After the revolution, of which the tragedy of Lucretia was the
traditional cause and which ended forever monarchical rule in Rome, our
subject begins to emerge from the haziness of legendary narratives into
the clearer light of veritable history. It now becomes possible for us
to catch glimpses of the women of Rome, living and moving amid scenes
that were real and under conditions which undoubtedly prevailed.
Roman society at the beginning of the Republic was most distinctly and
rigidly classified. Not only were the people divided by the
circumstances of birth into separate classes, but the law preordained
for every person his precise station, his duties, his privileges, and
his limitations. The citizen could no more go beyond these than he could
transfer himself into another order of creation; for law, in Rome, was
as absolute as it was rigid. Speaking generally, there were two orders,
the patrician and the plebeian. A common opinion of the old writers was
that out of the influx of adventurers who crowded to Rome at its
founding Romulus chose one hundred Senators, their qualification being
that they could name their fathers. Their children were called
patricians. In the third century before Christ, when the plebeians had
wrested many privileges and offices from the unwilling higher class,
Publius Decius, himself a plebeian, uses this theory of the origin of
the patricians to great advantage. Contending in debate for the right of
his order to serve in the priesthood, he said: "Have ye never heard that
the first-created patricians were not men sent down from heaven, but
such as could cite their fathers; that is, nothing more than freeborn?
Well, I can cite my father; he was a consul; and my son will be able to
cite a grandfather." This excessive pride which Roman citizens took in
the fact that they could trace their paternity through more or less
generations must not be understood as reflecting, in any way, upon the
character of the early matrons; it arose simply from the fact that they
could so surely name their ancestry as to eliminate possibility of
descent from one of the common herd of unenfranchised inhabitants.
These latter were the plebeians. This class was made up of the
descendants of the ancient people who of old had inhabited the country,
ordinary foreigners who were attracted to the city, and the children of
captives who had been given their liberty. At first, the plebeians
enjoyed no rights whatever. They lived, it is true, under the shelter of
the walls of the city, but on the outside. They possessed no right of
suffrage, and were not allowed to interfere in any public affair. But
they were free. They held property and engaged in handicrafts and in
commerce. It soon came to pass that the increase of their number and
their importance rendered their repression by the nobles more and more
difficult. Under King Servius the plebeians became citizens; and, as is
the case in every land, the internal history of Rome contains nothing
more interesting than the indomitable and successful struggle of this
lower class to wrest ever larger privileges from the tenacious rulers.
It was not, however, until B.C. 444 that equality of rights had made
sufficient progress for matrimonial alliances to be countenanced between
patricians and plebeians. By the commencement of the Christian era all
practical distinction between these two classes had vanished.
In addition to the two principal orders, there was that of the clients.
These were in reality vassals, who preferred dependence on the great and
wealthy to living independently in a precarious liberty. They were
called by the names of their patrons and were numbered in the latter's
tribe. By enactments of law, the patron was made responsible for the
support and protection of his clients. In return, the patrician could
depend upon his clients to fight his battles, support his cause, and
prove themselves loyal retainers of his house in both good fortune and
evil. The subservience of these clients, and the conscienceless zeal
with which they furthered the designs, even the most wicked, of their
masters, are well illustrated in the part which Marcus Claudius played
in the persecution of Virginia by the decemvir Appius. Another dependent
class was that of the slaves. At first the number of these was
comparatively small; but as the conquering arms of Rome spread over the
world her avaricious sway, the captives dragged in barbarous triumph to
the city grew out of all proportion to the population. They enjoyed
fewer rights and suffered under a regime more inhuman than in any other
slaveholding nation in history.
That which distinguished one class from another in early Roman society
had nothing whatever to do with the character of the occupation of the
people comprising it. The noblest of the early patricians, as well as
the commonest plebeians, tilled the soil with their own hands; nor did
they disdain to engage in trade, or even in the letting of money on
usury. Wealth was no more a consideration than occupation in
determining to which order a man or a woman belonged. In course of time,
the plebeians, despite the patricians' unneglected privilege of
practising robbery under due process of law, numbered many families of
great wealth; but no man could therewith purchase entrance to the higher
class. It was the blood line that marked these distinctions; it was
ancestry alone that could give the patent of nobility. Nor is it
surprising that a people who believed in the divine origin of some of
their tribes should acknowledge superior rights as attached to a
well-authenticated pedigree.
In most societies, the advantages of class are more markedly displayed
in the life of the women than in that of the men. This does not appear
to have been the case in the early times of the Roman Republic. In fact,
it is difficult to see how difference in class greatly distinguished the
patrician matron from her plebeian sister. Neither had any legal part
whatever in State affairs or in any public functions, excepting those of
a religious nature. The duties of each were confined to the home, and no
woman was relieved from the obligation of personal and diligent
industry. On the epitaphs of many noble women were praises for their
chastity and their proficiency in spinning. Indeed, the evidence seems
to indicate that any other qualities than these two, and that of
fertility, were deprecated rather than admired by the Romans of this
period. The only advantages which a patrician woman could possess were
her natural pride in the privileges of her family and what honor was
reflected upon her from the positions held by her male relatives. The
term "Head of the Family" never had so tyrannical a meaning as in most
ancient Rome. It was a place which a woman could not hold. The husband
was all in all; no one else was recognized by law. Wife, children,
clients, and slaves were alike persons without will of their own. They
were _mancipia_, under the hand of the father. He it was who answered
for them to the State and who judged them. If a wife was accused of
crime, she was committed to her husband for judgment. And this was the
law even down to the time of Nero, when Pomponia Græcina, charged with
embracing a foreign superstition, was "consigned to the adjudication of
her husband." A man could even condemn his wife to death for certain
offences, such as the violation of her marriage vows, or even for
forging false keys in order to steal his wine. At her husband's death,
the wife could not claim any of his property if he had bequeathed it to
another, even though it were willed to an entire stranger. In this
severely disciplined society, the woman never escaped from guardianship.
She was looked upon as belonging to the family rather than to the State.
The latter consisted only of men, to whom the women were merely
necessary accessories. No one thought that a woman possessed any claim
or right to independence of individuality. She was always under a
master: her father, when she was a girl; her husband, when she was
married; and her nearest male relative, if she became a widow. If she
obtained any share in her father's property or in that of her husband,
she could not transfer or bequeath it without the consent of her male
guardian, unless she were a Vestal; nor could she marry without the same
consent.
But, however dependent her position may have been, whether maid or
matron, the Roman woman was always treated with reverence. The _stola_,
the characteristic robe of the matron, corresponding to the toga of the
male citizen, always ensured for its wearer respect, it being not merely
an article of attire, but also an insignia which could only be retained
by strict rectitude of life, market days or assembly days. In the
villa--a miserable cabin made of mud, rafters, and branches--not a day,
not a moment, was lost. Horace does not draw a more agreeable picture of
ancient city manners. He tells us that "at Rome, for a long time a man
knew no other pleasure and no other festival than to open his door at
dawn, to explain the law to his clients, and to lay out his money on
good security. They learned from their elders, and taught beginners, the
art of increasing their savings." But when it is remembered that Cato
was a sour and miserly Puritan, who adopted austerity as his pose, and
that Horace was a poet, not untouched with cynicism, who lived in a
society in which the charm of simple enjoyments was entirely forgotten,
we may consider both pictures, though from differing causes, slightly
overdrawn. Nevertheless they serve to indicate how circumscribed was the
life of the wives of the early Romans.
Those strong-minded, intense, practical people were not, however,
without their entertainments. Music, both vocal and instrumental, was
cultivated. There were religious festivals, in which processions of boys
and maidens sang pious hymns. We also learn from Cicero that it was the
custom for the guests at a feast to sing the praises of their great men
to the sound of the flute. It is easy for us to imagine a home scene in
which Veturia, the mother of the youthful Cnæus Martius, tells over
again to the inquiring boy those inspiring stories which he has heard
chanted by his father's hearth and which are to prepare him to emulate
heroic deeds at Corioli and earn for himself an honorable name.
But, habitually solemn and grave as were those old Romans, they were
also much addicted to amusements of a coarse and grotesque nature. Even
in their religious processions they included monstrous mechanical
shapes, with formidable teeth and huge jaws which, by their opening and
closing, frightened the women and children, to the great enjoyment of
the men. Hideous masks were also worn for the same purpose. In fact, so
little refinement characterized the minds of the people of these times,
that they could find entertainment in only the rudest and coarsest of
jests. Farces, which were nothing more than the absurd antics and
personal witticisms of buffoons, had been introduced from Atella. But
the beginning of Roman drama may be dated from B.C. 364, when, on
account of a pestilence which devastated the city, Etruscan actors were
imported to institute scenic games in honor of the gods. The pestilence
ended; and consequently the games, being regarded as the efficacious
remedy, were retained. These games consisted of combined dances and
songs, which were accompanied by appropriate but not altogether proper
gestures. Later, there was instituted the floral festival, the purpose
of which was to induce the goddess of spring to grant that all the
flowers which decked the fields at the time of blossoming should be
represented by fruit in the harvest. In these games, dancing girls
appeared upon the stage; and we may draw our own conclusions from the
fact that in the time of Cato the scene was regarded as too frivolous
for the eyes of so grave a personage. But the most popular of all the
early festivals was that of Anna Perenna, the goddess of life. In this,
restraint was abandoned. To drink extravagantly, and to listen to a
recitation of the mistakes of Mars in taking a hideous goddess for the
beautiful Minerva, were regarded as works of piety. Young girls were
required to sing this story, which was full of the coarsest allusions.
But the ancients did not consider the requirements of modesty in the
same light as we do. They did not esteem that innocence born of
ignorance, in which modern times deem it sacrificed to honor was the
signal for the expulsion of tyranny.
It was not alone in the incitement of the populace to measures for her
protection that the influence of woman was felt in matters of State.
There were occasions when by her means calamities were averted, as well
as times when civil strife was for her sake produced. The memory of the
good service done for the city by Veturia, the mother, and Volumnia, the
wife of Coriolanus, was never allowed to fade.
In the history of this brave and haughty warrior we have a picture of
Roman political life. Rough politics they were; rock-faced episodes,
befitting the character of the times, in which men knew nothing of
_finesse_, and when appeal was made directly from reason to brute force
and to the natural feelings of men. Perhaps it would be bordering on
literary impiety to think that Shakespeare, in his Coriolanus, has not
given the best interpretation possible of this fragment from the old
Republic; but it is not one of his greatest pieces, because the material
is lacking in those human qualities which are necessary to arouse
profound interest. It is a drama with but one motive--filial respect.
Yet the most is made of this; and the great dramatist has succeeded in
vivifying the principal characters. In the portrayal of the mother of
Coriolanus we see a matron who is worthy of such a son; the wife's part
is that of passive resignation to the will of stronger spirits. Mrs.
Jameson, in her _Characteristics of Women_, says: "In Volumnia,
Shakespeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in
the true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus
is the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the
final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, and the power
she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story, 'she
saved Rome and lost her son.' Her lofty patriotism, her patrician
haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit,
are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female
nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor,
is without harshness." We may well believe that Veturia--whom, following
Plutarch, Shakespeare calls Volumnia--was a woman who could say: "When
yet he was tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb ... I was pleased
to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I
sent him, whence he returned, his brows bound with oak." And when the
wife tremblingly inquires: "But had he died in the business, madam--what
then?" it was in the mother to reply: "Then, his good report should have
been my son." This is in accord with the Greek historian's statement
that Coriolanus fought heroically, not only for glory and the passion of
battle, but to win the meed of praise from his mother.
The action in the story of Veturia and her son is entirely political.
The balance of power between the patricians and the plebeians was very
narrow, especially when hardship aroused the latter to make inquiry into
the claims of the former. A famine was more than sufficient to incite
the lower order to threaten the privileges of the upper class; and Rome
was at that time suffering from a scarcity of corn. The populace was not
entirely convinced by Menenius's parable that the whole duty of the
patrician order consisted in being the belly of the State organism. The
people clamored; their tribunes saw in this an opportunity to gain
increased powers; the Senators were inclined to be subservient. But the
haughty spirit of Coriolanus would yield nothing of the ancient
privileges. For his mother's sake, he sought the consulship;
nevertheless, he angered the commons, though he could not gain the
office without their suffrages. The stress became so great that his
patrician friends could not prevent his exile. He left Rome, only to
return to wreak vengeance at the head of a Volscian army. This enemy
being already a menace to Rome, the defection of the great leader to
their ranks placed the disordered city at their mercy. Then it was that
the Romans remembered that though women were incapacitated for political
action and were unable to fight, yet they were powerful factors in the
appeal to those feelings of the human heart whence flow justice and
pity. The arguments of ambassadors and the behests of the priests had
not availed; the authorities were constrained to adventure what might be
effected by the tears of the women for whom alone, of all that was
Roman, Coriolanus retained any regard. His mother and his wife were
implored to make the last appeal. This plan had come by inspiration into
the mind of Valeria, sister of the great Publicola, as she was praying
with the other matrons in the temple of Jupiter. Veturia and Volumnia,
leading the two sons of Coriolanus, went forth to the Voiscian camp. As
they drew near, Coriolanus, though resolved to remain obdurate, showed
himself not lacking in filial respect; he advanced to meet them,
ordering the fasces to be lowered in the presence of his mother. The
Roman historians clothe Veturia with noble dignity as she makes her
appeal. "Before I receive your embrace, let me know if I have come to an
enemy or to a son; whether I am in your camp a captive or a mother. Has
length of life and a hapless old age reserved me for this--to behold you
an exile and an enemy?... So then, had I not been a mother, Rome would
not be besieged; had I not a son, I might have died free in a free
country." The spirit of this is truly Roman. Even the women were trained
to force the claims of blood and the natural affections into a place
secondary to the duty of loyalty to the State. This appeal; joined with
the embraces of his wife and the lamentations of the other matrons,
prevailed over the anger of Coriolanus; and again Rome was saved by the
Roman women. As a reward, a monumental temple was erected by the men of
the city, and dedicated to Female Fortune.
It was not alone as peacemakers that the Roman matrons served the public
interests of the city. On more than one occasion the treasury was
rendered efficient by means of their generous contributions. More than
once the golden ornaments of the wives became auxiliary to the iron arms
of their husbands, and in one instance they accomplished that which the
latter could not achieve. When the Gauls burned the city, and were only
turned from the citadel by the payment of one thousand pounds of gold,
with the sword of Brennus thrown on the Gallic side of the scale to
insure good weight, the amount could not have been raised but for the
self-sacrifice of the matrons. In gratitude for this, the Conscript
Fathers voted that thenceforth funeral orations might be made for women.
The gold was afterward repaid to the women out of Etrurian plunder.
Again, when, in accordance with the vow of Camillus, a tribute was to be
presented to Apollo, the matrons brought what they possessed of the
precious metal, it was especially honored by being made into a golden
bowl, which was carried to Delphos. On this occasion also they were
rewarded; for the Senate conferred on them the privilege of riding to
public worship and to the games in covered chariots, and on other
errands in open carriages. The historian introduces this latter
information with "they say"; whether or not, previous to this, the Roman
ladies had been obliged to walk is left to be surmised without further
evidence.
Some Idea of what those golden ornaments were may be gathered from the
account of a voluntary contribution which was made in Rome at a later
period. Funds were required to equip a fleet against Philip of Macedon,
the ally of Hannibal. Lævinus the consul, urging upon his fellow
Senators the duty to set an example of public generosity, says: "Let us
bring into the treasury to-morrow all our gold, silver, and coined
brass, each reserving rings for himself, his wife and children, and a
bulla for his son; and he who has a wife or daughters, an ounce weight
of gold for each. Let those who have sat in a curule chair have the
ornaments of a horse, and a pound weight of silver, that they may have a
salt-cellar, and a dish for the service of the gods ..." Notwithstanding
the fact that, in response to this appeal, the needs of the fleet were
abundantly provided for, the indication is that at this period, about
B.C. 280, the decorative tastes of the Roman ladies had in no wise
acquired that luxuriousness with which they afterward became
characterized. There was no ornament so common as the ring, the place of
which, in these early times when only one was worn, was the third finger
of the left hand. It was used for the purpose of sealing letters and
papers, and long before the end of the Republic the custom arose of
setting rings with precious stones. Indeed, the people of the early
Republic were not unacquainted with most exquisite work of the
goldsmiths' art; but there was still prevalent that consciousness of the
surpassing value of personal excellences which could afford to be
independent of outward adornment, and of which Cornelia's reference to
her sons as her jewels was a surviving echo.
But the times were soon to change. Hitherto we have seen the Roman
matrons living the simple, diligent, unsophisticated lives of women who
were fitting mates for men who held to the plow for support, but dared
not let drop the sword. Until then, Rome had been nothing but a city
struggling for existence--sometimes a precarious existence. Instances
there were when her fortunes waned almost to the vanishing point; when
the tide of progress seemed to hang at the ebb. The god of victory,
though honored as the tutelary deity of Rome, was frequently partial to
her Italian neighbors; her walls were entered and her houses razed by
the barbarian Gauls; and once she was at the point of being deserted by
her citizens, the majority of whom could hardly be restrained by the
ideals of religion from removing the State and the Capitol to Veii. Yet
her star of empire persisted and, despite temporary eclipses, remained
in the ascendant.
How did those centuries of varying civic fortune affect the status of
the women? They were, by the necessities of their circumstances, trained
to endure hardship. The temple of Janus was never closed, for warfare
was unceasing; and it was usual for the widow's wailing death dirge to
be embittered by the fact that the husband had been slain in his
strength and prime. Slavery and outrage, the concomitants of barbarous
warfare, were always included within the possibilities of a Roman
matron's fate. Under such circumstances civilization necessarily
advanced slowly; it is only as life and liberty and leisure are secured
that existence can acquire the social graces. Hence the probability is
that, during the first two and a half centuries of the Republic,--that
is, until Rome was fully launched upon her career of conquest,--the
position and the habits and manner of life of the women did not greatly
change. It is true that there was a continuous internal development of
the State; but this manifested itself in an accentuation of those laws
which reveal the hardness of the old Roman character, rather than in any
tendency toward the easement of the individual lives of the citizens.
Never has personal privilege been so completely subjugated to State
prerogative. The laws, which were rigidly--even slavishly--interpreted
according to the letter and never according to the spirit, considered
the individual from the standpoint of his value to the State, and rarely
from that of his own rights. The woman's value to the State was entirely
submerged in that of her husband. Therefore, we find that it was only
with the greatest difficulty that edicts granting privileges to woman
could be passed, unless it were in payment for some special act of
loyalty on her part to the State. Hard and inflexible in their ideas of
life were those old Romans, practical and unsentimental in their
relations with each other, narrow in their conceptions, proud to
arrogance of their State, and reverencing only their institutions.
But in course of time they broke through their insularity with the force
of their own arms. Victorious contact with other States gave them a
larger acquaintance with the fruits of civilization, and the spoils of
conquest afforded them the means to enjoy it. Hence, during the latter
half of the republican period we see life in Rome rapidly undergoing a
change. As typical of this new state of things, as it affected the
character, status, and condition of women, there is only one woman whom
we need to select. In Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus and the
wife of Sempronius Gracchus, is found the ideal of Roman femininity of
that day. She was in every way worthy of her patrician ancestry, which
had produced a greater number of eminent men than any other family,
twenty-one consulships being held by the Cornelii in eighty-six years.
Cornelia lived in a Rome which we can understand and appreciate; we
begin to recognize social features upon which the imagination can lay
hold and from them piece together some idea of the reality. Hitherto
the data has been too foreign and too meagre for any great success in
this; but when we read of Cornelia providing herself with a country
house, riding to public worship, listening to the gossip of her friends
respecting each other's jewelry, and interesting herself in Greek
literature, we discover that the main features of a Roman matron's life
were not essentially dissimilar from those which characterize polite
feminine society in our own time. Indeed, there is more to evoke our
sympathetic appreciation in the Rome of B.C. 150 than in the Europe of
A.D. 1000 or in the Asiatic civilizations of to-day. We feel more at
home in the patrician villas than in the mediæval castles; just as we
find more that is applicable to modern life in the Roman poets than we
do in the bards of chivalry. In studying the period when the ancient
civilization of Italy was at its best, we discover habits of thought,
bits of life, and social customs, which really startle us with their
similitude to those to which we ourselves are accustomed.
The city, in the time of Cornelia, showed few outward signs of the
magnificence it was to acquire under the emperors. The houses were
mostly of brick, though domestic architecture had become quite ambitious
in its character, Cornelia herself having built, as has been said, a
very expensive villa at Misenum; those of the wealthy were filled with
costly furniture and precious works of art, which the Romans first
learned to admire in the countries which they subdued; and having
acquired a taste for beautiful things, they made no scruple of
appropriating them. Rome had now grown wealthy with the spoils of her
extensive victories, and, as always comes to pass with the advent of
riches, there had been brought about a great differentiation in the
condition of the population. Polybius gives us a picture of the
extravagant style in which Æmilia, the mother of Cornelia, appeared in
public. "When she left home to go to the temple," says he, "she seated
herself in a glittering chariot, herself attired with extreme luxury.
Before her were carried with solemn ceremony the vases of gold and
silver required for the sacrifice, and a numerous train of slaves and
servants accompanied her." And this notwithstanding the Oppian law,
which limited matrons to a half-ounce of gold on their wearing apparel
and prohibited them from riding in carriages in the city, and which had
not yet been repealed. As this modish lady passed through the streets of
Rome with her brilliant retinue, exciting the envy of other matrons, and
bestowing gracious recognition upon white-robed, stately patricians, she
must have beheld as many signs of abject, suffering poverty as are
prevalent in our own great cities. By this time, the plebeian order had
been raised to equal legal privilege with the patrician, and society had
now come to be divided into the enormously rich and the extremely poor.
The former rendered their position secure by means of extortion in the
provinces; the condition of the latter was made hopeless by the fact
that all labor was performed by slaves. A state of things unknown to the
old times was now prevalent in Rome: men and women were idle, willingly
or perforce, according to their circumstances.
The position of women had also changed. They were now beginning to make
a stand for their rights--a thing undreamed of in the old days. The
father of the family was no longer allowed to execute his arbitrary
power entirely unquestioned. Livy narrates an incident which illustrates
this development and bears interestingly upon the character of Æmilia
and the history of Cornelia. He relates that "the Senators, happening to
sup one day in the Capitol, rose up together and requested of Africanus,
before the company departed, to betroth his daughter to Gracchus; the
contract was accordingly executed in due form, in the presence of this
assembly. Scipio, on his return home, told his wife Æmilia that he had
concluded a match for her younger daughter. She, feeling her female
pride hurt, expressed some resentment at not having been consulted in
the disposal of their common child, adding that, even were he giving her
to Tiberius Gracchus, her mother ought not to be kept in ignorance of
his intention; to which Scipio, rejoiced that her judgment concurred so
entirely with his own, replied that she was betrothed to that very man."
It has been well said that the words which Plautus puts into the mouth
of Alcmena may be applied to the character of Cornelia, who was thus
bestowed by her great father upon a no less worthy man: "My dower is
chastity, modesty, and the fear of the gods; it is love to my kindred;
it is to be submissive to my husband, kind toward good people, helpful
to the brave." She also received a _dot_, an accompaniment of marriage
which was beginning to be highly considered among the matrons of Rome as
of more practical value than the above-mentioned moral qualities. It
consisted of fifty talents of gold. But the time had not yet arrived
when the riches of virtue and goodness were entirely unappreciated;
there were still matrons who could enter, with faces neither brazen nor
abashed, the temple erected to chastity; and upon the tombs of many of
them might have been truthfully inscribed, as upon that of Claudia:
_Gentle in words, graceful in manner, she loved her husband devotedly;
she kept her house, she spun wool_. Among these chaste matrons Cornelia
excelled; her fame remains as that of the highest type of the
pure-principled, noble-minded, cultured Roman matron. She lived in
entire sympathy with her husband; and we may well believe that it was
partly owing to her influence that the generous Sempronius Gracchus
found it in himself to command an army enlisted from among the slaves,
and to emancipate them upon the battlefield as a reward for the bravery
which his leadership incited.
Plutarch, in his lives of the sons of Gracchus, repeats a story which,
though characterized by the superstitions of the times, indicates in
what estimation Cornelia was held by her husband and all who knew her.
It relates that Gracchus once found in his bed chamber a couple of
snakes, and that the soothsayers, being consulted concerning the
prodigy, advised that he should neither kill them both nor let them both
escape; adding that if the male serpent were killed, Gracchus would die,
and, if the female, Cornelia would perish. Therefore, as he extremely
loved his wife, he thought that it was much more his part, who was an
old man, to die than it was hers, who as yet was but a young woman; so
he killed the male serpent and let the female escape. Soon after this,
he died, leaving his wife and the twelve children which she had borne to
him. "Cornelia, taking upon herself all the care of the household and
the education of her children, approved herself so discreet a matron, so
affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a widow, that
Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing
to die for such a woman; who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her
his crown and would have married her, refused it, and chose rather to
live a widow. In this state she continued, and lost all her children,
except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the Younger, and two
sons, Tiberius and Caius." The daughter, Sempronia, seems to have been
in every respect unlike her mother. Unattractive and childless, she
neither loved nor was loved by her husband; and, indeed, suspicion was
cast upon her of having brought about his death.
Cornelia was well equipped to undertake the education of her children.
What is told of her indicates a woman who was alert to advance with all
that was progressive in her time. The spirit of literature had but
recently attained its reincarnation, and that for the first time upon
Roman soil. It was begotten, as it was again fifteen centuries later, by
the immortal genius of Greek poesy. The Romans conquered Greece
physically; but Hellenic learning subjugated Roman ideas. The Scipios
were the ardent supporters of Greek culture; and in this, as in all
other respects, Cornelia took a foremost position among the
representatives of her gifted family.
She provided for her children the most erudite of Greek masters, and
spared no efforts in training their minds in the love of all that was
graceful and cultured. In the justly renowned eloquence of her sons,
there was recognized a gift which they inherited from their mother, as
was testified by Cicero, who had seen her letters. She possessed the
ability and also the courage to incite them to noble deeds for their
country. It was probably not so much ambition for herself as for them
which caused her to reproach her sons with the fact that she was still
known as the widow of Scipio and not as the Mother of the Gracchi. But
they lost no time in earning for her, both on account of their deeds on
the battlefield and by their devotion to the civil affairs of the State,
the distinction of this latter title.
The Roman Republic had so far degenerated as to submit to be governed by
an oligarchy consisting of a few proud and wealthy families--the worst
of all forms of government. The Senators were flagrantly using their
power to accumulate enormous riches and to monopolize the land by
seizing upon the public domain. Middle-class independence was rapidly
diminishing, and the growing masses of the people were oppressed by a
poverty from which they had no means of freeing themselves. The Gracchi
sought to relieve these evils by passing laws limiting the amount of
land which might be held by one person, and offsetting the power of the
nobility by securing the economic independence of the people. The
Gracchi were reformers; and they each in turn attained to dictatorial
power. But though they secured the enactment of their measures, they
could not put them into effect; and in the end,--as is frequently the
case with reformers,--because they were far-sighted enough to see evil
in that which the majority of the rulers considered good, there was
nothing for them but martyrdom. This they suffered in turn: Caius taking
up the work where Tiberius was compelled, by assassination, to
relinquish it.
The parting of Caius from his wife on the morning of his own death is a
scene from a heroic tragedy. He could not be persuaded to arm himself,
with the exception of a small dagger underneath his toga. As he was
going out, Licinia stopped him at the threshold, holding him by one hand
and their little son by the other. She pleaded that he would not expose
himself to the murderers of his brother. "Had your brother," she urged,
"fallen before Numantia, the enemy would have given back what then had
remained of Tiberius; but such is my hard fate, that I probably must be
a suppliant to the floods or the waves, that they would somewhere
restore to me your relics. For since Tiberius was not spared, what trust
can we place either in the laws or in the gods?" But Caius, gently
withdrawing himself from her embraces, departed; and Licinia, falling in
a faint, was carried as though dead into the house of her brother
Crassus.
Cornelia bore the death of her two sons with her characteristic nobility
of mind. She removed to her seaside home at Cape Misenum; and there she
surrounded herself with learned men, and especially delighted in
entertaining the exponents of Greek literature. She was held in the
highest esteem by all; and her friends desired no greater privilege than
to listen to her reminiscences of her father, Scipio Africanus. She
would proudly add: "The grandsons of that great man were my children.
They perished in the temple and grove sacred to the gods. They have the
tombs that their virtues merited, for they sacrificed their lives to the
noblest of aims,--the desire to promote the welfare of the people." Such
was Cornelia; and she was the noblest of the matrons of the Republic. No
greater thing can be said of her than that she gloried most in the
reflected honor which came upon her as being the mother of the Gracchi;
yet she has been deservedly given a high place among the great and good
women of all time.