[1154]. Athen. iv. 22.
[1155]. In the household of Pericles, however, we find mention made of a steward, and learn that the regulation of affairs was taken out of the hands of the women.—Plut. Pericl. § 16.
[1156]. Œconom. ix. 10. p. 57, Schneid. Similar business habits prevailed among our neighbours, the Dutch, while they enjoyed the advantages of republican institutions. Among the causes of their prosperity Sir Josiah Child enumerates, “the education of their children, as well daughters as sons, all which, be they of never so great quality or estate, they always take care to bring up to write perfect good hands, and to have the full knowledge and use of arithmetic and merchants’ accounts, the well understanding and practice whereof, doth strangely infuse into most that are the owners of that quality, of either sex, not only an ability for commerce of all kinds, but a strong aptitude, love and delight in it; and in regard the women are as knowing therein as the men, it doth encourage their husbands to hold on in their trades to their dying days. Knowing the capacity of their wives to get in their estates and carry on their trades after their deaths; whereas if a merchant in England arrive at any considerable estate, he commonly withdraws his estate from trade, before he comes near the confines of old age, reckoning that if God should call him out of the world while the main of his estate is engaged abroad in trade, he must lose one third of it, through the inexperience and inaptness of his wife to such affairs, and so it usually falls out.”—Discourse of Trade, p. 4.
[1157]. De Legg. l. ii. t. vii. p. 243. Bekk.—Ἐὰν δέ γ᾿ οἱ μείζους παῖδες, τὸν τὰς κωμῳδίας· τραγωδίαν δὲ αἵ τε πεπαιδευμέναι τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τὰ νέα μειράκια καὶ σχεδὸν ἴσως τὸ πλῆθος πάντων.
[1158]. The Roman ladies entered still earlier into the married state; at the age of twelve, says Plutarch, or under. Parall. Num. et Lycurg. § 4.
[1159]. Xenoph. Œconom. vii. 5. 6. sqq.
[1160]. Plut. Themist. § 18.
[1161]. Diog. Laert. i. 6. 4.
[1162]. In Greece, as everywhere else, portionless girls had few admirers. Diog. Laert. v. 4. 1.
[1163]. Examples occur in the comic poets, of men choosing for themselves. Thus in Terence a young man declines the lady offered him by his father, and proposes to marry the mistress of his choice, to which both parents agree. Heautontimor. v. 5. sub. fin.