Ischomachus goes on and tells how, in subsequent conversations, he taught his wife the value of order, "how to have a place for everything, and everything in its place," how to train a servant, and how to make herself attractive without the use of cosmetics or fine clothes. But enough has been quoted to show what the ideal family relation among the Athenians was, and what education was thought fitting for girls and women. Just as the man was merged in the citizen, so the woman was merged in the housewife, and they each received the education and training demanded by their respective duties. If Athenian husbands had all been like Ischomachus, it is clear that the lives of wives might have been very happy and useful, and that harmony might have reigned in the family. But, unfortunately, that was not very often the case. Wives, being neglected, became lazy, wasteful, self-indulgent, shrewish, and useless, while their husbands, finding them so, sought in immoral relations with brilliant and cultivated hetæræ, or in worse relations still, a coarse substitute for that satisfaction which they ought to have sought and found in their own homes. Thus there grew up a condition of things which could not fail to sap the moral foundations of society, and which made thoughtful men turn their attention to the question of woman's education and sphere of duty.
CHAPTER III
PLATO
All human laws are nourished by the one divine law; for it prevaileth as far as it listeth, and sufficeth for all and surviveth all.—Heraclitus.
Though reason is universal, the mass of men live as if they had each a private wisdom of his own.—Id.
Antigone. ... But him will I inter;
And sweet 'twill be to die in such a deed,
And sweet will be my rest with him, the sweet,
When I have righteously offended here.
For longer time, methinks, have I to please
The dwellers in yon world than those in this;
For I shall rest forever there. But thou,
Dishonor still what's honored of the gods.
—Sophocles, Antigone.
The circle that gathered round Isaiah and his household in these evil days, holding themselves apart from their countrymen, treasuring the word of revelation, and waiting for Jehovah, were indeed, as Isaiah describes them, "signs and tokens in Israel from Jehovah of hosts that dwelleth in Mount Zion." The formation of this little community was a new thing in the history of religion. Till then no one had dreamed of a fellowship of faith dissociated from all national forms, maintained without the exercise of ritual services, bound together by faith in the divine word alone. It was the birth of a new era in the Old Testament religion, for it was the birth of the conception of the Church, the first step in the emancipation of spiritual religion from the forms of political life,—a step not less significant that all its consequences were not seen till centuries had passed away.—W. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel.
Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.—Lowell.