Part 26

Gibbon expresses the opinion that in no period of the world's history has the human race been happier or more prosperous than during the time which elapsed between the reigns of Domitian and Commodus. There is not a little that may be said in support of this remarkable conclusion. Under Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, the Empire enjoyed the calm and brilliant evening following a long day of bitter strife and perilous turmoil, and preceding the moral darkness of the rule of the tyrants under whom paganism was fated to expire.

During this period, Italy and the interior provinces of the Empire were entirely free from the rude alarms of war. The home of that day was as secure from violence as it is among ourselves at the present time. No wife or daughter had occasion unavailingly to beg the life of husband or father from the jealous or timid cruelty of a self-indulgent ruler. In the home circle, there was no foreboding dread of proscription. The terrible laws regarding _crimen majestatis_, under which so many cruelties had been perpetrated and so many families unjustly bereaved, were held in abeyance. Pliny writes to Trajan: "It is said, sir, that a woman and her sons have been buried in the same place where your statue is set up." This, under some of the former emperors, would have been a grave matter; a woman was executed under Domitian because she disrobed before a statue of the emperor. But Trajan writes: "You should not have hesitated about such a question, for you know very well that I do not propose to make my name respected by terror and by accusations of treason. Dismiss this charge, which I shall not consider."

The people were prosperous. The vast extent of the Roman dominion, with its thoroughly organized and centralized government and its easy means of communication, interchanged a wonderful abundance and variety of the products of industry and commerce. At no time previous to the discovery of America did housewife ever draw the supplies for her table and her wardrobe from such widely separated quarters of the earth's surface as did the Roman woman in the time of Hadrian. As a modern historian has said: "The world was opened; the most secluded places had become accessible; all things circulated without let or hindrance. It was free trade, with its advantageous results in abundance and low prices. All the produce of the world came into Rome by the Tiber. The women of the Bernese Oberland bought their ornaments of a jeweller in Asia Minor, and thought less of it than we of procuring rugs from Smyrna or Damascus."

The people also were protected by salutary laws. The women of that day, when they went to the shops and purchased by weight or measure, were assured of honest dealing. There were standards kept in the municipal cities, and every tradesman was obliged to have his weights and measures tested by them; he was also subject to unannounced inspection. Never were wise laws more perfectly executed. How thoroughly the mind of Trajan was imbued with the idea that his mission was to administer the Empire for the benefit of the people is shown by his correspondence with Pliny. Hadrian spent almost the whole of his reign in travelling from one province to another, in order that he might not only satisfy his curiosity, but also secure good government by personal inspection.

The people also enjoyed a fair semblance of liberty. True, they were not free. The rule of the Antonines was as absolute as that of the first Cæsars; but the emperors of the period we are describing, ostentatiously and to the great contentment of the people, professed to administer the laws only as they were enacted by the Senate and to be themselves governed by the constitution. It was but a phantom of liberty, truly; but when has the world really seen more? The five emperors who followed Domitian exercised their absolute power under the guidance of virtue and wisdom; and, whether or not it were an honorable peace, the people were contented and happy.

The effect of this wise, strong, all-pervading government must have been made especially apparent in the woman's world of that time. There are no gains for women in war. The glory sought by man is no compensation for the wife's anxiety entailed by her fear of bereavement. In the hazards of foreign strife or the dangers of civil turmoil, woman may exemplify those possibilities of her character which reveal themselves in the heroism of devotion or resignation; but the normal qualities of her nature do not expand as in the quiet comfort of a home life where safety is assured.

In the history of Roman women, down to the period which we have now reached, there has been no opportunity to ascertain what the combined influences of culture and peace might accomplish. In the ancient Republic, culture of any appreciable degree was absent and life was continuously strenuous. In later days, when Roman hardihood was first touched by Greek civilization, and the love of letters began to find a place in woman's life, the Roman matron, though admirable and statuesque, was too heroic in her virtue to be altogether attractive. A writer of a later day--than whom none more keenly regretted the ancient purity--felt this. "Let her be more chaste than any single Sabine that, with hair dishevelled, rushed between the combatants and brought the war to a close; let her be a very phoenix upon earth, rare as a black swan; who could tolerate a wife in whom all excellencies are concentrated! I would rather, far rather, have a country maiden from Venusia than you, O Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, if along with your estimable virtues you bring as part of your dower a haughty and disdainful brow, and reckon as a portion of your fortune the triumphs of your house! Away, I beg, with your Hannibal and Syphax conquered in his camp, and march with all your Carthage!"

Equally unconducive to a feminine life combining sweetness with nobility were those later times, when danger was always imminent from a tyrant's lust or jealousy. Agrippina, travelling with Germanicus in expeditions against the Teutonic tribes, might earn the title "Mother of the Camps"; menaced by Tiberius, she might strengthen her mind in anticipation of the inevitable storm with the stern fortitude becoming to a Roman matron of the house of Augustus; but with years and affliction comes an unamiable sourness of disposition. Livia, Agrippina, and Antonia were women of the most unquestionable virtue; but they were ungentle in their manner and capable of extreme harshness in their methods. We know them fairly well; but there is no indication of their interesting themselves in any such womanly work as those public charities which graced the reign of Trajan, and with which we may be reasonably certain that Plotina, his noble consort, actively sympathized. With assured security of life, woman's heart expanded and her sympathies widened. Faustina, the wife of Aurelius, may not have been irreproachable; but she is represented in the position of the Lady Bountiful by the side of her husband in the public distributions. Under these noble emperors, a social conscience was developed; and there was nothing to prevent or disturb any of the genial graces of the home life, which are only possible when women are respected and happy.

During this period, the legal condition of the Roman woman was also greatly ameliorated. The acute sense of justice which actuated these emperors could not neglect this result of civilization. On one occasion, a matron stopped Hadrian in the street and begged leave to submit to him a matter in which she was suffering injustice. He refused to be delayed. "Why, then, are you emperor?" she bitterly exclaimed. This appealed to him; for he was conscious that he had no right to govern unless he allowed the salutary influence of his rule to extend to all alike.

A man and a woman, who, though they had cohabited, were not legally married, disputed as to the possession of their child in order to receive its share of the public allowance. "With whom do you live?" asked Hadrian of the child. "My mother," was the answer. "You rascal," said the emperor to the man, "you have no right to this allowance."

"I implore you," cried another woman, "to order that a part of my son's allowance be given to me." "But, my lord," said the son, "I do not acknowledge her to be my mother." "Then," answered Hadrian, "I shall not acknowledge you as a citizen."

These, it may be, were only casual incidents; but they indicate the sort of rule under which Rome had come, and they must have formed powerful precedents in future rulings in such cases. Laws were also passed which helped to relieve the burden of legal injustice which from the first had rested upon the Roman woman. A father had it always in his power to compel his son to put away his wife, and could thus, if he chose, shatter the life of a faithful, loving woman and drive her from her home. Marcus Aurelius amended this tyrannical law, so that it could only be executed for great and just cause. Under the old code, a child was always subject to the condition of his mother at his birth; hence, if a free woman, after conception, was relegated to servitude by sentence of law, her child was born a slave. Hadrian decreed that if a woman was free at any time during her pregnancy, her child should be free. This would seem to be more of a relief to the child so born than to the mother; but, apart from the mother sympathy, the parent of a free son would be much more likely to regain her own liberty. This emperor also decided that women should have the power to dispose of the whole of their property by will, on obtaining the consent of their guardians. It was soon afterward decreed that such a will should be valid without such consent, and this made the property rights of the Roman woman as untrammelled as such laws have been in any country, almost down to the present time. There was also a modification of the law of inheritance, so that women were allowed to take from their sons; but to avail herself of this new law a freedwoman must have had no less than four children.

This material comfort and security of life would, of itself, hardly suffice to substantiate Gibbon's opinion as to the superior happiness of this particular period of the world's history; but there was something more. Human life is not rendered felicitous solely by the abundance of the things which a people possesses; there must be the power to make the most of and enjoy them. It is with the life of a nation as it is with that of an individual--the happiest age is that immediately previous to the beginning of decadence; prior to that, the attention and energy are wholly taken up with the process of acquiring. The Roman Empire was now, as it were, balanced and resting on the summit of its greatness.

With one or two exceptions, never in the history of the world has so large a proportion of the citizens of a nation been capable of so fully appreciating the highest mental enjoyments. Art in those days was closely inwoven with the life of the people; they lived artistic lives. The women of that day moved habitually among those objects which the ladies of our time go to museums to admire. Their eyes were every day accustomed to rest upon the beautiful structures and statuary which are the wonder and the models of modern times. Every home, however modest, had about it much of the artistic; every public building was a magnificent example of architecture. Nothing was purely utilitarian, for life was not sordid. With an ample supply of the necessaries and luxuries of existence, and perfect protection through wise and beneficently administered laws, this added grace and beauty which pervaded everything lacked little to make the life of women in the days of Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines broader and happier than it has been in any other period, ancient or modern.

There were, however, two classes of persons which must not be left out of the estimate; and it may be suggested that a proper understanding of the conditions of their existence may detract greatly from the foregoing appreciation of the period under discussion: these are the slaves and the poor. But, inasmuch as what has been said is of the nature of a comparison, it can be justly answered that the poor we have always with us, and until recently the institution of slavery has been a cherished one. At any rate, it was rare that a Roman slave woman was ill fed, while compulsory hunger is by no means uncommon in modern times.

Since so large a portion of those Roman slaves were women, it will be quite pertinent to our subject if we take a glance at this institution of slavery as it existed in the ancient world.

It is estimated that at one time no less than one-fifth of the population of Rome was in a condition of compulsory servitude. The number was kept up by birth, by the slave market, and by war. In ancient times, the creditor could sell the family of the debtor; the father also could dispose of his children in the same manner. These barbarous measures, however, were less resorted to as manners grew milder, though the laws permitting them were not repealed until the time of Diocletian. Parents had the legal right to expose their unwelcome children, and whoever chose to take the abandoned infants owned them as slaves; but Trajan granted to such children the perpetual right of claiming their freedom, on condition that they could prove that of their parents.

By the ancient law, the slave was nothing but a chattel. He possessed no rights, he had no will of his own, he was not a person, and could not seek protection from the law. Over him his master owned absolute power of life and death. Women slaves were wholly subject to their owner's will. They might be required to bear offspring for the mere sake of increasing their master's number of servants, with absolutely no regard to any sentiment they might cherish relative to such a matter. A slave could not legally marry; and for many centuries no union of that nature was held to have any binding force. When it is considered that a large proportion of the slaves owned by Roman masters were secured as the spoils of war, or by kidnapping, and consequently included many persons of both sexes who were well born and educated, it is seen how peculiarly cruel was slavery in those times.

Gradually, principles of humanity prevailed in the softening of this condition, and it is probable that instincts of humanity on the part of the majority of owners induced them to do better than the law demanded. In the house of Columella, every slave woman who had three children was set free from labor, and she who had more was emancipated. During the period of the Antonines, laws were passed prohibiting masters from selling slaves to fight in the arena unless these had been convicted of some crime by public authority. They were not allowed to be left by will with the understanding that they were to fight with beasts. The killing of slaves became punishable as for murder; and even the slave's honor came to be protected, for a complaint could be lodged against the master for an attempt on the slave's modesty. Regard was also paid to the natural feelings of these unfortunate persons; for while those in a condition of slavery could not legally marry, yet, where the nuptial union had been formed it was not permitted that the husband and wife should be separated by sale. Thus we see that the Roman slaves, from a condition of absolute inhumanity in the days of the early Republic, came in the time of the Antonines to be so hedged about with the protection of the law that there was left little to be desired save the possession of their own persons. Still, it is not meant to be asserted that even in this mild period there was not ample scope for cruelty on the part of barbarous or ill-natured owners. Juvenal describes with great indignation how women would cause their female attendants to be unmercifully whipped. But a just complaint of intolerable treatment was, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, legal ground for compelling the emancipation of the slave, or at least for providing him or her with a kinder owner.

Paganism has often been accused of having paid no attention whatsoever to public charities. On the contrary, during the period with which we are now occupied institutions of poor-relief were founded and were as remarkable for the wisdom with which they were organized as for the spirit of beneficence which they manifested. There was abundance of evidence in Pliny's time to show that his beautiful words were not mere rhetoric: "It is a duty to seek out those who are in want, to bring them aid, to support, and make them in a sense one's own family." Has the modern spirit anything better to say than this sentence which was inscribed upon a tomb: _Therc is in life but one beautiful thing, and this is beneficence._ The Romans of the Antonine period put this sentiment into practical operation in more ways than one. Nerva conceived the project of rendering State aid to poor parents to enable them to rear their children. Trajan, his successor, adopted this scheme and developed it on a magnificent scale. As early as the year 100, there were, in the city of Rome, as we learn from Pliny, no less than five thousand children who received this assistance. So much consideration was shown in the arrangement for this distribution, that it was ordered that the apportionment of the sick or absent should be reserved until it was sent for. From the Inscription of Veleia, one of the longest which have come down to us, and the table of the Bæbiani for the apportionment of food among the poor, we learn of the poor-relief system under which two hundred and sixty-four boys and thirty-six girls were supported. "The boys received annually one hundred and ninety-two sesterces [$9.20], the girls one hundred and forty-four [$6.90]. The foundation was established for a definite number of children, a number that did not change so long as the foundation was not increased; but the assistance varied, doubtless with the price of provisions, in different localities; thus, at Veleia, sixteen sesterces per month; at Tarracina, twenty." The writer of the above demonstrates by authorities and examples that from sixteen to twenty sesterces per month was sufficient to support a Roman child. He continues:

"It cannot be affirmed that the institution was in a general measure established in the whole of Italy; but coins, inscriptions, and even sculptures, enable us to discover it in many places. Thus the bas-reliefs of the Arch of Beneventum represent men carrying boys on their shoulders, and four women, their heads adorned with mural crowns, conducting young girls to Trajan. Do these women represent the four towns of the vicinity, or are they the symbol of all the cities of Italy which had profited by the same benefaction? The second hypothesis is the more probable, and Dion confirms it.

"Provincial cities and wealthy individuals followed the example given by the emperors; this pagan society, which ameliorated the lot of the slave, which was mindful of the destitution of its poor, thus showed before its downfall that it possessed within itself powers of renewal sufficient to save it, had it not been ruined by bad legislation."

This annuity did not cease with the end of Trajan's reign. Hadrian increased the length of time through which the boys and girls were to receive it. It is noticeable that fewer girls than boys were assisted, and, while the latter received the pension until the age of eighteen, it was taken from the girls at the age of fourteen. It must be confessed that this introduced a suspicion of utilitarianism into the beneficence, girls at that time being considered of less advantage to the State than their brothers; but Antoninus, who was a man of peace and who would have much liked to be able to dispense with the army, in honor of his wife increased the number of girls on the lists for support; while on the death of the second Faustina, Marcus Aurelius followed his predecessor's example. Private persons, and especially ladies, also established foundations of this kind. To provide for a hundred children at Tarracina, Cælia Macrina bequeathed one million sesterces; Hispalis profited in a similar way by the legacy of a wealthy lady resident. The spirit in which the times viewed this subject is shown in the words of Paulus: "Donations," says he, "may be made to the city, either for its adornment or for its honor; and among the things which honor a city the most is the practice of giving support to infirm old men and to young children of both sexes." There is also proof that in many cities physicians were salaried by the municipality and required to render gratuitous assistance to the poor.

It is a fact exceedingly to be regretted that, while we find so much that is admirable in this period by means of which the female portion of society was benefited and for the existence of which much credit is undoubtedly owing to the noble women of the time, yet the records of individual women are extremely unsatisfactory. In the first place, they are very meagre. Unfortunately, there are no such brilliant and copious histories of the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian as of those of the previous and less worthy emperors. Of individual women, apart from those of the imperial house of this period, we know nothing. The records of the empresses and of their female relatives exhibit a similarity to the scandalous accounts of their predecessors which is sadly monotonous and entirely unworthy of the otherwise wonderfully improved conditions. It is doubtful whether or not the characters of the Faustinas could be rehabilitated if trustworthy evidence were obtainable; but, even if that were possible, there would still be nothing to secure for them equal moral rank with their noble husbands. There is a fine exception, however, in the character of Plotina, the wife of Trajan. In the Vatican Museum there is a bust of this noble woman. It shows a lady advanced in years, but with a countenance charmingly suggestive of intelligence and moral dignity.

Trajan was a plain, honest soldier, who, when he was proclaimed emperor on the death of Nerva, entered the city on foot and recognized his old friends as he passed on his way to the palace. Plotina Pompeia accompanied him; and as she mounted the steps of the imperial abode, she turned to the people and said: "Such as I am entering here, I desire to be when I leave here." She must have been then in the prime of her womanhood; for her husband reigned nineteen years, and she outlived him. Her life in the palace, unlike that of the majority of her predecessors, was distinguished by her unassailable virtue, her affability, and her charitable activity on behalf of the poor and needy. We may safely be assured that though the charitable scheme already described was developed by the mind of her husband, he was stimulated thereto by the gracious counsel of Plotina. She accompanied her husband on his expedition in the East, and was with him when he died in Cilicia, whence she carried his ashes to Rome. Under Hadrian she still continued to enjoy all the honors and titles of a Roman empress.