Among the Jews there seems to have been no intermediate stage of subordination of women, but instead a gradual progress throughout from complete subjection of the woman as wife to ever greater freedom.  At first the husband could repudiate his wife at will without cause. (This was not an extension of patriarchal authority, but a purely marital authority.) The restrictions on this authority gradually increased, and begin to be observable already in the Book of Deuteronomy.  The Mishnah went further and forbade divorce whenever the wife’s condition inspired pity (as in insanity, captivity, etc.).  By A.D. 1025, divorce was no longer possible except for legitimate reasons or by the wife’s consent.  At the same time, the wife also began to acquire the right of divorce in the form of compelling the husband to repudiate her on penalty of punishment in case of refusal.  On divorce the wife became an independent woman in her own right, and was permitted to carry off the dowry which her husband gave her on marriage.  Thus, notwithstanding Jewish respect for the letter of the law, the flexible jurisprudence of the Rabbis, in harmony with the growth of culture, accorded an ever-growing measure of sexual justice and equality to women (D.W.  Amram, The Jewish Law of Divorce).

Among the Arabs the tendency of progress has also been favorable to women in many respects, especially as regards inheritance.  Before Mahommed, in accordance with the system prevailing at Medina, women had little or no right of inheritance.  The legislation of the Koran modified this rule, without entirely abolishing it, and placed women in a much better position.  This is attributed largely to the fact that Mahommed belonged not to Medina, but to Mecca, where traces of matriarchal custom still survived (W.  Marcais, Des Parents et des Allies Successibles en Droit Musulman).

It may be pointed out—­for it is not always realized—­that even that stage of civilization—­when it occurs—­which involves the subordination and subjection of woman and her rights really has its origin in the need for the protection of women, and is sometimes even a sign of the acquirement of new privileges by women.  They are, as it were, locked up, not in order to deprive them of their rights, but in order to guard those rights.  In the later more stable phase of civilization, when women are no longer exposed to the same dangers, this motive is forgotten and the guardianship of woman and her rights seems, and indeed has really become, a hardship rather than an advantage.

Of the status of women at Rome in the earliest periods we know little or nothing; the patriarchal system was already firmly established when Roman history begins to become clear and it involved unusually strict subordination of the woman to her father first and then to her husband.  But nothing is more certain than that the status of women in Rome rose with the