e not a fair share of the emoluments of life,
and consequently endeavor to better the conditions which environ
themselves and their sisters.

In this chapter we shall make a study of the dramatists and philosophers
of Athens, in so far as they give insight into the social life of the
city in its most important epoch, and outline what they contribute to
our knowledge of Greek woman and the ever-present Woman Question.

For the early part of this brilliant period we must rely on the ideal
pictures of tragedy for the higher side, and the ribald travesties of
comedy for the lower side of feminine life, AEschylus flourished just
before and during the glorious period following the Persian War,--the
good days before the influx of foreigners and the new education
corrupted the life and undermined the faith of the citizens. In his
seven extant plays he has presented to us only three feminine characters
of any importance,--Clytemnestra, Electra, and Cassandra,--all belonging
to the cycle of tragedies treating of the fate of King Agamemnon and his
royal house at Mycenae. The dramatist's pictures of home life show his
high conception of the ability and the importance of women and of the
large part they play in human history. His Clytemnestra is a ruling
queen exercising all the functions of royalty, but her powerful nature
has been debased by grief and sin. She identifies herself with the
"ancient bitter Alastor," who visits on Agamemnon the curse of his
house. She is self-sufficingness, adamantine purpose, studied craft, and
cold disdain incarnate. With fulsome speech and consummate flattery she
welcomes her husband home; and when the deed is done and he lies dead by
her hand, in exultant tones she rejoices in the blood upon her robe as
"a cornfield in the dews of spring." Truly she is the most powerful
portrait of feminine guilt that dramatic literature affords us. AEschylus
drew his scenery and his characters largely from the conditions of the
Heroic Age as pictured by Homer, and was little affected by the current
of everyday life about him.

As AEschylus has given us Clytemnestra for an ideal type of feminine
power and wickedness, so Sophocles has presented two immortal heroines,
Antigone and Electra, who are statuesque in the beauty and grandeur of
their characters. In Antigone we observe two fundamental
qualities,--enthusiasm in the performance of duty, and intensity of
domestic affection, as seen in her efforts to reconcil