How, then, did Patriarchal Practices become so pervasive?
She mentions that Tacitus observed these cultures, noting that Britons make no distinction of sex in their appointment of commanders and that Germans felt a reverence for their women leaders that was untainted by servile flattery or any pretense of turning women into goddesses, which suggests a real respect rather than the self-serving pattern of placing women on a pedestal to show upper-class status. Tacituss comments indicate his bias–that cultures that differed from that classical patriarchal structure were strange and somehow more barbaric and less civilized.
