Note 1092 — Chapter II · WOMEN OF DORIC STATES.

Athen. xiii. 79.—Even Plutarch denominates the system of discipline observed by the Spartan women ἀναπεπταμένη καὶ ἄθηλυς,—"lax and unfeminine,"—and confesses that it afforded the poets an inexhaustible fund for ridicule. Ibycos, for example, called them φαινομηρίδες: and Euripides ἀνδρομανεῖς. Their education, in fact, rendered them coarse and domineering, “bold and mannish;” θρασύτεραι, and ἀνδριοδεῖς, are the words of Plutarch, who observes that they desired not only to rule by violence at home, but even audaciously to meddle with public affairs.—Compar. Lycurg. cum Num. § 3.