One sees little clearly through the mists of two thousand years, and
we know few details of what seems to have been the first concerted
revolt on the part of women. The visible cause was a trivial one, but
it was the proverbial last drop, and served at least to bring dismay
into the councils of men, and afterward, possibly, reflection. The
Roman woman was patriotic and quite ready, at need, to give all and
ask nothing. When money was required to carry on the Punic wars, she
poured out her jewels and personal treasures with lavish generosity;
nor did she murmur when the Oppian law decreed that she must no longer
wear purple or many-colored robes, that her gold ornaments must weigh
no more than half an ounce, and that she must walk if she went out, as
the use of a carriage in the city was a forbidden luxury. These were
small privileges, but they were about all she had, and when the crisis
was past, she asked a repeal of the decree. She met the usual rebuff of
those who seek to regain a lost point. Men saw in such a request only
an “irruption of female emancipators,” dangerous alike to religion and
the State. Cato, the austere, refused a petition which he regarded as
a subversion of order and a rebellion against lawful masters. He said
that the claim of women to any rights or any voice in public affairs
was a proof that men had lost their majesty as well as their authority;
such a thing could not have happened if each one had kept his own wife
in proper subjection. “Our privileges,” he continues, “overpowered at
home by female contumacy, are, even here in the forum, spurned and
trodden under foot”; indeed, he begins to fear that “the whole race
of males may be utterly destroyed by a conspiracy of women.” He rails
at the matrons, who throng the forum, for “running into public and
addressing other women’s husbands.” It “does not concern them what laws
are passed or repealed.” He bewails the “good old days” when women were
forced to obey their fathers, brothers, or husbands. “Now they are so
lost to a sense of decency as to ask favors of other men.” “Women,” he
says, “bear law with impatience.” They long for liberty, which is not
good for them. With all the old restrictions, it is difficult to keep
them within bounds. “The moment they have arrived at equality they will
be our superiors”--a dangerous admission surely. He calls the affair a
sedition, an insurrection, a secession of women.
But the matrons had some able defenders. Lucius Valerius, who had
asked the repeal of this obnoxious law, spoke for them. He objects
to calling a natural request by such hard names, and quotes from
antiquity to prove that it is not a new thing for Roman matrons to come
out in public, as they have often done so in the interest of the State,
and “always to its advantage.” He recalls the various times when they
saved Rome, and refers to the generosity with which they invariably
responded to a call for help. No one objected when they appeared for
the general good; why should they be censured when they asked a favor
for themselves? In reply to the accusation of extravagance, he says:
“When you wear purple on your own robe, why will you not permit your
wife a purple mantle?”... “Will you spend more on your horse than on
your wife?” Then he asks why women who have always been noted for
modesty should lose it now through the repeal of a law that has not
been in existence more than twenty years. One is tempted to quote
at length from these speeches, because they show us how the Romans
discussed certain questions that are familiar to-day. To be sure, it
was only a woman’s privilege of dressing as she chose that they were
considering, but it really involved her right to ask anything which her
lord and master did not freely accord. We hear practically the same
arguments, the same fears, the same special pleadings on both sides, at
each new step in the social advancement of women.
The Roman matrons, however, were not discouraged by criticism. They
flocked to the forum in greater numbers than ever. Women came in from
the towns and villages to aid them. The senators were so astounded
at their audacity that they solemnly implored the gods to reveal the
nature of the omen. They stigmatized the leaders as “androgynes” or
“he-women,” a term of contempt so freely applied in this country,
less than fifty years ago, to those who bravely presented the claims
of their sex to larger consideration, and who, silver-haired and
venerable, are so widely honored to-day. We do not hear that there were
any congresses or conventions, but these Roman ladies held meetings,
went into the streets for votes, and appealed to nobles, officials,
and strangers alike. They sought the tribunes in their houses, and
used all their arts of persuasion. There were fair-minded men then as
now, and the spirited rebels won their cause, though Cato revenged
himself for his defeat by imposing a heavy tax on the dress, ornaments,
and carriages of women. It is said that they put on their gay robes
and jewels at once, and celebrated their victory by dancing in the
legislative halls.
Not far from this time, possibly a little before, a dowry was set
apart for women. But there was a growing jealousy of their increasing
independence, and, a few years later, it was proposed to take away
from them the right of inheritance. It was feared that too much
property might fall into their hands, as had been the case in Sparta;
also, that their taste for elegant living might lead to degeneracy of
manners and morals. The irrepressible Cato again came to the front
and declaimed against the arrogance and tyranny of rich women. After
bringing their husbands a large dowry, he said, they even had the
presumption to retain some of their own money for themselves and ask
payment if they lent it to their masters! Men could not be expected to
tolerate such insufferable insolence on the part of their “reserved
slaves.” And so the decree was passed. But it was more honored in
the breach than in the observance, and became a dead letter, as men
themselves thought it unjust.
How far the gradual change in the laws was due to the efforts of
women and how far to the justice of men, it is not easy to determine;
but the astonished attitude of the latter when they felt that their
time-honored supremacy was in peril shows better than anything else the
real significance of the movement which was precipitated by so slight a
cause. It is quite safe to say that without an emphatic protest there
would have been no thought of justice. Traditions are only broken from
the inside where they press heavily. In this case it was a daring and
unheard-of thing to run against the current of centuries of passive
submission; but “it is the first step that costs.” When the right of
being heard had been once asserted, grave statesmen and jurists took
up the matter and solved it as best they could, with an evident desire
to be just and kind, as they understood it. It could hardly be expected
that half of the human family would voluntarily relinquish the absolute
ownership of the other half, or even believe it to be good for the
other half that they should do so. Men are not so constituted. The
institutions and customs that had come to them from their fathers they
felt bound to pass on, as far as possible, intact. Besides, all vital
changes must be slow, unless they are to be chaotic. But the leaven of
a new intelligence worked surely, if not swiftly.
The masses of the Roman women never passed out of a condition which we
should call subjection, though they did secure at last the use of their
own fortunes, relative freedom in the marriage contract, and a certain
protection against money-hunting and spendthrift husbands. In the
reign of Augustus the wife was given a guaranty for her own property,
and the husband was forbidden to alienate the dowry. The mother was
in a measure freed from oppressive guardianship, which later ceased
altogether. Under Hadrian she was permitted to make a will without
consulting any one, also to inherit from her sons. In many regards the
Romans after the Antonines were more just to women than are most of
the civilized nations of to-day. But these changes were the work of
centuries, and it is possible here to touch only upon a few essential
points.
There was a second revolt more than a hundred years after the first,
when the triumvirs levied on the rich women of Rome a tax which
compelled many of them to sacrifice their jewels. They appealed to
Octavia to use her influence, also to the able mother of Antony, both
of whom favored them; but his wife, the Fulvia of unpleasant fame,
treated them with intolerable rudeness. Again they thronged the forum;
but they had made vast strides in intelligence, and this time the
eloquent daughter of a famous orator was chosen to plead for them. It
was no longer a simple matter of personal injustice, but also a moral
question upon which thoughtful women had distinct opinions and the
ability to express them. Hortensia spoke for peace. “Do not ask us,”
she says, “to contribute to the fratricidal war that is rending the
Republic.” Her appeal for justice recalls a plea so often heard to-day,
in a form that is but slightly altered. “Why should we pay taxes,”
she says, “when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the
statecraft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful
results?... When have taxes ever been imposed on women?” Quintilian
refers to this address of a brilliant matron as worthy to be read for
its excellence, and “not merely as an honor to her sex.”
These spirited and high-born women were sent home, as the others had
been, but the people again came to their aid, and it was found best to
limit the tax to a few who could bear the burden easily.