ATHENIAN WOMEN.
We come now to the Athenians. The phenomenon that presents itself here
is as peculiar and striking as anything we have yet examined. In Athens
we find two classes of women who were not slaves. There was one class
who could scarcely move a step from their own rooms, and who were
watched and restricted in every possible way. There was another class
on whom no restrictions whatever were laid, who could move about and do
whatever seemed good in their own eyes. And the unrestricted would, in
all probability, have exchanged places with the restricted, and many of
the restricted envied the freedom of the other members of their sex. We
proceed to the explanation of this phenomenon.
First of all the ancient idea of a State has to be firmly kept in mind.
The ancient Greeks did not dream, as we have said, of any political
constitution more extensive than a city. Athens was the largest of
these city-States in Greece, and yet it probably never numbered more
than thirty thousand citizens. These citizens, according to the Greek
idea, were all connected by ties of blood more or less distant; they
all had the same divine ancestor; they all worshipped the same gods
in the same temples, and they possessed many rights, properties,
and privileges in common. It was therefore of supreme importance
that in the continuation of the State only true citizens should be
admitted, and, accordingly, the general principle was laid down that
none could become citizens but those whose fathers and mothers had
been the children of citizens. From this it followed that the utmost
care should be taken that no spurious offspring should be palmed upon
the State. The women could not be trusted in this matter to their
own sense of propriety. It was natural for a woman to love. Even men
were powerless before irresistible love, and much less self-control
could be expected from weak women. Means must therefore be devised to
prevent the possibility of anything going wrong, and, accordingly, the
citizen-women had special apartments assigned to them, generally in the
upper story, that they might have to come downstairs, and men might
see them if they ventured out. Then they were forbidden to be present
at any banquet. The men preferred to dine by themselves, rather than
expose their wives to their neighbour’s gaze. And in order to defy all
possibility of temptation, the women must wrap up every part of their
bodies. In addition to these external arrangements, laws were passed
such as might deter the most venturesome.
A citizen-woman could have almost[41] no other association with a
citizen than marriage. The most transient forcible connexion imposed
the duty of marriage, or was followed by severe penalties. And she
could not marry any but a citizen. Association with a stranger never
could become a marriage. And after she was married, infidelity was
punished with the most terrible disgrace. Her husband was compelled to
send her away. No man could marry her again; for if any one ventured
on such a course, he was thereby disfranchised. She was practically
expelled from society and excommunicated. If she appeared in a temple,
any one could tear her dress off, and maltreat her to any extent with
impunity, provided he stopped short of killing her. Her accomplice also
might be put to death if the husband caught him. Restrictions of the
most stringent nature and punishments the most terrible were employed
to keep the citizenship pure. To help further to realize the position
of the Athenian wife, we have to add that she was generally married
about the age of fifteen or sixteen. Up to this time she had seen and
heard as little as possible, and had inquired about nothing.[42] Her
acquaintance with the outside world had been made almost exclusively
in religious processions. “When I was seven years of age” say the
chorus of women in the ‘Lysistrata,’[43] “I carried the mystic box
in procession; then when I was ten I ground the cakes for our patron
goddess, and then, clad in a saffron-coloured robe, I was the bear
at the Brauronian festival; and I carried the sacred basket when I
became a beautiful girl.” Such were the great external events in the
life of a high-born Athenian maid. When she married, her life was not
much more varied. Her duties lay entirely within the house. They were
summed up in the words, “to remain inside and to be obedient to her
husband.” She superintended the female slaves who carded the wool; she
made, or assisted in making the garments of her husband and children;
she had charge of the provisions; and she was expected to devote some
time to the infants. If she went out at all, it was to some religious
procession or to a funeral, and if old she might occasionally visit a
female friend and take breakfast with her, or help her in some hour of
need. For the discharge of the duties which fell to an Athenian woman
no great intellectual power was needed, and accordingly the education
of girls was confined to the merest elements.
Such was the treatment of Athenian women. What were the results? One
can easily perceive that there was very little of love-making before
marriage. A girl of thirteen or fourteen preparing for a life of
sewing, spinning, provision-getting, and child-nursing is not generally
an object of much attraction to grown-up men. The romantic element is
decidedly deficient. And then, even if there had been some romantic
element, the young men had no opportunities of free intercourse.
Accordingly matches were managed to a large extent by old women, who
were allowed to go from house to house, and who explained to the young
woman the qualities of the young man and to the young man the qualities
of the young woman. A marriage concluded in such a way might or might
not be happy, but there could be little ideal love about it. Nor is
there any reason to believe that the Athenians were very fond of their
wives. They liked them if they managed their houses economically, and
had healthy children, especially sons. But they were absent from them
the most part of the day; they did not discuss with them subjects of
the highest moment; they did not share with them their thoughts and
aspirations. The domestic sentiment was feeble: this comes out in
various ways. One instance will suffice. Sophocles[44] presents one
of his characters as regretting the loss of a brother or sister much
more than that of a wife. If the wife dies you can get another, but if
a brother or sister dies, and the mother is dead, you can never get
another brother or sister. The one loss is easily reparable, the other
is irreparable.
This state of matters had a powerful effect on the wives. Many of
them consoled themselves in their loneliness with copious draughts of
unmixed wine. They often made assignations through their slaves, and
were fond of stealing out of the house whenever they could find an
opportunity. And faithlessness, though the punishment was so terrible,
was not uncommon. In fact their human nature could not bear the strain
laid upon it. No doubt there were many among them who were good and
faithful wives, and we must not always judge Southern girls by our
Northern constitutions of body and soul. I have known a Greek girl who
attained to peerless beauty before she was fourteen. Every feature was
perfect, her dark eyes twinkled at one time with the wildest merriment,
at another gazed with a strange and weird-like melancholy as if into
infinite darkness. She could speak fluently four languages, and she had
read largely in the literatures of each. And when I came upon her in
her sad melancholy moods, she would tell me that she was puzzled with
the mystery of life, and was wondering what it all meant. I have no
doubt there were many such girls in old Athens, and many an Athenian
wife could discuss the highest subjects with her husband. In fact,
it is scarcely possible to conceive that such a marvellous crop of
remarkable men, renowned in literature and art, could have arisen if
all the Athenian mothers were ordinary housewives. But circumstances
certainly were exceedingly unfavourable to them; and though there
never was in the history of the world such a numerous race of great
thinkers, poets, sculptors, painters, and architects, in one city at
one time as in Athens, not one Athenian woman ever attained to the
slightest distinction in any one department of literature, art, or
science. “Great,” says Pericles, in the famous funeral oration which
Thucydides[45] puts into his mouth, “is the glory of that woman who is
least talked of among the men, either in the way of praise or blame.”
And this glory the Athenian women attained to perfection.
We pass from the citizen-women of Athens to the other class of free
women--the strangers. A stranger had no rights or privileges in any of
the ancient States. Any justice that he might obtain could be gained
only by the friendly services of some citizen. If this was true of
the man-stranger, it was also true of the woman-stranger. She was not
entitled to the protection of the city-State. No laws were made for
her benefit. She had to look after her own interests herself or get
some man to do it for her by her own arts of persuasion. The one object
that the State kept before it in regard to these stranger-women was
to see to it that they did not in any way corrupt the purity of the
citizen blood. The statesmen thought that great dangers might arise
from their presence in a community. Political peril might threaten
the very existence of the State if strangers, with strange traditions
and foreign interests, were to take even the slightest part in the
management of public affairs. And the gods might be fearfully insulted,
and inflict dreadful vengeance, if any one of these stranger-women
were to find her way into the secret recesses of ancestral worship and
perform some of the sacred functions which only the citizen-women could
perform. The Spartans accordingly did not permit any strangers, male or
female, to reside in their city. These strangers might come to certain
festivals for a few days, but the period of their stay was strictly
limited.
Athens pursued a different policy. She was a commercial city. She was
at the head, and ultimately ruler, of a larger confederacy of Greek
States which sent their taxes to her. Besides, the city itself was full
of attractions for the stranger, with its innumerable works of art, its
brilliant dramatic exhibitions, its splendid religious processions,
its gay festivals, its schools of philosophy, and its keen political
life. Athens could not exclude strangers. It had, therefore, to take
the most stringent precautions that this concourse of strangers should
not corrupt the pure citizen blood. Accordingly, laws were enacted
which prohibited any citizen-man from marrying a stranger-woman or
any stranger-man from marrying a citizen-woman. If the stranger-man
or woman ventured on such a heinous offence any one could inform
against him or her. The culprit was seized, all his or her property was
confiscated, and he or she was sold into slavery. The citizen-man or
woman involved in such an offence had to suffer very severe penalties.
The stranger-women, therefore, could not marry. Marriage was the only
sin that they could commit politically in the eye of an Athenian
statesman. They might do anything else that they liked.
Now it is not conceivable that in such circumstances a numerous class
of women would betake themselves to perpetual virginity. If any one
had propounded such a sentiment the Greek mind would have recoiled
from it as unnatural, and plainly contrary to the will of the gods.
And accordingly these women might form any other connexions with men,
temporary or permanent, except marriage, and the Greek saw nothing
in this but the ordinary outcome of human nature under the peculiar
circumstances of the case. Besides, in Athens a special sphere lay open
for them to fill. The citizen-women were confined to their houses,
and did not dine in company with the men. But the men refused to
limit their associations with women to the house. They wished to have
women with them in their walks, in their banquets, in their military
expeditions. The wives could not be with them then, but there was no
constraint on the stranger-women. The Greek men did not care whether
the offspring of stranger-women was pure or not. It mattered not either
to the State or to religion. There was no reason for confining them.
And accordingly they selected these stranger-women as their companions,
and “Hetaira,” or companion, was the name by which the whole class
was designated. Thus arose a most unnatural division of functions
among the women of those days. The citizen-women had to be mothers
and housewives--nothing more; the stranger-women had to discharge the
duties of companions, but remain outside the pale of the privileged and
marriageable class. These stranger-women applied their minds to their
function, with various ideas of it, and various methods. Many adopted
the lowest possible means of gaining the good-will of men; but many set
about making themselves fit companions for the most intellectual and
most elevated among men.
They were the only educated women in Athens. They studied all the
arts, became acquainted with all new philosophical speculations, and
interested themselves in politics. Women who thus cultivated their
minds were sure to gain the esteem of the best men in Greece. Many of
them also were women of high moral character, temperate, thoughtful,
and earnest, and were either unattached or attached to one man,
and to all intents and purposes married. Even if they had two or
three attachments, but behaved in other respects with temperance and
sobriety, such was the Greek feeling in regard to their peculiar
position, that they did not bring down upon themselves any censure from
even the sternest of Greek moralists. One of these women[46] came to
Athens when Socrates was living, and he had no scruple in conversing
with her on her art, and discussing how she could best procure true
friends. And, in fact, these were almost the only Greek women who
exhibited what was best and noblest in woman’s nature. One of these,
Diotima of Mantinea,[47] must have been a woman of splendid mind, for
Socrates speaks of her as his teacher in love, when he gives utterance,
in the ‘Symposium,’ to the grandest thoughts in regard to the true
nature and essence of divine and eternal beauty.
Almost every one of the great men of Athens had such a companion,
and these women seem to have sympathized with them in their high
imaginations and profound meditations. Many of them were also
courageously true to their lovers. When the versatile Alcibiades had
to flee for his life, it was a “companion” that went with him,[48]
and, being present at his end, performed the funeral rites over him.
But of all these women there is one that stands prominently forward
as the most remarkable woman of antiquity, Aspasia of Miletus. We
do not know what circumstance induced her to leave her native city
Miletus. Plutarch[49] suggests that she was inflamed by the desire
to imitate the conduct of Thargelia, another Milesian, who gained a
position of high political importance by using her persuasive arts on
the Greeks whom she knew, to win them over to the cause of the King
of Persia. This may have been the case, but a good deal that is said
about Aspasia must be received with considerable scepticism. Like
Sappho, she became the subject of comedies, but, unlike Sappho, she was
bitterly attacked by the comic poets and others during her lifetime.
The later Greek writers were in the habit of setting down the jests of
the comic writers as veritable history, and modern commentators and
historians have not been entirely free from this practice. Whatever
brought her to Athens, certain it is that she found her way there,
and became acquainted with the great statesman Pericles. She made a
complete conquest of him. He was at the time married, but there was
incompatibility of temper between him and his wife. Pericles therefore
made an agreement with his wife to have a divorce, and get her married
to another, and so they separated to the satisfaction of both. He
then took Aspasia as his companion, and there is no good reason for
supposing that they were not entirely faithful to each other, and
lived as husband and wife till death separated them. Of course husband
and wife they could not be according to Athenian law, but Pericles
treated her with all the respect and affection which were due to a
wife. Plutarch tells us, as an extraordinary trait in the habits of a
statesman who was remarkable for imperturbability and self-control,
that he regularly kissed Aspasia when he went out and came in.
Her house became the resort of all the great men of Athens. Socrates
was often there. Phidias and Anaxagoras were intimate acquaintances,
and probably Sophocles and Euripides were in constant attendance.
Indeed, never had any woman such a _salon_ in the whole history
of man. The greatest sculptor that ever lived, the grandest man of all
antiquity, philosophers and poets, sculptors and painters, statesmen
and historians, met each other and discussed congenial subjects in her
rooms. And probably hence has arisen the tradition that she was the
teacher of Socrates in philosophy and politics, and of Pericles in
rhetoric.[50] Her influence was such as to stimulate men to do their
best, and they attributed to her all that was best in themselves.
Aspasia seems especially to have thought earnestly on the duties and
destiny of women. The cultivated men who thronged her assemblies had
no hesitation in breaking through the conventionalities of Athenian
society, and brought their wives to the parties of Aspasia, and she
discussed with them the duties of wives. She thought that they should
strive to be something more than mere mothers and housewives. She urged
them to cultivate their minds, and be in all respects fit companions
for their husbands. Unfortunately we know very little more. Did she
come to any definite conclusion as to the functions of woman? It is
difficult to say. The hints are very obscure. But in all probability
the conclusion to which she came was that neither man nor woman can
adequately perform their mission in life separately, that a man can
never do his best without the inspiration and support of a congenial
woman, and that woman should seek her work in vigorous and sympathetic
co-operation with some congenial man. Probably Plato has put into
the mouth of Aristophanes the sentiments which the philosopher had
heard often in the Socratic circles, which regarded Aspasia as their
instructress in those matters. Referring to the myth that man was
split in two, and that his two halves go in search of each other, he
says,[51] “For my part, I now affirm, in reference to all human beings,
both men and women, that our race would become happy if we were able
to carry out our love perfectly, and each one were to obtain his
own special beloved, thus returning to his original nature. And if
this is best, the best in present circumstances is to come as near as
possible to this, and this occurs when we obtain the beloved that is
by nature meet for us.” There is no reason to suppose that Aspasia had
any romantic notions in regard to love or the destiny of woman. She
was, on the whole, practical, and thought that woman should find her
satisfaction in work, not in dreams. She did not imagine that one could
have only one love, and that if she did not get that, or lost it, she
should repine and turn from life. She was in the world to be an active
being, and, accordingly, when Pericles died, she formed a connexion
with Lysicles, a sheep-seller, believing him to be the best citizen
she could obtain, and made him, though not a bright man, the foremost
politician in Athens for a time.[52]
The entire activity of Aspasia, her speculations, her intercourse with
men whose opinions were novel and daring, and who were believed, like
Anaxagoras and Socrates, to be unsparing innovators; her own hold
over the noblest married women in Athens, and her introduction of
greater social liberty among them, were all calculated to outrage the
conventional spirit. Almost all the prominent members of her coterie
were assailed. The greatest sculptor of all ages was meanly and falsely
accused of theft, and died in a prison. The outspoken Anaxagoras was
charged with impiety, and had to flee. And at length Aspasia was
brought to trial on the same accusation. It was easy to get up such an
accusation against her. She might have visited some temple, and taken
part in some religious ceremony, impelled by truly pious motives; but
such an act on the part of a stranger, whatever her motives might be,
would have been deemed a great impiety by orthodox Athenians; or she
may have induced some Athenian citizen-ladies to go with her and engage
in some foreign worship. The Athenians permitted foreigners to observe
their own religious rites in their city, without let or hindrance,
but they had strong objections to genuine Athenian women becoming
converts to any foreign worship. The Athenian ladies did not look on
religious matters with the same eyes as the men. They yearned to have
the benefit of the more enthusiastic worships which came from Asia
Minor; and, accordingly, if Aspasia had been inclined to lead them that
way, she would no doubt have had many eager followers. Or, finally,
and most probably, she may have been supposed to share the opinions
of the philosophers with whom she was on such intimate terms, and to
have aided and abetted their opposition to the national creed. What
were the grounds of the charge we do not know. All we know is that she
was acquitted, but that she owed her acquittal to the earnest pleading
of Pericles, who on this one occasion accompanied his entreaties with
tears.
There can be no doubt that Aspasia exercised a powerful political
influence during her residence in Athens. This fact is assured to us
by the abuse which she received from the comic poets. They called her
Hera, queen of the gods, wife of Olympian Zeus, as they named Pericles.
They also called her Dejanira, wife of Hercules, and the new Omphale,
whom Hercules slavishly served--all pointing at the power which she
had over Pericles. Aristophanes, in his ‘Acharnians’ asserts that
Pericles brought about the Peloponnesian war to take vengeance for an
insult offered to Aspasia, and others affirmed that the Samian war was
undertaken entirely to gratify her. These are absurd statements on
the face of them, and were probably never meant to be anything else
than jokes; but they render unquestionable the profound influence
of Aspasia. It is probable that this influence was exercised in an
effort to break down the barriers that kept the Greek city-States from
each other, to create a strong Hellenic feeling, to make a compact
Hellenic confederacy.[53] But whatever were the aims of her politics,
it may be safely asserted that no woman ever exercised influence by
more legitimate means. It was her goodness, her noble aims, her clear
insight, that gave her the power. There was probably no adventitious
circumstance to aid her. It is not likely that she was beautiful.
I think Sappho was beautiful. The comic poets said that she was
little,[54] and had a dark complexion. Littleness was incompatible
with beauty in the eye of a Greek, and a dark complexion would also be
against her. But all that we can gather about Sappho’s form leads to
the conclusion that the comic poets traduced her in this as in other
matters. Plato calls her “beautiful,” an expression which most have
taken to refer to her poetic genius; but this interpretation is at
least doubtful. A vase of the fifth century B.C., found in
Girgenti, gives us representations of Alcæus and Sappho, and on these
Sappho is taller than Alcæus, and exceedingly beautiful. We have also a
portrait of Sappho on the coins of the Mytilenæans; and here again the
face is exquisite in feature, and suggests a tall woman. If it has any
defect, it is that it is rather masculine. At first one might hesitate
to believe that it is the face of a woman, but there can be no doubt as
to its beauty. On the other hand, no ancient writer speaks of Aspasia
as beautiful. She is called the good, the wise, the eloquent, but
never the beautiful. We have one bust bearing her name certainly not
beautiful. It represents a comfortable meditative woman, but I doubt
very much whether it is genuine. And I am far more inclined to believe
that we have a true portrait of Aspasia in a marble bust of which there
are two copies, one in the Louvre and one in Berlin. The bust evidently
belongs to the best times of Greek sculpture, and, as Bernoulli in
the _Archæologische Zeitung_[55] argues, can well be that of no
other than Aspasia. The face is not altogether beautiful according to
Greek ideas. It has an expression of earnest and deep thought; but what
strikes one most of all is the perplexed and baffled look which the
whole face presents--as of some life-long anguish, resulting from some
contest which no mortal could wage successfully--not without a touch of
exquisite sweetness, tenderness, and charity. Could it be the struggle
in behalf of her own sex?
If ever there was a case which might have suggested to the Athenians
the propriety of extending the sphere of marriageability, surely it
was this case of Aspasia. But we cannot affirm that any one thought of
this. The Athenian women, even the citizens, had no political standing.
They were always minors, subject to their fathers, or to their
husbands, or to some male. Aristotle always classes women and children
together. But such was the force of character of these companions, or
such their hold on powerful men, that not unfrequently their sons were
recognized as citizens, and attained to the full rights of citizenship.
This could take place in three ways. There might exist between Athens
and another Greek or foreign state a right of intermarriage (ἐπιγαμία),
established by treaty. Strange to say, there is no clear instance
of such a treaty in the history of the Athenians. There was no such
treaty between Athens and Sparta, or Argos, or Corinth, or any other
of the famous towns of Greece. The privilege was indeed conferred on
the Platæans, but it was when they became citizens of Athens, and
were likely in a generation or two to become undistinguishable among
the rest of the Athenian citizens. A passage in Lysias[56] has been
taken to intimate that the right of intermarriage was ceded to the
Eubœans, but the passage occurs only in a fragment preserved in the
writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.[57] The text exhibits marks
of corruption, and the entire history of the relations between Athens
and Eubœa speaks strongly against the possibility of the establishment
of such a treaty.[58] Mention is also made of the proposal of such a
treaty between Athenians and Thebans in the speech of Demosthenes on
the Crown,[59] but the decree is unquestionably spurious, as Grote
has most conclusively shown and as is now universally acknowledged.
It is now agreed that all the decrees in the speech on the Crown are
forgeries.[60] In that same speech a decree is quoted in which the
Byzantines bestow on the Athenians the right of intermarriage, and it
is likely that other States would confer the same privilege on the
Athenians, but there is no proof that they ever returned the favour.
A second method of rendering the son of a foreign woman legitimate
was by decree of the Athenian Assembly: and it was probably in this
way that Pericles, the son of Aspasia, became an Athenian citizen
with full rights. There was a third way, not acknowledged by law, by
which many such children must have found their way into the ranks of
citizens. The ordinary process by which a legitimate child came to
the possession of his full rights was by his being presented by his
father to the _phratria_ and acknowledged by the φράτερες as a
genuine member of their class or brotherhood. The father had to swear
that the child was his legitimate child. In many cases fathers had no
difficulty in swearing that children born to them of a beloved stranger
were legitimate, and the φράτερες doubtless winked at the deception.
This was specially the practice with the aristocratic party. In earlier
times there had been no such strict law as afterwards prevailed in the
democratic period. Indeed, the theory seems to have been held that
the blood of a mother could not affect the purity of the birth of a
child, because there was really nothing of the mother in the child. She
had nothing to do with the production of the child. She was merely its
recipient and nurse. Æschylus has very strongly expressed this idea in
the ‘Eumenides,’ and we have good reason for thinking that the opinion
was held by large numbers of the aristocratic party to the end. It was
Pericles that established the law that the child to be legitimate must
be the son or daughter of an Athenian male citizen with full rights
and an Athenian female citizen with full rights, legally betrothed to
each other. It is when a distribution of corn takes place, or similar
advantages are reaped, that the law is strenuously applied by the
democratic party, and all the children of strangers disfranchised.
But always when investigation is made many are found enjoying the
privileges of citizens unchallenged, whose mothers were not genuine
Athenian citizens. Themistocles was the son of a Thracian stranger,
and so was the general Timotheus, according to one account. It was
probably through the φρατρία that Sophocles got his favourite grandson
through Theoris the Sicyonian, recognized as an Athenian citizen.[61]
But though the women may have gained recognition for their children, no
interest was taken in their own case, and mankind had to pay dearly for
this exclusiveness.
Probably the condition of women in Athens had much to do with the decay
of that city. The effort which Aspasia made to rouse the Athenian wives
to higher mental exertions must have lost much of its effect after her
death. The names of these wives are not to be found in history. But the
influence of the Companions came more and more into play. Almost every
famous man, after this date, has one Companion with whom he discusses
the pursuits and soothes the evils of his life. Plato had Archeanassa,
Aristotle Herpyllis, Epicurus Leontium, Isocrates Metaneira, Menander
Glycera, and others in like manner. And some of them attained the
highest positions. Princes can do as they like. In the earlier days of
Athens, when tyrants ruled, princes frequently married foreigners. And
now again princes married their Companions, and several of them thus
sat on thrones. The beauty of some, especially of Phryne, the most
beautiful woman that ever lived, attracted the eyes of all Greece;
Apelles painted her, and Praxiteles made her the model for the Cnidian
Aphrodite, the most lovely representation of woman that ever came
from sculptor’s chisel. Some were renowned for their musical ability,
and a few could paint. They cultivated all the graces of life; they
dressed with exquisite taste; they took their food, as a comic poet
remarks, with refinement, and not like the citizen-women, who crammed
their cheeks, and tore away at the meat. And they were witty. They
also occupied the attention of historians. One writer described one
hundred and thirty-three of them. Their witty sayings were chronicled
and turned into verse. Their exploits were celebrated, and their beauty
and attractiveness were the theme of many an epigram. But it must not
be forgotten that hundreds and thousands of these unprotected women
were employed as tools of the basest passions; that, finding all true
love but a prelude to bitter disappointment, they became rapacious,
vindictive, hypocritical ministrants of love, seeking only, under the
form of affection, to ruin men, and send them in misery to an early
grave. Nothing could be more fearful than the pictures which the comic
poets give of some of these women. But what else could have been
expected in the circumstances? There was no reason in the nature of the
women themselves why they should not have been virtuous, unselfish,
noble beings; but destiny was hard towards them; they had to fight a
battle with dreadful odds against them. They succumbed; but which of us
could have resisted?
I have already remarked that no one claimed political rights for
either the citizen-women or the strangers. I must make a slight
exception, and I am not sure but the exception may be owing to the
influence of Aspasia. We have seen that she was said to be the teacher
of Socrates. Indeed, Socrates appeals to her as his teacher in the
‘Memorabilia.’[62] She was one of the great characters in the Socratic
dialogues. She appeared several times in those of Æschines; and in
the Menexenus, a Socratic dialogue, if not a Platonic, she prepares a
model funeral oration. Is it not likely then that she influenced the
opinions of Plato; and in the ‘Republic’ of Plato we have the strongest
assertion of the equality of woman with man. Plato, and many others
with him who lived after the ruin of Athens at Ægospotami, had become
discontented with the Athenian form of government, and probably with
the treatment of the women.
Accordingly, in his ideal State, which, however, still remained a
city-State he took for his groundwork the Spartan system of education.
The State was to be all in all. He went so far as to remove the
monogamy which formed the barrier in the Spartan system to communistic
principles, and he recommended the same mode of gymnastic exercises
for both sexes. But he went further. He affirmed that there was no
essential difference between man and woman.
“‘And so,’ he says, ‘in the administration of a State neither a
woman as a woman nor a man as a man has any special function,
but the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes; all
the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, and in all
of them woman is only a lesser man.’ ‘Very true.’ ‘Then are we
to impose all our enactments on men and none of them on women?’
‘That will never do.’ ‘One woman has a gift of healing, another
not; one is a musician and another is not?’ ‘Very true.’ ‘And
one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military exercises, while
another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics?’ ‘Beyond question.’
‘And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy of
philosophy; one has spirit and another is without spirit?’ ‘That
is also true.’”[63]
From these premises he draws the conclusion that the women endowed with
the higher gifts should have the same education as the gifted men, and
that they should have the same duties, even to fighting in defence of
their country, only that in the distribution of labour the lightest
tasks should be assigned to the women, as being naturally weaker in
body. Some think that Plato’s community of wives was ridiculed the same
year that it was propounded, by Aristophanes, in his comedy of the
‘Ecclesiazusæ or Parliament of Women’; but it is far more probable that
the comedy was exhibited before Plato’s ‘Republic’ was written.[64] In
fact there is a likelihood that woman’s position was a subject much
agitated. Clemens Alexandrinus quotes a line from the ‘Protesilaus’
of Euripides, in which community of women seems to be indicated.[65]
Xenophon certainly puts into the mouth of Socrates a decided assertion
of woman’s equality with man. “Woman’s nature,” he says,[66] “happens
to be in no respect inferior to man’s, but she needs insight and
strength.” And it is likely that many others held the same opinion, and
proposed methods for elevating the position of women.
It was some communistic theory of the day that Aristophanes attacked,
but he was not bitter in his ridicule. It has always to be remembered
that it was the business of the Dionysiac priests, as we may call the
comic poets, to show the laughable side of even the most solemn things,
and often little harm was meant by these merry outbursts. Aristophanes,
moreover, had changed greatly from what he was in the time when, in the
‘Acharnians,’ he had bitterly attacked Aspasia. He had become gentle
to strangers. He did not dislike the Spartans and their ways. Though
he said many harsh things against women, he also said many good things
for them. It was through them that, in the ‘Lysistrata,’ he urged on
the Athenians the duty of reconciliation and peace. And now, in the
‘Ecclesiazusæ,’ he gives a kindly picture of what the women would do
if they had the reins of power in their hands. This was the only form
of government that the Athenians had not tried, and as all the rest
had notoriously failed, there could be no great harm in entrusting
the women with the administration of affairs. The gentle spirit of
women might prevail. And surely under such a government men would be
happy. The women would see to it that there would be no poor in the
city, theft and slander would cease, and all would be content. Plato’s
speculations and Aristophanes’s fun, however, were of no use. The
city-State was too small an organization for the progress of man. It
was destined to give way before a more humanizing government. And so
the petty States had to yield to the Empire of Alexander, and with the
change began a great change in the position of women. But this change
had to be carried out under another and greater rule. The Romans swept
over Greece and established a firmer and more comprehensive empire than
that of Alexander.
BOOK II.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT ROME.
CHAPTER I.
THE GOOD SIDE.
In early Rome we find the same state of matters as we have found in
Greece. The city is the unit. This city-State consists of citizens who
have all equal rights and privileges. All outside of the city have at
first no rights within its territories, and if they come within the
city, they have no claim to justice or consideration except what they
can obtain through a citizen. In all ancient cities there was always
a large number of slaves, men or women who either themselves or whose
ancestors had been taken captive in war or stolen from their homes.
Thus there were three classes of the population--citizens with full
rights and privileges, aliens with no rights of their own, and slaves
who were regarded as mere property. But the development of the city of
Rome follows a different course from that of the Greek cities. The
Romans gradually extended the privileges of citizenship till the unit
was no longer a city, but a nation, and finally it became the civilized
world. Aliens make no prominent figure in Rome, as they did in Athens,
unless we consider the plebeians as aliens, and in the process of time
the plebeians became citizens, and every civil distinction between
them and the original citizens vanished. Besides, the Censor had the
right to put the name of an alien on the list of citizens, and no doubt
many foreigners became Roman citizens in this way. The slaves also had
a more advantageous position in Rome. The road to citizenship was at
an early period laid open for them. Their masters manumitted many of
them, and they became freedmen. These freedmen came to be numerous and
influential, and the Censor Appius Claudius in 312 B.C.[67]
admitted them all to the full rights of citizenship. They were not,
indeed, allowed to enjoy the honours of the State, but this same Appius
Claudius granted to the sons of freedmen admission into the Senate,
and his right-hand man, Cn. Flavius, curule ædile of the year 304, was
the son of a freedman. Thus, in course of time, the slave became the
freedman, the freedman’s son became an _ingenuus_, or freeborn
citizen, with all the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship.
In Roman society there were these same three classes of women--the
full citizen, the alien, and the slave. The Roman citizen could marry
only a woman who was the daughter of a Roman citizen. Marriage with
any other was impossible. The very object of marriage was to produce a
race of citizens, and, therefore, both father and mother must belong
to the class of citizens. It was for this reason that such care was
taken of the purity of Roman women, and such a broad distinction was
drawn between the conduct of the man and the woman. There must be no
suspicion of spuriousness in regard to the Roman citizen. But the
offspring of the man with a foreign woman or a slave did not become a
citizen, and, therefore, the State was perfectly indifferent as to what
relations might exist between a male citizen and alien women or slaves,
and society was equally indifferent.
We have already seen what was the result of this state of matters in
Greece. In Rome the result was different. The alien women attained
to less prominence even than the alien men, and in this account of
the position of women in Roman society we may pass them without
notice. A few foreign women appear in the early history of Rome, and
play a prominent part; but the tales are borrowed from Greek stories
of the times of the Tyrants, and do not fit in with strictly Roman
ideas. During the best period of Roman history alien women are never
mentioned, except in plays borrowed from the Greek, and it is only
when we come to the later days of the Republic that we begin again to
hear the names of a few. But their presence is owing to the prevalence
of Greek ideas and Greek customs, and even the few that are mentioned
keep in the background.
The female slaves also do not demand our attention. The female
slave was treated simply as a cow or sheep. If she produced healthy
offspring, it was so much gain to her master, and he did not care
who was the father. Of course she could not marry, and all her
children were the property of her owner. Sometimes a male slave and
a female slave were allowed or compelled to live together, and there
was something like a marriage. But they had no right to their own
children, and no obligations towards them except such as were imposed
upon them by their proprietors. At the same time, as their fertility
was a source of revenue to their masters, they were often treated
very kindly. In olden times, the female slave who had three children
was allowed a dispensation from hard work, and if she had more she
sometimes obtained her freedom. The Romans had a great liking for the
slaves who were born within their households, and often brought them
up along with the younger members of the family, with whom they thus
became intimate. This close connexion tended to lessen the sense of
absolute proprietorship in many cases, and the slave woman was treated
with consideration. It was no doubt through such influences that the
lot of the slave woman was ameliorated, and when we come to the times
of the Empire, we see laws made to protect them, and freedom frequently
conferred upon them.[68]
It is, then, the matrons alone who are conspicuous in Roman history.
Every citizen girl married and became a matron, and it is that class
exclusively which we shall discuss.
Now, the first remark that has to be made is that Rome gave the same
expansion to marriage as to citizenship, and thereby produced a
revolution in the position of woman: a revolution, however, gradual
in its extension and gradual in its effects, but of most momentous
consequence to the world, for it broke down completely the old
constitution of city-States, by which their privileges were conferred
on men as members of families, and established a new and world-wide
constitution by which men obtained their privileges as men. In the
earliest stages it is possible that the right of intermarriage may have
existed between Roman citizens and citizens of various towns of Latium.
Certainly the legends make Roman princes marry into Latin families. But
on the establishment of the Republic the right of intermarriage existed
only between patricians of the city. A patrician man could not marry a
plebeian woman, nor a plebeian man a patrician woman. The children of
either marriage could not be patricians; they could only be plebeians,
and were not under the control of the father. But after various
struggles this wall of separation between patrician and plebeian was
broken down, and the Lex Canuleia, in 442 B.C., conferred
the conubium, or right of intermarriage, on the plebeians. Livy puts
speeches into the mouths of the proposers and opposers of this measure.
They have no claim to be historical; but they reveal the fact that Livy
thought the objections to the extension of the conubium were as much
religious as civil.[69]
There was a further extension of the conubium when Rome, in the middle
of the fourth century before Christ, admitted to its citizenship some
of the Italian, especially Latin, towns which it had subdued. The
bestowal of the citizenship on the _libertini_, or freedmen,
still further extended the conubium. In 89 B.C. the Italians
received the conubium by the Lex Julia and Plautia. During the later
days of the Republic, and in the time of the Empire, the citizenship
was conferred on men in various parts of the world, and especially on
various towns in the provinces. Soldiers also, who had served for a
certain time, and had allied themselves to foreign women, had these
alliances converted into legitimate marriages. In fact, the right
of intermarriage had become of much less value. In early days the
privileges of patricians were great, and it was worth while to take
care that these should be secured only to genuine patrician offspring,
especially as only genuine patrician offspring could perform due
sacrifice and worship to the gods of the family and the State. Even
in the days from the Punic wars to the end of the Republic, Roman
citizenship was at once valuable and honourable; for the Roman citizen
paid no taxes, and in an indirect way might share in the plunder of the
world, and he enjoyed peculiar advantages in the eye of the law. But
these advantages vanished with the advance of the Empire, which reduced
all to a dead level of subjection, and at length, in 212 A.D.,
one of the most hated of tyrants, Caracalla, conferred the citizenship
on all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, and with it the conubium.
After this, any man might marry any woman, and the factitious
distinctions which had ruled the ancient world vanished for ever. The
world owes no gratitude to Caracalla for this grand consummation; for
his only motive in conferring the citizenship on all was that all might
be compelled to pay taxes, and that aliens might not escape, as some of
them had hitherto done.
The outline of the history of what we may call the external
emancipation of woman now given is, we have no doubt, substantially
correct and based on trustworthy sources; but when we come to deal with
the moral progress of women, and their position in the midst of Roman
society, great difficulties meet us, which attach to all early Roman
history.
Rome, according to the usual account, was founded in 753 B.C.
There is no trace of any regular literature between that date and 390
B.C., when the city was burned to the ground. The Romans, no
doubt, knew the art of writing at an early period; but any records kept
by them were of the most meagre kind, and nearly all of them must have
perished in the conflagration of 390. One hundred and seventy years
have to pass before regular histories of Rome began to be written, and
nearly all the literature and monuments during these 170 years have
disappeared. We are thus without authentic documents for the minute
history of the Roman people for 500 years of their existence. During
this period the position of women underwent important changes; but,
owing to this absence of documents, we are unable to explain these
changes. We have, however, a very definite tradition to start with.
This tradition presents itself everywhere in the works of Roman poets
and historians, and pervades the ideas even of the late jurists, and we
may feel confident that it is substantially correct. This tradition is
to the effect that the position of the Roman matron was quite different
from that of the Greek matron in the time of Pericles. The Roman
matron was mistress in her own household. As the husband took charge
of all external transactions, so the wife was supreme in household
arrangements. The marriage was a community in all affairs, and within
the home the utmost diligence, reverence, and harmony prevailed.
The wife sat in the atrium, or principal hall, dispensing the wool
to the maidservants, and herself making the garments of her husband
and family. She did not cook or do what was regarded as menial work.
She dined with her husband, sitting while he reclined, when they were
alone. She received the friends of her husband, and dined with them
also. She walked in and out with great freedom, and she nursed and
brought up her own children.
This is a bright and beautiful picture, and some of the traits
remained true to the end of Roman history. Many stories are told of
the affection of husband for wife, wife for husband, children for
parents, and parents for children. Thus we are informed of the father
of the Gracchi, that he caught a couple of snakes in his bed, and, on
consulting the haruspices, or diviners, he was told that he must not
kill or let go both: that if he killed the male, he himself (Tiberius)
would die; if he killed the female, his wife Cornelia would die.
Tiberius did not hesitate in his choice. He loved Cornelia. He was
elderly, she was young. He therefore killed the male snake, and a short
time after this occurrence he died. The story is no doubt true, as the
authority for it was his famous son Caius.[70]
Nothing could be more striking than the affection of Cicero for his
daughter. He writes to her in the most endearing terms, cared for her
every want, and was inconsolable for her loss when death carried her
away. There are numerous instances in which wives resolved to share the
ill-fortune of their husbands to endure calamity along with them, and
to die rather than survive them.
This ideal remained with Roman men till the end of the Empire. It is
the standard by which Juvenal metes out his criticism on the women of
his own day, and many of the ill-natured judgments uttered against
the sex are based on the old-fashioned conception of a Roman matron’s
duties.
CHAPTER II.
THE OTHER SIDE.
But there is quite another side to this picture. In the early stages
of Roman history there is reason to believe that the Roman wife was
completely under the control of her husband. The Roman idea of a
family made the father a despot, with power of life and death over his
children, who could do nothing without his consent. This was the case
in regard to male children, even after they had reached a considerable
age. Women, according to the opinion of the early Romans, were always
children. They required protection and guidance during their whole
life, and could never be freed from despotic control. Accordingly,
when a Roman girl married, she had to choose whether she would remain
under the control of her father, or pass into the control or--as it
was called--into the hands of her husband. It is likely that in the
early ages of the city she always passed from the power of her father
into the hands of her husband, and the position she occupied was that
of daughter to her husband. She thus became entirely subject to him,
and was at his mercy. Roman history supplies many instances of the
despotism which husbands exercised over their wives. The slightest
indiscretion was sometimes punished by death, while men might do what
they liked without let or hindrance. “If you were to catch your wife,”
was the law laid down by Cato the Censor, “in an act of infidelity,
you would kill her with impunity without a trial; but if she were to
catch you, she would not venture to touch you with her finger, and
indeed she has no right.” Wives were prohibited from tasting wine at
the risk of the severest penalties. The conduct of Egnatius was praised
who, surprising his wife in the act of sipping the forbidden liquid,
beat her to death.[71] The same sternness appears in the reasons which
induced some of the Romans to dismiss their wives. Sulpicius Gallus
dismissed his because she appeared in the streets without a veil;
Antistius Vetus dismissed his because he saw her speaking secretly to
a freedwoman in public; and P. Sempronius Sophus sent his away because
she had ventured to go to the public games without informing him of her
movements.[72]
I think that we may see that the Roman matrons did not like this
arbitrary treatment, and that they protested against the assumption
that they were beings quite different from their husbands, and entitled
to no rights and privileges as against them. And the interesting
feature in the history of the Roman matron is the gradual emancipation
which she effected for herself from these fetters of Roman tradition
and usage. Unfortunately, we are not able, as I have explained, to
trace fully the processes of this emancipation, but we can indicate
some influences which worked in this direction.
First, the Roman records show that it was not safe to trifle with the
feelings of Roman women. They were, like Roman men, possessed of great
decision of character, and, when provoked, could do the most daring
deeds, reckless of the consequences. If they were treated kindly,
and on equal terms, they were the best of wives; and I am convinced
that their goodness and firmness were the most effectual causes of
the freedom which they attained. But if husbands put into force their
traditional power, and claimed supreme domination over them, they were
exactly the women to resist. And the history of Rome throws a lurid
light on this aspect of their character; for occasionally they took
stern and wild vengeance, when husbands went too far in their despotic
actions. I will adduce one or two instances of this.
In the year 331 B.C. many of the Roman citizens, and especially many of
the Roman nobles, were attacked by an unknown disease, which showed the
same symptoms in all, and nearly all perished. The cause was wrapped
in obscurity, but at length a maid-servant went to a curule ædile,
and said that she could explain the origin of the disease, but would
not do so unless security were given her that she would suffer no
harm in consequence. The curule ædile brought the matter before the
consuls, the consuls consulted the Senate, and a resolution was passed
guaranteeing safety to the maid-servant. Whereupon she declared that
the deaths arose from poison; that the matrons were in the habit of
compounding drugs, and she could take the officials to a house in which
they would come upon the matrons while engaged in the operation. The
officials accepted her offer, followed her, and found, as she said, the
matrons compounding drugs. About twenty of them were conveyed to the
Forum, and were subjected to an examination on their doings. Two of
them, of noble family, and with patrician names, Cornelia and Sergia,
affirmed that the drugs were perfectly wholesome. That could be easily
tested, and the two matrons were requested to prove their truthfulness
by drinking the mixture. The two matrons begged for a few moments of
private talk with the rest of their associates, but within sight of the
people. Permission was granted, a few words were exchanged, and then
all the twenty matrons came back, boldly quaffed the liquor, and died
in consequence. Then a search was made for all the matrons who had been
engaged in this conspiracy, and 170 of them were found guilty. The men
explained the occurrence by asserting that the women were infatuated;
but probably they knew well why recourse was had to such violent
measures, and that Roman matrons were not likely to be subjected to
tyranny without making an effort in one way or another to put an end to
it.[73]
An occurrence of a similar nature took place in 180 B.C. In
this case there can scarcely be a doubt that a real plague raged,
for it lasted for three years, and decimated Italy. But the women
were enraged with the men for the harsh measures which had been
taken against them in connexion with the Bacchanalian mysteries,
and they seem to have regarded the plague as affording a favourable
opportunity for the use of poison. In 180 B.C. the prætor,
the consul, and many other illustrious men died.[74] A judge was
appointed to inquire into these deaths, and especially to examine if
poison had been employed. The historians do not narrate the results
of this investigation, but we are told that the wife of the consul
was tried and condemned to death. Thirty-six years after this, two
men of consular rank were poisoned by their wives. In subsequent
times the use of poison became frequent; and particularly in the
early days of the Empire, the matrons about the Court were accused of
having constant recourse to it to get out of the way men whom they
did not like, husbands, and sons, and others connected with them, as
well as strangers. And one writer remarks that wherever there were
irregularities there were poisonings. Some historians have rejected
these tales of poisoning as the inventions of credulous annalists, I
think without good reason. But whether the stories are true or false,
the Romans believed them, and they embody the Roman belief in regard
to what women could do. And it seems to me that we must regard them as
indicating that the Roman matrons felt sometimes that they were badly
treated, that they ought not to endure the bad treatment, and that they
ought to take the only means that they possessed of expressing their
feelings and wreaking their vengeance by employing poison.
CHAPTER III.
RELIGION.
In the history of civilization, religion often acts as a liberator of
women. Sometimes, indeed, it acts in an opposite direction, when, by
false conceptions of humanity, it restricts the duties and privileges
of women. But, on the other hand, religion generally excites the
mind to a wild state of enthusiasm, and in this enthusiasm the ideas
and prescriptions of conventionality are set aside, the pleasures
of liberty are felt, and by degrees a permanent gain in freedom is
established. We find this to be the case in Greece, where almost the
only occasions on which the women came in contact with the outer world
were supplied by the observance of religious festivals. The Roman
religion was in many respects unlike the Greek. It was not brightened
by genial fancies, it afforded no scope for emotional outpourings, its
prayers were confined to fixed formulas, and its ritual was strictly
prescribed. It was, like the Romans themselves, solemn and sedate. The
Roman religion, therefore, did not contain those elements which could
contribute to enlarge the freedom of women. There were, indeed, various
festivals which were celebrated by matrons alone, into which it was
death for a male to intrude, and these afforded women opportunity to
consult with each other. But it may be doubted whether the Roman women
ever used these meetings for any other than purely religious purposes,
and whether these gatherings were ever characterized by fervour and
frenzy. It was in the introduction of foreign gods and worships that
the craving of the Roman women for religious excitement was gratified,
and in the celebration of these worships we see that the women were
sometimes as daring as in their poisonings. They naturally took to
the foreign gods, whose worship was accompanied by great elevation
of the spirit and outward demonstrations. Thus we are told that the
worship of the Idæan Mother, the goddess whose priests danced wildly,
cutting their bodies until the blood streamed down, was introduced in
204 B.C., and that on that occasion the highest matrons of
the city went forth to receive the goddess, and, amidst prayers and
incense, and in the sight of the whole population, carried the goddess
to her temple.[75] In this case there was no irregularity in the
introduction of the new worship, for the act had been ordered by the
Senate at the instigation of the Decemviral College, the keepers of the
Sibylline books.[76]
But the women did not always wait for the sanction of the State, but
acted on their own impulse. The most notable instance of this nature
was the introduction of the Bacchanalia, or worship of Bacchus, in 186
B.C. The historian Livy gives us details of this event, and
his account is confirmed by a contemporary tablet of brass, containing
a decree, or rather a letter of the Senate, found in Southern Italy
in 1640. The narrative throws great light on the effects produced
by the introduction of a new worship, and therefore I will relate
the circumstances with some minuteness. A Greek of low birth came to
Etruria, offering to initiate the people in the mysteries of Bacchus.
The rites of that god were often celebrated in Greece by night, and
were accompanied by feast, dance, and song. This was to some extent a
new feature of worship to the Italians, and the people of Etruria were
seized with a fury for it as by a plague. It spread from Etruria to
Rome. At first the worship was carried on in secret, but at length the
matter reached the ears of the consul. A woman who had been initiated,
testified that at first women alone were admitted to the celebration of
the rites, that they met in the day time thrice in the year on fixed
days, and that matrons were elected priestesses.[77]
At length, however, a priestess, acting as if by the advice of the
god, initiated her sons, changed the festival from the day time to
night, and appointed the celebrations to take place five times every
month. At the rites the men leapt and tossed their arms about in the
most frantic manner, amidst the clashing of cymbals and the beating of
drums, and they uttered prophecies; while the women, dressed as the
worshippers of Bacchus, howled and yelled, rushed with dishevelled hair
and blazing torches down to the river Tiber, plunged their torches
into the river, drew them forth still blazing as if by miracle, and
returned, still howling and yelling, to their celebrations. The woman
also declared that the frenzy had taken hold of a large portion of the
population, including many of the nobility; but that for some reason or
other, very recently a resolution had been passed that none should be
initiated who were above twenty years of age. The consuls, on receiving
this information from the woman, brought the matter before the Senate,
an inquiry was instituted, and it was discovered that above 7,000 men
and women had engaged in these secret celebrations. The feature in this
case which interests us, and at that time attracted the notice of the
Senate, was that persons of both sexes and various ages met together at
night and engaged in orgies, in which wine was freely drunk. The Roman
citizen was forbidden to practise any worship not sanctioned by the
State; but here the women defied the law of their country and outraged
the old Roman notions of propriety. Stories soon got abroad, as they
always do in such matters, that it was not merely for the worship of
the god that these nocturnal assemblies were held; that, in fact,
these meetings were scenes of revelry, and that in them poisonings
and fabrications of wills were concocted. The worship thus became,
according to these reports, an immoral conspiracy, and all who had
taken any part in it were searched out and punished. Many were thrown
into prison: some were put to death. The women were handed over to
their relatives to be punished in private, and if no relatives could be
found, then they were punished in public.
It may be doubted whether the immoral character of this religious
outburst was not grossly exaggerated, and whether the scandals
attributed to it did not arise simply from the fact that it was the
work of women. “First of all,” said the Consul, in his public harangue
on the subject, “a great portion of the initiated were women, and
that was the source of this evil.” Such ebullitions of women were
regarded by the stern old-fashioned Romans as in the highest degree
discreditable, and they must be repressed even by the severest measures.
For a time the religious mania seems to have subsided; but in the later
days of the Republic and the commencement of the Empire, the Roman
matrons displayed the same rage for foreign worships. The temples of
the Egyptian goddess Isis were crowded, and her priests were caressed
and revered. Many women became adherents of the Jewish faith, and
Eastern divinities had numerous devotees.
In these cases the women claimed for themselves the right to worship
whatever god pleased them. Often, in carrying out this worship, they
had to break through the rules of conventionality, and they thus
asserted for themselves a freedom which nothing but a religious impulse
would had led many of the more sensitive to claim.
CHAPTER IV.
LEGISLATION AND MARRIAGE LAWS.
The women of Rome were also roused to self-assertion by the
interference of the laws with their special concerns, and they did not
hesitate to step out of their usual routine to oppose such laws. Thus,
for instance: a law had been proposed in 215 B.C. by Oppius,
a tribune of the people, to the effect that no woman should be allowed
to possess more than a half ounce of gold, to wear a parti-coloured
garment, to ride in a chariot within the city of Rome or a town
occupied by Roman citizens, or within a mile of these places, except
for religious purposes. The exact object which this law had in view
is not made clear to us. Long before this, at the time of the Gallic
invasion 392, the liberty to ride in a chariot had been conferred on
Roman matrons as a special privilege, because, when the Roman State
had not sufficient money to pay the ransom demanded by the Gauls,
the Roman matrons came forward and presented their gold and other
ornaments to the treasury. It is possible that Oppius may have thought
that the Roman matrons in 215 B.C. were too slow in imitating
the generosity of their ancestors, and the law may thus have implied
an insulting rebuke. But there cannot be a doubt that the law was
specially designed to put a curb on the extravagant expenditure of the
women at a time when all the resources of the community were required
to meet the dreadful emergencies which had befallen the State. It was,
therefore, one of those sumptuary laws which make their appearance
in early stages of government, examples of which are to be met with
in Scottish legislation; as, for instance, when the Estates in 1567
passed a law that “no woman should adorn herself with dress above what
was appropriate to her rank.” But whatever may have been the object,
the law became peculiarly galling to the matrons. They might submit
patiently while distress prevailed, but the terrible Punic war had now
ended gloriously, success crowned all the military expeditions of the
Romans, wealth flowed in from the East, the men had taken advantage
of the prosperity, and it seemed singularly hard that women alone
should not share in the indulgences which riches had carried in their
train.[78]
Probably many complaints had been uttered in private, but the full
current of feeling did not come to light until two tribunes of the
people proposed the abrogation of the Oppian law. Then the subject
seized the public mind. It became the topic of conversation at the
baths and the barbers’ shops, at the public and the private gatherings
of men. Some were for the abrogation, some were against it, and
intense bitterness prevailed on both sides. It was not likely that
the matrons would remain silent on such an occasion. They, no doubt,
plied their husbands, sons, and other relatives with every possible
argument, by every form of entreaty. But their ardour could not be
confined within the limits of the house. They left house-keeping to
take care of itself, and issued forth into the streets and public
places to waylay every man that had a vote. They did not wait till
they became acquainted with the men. They assailed strangers as well
as friends. They also held meetings among themselves and had secret
deliberations. Each day their numbers swelled. Roman citizenesses
from distant towns and villages flocked in to help their sisters of
the city. No stone was left unturned. They went to the nobles, they
interviewed prætors and consuls. At length the day drew near when the
vote was to be taken in the public assembly. A great meeting was held
on the previous evening. One of the consuls, the obstinate red-haired
Cato, delivered a savage speech against the matrons. Others joined in
his resistance. The tribunes who had proposed the abrogation spoke
in their favour, and they were well supported. But the matrons must
have spent that night in great anxiety. They knew that two of the
tribunes were ready to oppose the abrogation, and that their veto was
sufficient to prevent the abrogation passing. And therefore their
resistance must be overcome. The women were determined. They rose
early; they gathered in vast crowds; they surrounded the houses of the
obstinate tribunes; they coaxed, they threatened, they employed every
form of womanly persuasiveness on these two tribunes, and at last the
tribunes gave way. The abrogation of the law was formally put to the
meeting; there was no opposition, and the women gained their point. One
historian (Zonaras) asserts that, on hearing the news, they burst into
the assembly, donned their ornaments once more, and then marched out,
dancing joyously from the legislative buildings into the streets.
The historian Livy, to whom we owe the most vivid account of this
outbreak of the matrons, furnishes us with a report of the public
meeting held on the day before the vote was taken. Especially he
supplies us with the speeches of the principal opponent, Cato the
Consul, and of L. Valerius the Tribune, who proposed the abrogation.
We can have no hesitation in believing that these speeches are the
productions of the historian himself. Cato, we may be sure, did
speak on the occasion, and the speech which Livy puts in his mouth
is in harmony with his character. The stern lover of old ways had a
detestation of woman’s rights and a contempt for woman herself, mixed,
doubtless, with a sneaking dread of her power. One of his sayings
handed down to us is: “Had there been no women in the world, the
gods would still have been dwelling with us.”[79] But another is also
attributed to him--a modification of a saying of Themistocles: “All
men rule their wives, we rule all men, and _we_ are ruled by our
wives.” The speech in Livy shows little of his ferocity. It contains
the arguments that would have been used in the time of Livy, and for
his time it is valuable:--
“If men,” he says, “had retained their rights and dignity within
the family, the women would never have broken out publicly in
this manner. If women had only a proper sense of shame, they
would know that it was not becoming in them to take any interest
in the passing or annulling of laws. But now we allow them to
take part in politics. If they succeed, who knows where they
will end? As soon as they begin to be equal with us, they will
have the advantage over us. And for what object are they now
agitating? Merely to satisfy their inordinate craving for luxury
and show, which will become only the more intense the more it is
gratified.”
The reply of L. Valerius was, like many of the replies of men in behalf
of women, I am afraid, far from satisfactory to them:--
“Cato is wrong in asserting that women make a public appearance
on this occasion for the first time. The wives of the first
Romans stepped publicly between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law.
Roman matrons went on deputation to Coriolanus, they interfered
at the Gallic invasion, they performed public services in
religious matters. Then the prosperity following the Punic Wars
has brought advantages to all classes of the community; why
should the matrons alone be excepted from this good fortune?
And why should men grudge them their ornaments and dress? Women
cannot hold public offices or priesthoods, or gain triumphs;
they have no public occupations. What, then, can they do but
devote their time to adornment and dress? Surely, then, men
ought to let them have their own way in these matters.”
On another occasion the women of Rome gathered in numbers, and made a
public appeal. The circumstances were these. The triumvirs, Octavianus,
Antony and Lepidus, had proscribed a large number of citizens, and
they confiscated and sold their estates in order to meet the expenses
of a war then going on. But land was a drug in the market, and,
besides, people were unwilling to purchase property exposed to sale
in consequence of violent acts. The sum, therefore, obtained from the
sales fell far short of the amount required, and the triumvirs had to
look to other sources of revenue. They accordingly passed a decree that
1,400 of the richest women in the city should lay before them an exact
statement of their means, with severe penalties against concealment or
undervaluation; and they claimed the power to employ any portion of
the wealth thus reported to them for paying the expenses of the war.
The women were thrown into the utmost perplexity and distress, but
they could find no man daring enough to plead their cause before the
triumvirs. Left to their own resources, they went first of all to the
sister of Octavianus and the mother and wife of Antony. The sister of
Octavianus and the mother of Antony gave them a kindly reception, but
Fulvia, the wife of Antony, drove them from her door. Thus insulted,
they turned to the tribunal of the triumvirs. Hortensia, the daughter
of the famous orator Hortensius, spoke in their name. She delivered
a powerful speech, which is highly praised by the great Latin critic
Quintilian, and she succeeded in getting the demands of the triumvirs
reduced to a comparatively small sum.[80]
These public appearances of women were, of course, only occasional; but
they were frequent enough to show that women had interests of their
own, and had resolution enough to assert them when such a course was
necessary.
Perhaps the cause which altered the position of women most of all,
next to their own goodness, was the change in the circumstances of the
Romans, brought about by the extension of their empire and the increase
of wealth. I have already said that it was held as a maxim that woman
can do nothing of herself; that she must be under the guardianship of
her father, her husband, or some tutor; and that in the earliest period
the girl, on being married, passed from the power of her father into
the hands of the husband. It has been inferred by some, from one form
of the Roman marriage rite, that there was a time when the Roman bought
his wife from her father or guardian, and thus acquired full power
over her. He did not treat her as a slave. His own respect for Roman
citizenship and the mother of Roman citizens would prevent this; but
his power over his slaves could scarcely be greater than that over the
wife for whom he had paid. Then there was a time when religion required
that the wife should pass into the hands of her husband. Every family
in Rome had special gods of its own, who were supposed to protect it,
and these gods could be worshipped properly only when the sacrifices
were offered by members of the family. It was profanation for others to
attempt this service. So if the wife had not been taken into the family
of her husband, she could not have shared in his worship, she would
not be present at the family festivals, and she would be bound to go
to the worship of the gods and celebrate the festivals of her father,
to whose family she would still belong. Thus pecuniary and religious
considerations would create a transference of the wife into the family
of the husband. But when we come to historical times we find both of
these influences dying out or dead. The pecuniary influence was gone.
The wife was no longer bought. And the religious influence existed only
in a few families whose members might attain to the highest priesthoods
of the State. In fact, the Romans had given up, to a large extent,
their special family gods, and therefore transference of the wife into
the family of the husband became unnecessary.
What, then, took the place of this transference into the family? To
answer that we must look into the condition of the Romans in respect
of wealth. At the earliest stage the Romans lived in humble cottages.
The consul might command armies, but he dwelt within a house of few
chambers, and might often be seen ploughing his own land. The household
lived on the produce of its own farm. In these circumstances the wife
could be nothing else than an economic housekeeper, working with her
hands and entirely dependent on her husband for her maintenance.
Probably her father would not wish to have her sent back to him, as
he might have enough to do for the rest of his family, and he would
be very unwilling to pay back the sum which he had received for her,
and so the wife had to make up her mind to submit. But a change in her
position took place when wealth began to flow into Rome. Then the men
obtained ample means, and money would be to them no consideration. The
fathers scorned in such circumstances to sell their daughters; but, on
the contrary, came to feel that it was their duty to provide for them
for life. The daughters would thus no longer wish to be in the power of
their husbands, but in that of their fathers.
A further development took place when the women themselves came to
possess wealth. Fathers left large sums to their daughters, husbands
left large sums to their widows, and thus arose a class of rich women.
This seemed such an anomaly to some of the Romans that they tried to
check it. A law[81] was passed (the Lex Voconia) in 169 B.C.,
by which it was illegal to make a woman heir to a fortune above 100,000
asses, and she was never to get more than the heir appointed in the
will. But the necessity of the law might have proved its futility.
Throughout Roman history a marked feature is the strong affection of
fathers for their daughters and of husbands for their wives, and no
law could effectively restrain them from contriving to give the most
part of their goods to those whom they loved. Accordingly, the fathers
and husbands invented devices by which all such laws might be evaded.
A father, for instance, named as his heir some man who had solemnly
promised that he would hand over all the fortune to the daughter.
The heir thus became a mere trustee, and the Roman law at length
sanctioned such trusteeships. In this manner, although the woman was
nominally under the power of a guardian, she had yet full liberty to
do with her property as she liked, and she gained the importance and
influence which belong to wealth. These changes produced a revolution
in the nature of marriage. Marriage now became a contract. It was the
invariable custom for the father to give a dowry with his daughter. The
interest of this dowry was sufficient to support her, so that she could
be no burden on her husband. In fact, the husband was not liable for
her support except remotely; the duty fell on the father first, and
then on various kinsmen, coming only at a late stage on the husband.
The husband had the right to the use of the dowry while the marriage
continued, but if it was dissolved, without blame on the wife’s part,
he had to return the entire dowry. Of course the wife might have money
of her own besides the dowry. That remained entirely in her own power,
or the power of her father or guardian; the husband could not meddle
with it. He might persuade her to bestow some of it on him, but he had
no legal control over it.
Marriage was thus a contract which came into full force when the woman
was led to the house of the man. It was a contract which must be made
in the presence of witnesses, and it could be dissolved, but again,
the dissolution of it must be carried out legally--_i.e._, in
the presence of competent witnesses. Religious ceremonies accompanied
the marriage, but the religious ceremonies had nothing to do with
the contract, and therefore were not essential to the marriage. It
was necessary in this contract that husband and wife should give
their consent, and when they were under control, that their parents
or guardians also should consent. Generally each family had a family
council, consisting of friends and relatives, and this council would
be summoned to decide on the terms of the contract, and it was deemed
disreputable in a man to dissolve his marriage without invoking this
council. Husband or wife might dissolve the marriage for any reason,
but precipitation was guarded against by the necessity of legal forms
and by the practice of asking the advice of this council, at the head
of which was the father of the husband or wife.
Such, then, was the position of woman in respect to marriage in the
last centuries of the Roman Republic, and it will be seen that she
was on a practical equality with man. This state of matters sometimes
caused curious combinations in life. The most singular case, one
throwing much light on the ideas of marriage prevalent among the
nobility of Rome, is that of Hortensius, which has been related by
Plutarch. Hortensius, the great Roman orator, was anxious to be allied
to Cato, the champion of Roman liberty, who died at Utica, and to marry
Cato’s daughter. There was one difficulty in the way. Cato’s daughter,
by name Porcia, was already married to Bibulus. But Hortensius did not
regard this as a serious obstacle. He went to Bibulus, told him his
wish, and begged him to dissolve his marriage with Porcia, and thus
afford himself an opportunity of marrying her. He stated that after she
had borne him two children he would relinquish his marriage claims, and
she might remarry Bibulus. Cato, the father, was consulted, and refused
his consent. But Cato suggested a way out of the difficulty. He himself
would yield up his own wife Marcia to Hortensius on condition that her
father did not object. Her father agreed, but on one stipulation, that
her former husband should be present at the marriage. Cato accepted
this stipulation, and Marcia was married to Hortensius. Hortensius
died and Marcia became a widow. But she did not remain a widow long,
for she soon married her former husband, bringing with her the fortune
of Hortensius. In this case there is no constraint of any one and no
illegality. Cato and Marcia dissolve their marriage voluntarily and
legally; Hortensius and Marcia marry voluntarily and legally; and Cato
and Marcia marry again voluntarily and legally. Marriage existed so
long as both parties were fully agreed; and the only obstacle to a
dissolution of the marriage was the necessity of carrying it out in a
strictly legal manner, and the duty of consulting near relatives.[82]
In our next chapter we shall discuss what was the effect of this
arrangement on the happiness and character of women.
CHAPTER V.
THE EFFECTS OF MARRIAGE AND OTHER ARRANGEMENTS.
We are to consider in this chapter the effect of the marriage
arrangements of Rome on the happiness, character, and influence of
the Roman women. It is needless to say that it is impossible to reach
incontestable conclusions on such a subject. Our evidence cannot but
be fragmentary and one-sided, whatever be the nation or period whose
happiness or morals we choose for the subject of our investigations.
Even in our own day it would be easy, from the reports of the divorce
and police courts and newspaper paragraphs, to draw together such
materials as might lead one to assert that women were treated with the
greatest cruelty, and that the age was one of the most licentious. But
the evidence in the case of the Romans is peculiarly fragmentary. Only
this has to be said for it: that it is not selected, that the facts
which bear on the subject have been recorded for other reasons, and
that therefore they may be expected to give a fair average picture of
the state of matters into which we are inquiring.
It is necessary to deal at the outset with a prejudice which has
influenced the views of many modern writers. It is supposed that
Christianity must have appeared at a time when the ancient world
was falling to pieces; when, therefore, morals were particularly
low, society was in an utterly corrupt condition, and licentiousness
universally prevailed. There is no sure foundation for this opinion.
There is no picture of the last days of the Republic or the first
years of the Empire that is so black as that painted by Ammianus
Marcellinus[83] of his own times. And the licentiousness of Pagan
Rome is nothing to the licentiousness of Christian Africa, Rome, and
Gaul,[84] if we can put any reliance on the description of Salvian. I
may adduce one instance of the effects of this prejudice. Drumann, in
his laborious work of six volumes, has collected all the biographical
facts that records have sent down to us in connexion with the last
period of the Republic. In his index to this book he has a very short
list of passages that refer to the virtues of women, and a very long
one referring to their degeneracy. We turn to the first of these
latter passages, and what do we find? Drumann[85] is describing
the proscriptions carried out by the triumvirs, Octavian, Antony,
and Lepidus, and he narrates how the Roman trembled before his own
wife, children, slaves, and freedmen, and adduces instances in which
Romans were betrayed by their relatives or slaves. He mentions three
instances of the treachery of wives, and we may be sure that these
were all the instances with which the records of the period furnished
him, for it is not likely that any one has escaped his most diligent
search. But he allows that another side of human nature was brought to
light, and, in exhibiting it to his readers, he quotes eight instances
in which wives saved their husbands at the risk of their lives or
followed them into exile. It would be rash to draw an inference from
these facts; but, if inference is to be drawn, it is that, even in the
midst of wild disorders in the State and a general reign of terror in
which each one feared for his life, wives were far more frequently true
to their husbands and ready to share every peril with them, and that,
therefore, we have really no proof of degeneracy, but, on the contrary,
of strong affection between husband and wife.
In considering the effect of the marriage customs of the Romans we
think naturally first of the fact that consent was the essence of
a Roman marriage. No woman could be compelled to marry. It is true
that women very frequently married when they were exceedingly young,
often when they were only fourteen or fifteen years old, and that we
must suppose that in these cases the influence of the fathers was
predominant. But even in these cases the girl had to give her consent,
and consent remained the essence of the obligation to a married life.
Whenever there arose a feeling of bondage, the woman as well as the
man could arrange for a dissolution of the connexion. And the woman had
no pecuniary difficulties in the way. Every father provided for the
support of his daughters for life by the dowries which he bestowed on
them; and, therefore, no woman was compelled to put up with a faithless
and cruel husband because she was entirely dependent on him for her
subsistence. The complaints which we hear of Roman marriages are not
from the female, but the male side. The women were too independent. A
Roman marries a Roman woman who has ample means of her own. He finds
that the old times are gone, and he cannot now lay hold of her money or
property without her consent. He must now humour her if he is to enjoy
her wealth, and the effort to gain her over in this way is held up as
degrading and humiliating to a man, and it is represented that it is
better for a man to be without a wife than to be subject to all the
imperious whims of a wealthy woman.
Then, again, there was no shame attached to a dissolution of marriage.
Marriage was a contract. Religious ceremonies were connected with it,
but they did not constitute the marriage, and they were not essential
to it. No sacredness invested the idea of marriage. It was an agreement
between two parties, and, whenever this agreement began to gall the one
or the other, there was no reason why the agreement should not come to
an end. The strength of the Roman feeling on this point is seen in the
attitude towards breach of promise. In Latium actions for breach of
promise were common, as we are told by Servius Sulpicius in his book
‘De Dotibus,’ quoted by Gellius (iv. 4), and they continued till the
citizenship of Rome was conferred on the Latins by the Lex Julia. But
the Romans never seem to have allowed them. Sometimes the sponsalia or
betrothal, though a private act, was celebrated with great pomp; but
the Romans thought that “it was dishonourable that marriages should
be held together by the bond of a penalty, whether future or already
contracted,”[86] and “if,” says Juvenal, “you are not going to love the
woman who has been by a legal agreement betrothed and united to you,
there seems to be no reason why you should marry her.”[87]
Appeal is often made in this connexion to the frequency of divorce. In
early days the Romans did not divorce their wives, and this fact is
exhibited as a proof of the virtue of early times and the degeneracy
of the later period. The first Roman divorce is said to have occurred
about the year 231 B.C., when Spurius Carvilius dismissed his
wife because she bore him no children. One writer represents Spurius as
fond of his wife, but every citizen had to answer the Censor’s question
“Have you a wife for the purpose of procuring children?” Spurius’s
wife was by nature incapable of bearing children, and he therefore
felt conscientious scruples in answering the Censor’s question in
the affirmative, as he was bound to do, and so dismissed his wife,
according to the advice of the family council. It is not likely that
this was the first divorce. At least, it is recorded that the Censors
of 307 B.C. removed L. Annius from the Senate because he had
divorced his wife without consulting the family council, and there
is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement. But it is probable
that divorces came into vogue about the middle of the third century
before the Christian era. The Roman Catholic lady, Mlle. Bader,[88]
who has lauded the virtue of the Romans because no divorces took place
before this time has suggested an explanation of the fact. “The Roman
husbands,” she says, “did not divorce their wives; they killed them.”
As long as the Roman wives were under the control or in the hands of
the husband, the husband unquestionably could kill his wife under
certain restrictions; but when this state of matters ceased, then the
obvious course was, unless the wife committed great crimes, and thereby
incurred severe punishment, to dissolve the marriage quietly. And it
seems to us that women would prefer divorce to death, and that, instead
of a degeneracy, the altered state of matters implies a softening of
manners and an advance in civilization.[89]
It cannot be denied that divorces became frequent after women attained
freedom, but much exaggeration prevails in regard to this matter. It
is only about the men and women who occupied a prominent position
in society that we get information, and their political interests
often led to marriages and divorces. To form an estimate of general
society from these would be as erroneous as to form an estimate of
English and French society from Henry VIII. and the Napoleonic family.
Marquardt[90] notes the cases of frequent marriages. “Ovid,” he says,
“and the younger Pliny married three times, Cæsar and Antony four
times, Sulla and Pompey five times, Cicero’s daughter Tullia three
times.” It is needless to say that there is nothing wonderful in this.
Many men and women in modern times marry three times, and there are
some who have married four and five times, and one Moderator of the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had seven wives.[91] Yet
these cases have not been deemed indicative of an exceptional state
of low morality. The satirists and moralists are fond of employing
exaggerated language in regard to women in this connexion. Juvenal
talks of a woman having eight husbands in five years, and Martial of a
woman being married to her tenth husband. Seneca describes some noble
women as reckoning their years, not by the names of the Consuls, but
by the names of their husbands. And it is possible that a few women
may have become notorious in this way. The Augustan marriage laws
offered strong temptations to go through the form of marriage, when
there was no real union, and thereby elude the penalties inflicted on
the unmarried state. But there are no clear instances recorded. Some
suppose that in the inscription on the tomb of a woman it is affirmed
that she had seven husbands; but the interpretation is incorrect, as
Wilmanns has conclusively shown. The authentic case of the largest
number of husbands is that of the woman of Samaria, who had five
husbands, and was living with one who was not her husband. But her case
may have been quite peculiar; and, strangely enough, it is to this
notorious woman to whom the grandest revelation of universal worship
ever made to mortal was vouchsafed. There is no good reason to suppose
that divorces were very frequent in ordinary society. There were not
the same causes at work as prevailed in the circles in which political
power was the predominant motive of action. From the earliest times
of subjection came down, the idea that, while the man might marry
frequently, the woman ought to marry only once, and this idea had its
influence even to the last period of Paganism. In the later period
the woman was not forced into marriage, and if her first marriage,
owing to her early age, may generally have been the result of parental
arrangement, the second would almost certainly be one made with her own
free will, and with her eyes open to all the consequences of the act,
and therefore it was likely to be a marriage of permanent affection.
Examining history, then, I think we must come to the conclusion that
the Roman ideas of marriage had not a bad effect either on the
happiness, or morals of the women. If we take the period of Roman
history from 150 B.C. to 150 A.D., we shall be surprised at the number
of the women of whom it is recorded that they were loved ardently by
their husbands, exercised a beneficial influence on them, and helped
them in their political or literary work. Many of these women had
received an excellent education, they were capable and thoughtful, and
took an active interest in the welfare of the State. It is well known
that it was Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, who inspired her sons
with the resolution to cope with the evils that beset the State, and
her purpose did not waver when she knew that they had to face death
in their country’s cause. Julia, the daughter of Julius Cæsar, and
the wife of Pompey, kept the two leaders on good terms as long as
she lived, and acted with great sweetness, and prudence. Cornelia,
Pompey’s second wife, was a woman of great culture, and a most faithful
and devoted wife. Plutarch thus describes her[92]: “The young woman
possessed many charms besides her youthful beauty, for she was well
instructed in letters, in playing on the lyre, and in geometry, and she
had been accustomed to listen to philosophical discourses with profit.
In addition to this, she had a disposition free from all affectation
and pedantic display, which such acquirements generally breed in
women.” The intervention of Octavia, the wife of Antony, in affairs
of State was entirely beneficial and judicious. The first Agrippina
displayed courage and energy, herself crushed a mutiny among the
soldiers, and was in every way a help to her husband. Tacitus praises
his mother-in-law, the wife of Agricola, as a model of virtue, and he
describes her as living in the utmost harmony with her husband, each
preferring the other in love. And Pliny the younger gives a beautiful
picture of his wife Calpurnia, telling a friend how she showed the
greatest ability, frugality, and knowledge of literature. Especially
“she has my books,” he says; “she reads them again and again; she even
commits them to memory. What anxiety she feels when I am going to make
a speech before the judges, what joy when I have finished it. She
places people here and there in the audience to bring her word what
applauses have been accorded to my speech, what has been the issue of
the trial. If I give readings of my works anywhere, she sits close by,
separated by a screen, and drinks in my praises with most greedy ears.
My verses also she sings, and sets them to the music of the lyre, no
artist guiding her, but only love, who is the best master.”[93]
These are only a few of the numerous instances that might be adduced,
in which wives behaved with a gentleness or courage or self-abnegation
worthy of all praise. It is true that they took an active part in the
management of affairs, but, on the whole, it must be allowed that they
acted with great good sense. And there is a curious proof of this
in the times of the Empire. Wives went with their husbands to their
provinces, and often took part in the administration of them. Some
of the old stern moralists were for putting an end to this state of
matters, and proposed that they should not be allowed to accompany
their husbands to their spheres of duty; but, after a debate in the
Senate, the measure was rejected by a large majority, who thereby
affirmed that their help was beneficial.[94]
No doubt it was their good sense, their kindliness, and their
willingness to co-operate with men, that led to their freedom and
power in political matters. And this power was sometimes very great.
Cicero,[95] in a letter to Atticus, relates an interview which he had
at Antium 44 B.C. with Brutus and Cassius. Favorinus was also
present, and besides him there were three women--Servilia, the mother
of Brutus; Tertulla, the wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus; and
Porcia, the wife of Brutus and daughter of Cato. Servilia strikes
in twice in the course of the discussion, and it is evident that her
words carried weight. On one of the occasions she promises to get a
clause expunged from a decree of the Senate. There must have been many
such deliberations where women were present. Even in earlier times
the influence of women is represented as great. Livy[96] asserts that
Licinius was induced to propose his laws to gratify the ambition of a
daughter of M. Fabius Ambustus, whom he had married.
It is true that some of the women who engaged in political affairs were
reckless and disagreeable. A woman played a most important and daring
part in the Catilinarian conspiracy, and it was through a woman that
the plot was revealed. Cicero’s wife, according to his own account
of her, knew more of political affairs than he knew of her household
arrangements, and when his love grew cold to her, partly perhaps on
account of her temper, but partly because he had become fond of a rich
young lady, who might help him out of his pecuniary straits, a divorce
took place, and Terentia married the political enemy of her former
husband. Livia, the wife of Augustus and the mother of Tiberius, was,
according to some, the prime mover of most of the public deeds during
the reigns of both; but a doubt still remains whether we ought to
place her among the good or the bad. But even these women had much
enjoyment from their careers and the companionship of their own choice.
At all events, the women enjoyed great freedom, and a wide field for
the exercise of their power. And many of them certainly made a good
use of their opportunities and wealth. Some of them were charitable.
They bestowed public buildings and porticoes on the communities among
which they lived; they received public honours, and one woman[97] in
Africa so impressed her fellow-citizens with her excellence that she
was elected one of the two chief magistrates of the place. Especially
in Asia Minor did women display public activity. Their generosity took
the most various forms, even to bestowing considerable sums on each
citizen in their own cities. They erected baths and gymnasia, adorned
temples, put up statues, and contributed in every way to the enjoyment
of their fellow countrymen. They often presided at the public games or
over the great religious ceremonies, having been regularly appointed to
this position, and they paid the expenses incurred in these displays.
In consequence of this they received the most marked distinctions, and
were elected to the highest magistracies. They also held priesthoods,
and several of them obtained the highest priesthood of Asia--perhaps
the greatest honour that could be paid to any one. And they were
admitted to aristocratic clubs, such as the “gerousia” is generally
supposed to have been.
It cannot be said that all the professions were thrown open to them,
because many of the professions were not open to the men. Medicine and
teaching and similar arts were still to a large extent practised by
slaves or freedmen, and were deemed unworthy occupations for freeborn
citizens. Law was not a profession, and women had a wide range of
action in legal matters.
Valerius Maximus[98] mentions that Amaesia--or Maesta (the name is
uncertain)--of Sentinum, when accused, pled her own cause amidst a
vast concourse of people, and managed the transaction with accurate
knowledge of the forms of procedure as well as with bravery. She was
acquitted almost unanimously. For her masculine mind they called her
Androgyne, or Man-woman. He also mentions Afrania, the wife of the
senator Licinius Bucco, whom he brands as fond of getting up lawsuits
and pleading her own cause before the prætor, not because she could not
procure advocates, but because she had an over-supply of impudence.
He says that her name became a byword for a woman of unexampled
forwardness and immorality. He states that she died in the first
consulship of C. Cæsar, and the second consulship of P. Servilius, that
is, in 48 B.C., remarking that her death was the one event
in the life of such a monster that deserved record. In the ‘Digests,’
a quotation is made from Ulpian[99] to the effect that women were
not allowed to prosecute on behalf of others, because it was not in
harmony with the modesty becoming the sex to mix themselves up with
other people’s affairs, and assume to themselves functions appropriate
to men. The origin of the restriction is assigned to the conduct of a
most impudent woman, Carfania, who, by pestering the prætor with her
shameless prosecutions, obliged him to issue the prohibition. Some
have identified this Carfania with Afrania, but it is likely that the
prohibition was made at a later date than 48 B.C.
As we have already seen, the women of Rome sometimes held meetings
among themselves in early times, and Livy mentions instances to which
I have not alluded. Under the Empire we hear of a regular assembly
or corporation of women (_Conventus matronarum_). On the first
occasion on which this Conventus crops up in history, we get a glimpse
of the lively scenes which must have occasionally taken place in it.
Agrippina, the mother of Nero, had been trying to seduce Galba, who
afterwards became Emperor, from fidelity to his wife. His mother-in-law
was very wroth with her for this, and when Agrippina came to a meeting
of the Conventus she rated her soundly, adding force to her words by
vigorous blows with her hands. Afterwards, the Conventus appears again
in the reign of Elagabalus, who assigned his mother a place among the
senators. He built on the Quirinal a meeting-place for the Conventus,
which his biographer calls a Senate, and the matrons decided there the
various points of court etiquette, such as precedence and the dresses
to be worn by ladies of different ranks. Probably this senate of women
came to an end through its absurdity, and we do not hear of it again
till the reign of Aurelian, who is said to have restored to women their
senate, and to have made the priestesses take first rank in it.[100]
Many Roman women devoted themselves to philosophy and literature, and
showed considerable ability in these subjects. But there is no proof
that any one of them attained a great reputation. Only one literary
work of a Roman woman has come down to us, the Satire of Sulpicia. It
is creditable to her good sense and ability, but it does not take a
high place among satires.
What, then, are we to say in regard to the morality of the Roman women?
Unquestionably some of the Roman writers depict their morals in the
blackest colours, but the facts that I have adduced seem to me to
prove that the accounts are greatly exaggerated. It would be absurd to
deny that there were many bad women in Roman society, just as there
have been bad men and women in all societies, but we are apt to form
too gloomy a picture of the conduct of the women, because it has been
the delight of writers, who wish to demonstrate the superiority of
Christianity to heathenism, to bring out into special prominence the
supposed vices and humiliations of pagan women. But in regard to this
matter it is of great importance that we view the facts from the right
point.
First of all we must be on our guard against confounding Pagan with
Christian notions of morality. The Romans highly esteemed purity in a
woman, but they confined these ideas of purity to the female citizens,
and their notions were based on the necessity of having a pure and
unadulterated breed of citizens. Their notions of purity did not extend
to the male citizens, and therefore, when the woman was still under the
control of the husband, the woman could not divorce her husband, though
her husband could divorce her without assigning a reason to her. There
was, indeed, an institution among the Romans which has been thought to
exalt the idea of purity and virginity. But a slight knowledge of Roman
thought shows the error of this opinion. Every sacrifice offered to a
god required to be pure. The ox that was to be sacrificed must not have
dragged the plough or undergone any toil. It must be reared and kept
exclusively for the homage that was paid to the god. And so the vestal
virgins consecrated to the goddess Vesta must be pure and undefiled
by subjection to any one, as long as they were in the service of the
goddess. But this was not a moral but a ritual purification. Marriage
was not an obstruction to service to a god, if the god presided over
functions that were consistent with it and, indeed, in all the great
priesthoods in Rome it was essential that the priest should be married,
for his wife acted as the priestess, and it was advantageous that the
priest should have a family, as his children were expected to assist in
his various priestly functions. Even the vestal virgins were allowed to
marry, after they had served the goddess for the prescribed period of
thirty years. The Roman women were not therefore restrained by a sense
of moral wrong in connexion with this matter. And accordingly when
they escaped from the firm grasp of the husband’s power, they could
not see why that which was allowed to the man should not be allowed to
the woman; why, if he gratified his passions without restraint or the
condemnation of society, the same indulgence should not be conceded
to her. And, accordingly, some of them did plunge into the wildest
careers of licentiousness and shamelessness. They adopted the prevalent
philosophy of the day, Epicureanism, with their fathers and brothers
and husbands; they abjured all belief in a future state and in moral
distinctions, and they acted as the men who held the same creed did.
Others of them took to Platonism,[101] and were particularly fond of
“The Republic,” because it advocated community of wives. But these
women were not worse than the men of their day, and there were much
fewer bad women than bad men.
Then our ideas of the immorality of Roman women are often drawn from
what is said of the women connected with the Court of the early Empire.
But our accounts of these women are derived from a bitter satirist,
a pessimist historian, and a scandal-mongering biographer. And there
can be no doubt that the most notorious of the licentious women of
the Court had, like the men, a strong taint of insanity. If we take
into consideration what I have already said about all Pagan notions
of purity, and along with this keep in sight the state of matters
at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, I think
that a milder view of the case will present itself to us. The Roman
Republic came to an end through the rivalry of the great houses, whose
matrons are the subjects of history. These houses were divided against
each other, even though they were sometimes closely related by blood
and marriage. Occasionally, even son was arrayed against father, and
nephew against uncle. The lives of the principal men were in continual
jeopardy. Very many of them died violent deaths. Their homes were thus
frequently broken up, and selfish feelings were brought prominently
into play. In these circumstances women had to act a difficult part,
and their motives were often misconstrued.
Thus the suspicion is suggested that Livia, the wife of Augustus,
had frequent recourse to poison; but surely the circumstances of the
case render this suspicion doubtful. Livia was unquestionably a bold,
resolute woman, and took an active part in the management of the
Empire. She had been married before, and by her former husband had two
sons, one of whom was Tiberius. Augustus also had been married before,
and had one daughter, Julia. It was natural that Augustus should seek
to establish his dynasty through his own daughter Julia, and not
through his stepson. Accordingly he gave her in marriage to his nephew
Marcellus, whom he intended to be his successor, but Marcellus died at
an early age without offspring. Augustus then gave the widowed Julia
in marriage to Agrippa, in whom he had great confidence, but Agrippa
died also. Agrippa left a family, two of whom were youths of much
promise, and Augustus naturally looked to these grandsons as possible
successors, but they died also. Meantime Augustus gave his daughter
in marriage to his stepson Tiberius, who by no means valued the gift;
for he had to part from a wife whom he loved to unite himself with a
wife whom he detested, and whom all the world knew to be dissolute.
And in the end Tiberius succeeded to his throne. Now it was suggested
that Livia from the first had made up her mind to make Tiberius the
successor of Augustus, and that, with this object, she employed
poison--poisoning Marcellus, poisoning Agrippa and his two sons, and
probably poisoning Augustus himself. But we must suppose the acts of
poisoning to be most fitful; for Marcellus died in 23 B.C., Agrippa
in 12 B.C., the sons of Agrippa in 2 A.D. and 4 A.D., and Augustus
himself in 14 A.D., each at a considerable interval of years from the
other; and it seems to me impossible that, if a woman had made up her
mind that her son should succeed, she would follow out her plan only at
widely separate periods.
Some of the other women who are notorious for their bad conduct were
unquestionably bad. But in the case of Messalina, whose name has become
a byword, it has to be remembered that she was only twenty-six years of
age when she died. The second Agrippina, who is equally infamous for
her wickedness, may be paying the penalty for having written memoirs,
in which she blackened the characters of her contemporaries. And nearly
all the women who are gibbeted as monsters of iniquity belonged to the
imperial family. The Emperor held a position of power and glory such as
never had fallen to the lot of any mortal before him. The wealth and
honours that were heaped on him were such as might turn the head of
any man. They could not but have a very injurious effect on the women
of the family. The descendants of this family intermarried cousins
with cousins, or even in closer connexion, and, between the unique
exaltation of their lot and the frequent intermarriages, need we wonder
that a taint of insanity infected them? I think that in this way we may
account for a considerable number of the wild excesses that are laid to
their charge.
I do not deny that there were many licentious women outside of the
imperial circle; I do not deny that there may have been some foundation
for the railing accusations which Juvenal brings against the sex; but I
am confident that these accusations are exaggerated in a high degree.
And if there were women who plunged into vice because they saw their
husbands and brothers claim and exercise the wildest licence for
themselves, there were other women who took an opposite course. They
argued that the equality was right, but that men and women were equally
bound to abstain from licentiousness, that the same law prevailed
for the man as for the woman. This opinion was a tenet of the Stoic
philosophy, and it was to this sect of philosophers that many of
the noblest Roman women belonged. I will mention but two of them.
Porcia, the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus, was a Stoic--“a
philosopher,” as Plutarch says,[102] “full of spirit and good sense.”
When married to Brutus, she perceived that her husband did not
communicate to her his political movements and secrets. So she removed
all her attendants, took a knife, and inflicted a deep wound in her
thigh so that the blood flowed out copiously and then fever ensued. Her
husband, in alarm, came to her, and she then addressed him: “I, Brutus,
Cato’s daughter, was given unto thy house, not, like women who serve
as concubines, to share thy bed and board only, but to be a partner
in thy happiness and a partner in thy sorrows. But, with respect to
thy marriage, everything is blameless on thy part; but as to me what
evidence is there, or what affection, if I must neither share with thee
a secret sorrow nor a care which demands confidence? I know that a
woman’s nature is considered too weak to carry a secret, but, Brutus,
there is a certain power towards making moral character in a good
nurture and an honest life: and I am Cato’s daughter and also Brutus’s
wife, whereon hitherto I had less relied, but now I know that I am
also invincible to pain.”[103] Then she showed her husband the wound.
He admired the deed, and, stretching out his hands, he prayed the gods
“that they would render him worthy of so noble a wife.”
The other Stoic woman whom I shall mention is the well-known Arria,
the wife of Pætus. Pliny gives the following narrative, received from
her granddaughter: “Her husband, Cæcina Pætus, was sick; her son
also was sick, both, to all appearance, by a fatal attack. The son
died; a youth of exquisite beauty, of equal modesty, and dear to the
parents as much because he was their son as for other reasons. She
made all the preparations for the funeral, and paid the last rites
to him, in such a way that her husband remained in ignorance of what
was going on. Whenever she entered his chamber she pretended that her
son still lived and was even improving in health. And when he often
asked, ‘How is my boy?’ she would answer, ‘He had a good night, he
took a little food eagerly.’ But when the tears, long kept in check,
overcame her and began to stream forth, she would go outside and give
herself up to a flood of grief, and then come back with dry eyes and
calm countenance.”[104] It was this same woman who taught her husband
how to die. He had received commands from the Emperor Claudius to put
himself to death. He hesitated. His wife thereupon took a dagger,
plunged it into her breast, drew it out and offered it to her husband,
with the words, “Pætus, it does not pain.” There were many such Stoic
women. What opinions did they entertain in regard to the education and
position of their sex? We are well informed on this point.
A Stoic philosopher, C. Musonius Rufus, who flourished in the time
of Nero, spoke or wrote treatises on the education of women and on
marriage, and large fragments of his sayings or writings have come
down to us. He argues that the same training and education must be
suitable for both sexes. He affirms that this ought to be the case for
training in all the mental qualities, but that possibly certain tasks
may in some cases be more appropriate for man or for woman. The sum
of his exposition is perhaps contained in the following words:[105]
“I say that, as in the human race men have a stronger and women a
weaker nature, each of these natures should have the tasks assigned
to it which are most suited to it, and the heavier should be allotted
to the stronger, and the lighter to the weaker. Spinning, as well as
house-keeping, would, therefore, be more suitable for women than for
men; while gymnastics, as well as out-of door work, would be fitter for
men than for women; though sometimes some men might properly undertake
some of the lighter tasks and such as seem to belong to women; and
women, again, might engage in the harder tasks, and those which appear
more appropriate for men, in cases where either bodily qualities or
necessity or particular occasions might lead to such action. For
perhaps all human tasks are open to all, and common both to men and
women, and nothing is necessarily appointed exclusively for either;
not that some things may not be more suitable for one, and others for
the other nature, so that some are called men’s and others women’s
occupations. But whatever things have reference to virtue, these one
may rightly affirm to be equally appropriate to both natures, since
we say that virtues do not belong more to the one than to the other.”
Musonius applies his principle of equality to sexual relations and to
marriage. He held that what was wrong in a woman was equally wrong in
a man, or rather was more disgraceful to a man, inasmuch as he claimed
to be a stronger being, and therefore more capable of controlling his
passions. He therefore denounced all illicit amours as unjust and
lawless. He also propounded a view which was afterwards adopted by
the Christian writers, that all indulgence of the flesh not requisite
for the propagation of the race was unworthy of a philosopher. But he
differed from the great mass of the Christian writers, and regarded
marriage as the happiest condition of life. He describes it as a
community of life, and a mutual care for each other in health and
sickness, and in every occurrence of life, and he brands a marriage
when there is no community of feeling as worse than a desert. He argued
that the man who does not marry must be inferior in his experience and
usefulness to the man who does, and that therefore the solitary life is
not advantageous even for the philosophers. And he urges that the whole
of civilization rests upon the institution of marriage. “For,” says he,
“the man who takes away marriage from the human race takes away the
household, takes away the State, takes away the human race.”
The opinions of Musonius and the Stoics greatly influenced subsequent
legislation in regard to marriage. But this is an obscure and
disputable subject, and we can refer here only to the commencement of
legislation on marriage. It was the Emperor Augustus who first drew up
laws in regard to it. Before his time marriage was deemed essentially a
private transaction, and no enactments had taken place in reference to
it except as to the disposition of dowries. Family councils controlled
it, and, like all other private acts, it was subject to the judgment
of the Censors, who in this matter followed prevalent opinion. The
prevailing opinion was that all Romans were bound to marry. The Censors
put the question to every Roman, “On your word of honour have you a
wife?” If the answer was in the negative the Censor weighed all the
circumstances of the case, and, if he deemed the man negligent of
his duty, he imposed on him a fine called _uxorium_. From the
earliest times it had been reckoned a Roman’s imperative duty to marry.
Dionysius embodies this practice in the statement that the “ancient
law compelled all adults to marry.” The historians mention several
instances in which the penalty for neglect of this custom was imposed
by the Censors.[106]
We are told[107] that the Censors, M. Furius Camillus and M. Postumius
Albinus, in 403 B.C., obliged all who had reached old age
without marrying to pay a sum of money to the public treasury, and
Valerius Maximus, in stating this fact, puts into their mouths words to
the following effect: “As nature imposes on man the necessity of being
born, so it imposes on him the obligation to produce birth, and your
parents bind you by maintaining you to the obligation of maintaining
their grandchildren. In addition to this, fortune has given you a long
period to listen to her appeals to you to perform this duty, while,
in the meantime, your years have wasted away, and you have remained
without the name of either husband or father. Go, then, and pay the
knotty coin which will be useful to a numerous posterity.” We need
place no implicit belief in the exact details of this narrative, and
Plutarch may be nearer the truth when he relates that the Censors
induced, either by persuasion or penalties, the unmarried Romans of
their day to wed the women who had been made widows by the devastating
wars of Veii. But, whatever may have been the particular occurrences,
there can be no doubt that the sentiments put by Maximus into the
mouths of the Censors were the genuine sentiments of the Roman people,
and they continued to be the same till the latest days of the Republic.
We are told[108] that Quintus Metellus in his censorship, the date
of which is uncertain, but it was either 131 B.C. or 101
B.C.--according as we accept the statement of Livy that it was
Quintus Metellus Macedonicus, or the statement of Gellius that it was
Quintus Metellus Numidicus--urged that all should be forced to marry
_liberorum creandorum causa_, and delivered a speech on marriage
which Augustus[109] deemed so convincing that he read it aloud in
the Senate, and drew the attention of the people to it by edict. And
Cicero, in his treatise ‘De Legibus,’[110] makes it part of the duty of
Censors to prevent people being bachelors.
There would not be the same obligation on females to marry, but it is
likely that every Roman citizen girl married. It is probable that the
number of the females was not so great as that of the males. Every
father had the right to expose his children, and, while he had no
reason to make away with his male children, the necessity of providing
dowries for females would induce him to think seriously before he took
up and reared the female children that were born to him.
This, then, was the state of matters in the best times of the Republic;
but this state was changed by the violent civil wars that preceded
the establishment of the Empire. Then the great families of the
commonwealth were decimated and family ties broken up. A feeling of
the utter uncertainty of life and an indifference to its continuance
pervaded all classes. Moreover, luxurious habits had become prevalent.
Formerly sons with their wives lived in the house of their father,
and constituted, in fact as in law, one family. Instances of this
conjoint family life are recorded so late as the second century
B.C. But now the expense of bringing up a family had come
to be felt by many as a burden, and the trouble of family cares was
regarded as an encroachment on the enjoyments of life. And hence arose
an unwillingness to marry. People saw no good and felt no pride in
having families. Their children might be a curse to them, or they
might be exposed to lives of poverty, accusations, harassment, and
proscription--lives, in fact, which were miseries, and not blessings.
But Augustus held that the prevalence of such sentiments and practices
was fatal to the welfare of a State, and the special circumstances of
the time made them peculiarly dangerous to Rome. For the State had
suffered enormous loss by its civil wars. Appian[111] asserts that at
the census of Julius Cæsar it was said that the population was only
half of what it had been before these wars. Dio Cassius[112] describes
the scarcity of the population as terrible, and the number of women had
decreased. Friedländer[113] estimates the free population of Rome in 5
B.C., omitting senators, knights, and soldiers, as consisting
of 320,000 males and 265,600 females.
A remedy for this state of matters was urgently required, and
Augustus believed that a remedy could be found only in legislation.
Accordingly legislation was the remedy which he adopted. The accounts
of this legislation are very confused. Mention is made of three
Bills--one, Julia de adulteriis coercendis; a second, Julia de
maritandis ordinibus; and a third, Lex Papia Poppæa. He commenced his
legislation in the very beginning of his reign, in 28 B.C.;
but as, on assuming the supreme power, he abrogated the decrees of
the triumvirate, and claimed to be restoring the Republic, his Bills
had to go through the ordinary processes of discussion in the Senate
and proposal to the Assembly. This afforded scope for every form of
obstruction, and, besides difficulties in passing the Bills, the laws
met with fierce private resistance. The Lex Papia Poppæa probably
embodied all the regulations which Augustus had made in regard to
marriage, with such additions and amendments as experience had proved
to be necessary. Its great object, was to encourage and reward
marriage, and punish and prevent celibacy. Before passing his final
law, the Lex Papia Poppæa, in 9 A.D., Dio Cassius[114] states
that Augustus, knowing that the equites were eager for the abrogation
of his previous laws, summoned the whole of them to a meeting. He
divided them into two classes--those who had married and those who had
not. He deplored the fact that the latter class was more numerous,
and addressed to them strong words of reproof, and at the same time
expounded the reasons why marriage should be praised and rewarded, and
bachelors condemned and fined. The principal points of this speech are
contained in the first two chapters of Dio Cassius, 56. “That first and
greatest god,” he says, “who fashioned us divided the mortal race into
two, the male and the female, in order, through the instinctive love
of the one to the other, he might make that which was mortal eternal
after a fashion from continual new births. And he who is born of a
father is bound to become a father if the race is to continue. Every
feeling of patriotism makes this a sacred duty. And what better means
could there be than a chaste wife, guardian and manager of the house, a
rearer of children, for cheering the man when he is in good health and
attending to him when he is ill, sharing with him his good fortune and
consoling him in misfortune, restraining the mad impulses of the young
and tempering the unseasonable austerity of the old? What could be more
delightful than to take up a child, the offspring of both, and rear and
educate him, an image of the body and an image of the soul, so that the
man himself reappear in this child when he grows to maturity.”
Julius Cæsar, painfully alive to the effects of the civil wars on the
destiny of the Empire, had already offered rewards for a numerous
offspring, and we find that in his agrarian law for the distribution
of lands in Campania, he gave the lots to fathers of three or more
children, of whom at the time there were twenty thousand. Augustus
resolved to carry out this idea systematically. Any married woman who
had three children received special privileges, and the jus trium
liberorum became an honour, which was also conferred at first by the
Senate, and subsequently by the Emperors, on distinguished women on
whom nature had not bestowed the requisite number of children. Four
children released a freedwoman from the guardianship of her patron, and
three children put a free patroness on an equality with a patron.[115]
Similar privileges were conferred on men. The consul who had the
greater number of children had precedence over him who had fewer, and
the married consul took precedence of the unmarried. The candidate
for office who had children was permitted to assume certain offices
of state at an earlier age than the unmarried, and other privileges
were bestowed on the married. Fines and disabilities were imposed on
bachelors. The ages fixed for males were twenty and sixty, and for
women twenty and fifty and whoever was unmarried within these ages was
subjected to a tax, and could not become heir except to near relatives
and could not receive legacies.
Such were some of the provisions of this Lex Papia Poppæa for the
encouragement of marriage. Our information in regard to it is in many
respects defective and unsatisfactory. The law was much discussed
by subsequent jurists, and it is likely that some of the clauses,
which are represented as the work of Augustus, were inserted by later
legislators.
Augustus did in regard to adultery what he did in regard to marriage.
He translated ordinary private practice into public law, and on the
whole made the conduct of the Romans milder than it had been, though
he was strongly tempted by the licentiousness of his daughter to
prescribe stern punishment for the crime. His law required that the
divorce should take place in regular form. The freedman of the man who
wished to divorce must hand over the repudium, or bill of divorce, in
the presence of seven Romans of full age, and the wife who wished a
divorce must do the same. The law ordained, that a woman who was found
guilty of adultery should be banished to an island, and lose half of
her dowry and a third of her property, and similar punishments were
inflicted on a faithless husband. In the case of the wife, it still
lay with the husband to inflict the penalty, and he himself was liable
to be punished if he did not carry out the sentence. The husband could
still kill his wife if he found her in the act; but he could execute
vengeance only if he put to death both the guilty parties.
The Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which was no doubt embodied in the Lex
Papia Poppæa, brings to light a new phase of Roman life. Distinctions
had arisen among the Roman citizens, and more anxiety was felt to
maintain the honour and purity of the highest of these classes than to
preserve the ordinary Roman citizen from the outside world. Senators
were forbidden to marry freedwomen, but all other citizens were allowed
to marry them, owing to the scarcity of free women, but prohibited from
marrying prostitutes, procuresses, condemned criminals, and actresses.
The legislation of Augustus in regard to marriage has generally been
regarded as a failure. Horace celebrated the success of the Lex Julia
de adulterio cohibendo in Ode iv. 5:--
“Nullis polluitur casta domus stupris,
Mos et lex maculosum edomuit nefas”--
words which seem to me to prove that the accounts of the degeneracy of
the women were grossly exaggerated--for no legislation could produce
effects in any way approaching to those described by Horace, if the
evil were deeply seated. From Horace’s words we may gather that the law
had some good effect; and the prominence of the Lex Papia Poppæa in the
discussions of jurists, renders it likely that it continued to act for
some time with considerable force. The general effect of legislation
based on it, and of the course of events, was to alter the basis of
the Roman State, and to make the individual, and not the family, the
unit. Husband and wife became more closely connected together, the
wife becoming to some extent the heir of the husband, and her children
being entitled to inherit her property. But causes were working, in
combination with the aversion to marriage, which rendered the Lex Papia
Poppæa nugatory. In the Christian Church arose an inordinate estimate
of the virtue of celibacy. A large family came to be regarded almost as
a disgrace, as a proof of lasciviousness. And thus, when Constantine, a
Christian Emperor, ascended the throne, he abolished most of the pains
and penalties of celibacy and childlessness, and Justinian abolished
all the clauses that dealt with inheritance.
BOOK III.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE
OF WOMEN
IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER I.
HIGH POSITION OF WOMEN AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEGRADATION.
The opinion has been continually expressed that woman owes her present
high position to Christianity, and the influences of the Teutonic
mind. But an examination of the facts seems to me to show that there
was no sign of this revolution in the first three centuries of the
Christian era, and that the position of women among Christians was
lower, and the notions in regard to them were more degraded than
they were in the first. Unquestionably in the Gospels women occupy a
prominent position. Many of them followed Christ and ministered to
Him. With a woman who had had five husbands and was living with a man
not her husband, He holds the most profound conversation, and to her
He proclaims the grandest truths of His revelation. And the women of
His day and country seem to have had great liberty of movement and
action. One of them, described by St. Luke as “a sinner in the city,”
finds her way into the house of a Pharisee with whom He was dining,
pours a box of ointment on His feet, and washes His feet with tears
and wipes them with the hairs of her head. Christ mingles freely in
the marriage festivities where His mother and doubtless other female
residents were present. His intercourse with the family of Bethany is
of the most unrestrained character, and He talks to both sisters on
the highest subjects. And, according to St. John, His first appearance
after His resurrection is made to a woman, Mary of Magdala, from whom
he had expelled seven demons. But in the Gospels there is no special
doctrine propounded in regard to women, and if there is any approach
to this, it exhibits great mildness, if we take the story of the woman
caught in adultery as genuine. It is when we come to the writings of
St. Paul that opinions are pronounced in regard to marriage and the
conduct of women, and there can be no doubt that these opinions are
of a stern and restrictive nature. The Ebionites[116] explained the
Apostle’s conversion by stating that he was, as he himself allowed,
a native of Tarsus, that he was not a Jew, but a Greek with a Greek
father and a Greek mother; that he went up to Jerusalem and stayed
there for some time; that he fell in love with the high priest’s
daughter, became in consequence a proselyte, and asked her in marriage,
but on being refused he was enraged, and wrote against circumcision,
the Sabbath, and the law. Some have thought that there is a bitterness
against women in the writings of St Paul, which can be explained only
by some such rejection as that related by the Ebionites. Perhaps,
also, the character of the women of Tarsus, his native city, may have
had an effect upon him. At an early time they were particularly prim
and modest. They were in the habit of covering the entire body with
clothing, so that no one could see a single part of their face or the
rest of their body, and they themselves could see nothing except the
road on which they were walking. This habit continued till the time of
Dio Chrysostom,[117] who relates the fact. But he regards the habit as
a remnant of a chastity which no longer existed. Impurity rushed in
upon the women through the ears as well as the eyes, and the most of
them became thoroughly licentious and corrupt. “They walk,” he says,
“with their faces covered, but with soul uncovered, and indeed wide
open.” St. Paul’s words had a great influence on the formation of
opinion in regard to women in the ancient Church. They fell in with
the tendencies of the times, and were made the groundwork and support
of the depreciation of marriage, which became prevalent in the third
and fourth centuries of our era.
Christianity also soon brought with it a new state of feeling in regard
to questions relating to sex. Acts that had been indifferent before,
now became morally wrong, and the Christian writers inquire minutely
into points which had not previously been discussed. The Christian
writers are particularly frank in their treatment of these questions.
Their sense of decency is quite different from that of the moderns, and
the consequence is that it is not possible for a modern writer to give
a full exposition of their ideas and reasonings.
There are two Christian books belonging, the one to the beginning of
the third century, the other to the beginning of the fourth, that
make large reference to the duties and position of women. The first
is the “Pædagogus,” or Instructor, of Clement of Alexandria. In this
work the Alexandrian Father guides the Christian in all the affairs of
common life. He exhibits how the Christian ought to behave at meals,
what food and drink he ought to take, how long he should sleep, what
kind of clothes he ought to wear, how he ought to conduct himself in
church, and similar matters. Now in dealing with the duties of women
he refuses to employ any euphemism. A spade with him must be a spade
or it is a lie. God created man and woman, every part of them, and
“no one,” he says, “ought to be ashamed of naming what God was not
ashamed to create,” and to go about the bush is to act in disrespect
of Him. Besides, he thought it very important that every detail of the
Christian life should be directed according to the instructions of
Divine Reason, and therefore he would have regarded it a dereliction of
duty if he had not discussed all that concerns the functions of women.
But the feeling of the present age is for euphemism and concealment,
and accordingly when we had to translate Clement’s work into English,
in the Ante-Nicene Library, there were portions so completely opposed
to modern ideas of decency that we considered it better to present them
in a Latin and not an English dress. The same peculiarity characterizes
the other work which I mentioned--‘The Banquet of the Ten Virgins,’
by Methodius. In this book ten virgins praise virginity; but the
virgins show a remarkably intimate acquaintance with the physiology
and aberrations of women. Now in the case of Clement no one can doubt
the purity and simplicity of his mind, and his expositions, though
they have been denounced by some divines, are absolutely devoid of all
pruriency. Perhaps there is a little of the meretricious in the style
of the Banquet, for the writer is imitating somewhat unsuccessfully the
Banquet of Plato; but the language is entirely consistent with perfect
purity, and the difference from our own times is to be attributed to
the sentiments of the age, not to a debasement of character.