[Illustration: Decorative image]
· The Woman Question an Old One ·
· Character and Virtues of Early Roman Women ·
· Instances of Heroism ·
· Their Disabilities ·
· Primitive Roman Morals ·
· Servitude of Wives · Husband Poisoning ·
· The Oppian Law · The Revolt ·
· Crabbed Cato · Change in Laws ·
· Second Revolt · Hortensia ·
· The Marriage Question ·
· Intellectual Movement · Cornelia ·
[Illustration: Decorative image]
I
Not long ago an able and eloquent man, well known in political life,
made the astonishing statement that from the time Eve left paradise to
the advent of the modern champion of her sex, “woman was apparently
content with her subordination.” It is not proposed here to enter at
all into the present phases of a subject that has been sufficiently
discussed, or to define the precise point where those who belong to
what our noble friend is pleased to call the “inferior and defective
half of the race” may with reason protest; but as a matter of fact
there has never been so prolonged and serious a commotion on the
much-talked-of “woman question” as in the Rome of two thousand years
ago; and perhaps no recorded moment in the history of women has been
of such far-reaching importance as those struggles for justice and
recognition. With possibly one exception, the points at issue were not
quite the same as in the middle of the nineteenth century, but they
involved many of the same privileges. The contention concerned not only
a woman’s right to a voice in the control of her own property, but to
some consideration in marriage, and a measure of personal liberty. The
laws that grew out of it, in the slow process of years, have served
as a basis for the codes that have more or less governed civilized
countries ever since, and though these have often deviated far from the
liberal standard of the statutes of Justinian, they have never fallen
permanently to the old level. A certain marked resemblance in the
character and growth of the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon woman gives us a
special interest in these controversies and their practical outcome.
That the Roman woman had ample cause for protest could hardly be
questioned to-day, even by the most determined advocate of the old
order of things. The contrast between the character and ability so
conspicuously shown by what she did at various times for her country,
and the humiliation of her position, was too great. In the qualities
of temperament and imagination which, if given free scope, make poets
and artists, the Grecian women surpassed her. But the very traits of
sensibility that constituted their fascination rendered them an easy
prey to the rule of a master. Their chief legacy to posterity was an
esthetic one. The talent of the Roman woman was of another sort. She
was of a masterful type, striking in physique, strong in purpose,
clear in judgment, with the pride and dignity of a race born to rule
the world. It was through her practical wisdom in directing affairs,
together with her courage, foresight, and indomitable will, that she
gained in the end a degree of independence which perhaps we should
hardly call by that name to-day, but which was relative freedom and
left a permanent trace on after-ages.
Of the heroism, political sagacity, and moral value of the Roman women
we have abundant evidence, but it is difficult to catch the outline
of faces seen in half-lights, or of characters revealed only on one
side. They did not write of themselves, or of each other, as women
of later and, to some extent, even of earlier ages have done. There
was no Sappho to sing of their joys and sorrows, or give us a clue to
what they thought and felt. Men who wrote freely of affairs reserved
small space for them, so we know little of their personal life, except
through passing glimpses in a few private letters, and the cynical if
not malicious pictures of satirists. The Romans were not a creative
or imaginative race, and have left us none of the great ideals of
womanhood that grace the pages of the Greek poets. No Helen with her
divine beauty and charm, no Antigone with her strength of sacrifice,
no Andromache with her tender and winning personality, shows us the
manner of woman that lived in the minds and hearts of men. But if the
delicacy of shading which reveals fine complexities of character is
wanting, we have a few records of brave deeds and individual virtues
that are likely to stand as long as the world to show us the quality
that made them possible. Alcestis going serenely to her death for her
weak and selfish lord is not more heroic than Lucretia, who saved the
falling liberties of Rome by plunging the dagger into her heart and
calling upon her husband to avenge her outraged honor. Iphigenia is not
a more touching figure than the innocent Virginia, sacrificed, not to
the gods, but to the brutality of wicked men.
From Tanaquil, whose ambition and prophetic insight led the first
Tarquin to leave his simple Etruscan home for a Roman throne, to the
wise Livia, who shared the power and glory of Augustus for more than
half a century, women came to the front in many a public crisis. Men
gave them no real liberty, but they did give them monuments. These
are mostly gone now, but the records of them are left. Standing by
the Capitol to-day and looking across the crumbling temples, columns,
statues, and arches which have preserved for us the memories of Old
Rome, one is forcibly reminded of the important part played by women in
laying the foundations of the long faded glory that still lends these
ruins so melancholy and picturesque a charm. The strength and courage
of the Roman woman were immortalized in the equestrian statue of the
daring Clœlia, in the Via Sacra, that stretches before us. Not far off
was the temple of Juno, where the festivals of the Matronalia were held
for centuries, in honor of the women who settled the contest between
the Romans and the Sabines. Beyond the walls on the way to the Alban
hills was the temple of Fortuna Muliebris, which bore lasting testimony
to the wisdom and patriotism of Valeria, its first priestess; also to
the gentle but powerful influence of Volumnia and Virgilia, who, led by
her counsels, saved the city from a too ambitious son and brother. It
was the spirit of the divine Egeria that whispered prophetic words of
warning to Numa in the secluded grotto beyond the Aventine. The Sibyls
held the secrets of divination, and in the vaults at our feet they
deposited the books that foretold the destinies of Rome.
There still stands the little temple where the white-robed Vestals
watched over the holy Palladium and took care that the sacred fire
should never go out for eleven hundred years. Men on the heights of
power bowed to the authority of these consecrated women, who occupied
everywhere the place of honor, settled disputes, testified without
oath, and brought pardon even to a criminal who met them by accident.
All this, whether fact or legend, was a tacit recognition of the
judgment, purity, and insight of woman. It might not be desirable to
give her any rights civil or social, but, as a sort of compensation,
men quieted their consciences and gave themselves a comfortable feeling
of being just, if indeed they ever had any doubt on that point, by
offering her more or less theoretical honor, and a shadowy place near
the gods, where they could avail themselves of her wisdom without any
personal inconvenience. In addition to this, they built her a little
temple dedicated to the goddess Viriplaca, Appeaser of Husbands, where
she could solace her bruised heart by confiding her wrongs and sorrows
to this conciliatory divinity, who seems to have been useful mainly as
a repository of tears, though her office was to compose differences. It
has long since vanished, but it speaks volumes for the helplessness of
women that it ever existed at all. It told the tragedy of many a Roman
matron’s life.