It is evident that not only in private life, but in their desire for public activity also, the independence of the Sabine women failed to comport with the ideas already in vogue among their Roman husbands regarding the “proper sphere” of women. Consequently their behaviour was thought to be

too bold and too masculine, in particular to their husbands; for they considered themselves as absolute mistresses in their houses; nay, they wanted a share in affairs of state, and delivered their sentiments with great freedom concerning the most weighty matters.221

A woman even appeared in the Forum to plead her own cause, whereupon the grave senators ordered that the oracles be consulted that the true import of the singular phenomenon might be revealed.222

Plutarch, who lived in the first century of the Christian era, after having recounted these misdemeanours, assures us that “what is recorded of a few infamous women is a proof of the obedience and meekness of Roman matrons in general.”223

Doubtless, in Plutarch’s time, Roman women had lost much of that influence which characterized the female sex in an earlier age; it is not, therefore remarkable that by this writer the Sabine women should have been regarded as too forward and as altogether infamous. That their conduct was not all that could be desired by the outlaws and bandits who founded Rome, and who had stolen them for wives, is evident; and the regulations of their rulers respecting them show plainly that much judicious training and a vast amount of repression were required before they were fitted for the peculiar duties devolving upon them as sexual slaves.

We are told by Plutarch that the regulations established by Lycurgus, instead of encouraging that licentiousness of the women which prevailed at a later period, operated to render adultery unknown amongst them; yet this writer forgets to mention the fact that in Sparta, in the time of this ruler, there was no demand for prostitution by a class who held all the wealth and power, and who were therefore in a position to regulate this matter to suit their own tastes and inclinations. On the contrary, the female sex was free, not only in the matter of sexual relations, but in the exercise of all their natural tendencies, and in the direction of all their movements. The idea of sex, which among later and more thoroughly sensualized nations became first and foremost, among the Dorians, so far as equal rights, obligations, and duties were concerned, was ignored or left to nature to regulate.

Plutarch, like most writers who have dealt with the relations of the sexes, fails to observe the fact that just to the extent in the past history of mankind to which women have been free and independent, licentiousness has disappeared, and that just in proportion as the influence of women has declined, in just such proportion have shame, profligacy, disease, and infamy prevailed. To produce a state of society in which the animal instincts ruled supreme, and in which passion was the recognized god, women had first to become physically dependent and mentally enslaved.

For so long a time have women been judged by masculine standards, it is not perhaps remarkable that male writers of these later times can discern in the simplicity and chastity existing among the Dorians, in the age of Lycurgus, no evidence of a former era of female independence. Neither is it singular, as for so many ages women have been subject to the pleasure and control of the opposite sex, that we should be repeatedly told by writers who have dealt with the usages of the Spartans, that their women were “permitted” to do this, and “allowed” to do that, although the facts in the case prove that in all their movements they were guided by their own wills, exercised either directly, or through the oracles of the gods.

When the customs of the ancient Dorians are viewed without prejudice, the fact will doubtless be observed that they originated not in a depraved and licentious state of society, but, on the contrary, that they were the direct result of that freedom of action which characterizes purity of life and a high standard of thought and action.