There was in ancient Rome a street called Argiletus, which we learn from
Martial was occupied principally by booksellers. Here those works which
are cherished not alone for their antiquity, and some others possibly as
good but which in the misfortunes of many centuries have disappeared,
were bought fresh from their authors' hands and sold to the eager lovers
of literature. Here, when a new piece by Virgil or Horace was announced,
the reading public would flock, urged by the most commendable form of
curiosity known to the cultured human mind. Here hundreds of scribes
were employed in the multiplication of copies of those classics over
which in later days have labored scores of generations of youthful
students, with deep regret that those classics were not written in their
own mother tongue. Those shops, or _taberna libraria_, were the lounging
places of the famous men who created this literature and of those who
did good service to posterity by constituting themselves the patrons of
the geniuses of their age, who otherwise would have been as indigent and
as barren as are the neglected authors of our own times. The men and
women who received an ancient author in the name of a poet are entitled
to receive a poet's reward. In the shops of Secundus and the Sosii
brothers, the literati of Rome and their admirers gathered to indulge in
that most fascinating of all conversational intercourse: book talk.
While it is probable that the presence of women was not so marked and
frequent in these haunts of the cultured fraternity as it is in the book
shops and publishing houses of modern times, this does not signify that
the ladies of Rome did not take a deep and influential interest in
literature. Did not Augustus dedicate a public library in the name of
his sister Octavia? There was in the Roman world a reading public so
great as to appear to us nothing less than marvellous in view of the
lack of the printing press; but slaves who could be set to copying were
plentiful, and if a lady wished a copy of the poems of Propertius or
Catullus she could procure it for a small sum in the street Argiletus,
or she could borrow it from a friend and have it transcribed at home.
Great attention was paid to the education of girls in Greek and Latin
literature. Even those of the poorer class received this instruction;
for such an accomplishment, especially if assisted by personal
attractions, often availed in place of a rich dowry to secure a
desirable match. Women also were not rare who, like Sempronia, could
write verses of sufficient merit to be mentioned by the serious
historians of their times, though unfortunately their productions have
not been preserved to us. Mommsen, commenting on the flood of literature
which characterized the period of the commencement of the Empire,
assures us that "The female world also took a lively part in these
literary pursuits; the ladies did not confine themselves to dancing and
music, but by their spirit and wit ruled conversation and talked
excellently on Greek and Latin literature; and when poetry laid siege to
a maiden's heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered
likewise in graceful verses. Rhythm became more and more the fashionable
plaything of the big children of both sexes."
If it can be shown that the law of the "survival of the fittest"
operates with any degree of inevitability in the preservation of books,
we shall be obliged to conclude that few of the writings that owed their
existence to the lady authors of ancient Rome were remarkable for their
merit. It is difficult even to indulge a natural desire to be gallant by
assuming that to the accidents of time may be attributed the loss of
much that was worthy of preservation; for the number of female writers
who are mentioned in contemporary works as having attained to any great
degree of excellence in authorship is remarkably limited. Some, however,
there are. Pliny says: "Pompeius Saturninus has lately read to me some
letters he says are from his wife. I fancied myself listening to Plautus
or Terence in prose. Whether they are his wife's, as he affirms, or his
own, as he denies them to be, he is entitled to equal credit: in the one
case, for producing such compositions; in the other, for transforming
his wife, a mere girl when he married her, into such a learned and
finished woman." Martial also tells of a young woman who, he says, had
the eloquence of Plato, the austerity of the Porch, and composed verses
worthy of a chaste Sappho. Sidonius Apollinaris recites a list of Latin
poetesses; but of them all there is only one whose work may be read at
the present time. We do not refer to Balbilla, who wisely engraved her
verses and also her genealogy upon the leg of the statue of Memnon; the
fact that these have endured is attributable solely to the lasting
nature of the medium upon which they were written.
Sulpicia, the only Roman poetess whose work is still extant and well
authenticated, lived in the time of the Emperor Domitian. She came of a
famous patrician family, many members of which had been able men of
affairs in their time. She was a great and highly respected friend of
the poet Martial, to whose two epigrams on herself and her husband we
are indebted for almost all that we know of this talented woman. Her
husband's name was Calenus; and with him she lived for fifteen years, in
a felicity of reciprocated conjugal affection which, notwithstanding the
degeneracy of the age, seems to have been ideal. Martial bears testimony
not only to her surpassing ability as a votary of the poetic muse, but
also to the fact that in her life and character she exemplified a purity
such as would beautify any age or society.
There is in existence but one poem known to have been written by
Sulpicia; it was called forth by an act of tyranny which she rebuked
with as much beauty as spirit. During the reign of Domitian, the
philosophers were banished from Rome by edict of the emperor. Those
against whom this measure was particularly directed were of the Stoic
school; this fact helps to explain the cause of their expulsion and also
the poem which Sulpicia wrote upon the occasion. Their tenets inculcated
an independence of thought and manner which was entirely at variance
with that servility which could allow the people to rest peacefully
under the despotism of such a ruler as was Domitian. The philosophers
were considered, and probably justly so, a menace to the government of
the tyrant. Whether Sulpicia was directly connected with these people
and whether she was included in the edict of banishment, we do not know;
in any case, it is quite clear that her sympathies were entirely with
the expelled philosophers. Her satire on this incident bewails the
weakness that had evidently fallen upon the Roman race, causing men to
submit so easily to such tyranny as that to which her friends were
subjected. She asks if "the Father of the Gods" is about to allow the
Romans to revert to primeval barbarism, "to stoop again to acorns and
the pure stream"; or if he has forsaken them for the care of other
nations. She declares that "adversity alone is salutary for a State,"
"for when the love of country urges them to defend themselves by arms,
and to regain their wives, held prisoners with their household gods,
they combine like wasps when their home and citadel is assaulted." Then
she implores her divine patroness that at least her husband may not be
unwilling to abandon this inglorious ease and to leave Rome and its
vicinity, since all the good and estimable have been driven from it. The
poem is a noble, high-spirited production; and it proves Sulpicia to
have been a woman of extraordinary intelligence and a fearless exponent
of principles and ideas which the majority of men in her time found it
more convenient to forget.
Sulpicia was also the author of a poem on conjugal affection which is
most highly commended by Martial; but unfortunately it has been lost.
Indeed, from the reference in the beginning of her satire to her
"thousand sportive effusions," we gather that she was a prolific writer
and that all her poetry was not of the philosophic or didactic kind.
With this brief reference to Sulpicia, our account of woman's creative
participation in Roman literature must end for want of material. The
real part which the women of the Roman world played in the formation of
the literature of their time must be sought rather in the view which the
authors present of their character and the inspiration which the poets
drew from their love and friendship. That is to say, we meet the Roman
woman in the poetic art of her nation as the model and also as the
motive, but not as the artist. But it is very essential that we should
give attention to both these phases of feminine life. Hitherto we have
dealt only with historic personages, and those of the highest class; to
obtain a complete view of the Roman woman, it is necessary to see her in
that broader light in which she is sketched by the makers of other
literature than history. And in order that our attention may not be
confined to the women of one class, we must take notice of those ladies
of whom the poets sing and to whom they address their effusions.
First let us consider the woman drawn by Roman creative art. In her
image, as it is portrayed in literature, we see the real person of flesh
and blood, as she appeared to the literary artists. Virgil says: "Woman
is a fickle and ever changeable creature;" and yet he must have found in
the women of his time the qualities with which he endowed Queen Dido.
She is a Roman woman, because she is the creation of a Roman. She is an
ideal queen; yet one who governs her kingdom in the same manner in which
a noble matron presided over the activities of her household,
"dispensing justice and laws to her subjects" from the middle room, or
atrium, of the temple, and "in equal portions distributing their tasks
or settling them by lot." Furthermore, she is a true woman. She is the
sole contribution of Roman poetry to that gallery of imaginary men and
women who, having their existence only in literature, are immortal
because they faithfully represent the real. In Dido, Virgil, though he
calls her a Sidonian, shows how a woman of pagan Rome could love; and
how, her heart being broken and her pride injured by rejection, she
could die in the high-spirited manner peculiar to her prideful race.
But in all Latin poesy there is no other character such as Dido. When we
turn to Plautus and Terence, we learn a great deal about women, but we
encounter none that live and move and have a being. These authors did
not lay their scenes in the houses of the patricians or in the seats of
the mighty; they show us a class of women that we have not hitherto met.
Having studied the highest, we now turn to the lowest stratum of Roman
society. We are introduced to a class of people who traffic in female
beauty; and much insight is gained into that laxity of morals which was
countenanced both by the laws and customs of ancient Rome. Here we are
informed of the multitude of girls who were carefully trained and
educated, both in mind and person, that they might make profit for their
owners by the prostitution of their charms. We meet these girls as they
are being sent to school in order that, at the same time, their
intellects may be developed and their commercial value enhanced. In
these plays, we are shown the women of the brothel; and we are less
astounded at the greatness of their number than we are at the
complacency with which their existence was tolerated in Roman society.
These women were principally unfortunates who had been captured in war
or were born in slavery, and the only redeeming feature in the picture
of their situation is the intimation that now and again one, by signal
success in a bad business, might hope to earn her freedom.
It is said that because a sacrifice of virtue is made by one class of
women, the members of another class are enabled to live purely. If we
accept Juvenal's description of the character of the Roman women as a
true one, it must be concluded that the morality of the more fortunate
ladies gained little by the immorality of those who were courtesans
perforce or by profession; but in satire it is essential to fasten upon
the worst, and to hold it up to public ridicule as representative of the
whole. There is no balance, no justice, no offsetting the indecent by
that which is noble and good. The Roman woman was not at any period
such a morally deformed creature as Juvenal paints her; nor could the
ladies who patronized literature have been quite so disagreeable as he
would have us believe. It is certain that he was not blessed with a
patroness, or, in his description of the Roman "bluestocking," the
shafts of satire would not have been embittered with so much prejudice.
Yet, as indicating how some men regarded the devotion to belles-lettres
which was affected by the women, we will quote what the great satirist
says on the subject. After depicting some monstrously disagreeable
females, he declares:
"But she is more intolerable yet,
Who plays at critic when at table set:
Calls Virgil charming, and attempts to prove
Poor Dido right in venturing all for love.
From Maro and Mæonides she quotes
The striking passages, and, while she notes
Their beauties and defects, adjusts her scales,
And accurately weighs which bard prevails.
The astonished guests sit mute; grammarians yield,
Loud rhetoricians, baffled, quit the field;
Even auctioneers and lawyers stand aghast,
And not a woman speaks.--So thick and fast
The wordy shower descends, that you would swear
A thousand bells were jangling in your ear,
A thousand basins clattering. Vex no more
Your trumpets and your timbrels, as of yore,
To ease the laboring moon; her single yell
Can drown their clangor, and dissolve the spell
She lectures too in Ethics, and declaims
On the Chief Good!--but, surely, she who aims
To seem too learned, should take the male array;
A hog, due offering, to Sylvanus slay,
And, with the Stoic's privilege, repair
To farthing baths, and strip in public there.
Oh, never may the partner of my bed
With subtleties of logic stuff her head;
Nor whirl her rapid syllogisms round,
Nor with imperfect enthymemes confound.
Enough for me. If common things she know,
And boast the little learning schools bestow.
I hate the female pedagogue, who pores
O'er her Palaemon hourly; who explores
All modes of speech, regardless of the sense,
But tremblingly alive to mood and tense;
Who puzzles me with many an uncouth phrase
From some old canticle of Numa's days;
Corrects her country friends, and cannot hear
Her husband solecize without a sneer."
It may be that the horror of learned women which was affected by Juvenal
arose from his realization of that proverb which declares the inability
of two who are engaged in the same trade to maintain intimate and happy
relations. Whether or not he was so unfortunate as to learn this by
personal experience, we have no means of ascertaining; but it is certain
that while many of the Roman authors gained inspiration and influence
from the women with whom they were connected, others discovered in their
matrimonial relations a want of harmony unfavorable to the cultivation
of the muse. In Terentia, for example, Cicero was burdened with a wife
who entirely lacked that power of sympathy which is the glory of
womanhood. Terentia did not appreciate her brilliant husband; and she
could not anticipate the honor in which she might have been held by
posterity, had she proved herself the devoted wife of so famous a man.
But, after all has been said, she probably knew Cicero better than he is
known by posterity. He alleged that she was so overbearing that at last
he was compelled to divorce her; but in Terentia the old adage was
justified which says that what is one man's poison is another man's
pleasure, for, being repudiated by Cicero to the great relief of
himself, she was at once accepted by the historian Sallust; and in as much
as there appears to have been no other motive for their union, it seems
probable that the bond between them was that of sentiment.
Then there was that other Terentia, who was such a trial to the patience
of Mæcenas, the great patron of literature in the days of Augustus. Her
he repudiated so often, and yet received back so regularly, that it was
said of him that he had been married a thousand times, and yet all the
while had but one wife.
There was another class of women which furnished many of the names
intimately connected with Roman poetry, not for what these women
themselves did, but because of their intimate relations with the poets.
As the exquisite tracery of primordial ferns is sometimes found embedded
in the carboniferous strata, so these women, whose names would otherwise
have perished with their generation, were, by the chances of their birth
and fortune, brought into connection with literary men, and their memory
has thus been preserved in Latin poesy. It is to Martial himself that we
are indebted for the information that, returning to his country home
after many years of absence in Rome, he finds comfort for the lack of
his urban pleasures and conveniences in the society of Marcella, a lady
of uncommon intellectual development and grace of person. Her relation
to the poet was rather that of patroness than mistress. It would seem
unimportant either way; yet she assisted in the production of literature
more durable than the Empire, and her name is known to posterity.
Every reader of Horace knows of Lydia, Glycera, Phyllis, and Barine. Who
were they? To have found them in that ancient Rome, it would have been
necessary to go, not to houses such as have been described as the homes
of the imperial women, but to those _insulæ,_ or huge tenements, in
which the great mass of the people lived. There these women inhabited
one room or many, according as their poverty or wealth would warrant.
The latter depended largely upon their youth and beauty; for these women
were light-o'-loves, who were inured to the changes and chances of their
position, and could turn from one lover to another with as few heart
pangs as were suffered by their inconstant friends. In many cases, they
were the daughters of unnaturalized foreigners, whom Roman citizens
could not marry and to whom no lot other than that of the mistress was
open. That such women were the intimates of Horace is revealed by the
manner in which he descants in his Satires on the danger attending
liaisons with married women--so also is the sincerity of that affection
to which he swears in his Odes. Speaking of those ladies who were not
eligible for marriage bonds, he says: "When I am in the company of such
an one, she is my Ilia and Ægeria; in short, I give her any tender
name."
The favorite of Horace seems to have been Lydia, of whose undistinguished
fame he tells, but does not inform us on what account she was famous.
Among the amorous epistles in which he addresses her, there is more than
one that reveals his jealous knowledge of the fact that he is not the
sole recipient of her favors. As a punishment for her occasional
inhospitable treatment of him, he writes an insulting ode in which it is
averred that she has grown too old for lovers and that her slumbers will
no more be disturbed by the serenade. Horace possessed the ability, and
did not lack the meanness, to castigate these women in his poetry after
the most shameful manner; and that not for their moral delinquencies,
but because of the suspension of their preferences for himself. Witness
the manner in which he gloats over the fading of the charms of Lyce, who
had sometime disdained his advances: "Wrinkles and snowy hair render
you odious. Now neither Coan purples nor sparkling jewels restore those
years which winged time has inserted in the public annals. Whither is
your beauty gone? Alas! or whither your bloom? Whither your graceful
deportment? What have you remaining of her, of her who breathed loves
and ravished me from myself? Happy in accomplishments next to Cynara,
and distinguished for an aspect of graceful delicacies. But the Fates
granted but a few years to Cynara, intending to preserve Lyce for a long
time, to rival in years the aged raven; that the fervid young fellows
might see, not without excessive laughter, that torch, which once so
brightly scorched, now reduced to ashes."
As a finale at once to his love epistles and amorous relationships, he
invites Phyllis to an entertainment in his country villa on Maecenas's
birthday; and among the provisions for this festive occasion he mentions
a caskful of Albanian wine, upward of nine years old, besides parsley
for the weaving of chaplets, and ivy to bind her hair. "Come, then, last
of my loves: learn with me such measures as you may recite with your
lovely voice; our gloomy cares shall be mitigated with an ode."
Through Ovid we learn of Corinna, who was his mistress and the heroine
of his love elegies; but his passion for her was no more sincere than we
should expect from that manual of libertinism--his _Ars amatoria_. This
work is the glorification of animalism and indirectly a defamation of
woman. It assumes with the most undisguised frankness that the root and
source of the principal part of the attention which men pay to women is
their availability for the purpose of satisfying amatory desire, and it
alleges the theory that any woman will capitulate the citadel of her
honor, if only it be besieged with indefatigableness and resource. It
was by such poetry as this that the women of Rome were prepared for that
carnival of vice into which they threw themselves with such frenzied
abandonment in the days of Claudius and Nero. In the eroticism of Latin
poetry is revealed a society in which illicit love is put to the
experiment; in Roman history is made manifest the resulting moral chaos.
The master of this school was Catullus; and he immortalized one Lesbia,
who was the principal heroine in his love poems. It has been said by one
of the best-informed students of Roman literature that the poems of
Catullus to Lesbia are unique in Roman letters for the intensity and
self-oblivion of the passion they portray. We learn from Apuleius that
Clodia was the real name of Lesbia; and it is supposed that the latter
name was given her by her lover because of his admiration of the Lesbian
poetess. Many have concluded from the statement of Apuleius that Lesbia
was the notoriously fascinating sister of Clodius, the woman whom Cicero
so mercilessly pilloried before the judges; but the possibility of this
seems to be precluded by the fact that Catullus incited a poem to Cicero
in which he terms him the "best of all advocates "--a courtesy which
hardly could have been overlooked or forgiven by the woman to whom the
advocate had given such ample cause for hatred.
Many of Catullus's brightest pieces are addressed to Lesbia; but all are
touched by the poet's consciousness of her inconstancy. At last she
leaves him, and he bids her adieu in the lines which have thus been so
beautifully rendered by Moore:
"Comrades and friends, with whom where'er
The Fates have willed through life I've roved,
Now speed ye home, and with you bear
These bitter words to her I've loved.
"Tell her from fool to fool to run,
Where'er her vain caprice may call;
Of all her dupes, not loving one,
But ruining and maddening all.
"Bid her forget--what now is past--
Our once dear love, whose ruin lies
Like a fair flower, the meadow's last,
That feels the ploughshare's edge, and dies."
In Cynthia, whose love and beauty inspired the pen of Propertius, is
seen the sympathetic helpmate as well as the mistress. She was the
granddaughter of Lucius Hostius, who wrote a poem on the Illyrian War.
She inherited her ancestor's love of literature, and there consequently
existed between her and Propertius that fellowship in poetic labor which
is the most perfect companionship known to human experience. Though of
the highest type of that class of women, she was a courtesan; which
accounts for the fact that the poet could not, as he desired, make her
his lawful wife. Her house was situated in the Suburra, which was the
centre of "Bohemian" life in Rome and the quarter especially favored by
women of her class. The intimacy between her and Propertius lasted for
six years; but, notwithstanding their sympathetic tastes, those years
were not passed in unbroken concord. Cynthia, besides other faults,
seems to have possessed a violent temper, and in some outburst of this
Propertius was banished. After this, though their friendship was
renewed, neither was faithful to the other. During the illness which
preceded her death, they were again reconciled to each other, which
fact, more than anything else, indicates the hold that Cynthia must have
had upon the sincere affection of the poet. In the seventh poem of his
last book, Propertius gives an account of a dream he had of Cynthia
after her death; and from certain allusions therein contained it may be
inferred that she left to him the duty of disposing of her property and
arranging her funeral.
Women like Cynthia were not in any degree conspicuous among their
contemporaries; they were nothing more than ciphers in the estimation of
those great ladies who took a part in the game of politics. They are
only known to us because their names chanced to be embalmed in the
writings of the men whose companions they were; but from this distance,
whence the names of the women of Rome may be seen as divested of that
fictitious glory which was a mere accident of their birth, a Cynthia
gains more interest from her connection with a poet than does a Julia
from her relation to an emperor.
These women look out at us from the _insulæ_ in which were massed the
common people. We catch glimpses of their fair faces and hear somewhat
of their sportive talk, but unfortunately we know little of their lives.
History has not individualized the woman of the common people;
literature has dressed her up in all her finery, and has posed her in
natural but unusual situations. Delia, Nemesis, and Neaera, women whose
love and whose loss Tibullus sang in such passionate strains, though
human enough, as is attested by their fickleness, are credited with
those charms which have their existence only in the imagination of a
poet and in a lover's fancy.
Tibullus, unlike Horace, took his love affairs too seriously;
consequently, owing to the character of the women to whom he became
attached, they brought him more grief than pleasure. The first object of
his affection was Delia, whose real name, according to Apuleius, was
Plania. "She belonged," says Milman, "to that class of females of the
middle order, not of good family, but above poverty, which answered to
the Greek hetaeræ." Tibullus longed to retire with her to the
undisturbed seclusion of the country. For her sake he rejected a
flattering offer from his great patron Messala, who desired the poet's
companionship on a martial expedition. "The bonds of a fair girl hold me
captive, and I sit like a gatekeeper before her obdurate door. I care
not to be praised, my Delia; only let me be with thee, and I am content
to be called slow and spiritless." It would have been very surprising if
the poet had been able to retain the fidelity of Delia by such arguments
as these. The time had not yet come when the women of Rome did not love
soldierly valor; the time never came when they were not influenced by
the hope of a participation in the spoils of conquest. Shortly after the
rejection of Messala's offer, the poet seems to have been obliged to
leave the city; and when he returns, he finds that Delia has married;
upon which, in the imagery of poetic numbers, he drowns his grief in
wine. However, he soon recalls to his mind the fact that a husband is
not necessarily an insurmountable barrier between himself and the lady.
She must be taught how to elude observing eyes. He pretends--the wish
probably being father to the thought--that he has a magic which will
render them invisible. "Chant thrice, spit thrice after reciting the
charm; your husband will be unable to believe the testimony of his own
eyes." But Delia could not remain faithful even to such a pertinacious
lover. What a moving scene is that in the fifth elegy of the first book!
It is worthy of quotation, if for no other reason than that in it the
poet recites the efficacious means which he has employed for the
recovery of Delia, who has been ill.
"What can atone, my fair, for crimes like these?
I'll bear with patience, use me as you please.
Yet, by Love's shafts, and by your braided hair,
By all the joys we stole, your suppliant spare.
When sickness dimmed of late your radiant eyes,
My restless, fond petitions won the skies.
Thrice I with sulphur purified you round,
And thrice the rite, with songs, the enchantress bound;
The cake, by me thrice sprinkled, put to flight
The death-denouncing phantoms of the night;
And I nine times, in linen garbs arrayed,
In silent night, nine times to Trivia prayed.
What did I not? Yet what reward have I?
You love another, your preserver fly."
The Romans most firmly believed that there was efficacy in odd numbers.
In the seventh elegy, the poet complains that he has been caught in his
own trap; for Delia is practising upon himself those arts by which he
has taught her to deceive her husband. Then he appeals to her husband to
assist him in watching her and keeping her from others. This appears to
be a rather bold step; but, considering the class to which Delia
belonged, it is likely that her intimacy with Tibullus was no news to
her spouse. The address to him is nothing more than a most exquisite
piece of persiflage. From this time on, however, we hear no more of
Delia.
The poet now turns to Nemesis, with whom he is no more fortunate.
Besides being fickle, she is avaricious; from which fault Tibullus tries
to save her, possibly not altogether without a thought of the limitation
of his own means. "The girl who is good-natured and not avaricious,
though she live a hundred years, shall be wept for before the blazing
pyre; and some aged man, revering the memory of his old love, shall
yearly deck her reared tomb with flowers, and say as he leaves it: 'Rest
well and placidly, and light be the earth above thy quiet bones!'"
The third book of elegies is dedicated to Neæra. On the first of March,
it was customary for the Roman women to expect presents from their
husbands and lovers. Tibullus was betrothed to Neaera, and was
confronted with the question as to what he should send her for a New
Year's gift. The Muses inform him that the lovely are won with song;
hence he determines to send her a book of his own poems. It was made of
the finest paper; and upon the cover--which was yellow, the color sacred
to marriage--the recipient's name was beautifully inscribed, with the
dedication: _Your husband that will be, chaste Neæra, sends you this
little gift and begs you to accept it_.
To what degree Neæra prized the volume is not known; but Tibullus was no
more fortunate with her than he had been with the others. In a dream it
is revealed to him that: "She who is celebrated in thy songs, the
beautiful Neæra, prefers to be the bride of another." "Ah, cruel sex!
woman, faithless name!" exclaims the poet; and then: "But she may be won
yet; their minds are changeable."
The fourth book of poems published under his name was probably not
written by Tibullus. Eleven of these poems relate to the love of
Sulpicia, a Roman lady of high station, and the daughter of Valeria, the
sister of Messala. She had fallen in love with a youth named Cerinthus,
and these poems tell the story. It is thought by many that Sulpicia was
the author of them and that, in fact, some of them are nothing other
than her own letters to her lover. These "letters" are very short; but,
if this supposition is correct, they are the only love poems by a Roman
woman that have survived.
Thus she writes to Cerinthus from her couch, to which she is confined by
a racking fever:
"On my account, to grief a ceaseless prey,
Dost thou a sympathetic anguish prove?
I would not wish to live another day,
If my recovery did not charm my love;
For what were life, and health, and bloom to me,
Wore they displeasing, beauteous youth! to thee?"
There is another Roman woman who may be counted on the list of authors,
and whose writings, had they only been preserved, would have proved of
exceeding interest. This was the brilliant and accomplished Agrippina
the Younger; a woman who was as finished a scholar as she was an
experienced and successful politician. She wrote her _Memoirs_, not so
much from a desire to make a contribution to history as to use them to
blacken the character of the enemies of her house. She dipped her pen in
the venom of hate and envy, and she found her material in the scandalous
stories which floated about Rome, growing daily more exaggerated from an
origin which no one knew. From this work of Agrippina, Suetonius and
Tacitus doubtless drew much of the information which in their more
serious productions blackens the character of Tiberius. It is also
likely that, if it had not been for the facile and unrestrained pen of
her successor, Messalina would have been known to us as a far less
disreputable woman than she is made to appear.
Although there is no writing of Agrippina's extant, we do have what
purports to be the speech in her defence which she made when accused by
Junia Silana with a design of inciting Plautus to effect a change in the
State, and, by marrying him, to regain her power in the commonwealth,
which Nero had taken out of her hands. In it all we see nothing but the
backbitings of two rancorous old women; but it was represented to Nero
as a horrible affair. Nero's fears were so excited that it was with
difficulty that he could be induced to allow his mother to survive until
morning and have an opportunity to make her own defence. We have her
speech as it is given by Tacitus. Possibly it is the historian's own
composition; but it is exactly what we might expect from the fierce old
empress-mother. And as it is certain that Seneca and Burrhus, to whom
it was addressed, would have with them shorthand writers, it is not
improbable that Tacitus took it from the official records. "I wonder
not," said Agrippina, "that Silana, who never bore a child, should be a
stranger to the affections of a mother; for, in truth, children are not
so easily renounced by their parents, as adulterers are changed by a
profligate. Nor, because Iturius and Calvisus, after having consumed
their whole fortunes, as a last resource pay back to an old woman their
services in undertaking my accusation, as an equivalent for their hire,
does it follow that I am to be branded with the infamy, or that Cæsar
should conceive the guilt of parricide. As to Domitia, I would thank her
for all the efforts of her enmity to me, if she strove to exceed me in
kindness to her nephew, my Nero. At present, by the ministration of
Atimetus, her minion, and the merry-andrew Paris, she is framing a farce
to fit for the stage. Where was she when I by my counsels obtained the
adoption of her nephew and my son into the Claudian house? when I
advanced his cause in every way necessary for getting him the
Empire?--Admiring her fishponds at Baiæ." If this is Agrippina's
composition, there is certainly no lack of force in it and she was
preëminently an adept in the use of innuendo. We would like to have seen
those _Memoirs_.
To turn to a pleasanter subject and introduce a more amiable, though
less picturesque, character. While there were few women authors, there
were many ladies who knew how to appreciate the work of their literary
husbands; matrons who, in the bonds of legal marriage, were companions
to their husbands in learning as well as in other things. Pliny has left
us a most beautiful pen portrait of his young wife. He tells how, to
please him more, she studied polite literature, learned his books by
heart, set his verses to music, and accompanied them on her lyre. "How
great is her anxiety," he says, "when she sees me going to speak in
court, and how great her joy when I have spoken! She sets messengers
about to report to her what favor and applause I have excited, and what
is the result of the trial. Then whenever I recite she sits hard by,
separated only from us by a curtain, and catches up with eager ears the
praise bestowed on me."