Each of these events has left a deep impress
upon the soil, upon the laws, upon the manners and upon the intellect
of the nation.
Greece having one foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influenced
by her voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions;
she received them from the East, where her philosophers, her
legislators and her poets went to study the abstruse antiquities of
Egypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which was
necessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws of
Greece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the marbles
of the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a city,
to a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art
and religion by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first
passions of the young men, who were few in number, since their
strength was elsewhere taken up in the violent exercises of that
training which was demanded of them by the military system of those
heroic times.
At the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to
seek such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy,
stamped upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of complete
servitude. The senate understood the importance of virtue in a
republic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development
of the marital and paternal power.
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