contrary, full
liberty to maidens to show themselves in public, and to steel their
strength by bodily exercise. This liberty, however, was not the result
of a philosophic idea of the equality of the two sexes, but was
founded on the desire of producing strong children by means of
strengthening the body of the female.

The chief occupation of women, beyond the preparing of the meals,
consisted in spinning and weaving. In Homer we see the wives of the
nobles occupied in this way; and the custom of the women making the
necessary articles of dress continued to prevail even when the luxury
of later times, together with the degeneracy of the women themselves,
had made the establishment of workshops and places of manufacture for
this purpose necessary. Antique art has frequently treated these
domestic occupations. The Attic divinities, Athene Ergane and
Aphrodite Urania, as well as the Argive Here, Ilithyia, the protecting
goddess of child-bearing, Persephone, and Artemis, all these plastic
art represents as goddesses of fate, weaving the thread of life, and,
at the same time, protecting female endeavors; in which two-fold
quality they have the emblem of domestic activity, the distaff, as
their attribute. Only a few representations of spinning goddesses now
remain; but many are the pictures of mortal spinning-maidens painted
on walls, chiefly for female use. For the spinning, a spindle was
used, as is still the case in places where the northern
spinning-wheel has not supplanted the antique custom. Homer describes
noble ladies handling the distaff with the spindle belonging to it.
Helen received a present of a golden spindle, with a silver basket to
keep the thread in. The distaff, with a bundle of wool or flax
fastened to its point, was held under the left arm, while the thumb
and first finger of the right hand, slightly wetted, spun the thread
at the end of which hung the spindle, made of metal. The web was, from
the spindle, wound round a reel, to be further prepared on the loom.

[Illustration: SOCIAL ENJOYMENT OF WOMEN (_From an ancient
painting._)]

Akin to spinning are the arts of weaving and embroidering. We
frequently see in vase-paintings women with embroidering-frames in
their laps. The skill of Greek ladies in embroidery is sufficiently
proved by the tasteful embroidered patterns and borders on Greek
dresses, both of men and women. The vase-paintings supply many
examples.

Our remarks about female dut