Just here may be observed the key to the gradually declining position of the female element in the deity, and to the finally accepted dogma that the female is inferior to the male. Through the private ownership of land and the consequent dependency of women upon men, the way had been paved for this assumption—an assumption which had the effect to create in Ionian men the supreme and lofty contempt for women which is observed throughout their literature and laws. From the age of Solon to that of Pericles, the overwhelming degree of superiority assumed by Athenian men over women had uprooted in the former every vestige of restraint, at the same time that it had deprived them of the last trace of that respect for womanhood which under earlier and more natural conditions had been entertained.
It has been frequently remarked that women took little or no part in the intellectual development of Greece; that during the most rapid progress of Greek men, there was no corresponding improvement in the position occupied by Greek women.
From what is recorded relative to Athenian women from the time of Cecrops to that of Solon, one would scarcely expect to find them competing with men for the prizes of life. Later, however, that a considerable number of them did assert their independence, and that, defying the customs and traditions by which they were bound, did prove themselves the equals of men, may not be doubted.
There probably has never been a time since the dominion of man began when the more sensitive and better endowed among women have not secretly rebelled against the tyranny exercised over them, and, throughout the ages, whenever an opportunity has been offered, large numbers of these women, have never failed to make known their discontent. Greek women were no exception to this rule. Their first step toward liberty was to free themselves from the galling chain imposed upon them by marriage, a position in which, as has been shown, wives were simply household slaves, tools of their imperious and degenerate masters. Greek women, in the Periclean age, simply assumed the control of their persons and by so doing provoked the maledictions of future ages, ages in which sensualism still reigned supreme.