypt, having learned that
there, not the sons, but the daughters, supported their aging parents.
He contemptuously shrugs his shoulders at the poltroons of the Nile, who
relinquish household and public rights to the members of the weaker sex,
and allow them privileges that must sound unheard-of to a Greek or a
Roman.

Under the gyneocracy, a state of comparative peace prevailed in general.
The horizon was narrow and small, life primitive. The different tribes
separated themselves from one another, as best they could, and respected
their mutual boundaries. Was, however, one tribe attacked by another,
then the men were obliged to rush to its defence, and in this they were
supported by the women in the most vigorous fashion. According to
Herodotus, the women joined in battle among the Scythians: as he claims,
the maid could not marry before she had slain an enemy. What _role_
women played in battle among the Germans, Iberians, Scots, etc., has
already been stated. But in the gens also did they, under given
circumstances, command a strong regiment:--woe to the man who was either
too lazy or too unskilled to contribute his share to the common support.
He was shown the door, and, either he returned to his own gens, where it
was with difficulty he was again received with friendliness, or he
joined another gens that was more tolerant toward him.[7]

That conjugal life still bears this character in the interior of Africa,
Livingstone learned to his great surprise, as he narrates in his
"M