XLVIII. After all this recital of magnanimous women, there still
remains something to be said on a particular, which the men point
out as their weak side, and with respect to which, they charge them
with the greatest want of constancy; that is, their not being firm in
keeping a secret. Cato the Censor in this instance, would not admit of
any exception whatever with regard to them, and condemned the trusting
a secret to any woman, be she who she would, as one of the greatest
errors a man could run into; but Cato’s own great niece Porcia,
daughter of Cato the younger, and wife of Marcus Brutus, gave the lie
to this assertion, she having obliged her husband, to confide to her
the grand secret of the conspiracy against Cæsar, by the extraordinary
proof she exhibited to him of her valour and constancy, in the great
wound she voluntarily gave herself with a knife in the thigh.
XLIX. Pliny, quoting the Magi as his authors, tells us, that the heart
of a certain bird, applied to the breast of a woman when she is asleep,
will make her reveal all her secrets. And in another place, he says,
the tongue of a certain snake will have the same effect. The magicians
being obliged to search among the hidden secrets of Nature, for keys
to unlock the doors of their hearts, is no proof, of the women’s being
so easily brought to reveal what has been confided to them. But let
us laugh with Pliny at these inventions; and let us grant, if you
please, that there are very few women strict observers of a secret;
but, in return to this, it is confessed on the other hand by the most
experienced politicians, that there are very few men also, to whom
you can confide secrets of importance; and truly, if such men were
not very scarce commodities, princes would not hold them in such high
estimation, as to think scarce any of their richest moveables equal to
them in value.
L. Nor are there examples wanting, of women of invincible constancy in
the article of keeping a secret. Pythagoras, when he found himself
near dying, delivered all his writings, in which were contained
the most hidden mysteries of his philosophy, into the custody of
his prudent and dutiful daughter Damo; directing her at the same
time, never to permit them to be published, which injunction she so
punctually obeyed, that, even when she found herself reduced to extreme
poverty, and could have sold those books for a large sum of money,
she chose rather to endure the anguish and pinchings of want, than be
deficient in point of the confidence reposed in her by her father.
LI. The magnanimous Aretaphila, whom we have already mentioned, having
attempted to take away the life of her husband by a poisonous draught
before she entered into a conspiracy against him, which was to be
carried into execution by force of arms, was surprized and detected
in the fact, and being put to the torture to discover who were her
comforters and abettors, the force of the torment was so far from
extorting the secret, or depriving her of the possession of herself,
or the use of her reason, that, after owning she intended to give
him the poison, she had the address to persuade the tyrant it was a
love-philter, and contrived for the purpose of increasing his passion
for her. In fact, this ingenious fiction had the effect of a philter,
for Nicotratus’s love of her was afterwards greatly increased from
this persuasion, that she, who was solicitous to excite in him an
arduous and excessive desire for her, could not do otherwise than
entertain a sincere tenderness and affection for him.
LII. In the conspiracy set on foot by Aristogiton, and which was begun
to be executed, by putting to death Hipparchus, the brother of Hippias,
a courtesan woman, who had been trusted with the secret, and knew all
the accomplices, was put to the torture; but she, to convince the
tyrant of the impossibility of extorting the secret from her, cut her
tongue asunder with her teeth, and let the end drop before his face.
LIII. When the first indications of the conspiracy of Pison against
Nero, began to shew themselves, many of the most illustrious men of
Rome shrunk under, and gave way to the rigour of the torture. Lucan,
for example, discovered his own mother as an accomplice, and many
others their most intimate friends; and there was only one Epicharis,
an ordinary and obscure woman, who was acquainted with the whole
transaction, on whom neither whips nor fire, nor all the martyrdoms
they could invent, had power to tear from her breast the least
information.
LIV. I knew a certain one myself, who, being examined by the torture,
touching an atrocious crime which had been committed by her master
and mistress, resisted the force of that rigorous test, not to save
herself, but only to skreen them; for so small a portion of the fault
could be imputed to her, either on account of her ignorance of the
magnitude of the crime, or from her having acted by the command of
others, and from various circumstances of mitigation, that the law
would not have condemned her to a punishment, any thing comparable to
the severity of that she underwent.
LV. But of women, from whom the power of torture could not tear the
secrets of their breasts, the examples are infinite. I heard a person
who had been used to assist upon such occasions declare, that, although
he had known many of them confess, rather than be stripped naked to
prepare them for the execution of the punishment of the rack, the
instances of their having confessed after undergoing this martyrdom of
their modesty, were very rare. A truly great and shining excellence
in the sex this, that the regard for their modesty, should have more
weight with them than all the terrors of an executioner.
LVI. I do not doubt, but this parallel I have drawn of the sexes, may
appear to many somewhat flattering to the women; but I shall reply
to these, that Seneca, whose rigid Stoicism removes all doubts of his
impartiality, and whose severity sets him at a great distance from all
suspicion of flattery, has made a comparison not a jot less favourable
to the side of the women, for he absolutely asserts them to be equal
to the men, in all the valuable natural faculties and dispositions.
These are his words: _Quis autem dicat, naturam malignè cum muliebribus
ingeniis egisse, & virtutes illarum in arctum retraxisse? Par illis
mihi crede, vigor, par ad honesta (libeat) facultas est. Laborem,
doloremque ex æquo si consuevere patiuntur._ (in Consol. ad Marciam.)