'WOMEN IN ANTIQUITY'
Sla,.--Chivalry demands that I rise to defend alY most friendly reviewer, Virginia Graham, against the inconsequent attack which has been levelled at her by the reverend Canon Earle in your issue of July 6. He runs true to Adamic. form and goes for Virginia Graham because she is only a woman, instead of going for me, the author of the book called Women in Antiquity. I am not 'a the least concerned with beastly social conditions which prevailed in the eighteenth century, as much as in every century down to our own day; but when the reverend Canon Earle pretends that Christianity made things better for womankind he betrays his lack of acquaintance with the writings of the Church Nthers and their congeners like Tertullian and Origen. If he had read the last chapters °f my book he would not have launched an attack on Virginia Graham but, I think, on St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, George nernard Shaw, Simone de Beauvoir and my- self. Surely Canon Earle realises that Jesus exalted women, Paul of Tarsus deplored them and the Fathers' who followed degraded them. Everything that the Canon says about certain horrid aspects of antiquity is true, but he Must realise that the subsequent mediEeval Periods were much more horrid. Human b‘eings have periodically behaved abominably to other human beings and still do. But the Male half of humanity was turned under Christendom into women-haters of a violence that the ancient world never knew. One must take into account the rather disgusting mis- gYny of both Tertullian and Augustine. • Medimval Christendom and its offshoot Islam °ffered an admirable religious framewbrk for Males; but for women—who are, after all, half the human race—Christendom from the ofth century to the Renaissance offered only cllsgrace.—Yours faithfully, CHARLES SELTMAN Ji Little St. Mary's Lane, Cambridge
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