Note 250-8 — Chapter II

Plato, De Legg., VI, 774, and Aristotle, Polit., II, 6; V, 9, 6; VI, 2, 12, complain of the too great supremacy of women in their day. Colossal land ownership of Lacedemonian women. (Aristot., Polit., II, 6, 11.) And yet even Plato advises that women be allowed to participate in the gymnasia, in the assemblies and to hold public office, etc. They were indeed different from men, but not as regards those qualities which fit for ruling. (De Rep., V, 451 ff.; De Legg., VI, 780; VII, 806.) That the Roman courtesans wore the male toga and were therefore called togatæ. Horat., Serm., I, 2, 63 ff., 80 ff.; Martial, VI, 64, recalls certain caricatures of very recent times; for instance, Bakunius' demand that both sexes should wear the same kind of dress. (R. Meyer, Emancipationskampf des 4 Standes, I, 43.) Later, concerning wifish men, see Apuleius, Metam., VIII; Salvian, Gubern. Dei VII. We are led to a related subject in noticing that in England of persons charged with serious crimes there were 10 women to 30 men; in Russia only 10 women to 81 men. (v. Oettingen, 758.) As Riehl remarks, Famille 15, the undeniable consensus gentium, that the costume of men should differ from that of women, is an equally undeniable protest against this species of emancipation. I would add that, as among ourselves in the earliest years of childhood, so also among lowly civilized peoples, the difference in costumes of the sexes is least apparent. (Tacit., Germ., 17; Plan. Carpin., Voyage en Tartarie; Add. éd., Bergeron, art. 2.) Even the physical difference is smaller there (Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I, 76), especially in the size of the pelvis. (Peschel, Völkerkunde, 81, 86.)