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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 2 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays 2 0 Browse Search
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, The Greek goddesses. (search)
nd the Olympic games; all these saw womanhood deified in their goddesses and dignified in themselves. The vast religious ceremonial appealed alike to the high-born maidens who ministered at the altars, and to the peasant-girls through whom the oracles spoke. Every range of condition and of culture might be comprised among the hundreds who assembled before daybreak to bathe the image of Pallas in the sacred river, or the thousands who walked with consecrated feet in the long procession to Eleusis. In individual cases, the service brought out such noble virtue as that of the priestess Theano, who, when Alcibiades was exiled from Athens and was sentenced to be cursed by all who served at the altar, alone refused to obey, saying that she was consecrated to bless and not to curse. But even among the mass of Greek women, where so much time was spent in sharing or observing this ritual of worship, life must have taken some element of elevation through contact with the great ideal women