Thus under Paganism the general influence of women was to pull men down rather than to elevate them, especially those who were attractive in society.  Virtuous and domestic women were not sufficiently educated to have much influence except in a narrow circle.  Even they, in a social point of view, were slaves.  They could be given in marriage without their consent; they were restricted in their intercourse with men; they were confined to their homes; they had but few privileges; they had no books; they led a life of terror from the caprices of their lords and masters, and hence inspired no veneration.  The wives and daughters of the rich tyrannized over their servants, decked themselves with costly ornaments, and were merely gilded toys, whose society was vapid and uninteresting.  The wives and daughters of the poor were drudges and menials, without attraction or influence; noisy, quarrelsome, garrulous women, who said the least when they talked the most.

Hence under Paganism home had none of those attractions which, in Christian countries, invest it with such charms.  The home of the poor was squalid and repulsive; the home of the rich was gaudy and tinselled enough, but was dull and uninspiring.  What is home when women are ignorant, stupid, and slavish?  What glitter or artistic splendor can make home attractive when women are mere butterflies or slaves with gilded fetters?  Deprive women of education, and especially of that respect which Christian chivalry inspires, and they cannot rise to be the equal companions of men.  They are simply their victims or their slaves.  What is a home where women are treated as inferiors?  Paganism never recognized their equality with men; and if they ever ruled men, it was by appealing to their lower qualities, or resorting to arts and devices which are subversive of all dignity of character.  When their personal beauty fled, their power also departed.  A faded or homely woman, without intelligence or wit, was a forlorn object in a Pagan home,—­to be avoided, derided, despised,—­a melancholy object of pity or neglect, so far as companionship goes.  She may have been valued as a cook or drudge, but she was only a menial.  Of all those sins of omission of which Paganism is accused, the worst was that it gave to women no mental resources to assist them in poverty, or neglect, or isolation, when beauty or fortune deserted them.  No home can be attractive where women have no resources; and women can have no resources outside of domestic duties, unless educated to some art or something calculated to draw out their energies and higher faculties by which they win the respect and admiration, not of men only, but of their own sex.