Comanche Indians, who treated their squaws with especial contempt, nevertheless would not hesitate on occasion to submit to the rule of a female chief (Bancroft, I., 509); and the same is true of other tribes in America, Africa, etc. (Grosse, 163).  In this respect, barbarians do not differ from civilized races; queenship is a question of blood or family and tells us nothing whatever about the status of women in general.  As regards the “equal rights” of the Dyak women just referred to, if they really have them, it is not as women, but as men, that is, in so far as they have become like men.  This we see from what Schwaner says (I., 161) of the tribes in the Southeast: 

“The women are allowed great privileges and liberties.  Not infrequently they rule at home and over whole tribes with manly power, incite to war, and often personally lead the men to battle.”

Honors paid to such viragoes are honors to masculinity, not to femininity.

GREEK ESTIMATE OF WOMEN

Here again the transition from the barbarian to the Greek is easy and natural.  The ancient Greek looked down on women as women.  “One man,” exclaims Iphigenia in Euripides, “is worth more than ten thousand women.”  There were, of course, certain virtues that were esteemed in women, but these, as Becker has said, differed but little from those required of an obedient slave.  It is only in so far as women displayed masculine qualities that they were held worthy of higher honor.  The heroines of Plutarch’s essay on “The Virtues of Women” are women who are praised for patriotic, soldier-like qualities, and actions.  Plato believed that men who were bad in this life would, on their next birth, be women.  The elevation of women, he held, could be best accomplished by bringing them up to be like men.  But this matter will be discussed more fully in the chapter on Greece, as will that of the adulation which was paid to wanton women by Greek and Roman poets, and which has been often mistaken for adoration.  George Eliot speaks of “that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself.”  No Greek ever felt a woman to be “greater and better than himself,” wherefore true adoration—­the deification of persons—­was out of the question.  But there was no reason why a Greek or Roman should not have indulged in servile flattery and hypocritical praise for the selfish purpose of securing the carnal favors of a mercenarily coy courtesan.  He was capable of adulation but not of adoration, for one cannot adore a slave, a drudge or a wanton.  The author of the Lover’s Lexicon claims, indeed, that “love can and does exist without respect,” but that is false.  Infatuation of the senses may exist without respect, but refined, sentimental love is blighted by the discovery of impurity or vulgarity.  Adoration is essential to true love, and adoration includes respect.