One of the most noticeable of these is that immorality seems to have been no bar to social position.  Some of those who were most attractive and sought after were notoriously immoral.  Aspasia, whom Socrates and Pericles equally admired, and whose house was the resort of poets, philosophers, statesmen, and artists, and who is said to have been one of the most cultivated women of antiquity, bore a sullied name.  Sappho, who was ever exalted by Grecian poets for the sweetness of her verses, attempted to reconcile a life of pleasure with a life of letters, and threw herself into the sea because of a disappointed passion.  Lais, a professional courtesan, was the associate of kings and sages as well as the idol of poets and priests.  Agrippina, whose very name is infamy, was the admiration of courtiers and statesmen.  Lucilla, who armed her assassins against her own brother, seems to have ruled the court of Marcus Aurelius.

And all these women, and more who could be mentioned, were—­like Cleopatra—­cultivated, intellectual, and brilliant.  They seem to have reigned for their social fascinations as much as by their physical beauty.  Hence, that class of women who with us are shunned and excluded from society were not only flattered and honored, but the class itself seems to have been recruited by those who were the most attractive for their intellectual gifts as well as for physical beauty.  No woman, if bright, witty, and beautiful, was avoided because she was immoral.  It was the immoral women who often aspired to the highest culture.  They sought to reign by making their homes attractive to distinguished men.  Their houses seem to have been what the salons of noble and fascinating duchesses were in France in the last two centuries.  The homes of virtuous and domestic women were dull and wearisome.  In fact, the modest wives and daughters of most men were confined to monotonous domestic duties; they were household slaves; they saw but little of what we now call society.  I do not say that virtue was not held in honor.  I know of no age, however corrupt, when it was not prized by husbands and fathers.  I know of no age when virtuous women did not shine at home, and exert a healthful influence upon men, and secure the proud regard of their husbands.  But these were not the women whose society was most sought.  The drudgeries and slaveries of domestic life among the ancients made women unattractive to the world.  The women who were most attractive were those who gave or attended sumptuous banquets, and indulged in pleasures that were demoralizing.  Not domestic women, but bright women, carried away those prizes which turned the brain.  Those who shone were those that attached themselves to men through their senses, and possibly through their intellects, and who were themselves strong in proportion as men were weak.  For a woman to appear in public assemblies with braided and decorated hair and ostentatious dress, and especially if she displayed any gifts of eloquence or culture, was to proclaim herself one of the immoral, leisurely, educated, dissolute class.  This gives point to Saint Paul’s strict injunctions to the women of Corinth to dress soberly, to keep silence in the assemblies, etc.  The modest woman was to “be in subjection.”  Those Pagan converts to the “New Way” were to avoid even the appearance of evil.