Respecting the wise regulations instituted by Lycurgus for the management of women, Plutarch says:
In order to take away the excessive tenderness and delicacy of the sex, the consequence of a recluse life, he accustomed the virgins occasionally to be seen naked as well as the young men, and to dance and sing in their presence on certain festivals.[204]
Perhaps throughout the entire narrative of Plutarch concerning Lycurgus and his laws, there is nothing so absolutely devoid of reason as this. If, as he assures us, women were possessed of that excessive tenderness and delicacy which are the result of a recluse life; and if, as he supposes, they had hitherto been trained according to masculine ideas of female modesty and decorum, it is greatly to be doubted if the laws of Lycurgus, or even the lightnings of Zeus could have driven these virgins into the presence of the opposite sex under the conditions named.
Doubtless the Spartan people had not at this stage of their career departed so far from the customs of a gynecocracy that women were unable to exercise absolute control over their persons. Being free from the domination of the opposite sex, all those exercises and habits of body in use to increase their own vigour and that of the entire race had doubtless been instigated by women, or at least had been instituted at a time when female influence was in the ascendency. Concerning the position occupied by the women of Sparta, Plutarch says they had assumed to themselves great liberty and power “on account of the frequent expeditions of their husbands, during which they were left sole mistresses at home, and so gained an undue deference and improper titles.”[205]
It is evident that this writer was unacquainted with the fact that at a time not far distant in the past from the age of Lycurgus, the influence of women in the family and in the gens had been supreme; hence, like others who have attempted to deal with the subject of primitive peoples, he was unable to conceive of a condition of society in which women’s natural instincts played a conspicuous part in regulating the social customs and in formulating the laws by which they were governed.
The extreme modesty and sensitiveness which are observed as a characteristic of both sexes in the marriage relation, and the reserve of the youths at festivals in which young women are reported to have appeared naked, may not be ascribed to the laws of Lycurgus, but on the other hand appear as direct results of those checks upon the animal instincts in the male which the former strength and independence of women had imposed.[206]