ancient date, reaching back for nearly a thousand years, and maintained by the recollection of the abduction of women and the resulting wars. The first trouble of this kind was the carrying off of Io, an Argive maid, by the Phoenicians. Then the Greeks stole away Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre, and she was in the myth represented as the spirit of intelligence and refinement with whom civilization crossed the Egean, and who gave character and name to the continent which has since had the leadership in progress. When Jason led the Argonauts to Colchis on the eastern coast of the Black Sea in search of the Golden Fleece, he met Medea, who loved and assisted him, and then eloped with him. The Greeks thus overdrew their account, and gave to Paris an excuse for running off with the wife of Menelaus. Excuse, however, was probably the last thing in his mind. He had been led into the affair by fate. Three goddesses, after a rivalry in heaven, had come down to earth and applied to him to decide between their relative attractions, and then, instead of trusting to his impartial judgment, undertook by common consent to bribe him. Juno offered him power, Minerva wisdom, and Venus the most beautiful woman in the world. He made the only decision that could be expected from a young man under the circumstances; and he was not only fairly entitled to the reward promised by the queen of love, but entitled to its undisturbed possession. It was a violation of the bargain when his title to Helen proved to be bad, as if a man had sold a horse which he did not own and then refused to protect the purchaser.

The gods permitted the Greeks to unite their forces and besiege the city of Priam to recover the stolen woman. For ten long years the siege continued, and at any time the Trojans could have ended it by surrendering the object of

the struggle, but they considered themselves bound in honor to defend their prince's possession of his paramour. Even the very old men, whose voices had the treble tone, and whose veins were almost bloodless, did not desire her surrender.

"These, when the Spartan queen approached the tower,

In secret owned resistless beauty's power;
They cried, 'No wonder such resistless charms

For nine long years have set the world in arms.'

Notwithstanding the decided preponderance of military power on the side of the Greeks, they were in much peril of ultimate failure, on account of a quarrel between two of their leaders about another woman. In a distribution of Trojan captives, Chryseis and Briseis, two beautiful girls, were given, the first to Agamemnon and the second to Achilles. Chryseis was, however, the daughter of a priest of Apollo, and when a ransom was tendered, it was necessary to surrender her, whereupon her late master, who was the commander-in-chief of the besieging army, and as such entitled to exceptional consideration, at a meeting of the chiefs demanded another captive to replace the one surrendered for the good of the cause. Achilles taking offense, spoke very sharply; Agamemnon replied in a still angrier tone, and the result was that the latter seized Briseis. The despoiled hero swore that he would take no further part in the war, and for some days Hector, no longer opposed by the only Greek whom he feared, made frightful slaughter among the besiegers. At last, however, Achilles avenged the death of his friend Patroclus by slaying Hector, and soon Troy was in ruins, a sacrifice to Helen. When Agamemnon returned from this war he was murdered by Ægystheus, the paramour of his wife Clytemnestra, and this crime was only one of a long and dark series that beset the blood of Atreus to which Agamemnon belonged. The fate of the

Atridæ became proverbial for its tragic character, and in many instances women were the cause of their misfortunes. The taking of Briseis and the treason of Ægystheus were not causes of ill-feeling between Europe and Asia, and are not mentioned by Herodotus, who refers very briefly to the Trojan war, to which, however, he attributes a serious influence in the mind of Darius, who undertook to avenge that as well as other of fenses committed by the Greeks against his continent. We can smile at the idea that such a motive could be ascribed to him, but the fact shows how much influence was attributed among the Greeks to quarrels about women. It is certain that the invasions of Greece by Darius, and Xerxes were prominent considerations in the minds of Alexander and his army in stimulating the expedition for the conquest of Persia; and when Alexander had taken Persepolis, he burned it at the request of Thais, a Grecian courtesan, who demanded this vengeance for the burning of Athens by Xerxes.

The Peloponnesian war one of the most disastrous of all wars for the cause of civilization—was attributed by common rumor to the influence of a woman. It began in 433 B. C., and, after continuing thirty years, ended with the conquest of Athens, the destruction of the Athenian empire, the impoverishment of the Hellenic states generally, and the close of the most glorious period of ancient culture. This lamentable contest began when Pericles was in the height of his power as the head of the Athenian administration, and when the parlor of Aspasia was his daily resort, the scene of his chief pleasures, and the source of many of his inspirations. She was born in Miletus, and as the war arose from a quarrel in which that city was a prominent party, there was reason to suspect that Aspasia had gratified her sympathies with her native land by inducing Pericles to espouse its cause and sacri

fice the welfare of Athens to it. The thorough military discipline of the Spartans gave them such a superiority in the field that the Athenians were finally overthrown, and, though two thousand years have elapsed in the meantime, the world is still waiting to see another city so rich relatively in great statesmen, authors, and artists.

As Troy, Persia, and Athens owed their destruction to feminine influence, so did Sparta. It was by dressing as a woman that Pelopidas and his associates delivered Thebes from Spartan tyranny. When the despondent Boeotians were at Leuctra, about to give a pitched battle with an equal force to the Lacedemonians, who had never failed to conquer under such circumstances, Epaminondas changed the mood of his army to confidence by reminding them that the enemy had encamped upon the ground where two Theban maids, after having been outraged by Spartans, had called down the curses of the gods upon the race of the offenders, and had proved their purity and given efficacy to their appeal for vengeance by a mutual and sacrificial suicide. That day saw the end of Sparta's harsh and haughty hegemony. The Theban maids were avenged.

The dominion of Rome was lost thrice on account of women. The authority of the kings was overthrown because of the wrong done to Lucretia by Tarquin, and that of the decemvirs because of Appius Claudius' attempt to take Virginia from her father. Mark Antony neglected the people, the army, and navy, to pay court to Cleopatra, and, through her, the fall of the empire and of himself was decided at Actium. The Egyptian queen had previously conquered Pompey, and Cæsar, who had conquered the world.

Wherever women have been permitted to wear the honors or take part in the ceremonies of religion, they have been its most zealous advocates. In

spreading Christianity they have played a prominent part. The conversion of Constantine was attributed mainly to the influence of his mother Helena, and also his decree recognizing the new faith as that of the empire, and the transfer of the capital from Rome to Byzantium, where a new city was built without the multitude of venerable pagan temples and associations to overawe the followers of Christ. After the conquest of the west by the Teutons, and the transfer of the main seat of power from the coast of the Mediterranean to the northern slope of Europe, it became a matter of great importance to the church to convert the Franks, and she succeeded by the help of Clotilde, the wife of King Clovis. He became "the eldest son of the church," and his successors to the present day have claimed the same title. The church was the guardian and guide of education and refinement in the dark ages, and the ecclesiastics were not disappointed in the expectations of help from the princesses whom they taught, and who, when they became the wives of barbarian chiefs and kings, used every exertion to convert their husbands and subjects. Female missionaries did much to bring Germany, Scandinavia, and Slavonia into the church.

Islam, too, was helped by woman's influence. The conquest of Spain by the Arabs was the result of a quarrel about a woman. Roderick, a Gothic king of Toledo, outraged a daughter of Count Julian, who, seeing no hope of revenge among the Christians, invited the Mohammedans to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. Roderick was soon a fugitive; the crescent was hoisted over all the cities of Spain; and France had a narrow escape at the battle of Tours, after Aquitaine had been under Arab dominion for ten years. About a century after Spain was lost to Christendom, Sicily was also taken, in consequence of a visit made to the island by an ad

venturous Moslem, on an expedition to carry off a nun who had expressed a wish to leave the ascetic life.

Neither has Protestantism been left without help from women. Ireland fell under the dominion of England and afterward of the English Church, because Dermot, King of Leinster, carried off the wife of a neighboring prince, who with the help of his friends defeated and drove out the offender, who appealed to Henry II. for help. It was given, but when the English had once established their power in the green island they staid there, and they hold it yet, after a lapse of six centuries. Henry VIII. would have remained a zealous Catholic if the pope had consented to his divorce from Queen Catherine. She had been betrothed to his elder brother; this betrothal made her his sister-in-law according to the rules laid down by some ecclesiastical authorities; according to the same authorities, a marriage between persons thus related was not lawful until a special dispensation had been obtained, and there was none in this case. The objection of invalidity for relationship, brought up many years after the marriage as a pretext for a divorce, was base and hypocritical; but divorces had been granted by the papal court on even flimsier grounds, and Henry thought he was entitled to as much favor as anybody else. It happened, however, that there were weighty considerations on the other side in this case. Catherine was the sister of Charles V., who was master of Germany, Spain, Flanders, Milan, Naples, Sicily, and the New World. If the pope should offend him after northern Europe had adopted the ideas of Luther and Calvin, the Catholic Church might be given up to destruction. Better risk the utmost enmity of England. So Henry's application was denied, and as he was determined to get rid of his queen, he discarded her and the church

in talent, but the times were less favorable for female influence. They, too, did not escape without scandal; but if not chaste they were at least more secret in their loves than the women of the preceding generation. The introduction of Protestantism into France was helped by Marguerite of Valois and Jane d'Albret; its overthrow owed much to Catherine de Medicis and Madame de Maintenon; and the rapid spread of the ideas of Voltaire was furthered by the influence of the ladies at the head of the famous parlors of Paris in his time.

It has been the fortune or misfortune of the French to have been involved more frequently in trouble in foreign lands, on account of women, than any other nation. Perhaps this has been because they have occupied the leading place as invaders and conquerors. The Sicilian Vespers, when the French residents and soldiers of the island were all massacred, is the most horrid and famous of the results provoked by an outrage offered to a woman; but it was not the only case of the kind in French experience. Flanders in 1302, Florence in 1342, Scotland in 1385, and Genoa in 1409 and in 1460, witnessed similar protests against Gallic gallantry. Turenne made peace so that he could meet a grisette in Paris, and Henry IV. made war so that he could get to Anne of Montmorency in Flanders. Coligny and Henry of Guise fought a duel about the Duchess of Montbazon, and the Duchess of Longueville was present in the dress of a page. The only great grief in the life of the incomparable Ninon-who was accounted by her contemporaries the happiest as well as the most charming of women during the three-quarters of a century that had elapsed between her fifteenth and ninetieth years, preserving her wit, her beauty, her fresh complexion, her health, and her active habits to the last-was the

suicide of her son. She had reared him in ignorance of his parentage, and when his education was completed she invited him to her house, intending to keep him near to her and yet conceal the relationship. He misunderstood the motive of her attentions, and fell so violently in love with her that when she was compelled in self-defense to tell him that she was his mother, he could not resign himself to the loss and took his life.

In England women have had less influence politically and have been engaged in fewer scandals than in France, and yet there serious troubles on their account have not been rare. The insurrection of Wat Tyler was provoked by an outrage to his daughter; the fortune of young Churchill, afterward the great Marlborough, began by the promotion of his sister to the favor of the Duke of York—as Napoleon's fortune by the favor of Josephine with a member of the directory. When the mob attacked Nell Gwynne's carriage as she was leaving the palace of Charles II., she restored good humor as well as order by sticking her head out of the window and calling out that she was the Protestant, not the Popish mistressusing, however, a phraseology slightly different; and it was by the help of Lady Hamilton, whom he afterward loved beyond the limits of the law, and whose previous career had not been above reproach, that Lord Nelson was enabled to win the battle of the Nile, and thus to strengthen the supremacy of England on the seas to such a degree that Napoleon could not cross the Channel with his army of invasion.

Among the women who were the subjects of scandal and in some cases of serious quarrels among their lovers, were the Roman empresses Messalina, Fausta, and Julia Denana; the Russian empresses Catherine II. and Elizabeth; the French queen, Marguerite, wife of