GYNÆCEUM, among the ancients, the apartment of the women, a separate room in the inner part of the house, where they employed themselves in spinning, weaving, and needle-work.

GYNÆOCRACY, denotes the government of women, or a state where women are capable of the supreme command. Such are Britain and Spain.

GYNÆOCRATUMENI, an ancient people of Sarmatia Europæa, inhabiting the eastern banks of the river Tanais, near its opening into the Palaus Maeotis; thus called, as authors relate, because they had no women among them; or rather because they were under the dominion of women. The word is formed of γυναίκα woman, and καταρχάων, vanquished, of καταρχάω, I overcome, q.d. overcome by women.

Pa. Hardouin, in his notes on Pliny, says, they were thus called, because, after a battle which they lost against the Amazons, on the banks of the Thermodon, they were obliged to have venereal commerce with them, in order to get them children; et quod victricibus sequantur ad procurandam eis foliolum.—Hardouin calls them the husbands of the Amazons, Amazonum connubia; for, as the author observes, the word unde must be retrenched from Pliny, having been foiled into the text by people who were not masters of the author's meaning, unde Amazonum connubia. See AMAZONS. They who take the Amazons for a fabulous people, will conclude the same of the Gynaecocraticumensians.