ROMAN WOMEN AND ROMAN MARRIAGES
=47. Honorable Status of Roman Women.=--Calvus is the lordly senator
when his litter swings him down to the Curia by the Old Forum to
participate in what is still the most venerable council in the world,
but in his own house his authority is divided. He is not even sure that
one-half the power is really his. In all private matters his sway is
shared by his spouse Gratia.
Many are the evils inflicting Imperial Rome, but oppression of women is
not one of them. By the age of Hadrian it has long since come to pass
what Cato the Elder sadly predicted three centuries earlier, when Roman
women were learning the way to freedom: “On the day that women are our
equals, they will be our masters.”
Roman women are, indeed, excluded from seats in the Senate and from
the long-defunct right to vote in the public assemblies.[25] They
cannot command armies nor receive governorships, although every now
and then an angry senator vainly proposes a resolution that governors
shall not take their wives along with them to their provinces, lest the
latter constitute themselves the real rulers of the district. Women do
not act as judges or jurors. Nay more: legally they are under legal
disabilities calculated to stir the rage of their “equal suffrage”
sisters of a later day. They have always the status of minors, and are
subject to the legal control of either father, guardian, or husband to
their dying hour.
All this is true, yet, what of it? The jurists have long ago devised
fictions of the law whereby the women have practically as complete
control of their property as have their brothers; and the government
of the Empire is peculiarly a government of backstairs intrigues and
of secret influence. What chance have mere men against women in such
warfare? Custom also assigns to women an amount of freedom in most
social matters which makes Imperial Rome a feminine paradise that can
only be matched by Twentieth Century America.
=48. Men Reluctant to Marry.=--Long since leaders of the bolder
sex have had to reason with their fellow citizens on the necessity
of marriage as a patriotic duty. The pragmatic old censor Quintus
Metellus in 102 B.C. delivered a kind of a lay sermon: “If we could
get along without wives, fellow citizens (_Quirites_) we should all
spare ourselves the _tedium_ of marriage, but nature has ordained that
we can neither live pleasantly with wives, nor exist at all without
them--therefore let us sacrifice our personal interests to those of
society.” After him Emperor Augustus enacted stiff laws to decrease the
alarming number of bachelors, and to give special privileges to the
parents of three children. This does not prevent many prominent Romans
from looking upon a wife as a kind of expensive bondage often to be
shunned altogether.
=49. Rights and Privileges of Married Women.=--The great majority
of all Romans are married. Even the slaves are allowed to join in a
kind of unofficial wedlock known as _contubernium_, which only a
very harsh master will dissolve. As for the free married women they
go everywhere and do almost everything. No husband’s permission is
needed when they visit the Forum or theater. They can sue and be sued
or give testimony in the courts without his intervention. They manage
their own property. Gratia, for example, is well off in her own right.
Her estates are in charge of a dapper young freedman Ephorus, who is
incessantly visiting her, and who never dreams of taking orders from
her husband. So long as Gratia is barely faithful to Calvus he has no
right to complain. He thanks his “Good Genius,” therefore, that things
are not as in his friend Probus’s house, where the mistress’s factotum
is suspected of being on altogether too familiar terms with his fair
employer.
[Illustration: A ROMAN MATRON.]
Nevertheless, this freedom is supposed to carry with it corresponding
responsibilities. Every Roman woman theoretically is responsible for
her husband’s good name and for the wise ordering of his family. No
right-minded woman dismisses the hope that at the end they will put
the great words on her tombstone: “_She counselled well. She managed
well. She spun wool._”
The control of the vast _familia_ of slaves is usually in a matron’s
hands, a duty calculated to bring out every executive quality within
her. She largely conducts the education of her sons, no less than
of her daughters. No Roman is ashamed to admit (as an Athenian in
Pericles’s day might have been ashamed) that in the great crises
of life he took the authoritative advice of his mother.[26] Roman
civilization is, therefore, for better or worse, a civilization to
which women no less than men have been suffered to apply the full
powers of their genius. _It is a “hundred per cent civilization”_;
whereas, that of Athens, considering the manner in which Athenian women
were confined and ignored, was hardly more than a “fifty per cent
civilization.”
=50. Selection of Husbands for Young Girls.=--It is a fact, however,
that in one great and vital matter Roman women are not free agents.
They usually have their husbands, at least their first husbands, chosen
for them by their parents. This comes to pass largely because usage
requires that girls should be married so young that no rational romance
on their part is really possible.
Custom amounting to law requires that a girl shall be at least twelve,
and a boy fourteen before marriage. In the case of girls this minimum
is often adhered to pretty closely, but betrothals can be arranged
still earlier. Cicero’s daughter Tullia was betrothed at ten and
married at thirteen--a very common arrangement. Nobody imagined she had
the least right to complain. Marriage involves a great shift in family
relations, and the control of the family pertains strictly to the
_pater familias_ and to his _matrona_. They will ordinarily exercise
loving pains in selecting a suitable spouse for a daughter, but the
decision must be very largely theirs.
Boys as a rule marry much later, often not until well into manhood.
They can demand inevitably a certain right of choice, although the
parents still exercise a marked authority. As for bachelors, if they
indulge in various coarse “affairs” with dancing girls, only very
peevish persons are critical. After marriage, however, they must treat
their wives with reasonable outward respect, if by no means always
with austere faithfulness. In any case a girl is likely to be married
off too young either to resist her parents’ choice or to pick out
intelligently any proper husband for herself.[27]
=51. A Marriage Treaty among Noble-Folk.=--When Gratia’s parents
decided she was old enough to “become settled” they applied to a
distinguished kinsman, an ex-consul, to help them to find a suitable
bridegroom. This noble gentleman looked over a list of his younger
friends, selected Calvus, and wrote a careful letter commending him,
praising his lineage, and his firm hopes of official distinction,
and telling how “he had a frank, open countenance, fresh colored and
blooming and a handsome well-knit figure”; in short “he was quite
the fellow to deserve so fine a girl.” The great man went on to add
that the favored candidate had a respectable fortune, for “though I
dislike to speak of the financial aspects of the matter, still one must
consider the tendencies of the day.” Not one word was said as to how
Gratia herself might want to be consulted; her consent was taken for
granted.[28]
Gratia’s parents, therefore, approached Calvus’s guardian, his uncle.
He being satisfied as to dowry and social adjustments, both young
people were informed of what had been determined for them. Gratia
and Calvus alike had always expected some such arrangement and
capitulated with reasonable grace. The ensuing marriage, founded not
on any romance, but on a cold-blooded study of what supposedly made
for domestic happiness, in this case at least has been fortunate and
fruitful. The wedded pair have come truly to love one another, and they
dwell in great harmony. In this general manner marriages are arranged
every day in Rome.
Of course these are first marriages. Let Gratia become a widow, or let
her imitate so many of her friends and divorce her husband, and her
second spouse will ordinarily be of quite her own choosing; and Calvus,
of course, in selecting again, would be completely his own master.
=52. A Betrothal in Wealthy Circles.=--Gratia’s daughter Junia
is only ten, yet her parents are already beginning to think about
betrothals; but only a block up the street there has just been the
excitement of an actual wedding. Aulus Statilius Pomponius is only an
eques, but the gods have blessed him with a hundred million sesterces
($4,000,000). He and his wife have a daughter who will inherit vast
possessions, and wealth is a splendid substitute for lineage. They have
found a young Gaius Ulpius Pollio, already in the Senate, who claims a
distant cousinship to the Emperor himself. Pollio is none too wealthy
and is already a widower, but Statilia and her mother are infinitely
delighted at an alliance with the edges of an imperial house. Nothing
has lacked, therefore, for an ultra-fashionable wedding, the talk of
the entire capital.
First came the betrothal, a great social concourse in Pomponius’s
atrium, a throng of equites and senators with their wives, jewels
flashing, countless tongues gossiping, with Statilia led in by her
father to the center of the circle to meet the bridegroom-to-be.
Statilia said not a word through the entire proceedings. All Pollio’s
dealings were with her father, and in clear voice the two men exchanged
the legal formulas: “Do you promise to give your daughter, Statilia to
me, to be my wedded wife?” said the younger man.
“The gods bring luck! I betroth her.”
“The gods bring luck!”
After that technically Statilia became a bride-elect; she was a
_sponsa_. Either side had legally the right still to break the
agreement, but it was socially ruinous to do so. Pollio presented
Statilia with various valuable toilet articles, and especially with a
ring to be worn on the third finger of the left hand, because everybody
said that “a nerve ran directly from this particular finger to the
heart.” It was the engagement ring of a later age almost precisely.
=53. Adjusting the Dowry.=--Then followed weeks of frantic
preparation: the women busy with the things which always have
made women busy over weddings long before the days of Romulus and
Remus; Pomponius and Pollio with wrestling over the very nice legal
adjustments of Statilia’s dowry. How much would the old eques give
in all, in cash, land, and banker’s securities? How much for his
daughter’s special use? How much as _dos_, the funds which the
new son-in-law could touch? How could the property be arranged so that
if the marriage ended presently in a divorce (as spiteful wagers were
already being laid that it might) the _dos_ could be given back to
Statilia without grievous loss of principal?
At one time the betrothal almost had to be cancelled, such extreme
shrewdness was shown on both sides. But finally the matter was
adjusted. Three noble friends for either side pressed their seal rings
in witness to the contracts. The day came for the wedding.
=64. Dressing the Bride.=--Family exigencies required a springtime
wedding, when there were a great many unlucky days to be avoided;
but an expert Etruscan haruspex at length found a day that satisfied
Statilia and her parents’ scruples. On the night before the great event
she laid all her playthings, her childish amulet (_bulla_), and her
childish garments on the altar of the paternal Lares whose protection
she was quitting forever. Then she went to bed in a _tunica recta_,
a fine, yellow garment woven in one piece, supposedly an article of
extremely good omen.
The next day the bride was dressed personally by her mother with
unusual care. However expensive her ornaments she had to wear this
same one-piece tunic next to her skin, the gown being held around the
waist by a band of wool tied with a complicated “knot of Hercules.”
She wore, of course, all the jewels loaded upon neck, ears, arms, and
fingers which by the contract she was to bring Pollio in her trousseau.
Her long hair had been parted according to ancient custom by a spear
into six locks, braided now with ribbons weighted down with pearls.
Her shoes were of finest white leather covered with more pearls. Over
her head streamed a long, gauzy flame-colored veil of silk--worth
very literally more than its weight in gold.[29] Pressing down this
bridal veil was a garland of flowers picked, as custom required, by the
bride’s own hand, and interspersed with sprigs of the sacred “verbena”
herbs. Pollio, when he presented himself, was in the best gala costume
of a senator, but there were no special “wedding garments” for the
bridegroom, corresponding to the bridal veil.
=55. The Marriage Ceremonies.=--The afternoon was at hand, and the
insulæ in neighboring quarters emptied their plebeian throngs to gaze
at the gilded litters which went swinging up to the house of Pomponius,
the armies of scarlet-clad running footmen, the pompous freedmen
marching beside their patron’s sedans, the bravery of purple robes,
the flash of gold and of jewels. Of course, the atrium had been hung
with garlands. The air inside was heavy with the perfumes of flowers,
of costly unguents, and of the finest Arabian incense, while the noble
guests elbowed and pushed one another to get near the altar near the
tablinum and win the best sight of the happy pair.
Roman marriages are pretty strictly civil ceremonies. There is no legal
requirement for any religious rites. Hardly anybody now is married
according to the stale old formula of the _confarreatio_, when the
betrothed couple became wedded by eating a cake which had just been
consecrated by the Pontifex Maximus. A much simpler form is now used,
but before the ceremony there always has to be the sacrifice.
Amid a decently pious hush a sheep is led to the side of the water tank
(_impluvium_) in the atrium; the shrewd-eyed old haruspex, trailing his
long robe and muttering jargon that passes for Etruscan, is aided by
two skillful assistants in killing the creature promptly and avoiding
disgusting gore; then in ripping open its belly and examining with
expert eye the still quivering entrails. (See p. 429.) It is proper now
for Statilia to turn pale and clutch the arm of her mother. What if the
signs were unfavorable? “Whoever heard of bad omens being discovered
at a great wedding?” cynically whispers a senator. “_Bene_--good!”
announces the haruspex with a leer. “_Bene! Bene!_” echo all the
guests. The soothsayer retires. The wedding can proceed.
The final ceremony is very simple. First the tablets of the marriage
contract and the transfer of the dowry are produced, read, and, if not
already witnessed, are signed by the proper attestors. Then a young
matron-of-honor, Statilia’s _pronuba_, leads the bride up to Pollio.
She thrusts out her hand from under her great veil and takes the hand
of her husband-elect. Everybody listens while he, and not any priest
or official for him, puts the direct question: “Will you be my _mater
familias_?” “Yes,” answers Statilia, perhaps a little too readily; and
then she asks him openly: “And will you be my _pater familias_?” “Yes,”
and immediately there is a general shout of congratulation.
These decisive words once spoken, Pollio, his bride, and her parents
unite in placing a cake of coarse bread upon the altar, uttering brief
dedications of the food to Jupiter and Juno, and also to the quaint
rural gods Tellus, Picumnus, and Pilumnus who will bless the estates
of the new couple. The cakes are presented in a basket held by a
young boy, Statilia’s cousin, her _camillus_, both of whose parents
are required to be living. The company now redoubles its cry of “Good
luck! Good luck! _felicitas!_”--and everybody is assuredly in excellent
appetite for the ensuing wedding feast.
=56. The Wedding Procession.=--This is not the place for describing a
great banquet (see p. 113); it is enough here to state that Pomponius
is obliged to justify his wealth by a prodigal hospitality. Vain has
proved Augustus’s law limiting the cost of wedding feasts to one
thousand sesterces ($40). Such regulations win only laughter!
As the climax after the dainties comes the distribution of pieces of
the huge wedding-cake (_mustaceum_), made of fine meal steeped in
new wine and served upon bay leaves. By this time everybody has drunk
enough good Massic and Falernian to be excited and talkative, it has
become twilight in the street, and Pomponius’s chief freedman (the
master of ceremonies) gives the signal: “The procession!”
In the vestibule musters a squad of flute players and torch bearers.
As the music strikes up, good form requires Statilia to cast herself
into her mother’s arms and weep and scream violently. Good form
equally requires Pollio to tear her thence with playful violence--“a
remembrance,” people say, “of the Romans’ rape of the Sabines.”
Statilia promptly ceases struggling and submits cheerfully to being led
through the door.
The wedding procession is an indispensable part of the ceremony.
Probably if Pollio lives in another city, some family friend will
now loan his residence for “leading home the bride.” As it is, the
bridegroom fortunately possesses a handsome house about a mile distant
on the Quirinal. For all her wealth Statilia has to walk the entire
way.
First go the flute players bringing the crowds out of all the insulæ
when they cross the Subura; then long files of the younger guests of
both sexes, talking vivaciously, and flourishing white-thorn torches;
then the camillus and a youthful assistant bearing ostentatiously the
bride’s spindle and distaff, token of the household labors presumably
ahead of her; then the bride herself, led on either hand by a boy both
of whose parents are living, while a third of like good fortune carries
a special torch of honor. Pollio himself walks just behind the bride,
and is kept busy tossing walnuts to all the children in the crowd
in token of the fact that he has now (for the second time) put away
childish things. After them, with more flambeaux and in merry disorder,
taking pains to exhibit their fine robes and jewels, follow all the
older relatives and friends of both parties. The torchlight, the music,
the brave colors, and gems gleaming out of the darkness make the scene
bewitching. No wonder all the gaping crowds join in the marriage shouts
“Io Talasse!”[30] or in the oft-repeated “Felicitas!”
=57. At the Bridegroom’s House.=--The guests and many of the spectators
fail not also to raise the “Fescinne songs” proper for marriage
processions; old folk songs very coarse, and interspersed with
extremely broad quips and personalities. At last the house of Pollio is
reached. It is a blaze of light from vestibule to garden, and all the
_decuriæ_ (squads of ten) of slaves are mustered to greet their new
_domina_.
At the entrance Statilia stops to wind the door pillars with bits of
wool, and to touch the door itself with oil and fat, the emblems of
plenty. She is then promptly _lifted_ over the threshold to avoid
an ill-omened stumble, and is immediately confronted by her husband who
has slipped in before her and who now presents her with a cup of water
and a glowing fire brand, token that she is entitled to the protection
of his family Lares. Statilia accepts these and in clear voice repeats
the very ancient and famous marriage formula, “Where thou art Gaius, I
am Gaia” (_Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia_).
The invited guests now sweep inside and there is more elbowing while
Statilia produces three silver coins; one of these she gives to her
husband as emblem of her dowry; one she lays on the altar for the
Lares of her new home; one she casts back into the street, a gift to
the “Lares of the Highway” who guarded the door. Then her marriage
torch is blown out, and tossed away to be scrambled for as emblem of
supreme good luck by all the younger guests. The matron of honor has
already arranged the luxurious marriage chamber, and the happy pair
are led inside and the door shut upon them, while all their friends
join in the rollicking “nuptial song” just outside the portal. There
is nothing left now for the guests to do but to go home; all being
invited, however, to return to Pollio’s house the next day to join in
a second great feast, with Statilia this time presiding as mistress of
the establishment.
=58. Honors and Liberties of a Matron.=--Before her marriage Statilia
had been a mere girl, completely controlled by her parents, unable to
appear in public save under severe restrictions, and apparently with
hardly a will of her own. The day after entering Pollio’s house she
finds herself become by one act a noble _matrona_, with the destinies
of a huge retinue of slaves and freedmen at her disposal, enjoying a
great property, meeting her husband’s friends as their equal, going
where she pleases, saying what she pleases, almost (within wide limits)
doing what she pleases.
Abroad in crowds, her dress, the _stola matronalis_, secures
the young married woman extreme respect. Every March, she, with
all the other honorable wives in Rome, enjoys the honors of the
_matronalia_, an official festival, kind of “Mother’s day” devoted
to celebrating the virtues of the gracious heads of each household.
On this day no less than on her birthday, she receives presents from
her husband, her family, and all her dependents. Finally, being a
Senator’s wife, when she comes to die, she probably will be entitled
to a great state funeral, with a formal eulogy in the Forum as if she
were a public personage. No wonder that Roman girls yearn eagerly for
marriage! It is their astonishing emancipation.
=59. Unhappy Marriages and Frivolous Women.=--Will a fashionable
alliance like that of Statilia and Pollio turn out happily? There
are scoffers even among the friends who bore the torches. Nobody
expects Pollio (a gay young aristocrat) to prove an example of austere
faithfulness, although he must never do anything to insult his wife
publicly. As for Statilia the cynics about the fair sex are very many.
Long ago Ovid has written, “Every woman may be won if only she’s
rightly tempted.” If a young wife is light-minded, she has plenty
of opportunities to acquire lovers, and at the great festivals and
banquets, at the theaters, gladiator fights, and circuses women have
every chance to meet intriguing men without interference by their
husbands.
The very fact that as unmarried girls Roman matrons were denied
all chance for lawful romances, now makes devious love affairs
seem all the more racy. Any number of fine ladies have indulged in
unwise “friendships” with dissolute actors, public dancers, or even
gladiators. In many a mansion there is a handsome freedman or even a
slave who can become extraordinarily familiar with his mistress. There
are said to be coarse-grained mothers who actually teach their married
daughters how to push intrigues and to smuggle in or out love-letters
under the very noses of their husbands; and there are plenty of young
men, rich, “noble,” and very idle, who spend their time philandering
with married ladies.
With every deduction and allowance for scandal the number of such
unsteady women is very great. “What snakes are driving you mad,” cried
Juvenal, “that you think of taking a wife? Why not leap from a high
window or from the Æmilian bridge rather than submit to a she-tyrant?”
However, even if women lead lives that are outwardly respectable, there
are plenty of minor charges against Roman ladies. Some are utterly
extravagant; haunting the fine shops along the Via Lata and running
up ruinous bills. Some are laughed at for taking up music, poetry, or
Greek antiquities as shallow fads and “chattering in a mixture of Latin
and Greek, and making their tongues go incessantly like a gong.” Some
are said to take fencing lessons and to waste their days practicing
on a dummy antagonist with a foil, and learning to handle a shield
as if intending to join the army. Others are never happy unless they
know all the latest news: “What the Thracians and the Seres (Chinese)
are doing”; “Who has just married a notorious widow”; “Whether a
comet threatens the King of Parthia.” Others are utterly selfish and
heartless; they will weep at the loss of a pet sparrow, but treat their
slave girls with hideous brutality, and “let a husband die to save a
lap-dog’s life.” Worst of all are certain women actually suspected of
giving their unloved husbands a dose of poison when various reasons
make a divorce inconvenient.
=60. Divorces, Easy and Frequent.=--However, divorce is the regular
outcome of very many unlucky marriages. Every Roman girl, when her
parents tell her “We have chosen for you--”; knows in the back of her
mind: “Marriage will give me freedom. If this wedlock isn’t a success,
my next husband will probably be my own choosing.”
The first divorce mentioned in Roman history was in 231 B.C. when a
certain Ruga put away a truly beloved wife, out of a high sense of
public duty--because she bore him no children. The public was shocked
at such action then, but soon it was shocked no longer. Under the later
Republic lucky was the nobleman or noblewoman who was not divorced at
least once. Cicero divorced Terentia after a long wedded life seemingly
because he wanted a new marriage portion; Cato the Younger (immaculate
Stoic) repudiated his wife to please a friend, then calmly took her
back again at the friend’s death.
Under the Empire things hardly seem to have become any better. “Trial
marriages” are not a recognized institution; but surely they exist. It
is direfully easy for either a man or woman to take the initiative.
No court proceedings are necessary. “Take away your property!” spoken
formally and before witnesses is sufficient to break up the household,
although the more usual method is to “_send a messenger_”; _i.e._
dispatch a delegation of friends to the other party to break the news.
Vainly did Augustus try by legislation to make divorces less prompt and
convenient. The whole proceeding is still grievously popular and simple.
Of course, divorced persons are under no stigma in the fashionable set.
Many a time a couple has separated, married elsewhere, separated again,
and then resumed the old wedlock. Women are charged with “flitting
from one home to another, wearing out the bridal veil”; and indeed,
spicy instances are cited of ladies who boasted “eight husbands in
five autumns, a fact worthy of commemoration on their tombs”; or of
reckoning the years not by the annual consuls but by their annual
husbands.
=61. Celibacy Common: Old Families Dying Out.=--Under such conditions
what wonder many a rich Roman prefers celibacy! They often proclaim the
“advantages of childlessness.” Old men of property without children
are fawned upon with offers of every kind of service. Social and even
public honors are thrust upon them. Their atria are crowded every
morning with genteel visitors; their least wishes anticipated--all in
the desperate hopes that “when their tablets are opened” they will have
remembered the swarm of lackeys in their wills. Indeed, adventurers
have been known to go far in Rome by making a false show of wealth,
concealing the fact they actually have children, and “seeming bilious
and complaining of indigestion.” Everybody apparently will give them
favor or credit. It is a familiar scandal.
Under such circumstances what wonder most of the old Republican
families have died out by the age of Hadrian, that the Calvi feel very
isolated; and that of the strictly patrician families only the famous
Cornelii appear now to survive.
=62. Nobler Types of Women.=--But do the above stories represent
the true moral condition of most women in Rome? Certainly not, or
society could not exist. In the first place such women represent the
rotten crust of the nobility; the ordinary equestrian and middle-class
women are still relatively modest and moral, efficient managers, good
mothers, and, if they are poor, hard workers. In the second place, even
among the upper Senatorial nobility, there are plenty of matronæ of the
very best type; true props to their husbands, wise mothers to their
children, kindly mistresses to their slaves. Gratia has many friends
whose households are schools of virtue, and many a Roman, from the
Imperial Augustus down, has confessed that his wife has been his tower
of strength.
=63. Famous and Devoted Wives.=--People still talk of the famous Arria,
wife of Cæcina Pætus, who, when the Emperor Claudius ordered him to
commit suicide, and he could hardly pluck up courage for a manly exit
from life, as an example plunged the dagger in her own breast, then
held it out to her husband, saying, “Pætus, it doesn’t hurt me.”
Her own daughter, the younger Arria, and Fannia, the wife of the
philosopher Helvidius Priscus, grossly murdered by Nero, won hardly
less reputations for fortitude. Pliny the Younger has recorded a more
humbly born Italian dame, who, when her husband was suffering from
incurable ulcers, but lacking the hardihood to kill himself alone, tied
herself to him and with him jumped into the lake at Larium so that both
were drowned.
[Illustration: WEDDED PAIR WITH CAMILLUS (Boy
Attendant).]
Fortunately the days of tyrannous emperors seem long since over. Wives
usually can show their virtue by living for their husbands and not by
dying with them. Rather lately there passed away an old man, Domitius
Tullus. Vast was his wealth but it brought him no pleasure; he was so
crippled and racked in every limb “that he could only enjoy his great
riches by looking at them. He was so helpless that he had to get others
to clean and wash his teeth.” He had a young and a very pretty wife;
but so far from neglecting him or trying to hasten his end, she kept
him alive for years by extraordinarily faithful personal care. Lately,
too, the venerable Senator Macrinus has lost his wife, “who if she had
lived in the good old days would have been counted an exemplary woman.
They lived together for thirty-nine years, with never a single quarrel
or disagreement.”[31]
[Illustration: SEATED NOBLEWOMAN.]
These are simply random cases. Of course, many people know the tribute
Pliny the Younger paid to his own wife Calpurnia, much younger than
himself but absolutely devoted to her husband: “She has a keen
intelligence, she is wonderfully economical, and she loves me.” He went
on to add that she read all his literary effusions most carefully,
sat behind a curtain to listen when he gave public recitations before
a male audience, and that when he had to argue in court had relays
of runners to keep her informed as to how well he was impressing the
judges. When the twain were separated she “would embrace his letters as
though they were himself,” while he (if he got no new letters from her)
“would read over her old letters and take them up again and again as
though they were new ones.”
=64. The Story of Turia.=--One day when Gratia had caught young
Junia overhearing a very uncanny story of a rich old lady who kept a
whole troupe of profligate actors for her own private amusement, she
took her out upon the magnificent avenue of stately tombs along the
Appian Way to visit the memorial to a venerated ancestress,--a certain
Turia who had lived in the troubled days of the Second Triumvirate,
and who by her rare courage, fortitude, and intelligence had saved her
husband the noble Vespillo from disgrace and death.
Turia’s husband in a long inscription recited how she had saved his
life in the Civil Wars at sore peril to her own, and how she had lived
with him afterward in perfect affection and harmony, although, being
childless, such was her devotion to him that she actually offered
to let Vespillo divorce her that he might have children by a second
marriage, promising very literally “to be a sister” to his new wife.
But her husband repudiated the strange idea with anger: “That you
should have ever thought it possible we could be separated save by
death was most horrible to me. The one sorrow that was in store for me
was that I was destined to survive you.”
And thus the tablet concluded: “You were a faithful and obedient wife;
you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly; you were assiduous
in your spinning; you followed our family and national religious rites
and admitted no foreign superstitions; you did not dress conspicuously,
nor make any kind of household display. Your management of our house
was exemplary; you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been
your own. You had innumerable other excellencies, common to the best
type of matrons, but these I mention are peculiarly your own.”[32]
Turia has been dead over a hundred years, but there are still high-born
women in Rome who are her equals. One of them, Calvilla, has a fine
young son now about thirteen, who owes an infinite debt to his mother,
and whom the Emperor will presently select as the heir presumptive to
the throne. History will call him Marcus Aurelius.