Part 4

In most societies, the advantages of class are more markedly displayed in the life of the women than in that of the men. This does not appear to have been the case in the early times of the Roman Republic. In fact, it is difficult to see how difference in class greatly distinguished the patrician matron from her plebeian sister. Neither had any legal part whatever in State affairs or in any public functions, excepting those of a religious nature. The duties of each were confined to the home, and no woman was relieved from the obligation of personal and diligent industry. On the epitaphs of many noble women were praises for their chastity and their proficiency in spinning. Indeed, the evidence seems to indicate that any other qualities than these two, and that of fertility, were deprecated rather than admired by the Romans of this period. The only advantages which a patrician woman could possess were her natural pride in the privileges of her family and what honor was reflected upon her from the positions held by her male relatives. The term "Head of the Family" never had so tyrannical a meaning as in most ancient Rome. It was a place which a woman could not hold. The husband was all in all; no one else was recognized by law. Wife, children, clients, and slaves were alike persons without will of their own. They were _mancipia_, under the hand of the father. He it was who answered for them to the State and who judged them. If a wife was accused of crime, she was committed to her husband for judgment. And this was the law even down to the time of Nero, when Pomponia Græcina, charged with embracing a foreign superstition, was "consigned to the adjudication of her husband." A man could even condemn his wife to death for certain offences, such as the violation of her marriage vows, or even for forging false keys in order to steal his wine. At her husband's death, the wife could not claim any of his property if he had bequeathed it to another, even though it were willed to an entire stranger. In this severely disciplined society, the woman never escaped from guardianship. She was looked upon as belonging to the family rather than to the State. The latter consisted only of men, to whom the women were merely necessary accessories. No one thought that a woman possessed any claim or right to independence of individuality. She was always under a master: her father, when she was a girl; her husband, when she was married; and her nearest male relative, if she became a widow. If she obtained any share in her father's property or in that of her husband, she could not transfer or bequeath it without the consent of her male guardian, unless she were a Vestal; nor could she marry without the same consent.

But, however dependent her position may have been, whether maid or matron, the Roman woman was always treated with reverence. The _stola_, the characteristic robe of the matron, corresponding to the toga of the male citizen, always ensured for its wearer respect, it being not merely an article of attire, but also an insignia which could only be retained by strict rectitude of life, market days or assembly days. In the villa--a miserable cabin made of mud, rafters, and branches--not a day, not a moment, was lost. Horace does not draw a more agreeable picture of ancient city manners. He tells us that "at Rome, for a long time a man knew no other pleasure and no other festival than to open his door at dawn, to explain the law to his clients, and to lay out his money on good security. They learned from their elders, and taught beginners, the art of increasing their savings." But when it is remembered that Cato was a sour and miserly Puritan, who adopted austerity as his pose, and that Horace was a poet, not untouched with cynicism, who lived in a society in which the charm of simple enjoyments was entirely forgotten, we may consider both pictures, though from differing causes, slightly overdrawn. Nevertheless they serve to indicate how circumscribed was the life of the wives of the early Romans.

Those strong-minded, intense, practical people were not, however, without their entertainments. Music, both vocal and instrumental, was cultivated. There were religious festivals, in which processions of boys and maidens sang pious hymns. We also learn from Cicero that it was the custom for the guests at a feast to sing the praises of their great men to the sound of the flute. It is easy for us to imagine a home scene in which Veturia, the mother of the youthful Cnæus Martius, tells over again to the inquiring boy those inspiring stories which he has heard chanted by his father's hearth and which are to prepare him to emulate heroic deeds at Corioli and earn for himself an honorable name.

But, habitually solemn and grave as were those old Romans, they were also much addicted to amusements of a coarse and grotesque nature. Even in their religious processions they included monstrous mechanical shapes, with formidable teeth and huge jaws which, by their opening and closing, frightened the women and children, to the great enjoyment of the men. Hideous masks were also worn for the same purpose. In fact, so little refinement characterized the minds of the people of these times, that they could find entertainment in only the rudest and coarsest of jests. Farces, which were nothing more than the absurd antics and personal witticisms of buffoons, had been introduced from Atella. But the beginning of Roman drama may be dated from B.C. 364, when, on account of a pestilence which devastated the city, Etruscan actors were imported to institute scenic games in honor of the gods. The pestilence ended; and consequently the games, being regarded as the efficacious remedy, were retained. These games consisted of combined dances and songs, which were accompanied by appropriate but not altogether proper gestures. Later, there was instituted the floral festival, the purpose of which was to induce the goddess of spring to grant that all the flowers which decked the fields at the time of blossoming should be represented by fruit in the harvest. In these games, dancing girls appeared upon the stage; and we may draw our own conclusions from the fact that in the time of Cato the scene was regarded as too frivolous for the eyes of so grave a personage. But the most popular of all the early festivals was that of Anna Perenna, the goddess of life. In this, restraint was abandoned. To drink extravagantly, and to listen to a recitation of the mistakes of Mars in taking a hideous goddess for the beautiful Minerva, were regarded as works of piety. Young girls were required to sing this story, which was full of the coarsest allusions. But the ancients did not consider the requirements of modesty in the same light as we do. They did not esteem that innocence born of ignorance, in which modern times deem it sacrificed to honor was the signal for the expulsion of tyranny.

It was not alone in the incitement of the populace to measures for her protection that the influence of woman was felt in matters of State. There were occasions when by her means calamities were averted, as well as times when civil strife was for her sake produced. The memory of the good service done for the city by Veturia, the mother, and Volumnia, the wife of Coriolanus, was never allowed to fade.

In the history of this brave and haughty warrior we have a picture of Roman political life. Rough politics they were; rock-faced episodes, befitting the character of the times, in which men knew nothing of _finesse_, and when appeal was made directly from reason to brute force and to the natural feelings of men. Perhaps it would be bordering on literary impiety to think that Shakespeare, in his Coriolanus, has not given the best interpretation possible of this fragment from the old Republic; but it is not one of his greatest pieces, because the material is lacking in those human qualities which are necessary to arouse profound interest. It is a drama with but one motive--filial respect. Yet the most is made of this; and the great dramatist has succeeded in vivifying the principal characters. In the portrayal of the mother of Coriolanus we see a matron who is worthy of such a son; the wife's part is that of passive resignation to the will of stronger spirits. Mrs. Jameson, in her _Characteristics of Women_, says: "In Volumnia, Shakespeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus is the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, and the power she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story, 'she saved Rome and lost her son.' Her lofty patriotism, her patrician haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit, are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor, is without harshness." We may well believe that Veturia--whom, following Plutarch, Shakespeare calls Volumnia--was a woman who could say: "When yet he was tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb ... I was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, whence he returned, his brows bound with oak." And when the wife tremblingly inquires: "But had he died in the business, madam--what then?" it was in the mother to reply: "Then, his good report should have been my son." This is in accord with the Greek historian's statement that Coriolanus fought heroically, not only for glory and the passion of battle, but to win the meed of praise from his mother.

The action in the story of Veturia and her son is entirely political. The balance of power between the patricians and the plebeians was very narrow, especially when hardship aroused the latter to make inquiry into the claims of the former. A famine was more than sufficient to incite the lower order to threaten the privileges of the upper class; and Rome was at that time suffering from a scarcity of corn. The populace was not entirely convinced by Menenius's parable that the whole duty of the patrician order consisted in being the belly of the State organism. The people clamored; their tribunes saw in this an opportunity to gain increased powers; the Senators were inclined to be subservient. But the haughty spirit of Coriolanus would yield nothing of the ancient privileges. For his mother's sake, he sought the consulship; nevertheless, he angered the commons, though he could not gain the office without their suffrages. The stress became so great that his patrician friends could not prevent his exile. He left Rome, only to return to wreak vengeance at the head of a Volscian army. This enemy being already a menace to Rome, the defection of the great leader to their ranks placed the disordered city at their mercy. Then it was that the Romans remembered that though women were incapacitated for political action and were unable to fight, yet they were powerful factors in the appeal to those feelings of the human heart whence flow justice and pity. The arguments of ambassadors and the behests of the priests had not availed; the authorities were constrained to adventure what might be effected by the tears of the women for whom alone, of all that was Roman, Coriolanus retained any regard. His mother and his wife were implored to make the last appeal. This plan had come by inspiration into the mind of Valeria, sister of the great Publicola, as she was praying with the other matrons in the temple of Jupiter. Veturia and Volumnia, leading the two sons of Coriolanus, went forth to the Voiscian camp. As they drew near, Coriolanus, though resolved to remain obdurate, showed himself not lacking in filial respect; he advanced to meet them, ordering the fasces to be lowered in the presence of his mother. The Roman historians clothe Veturia with noble dignity as she makes her appeal. "Before I receive your embrace, let me know if I have come to an enemy or to a son; whether I am in your camp a captive or a mother. Has length of life and a hapless old age reserved me for this--to behold you an exile and an enemy?... So then, had I not been a mother, Rome would not be besieged; had I not a son, I might have died free in a free country." The spirit of this is truly Roman. Even the women were trained to force the claims of blood and the natural affections into a place secondary to the duty of loyalty to the State. This appeal; joined with the embraces of his wife and the lamentations of the other matrons, prevailed over the anger of Coriolanus; and again Rome was saved by the Roman women. As a reward, a monumental temple was erected by the men of the city, and dedicated to Female Fortune.

It was not alone as peacemakers that the Roman matrons served the public interests of the city. On more than one occasion the treasury was rendered efficient by means of their generous contributions. More than once the golden ornaments of the wives became auxiliary to the iron arms of their husbands, and in one instance they accomplished that which the latter could not achieve. When the Gauls burned the city, and were only turned from the citadel by the payment of one thousand pounds of gold, with the sword of Brennus thrown on the Gallic side of the scale to insure good weight, the amount could not have been raised but for the self-sacrifice of the matrons. In gratitude for this, the Conscript Fathers voted that thenceforth funeral orations might be made for women. The gold was afterward repaid to the women out of Etrurian plunder. Again, when, in accordance with the vow of Camillus, a tribute was to be presented to Apollo, the matrons brought what they possessed of the precious metal, it was especially honored by being made into a golden bowl, which was carried to Delphos. On this occasion also they were rewarded; for the Senate conferred on them the privilege of riding to public worship and to the games in covered chariots, and on other errands in open carriages. The historian introduces this latter information with "they say"; whether or not, previous to this, the Roman ladies had been obliged to walk is left to be surmised without further evidence.

Some Idea of what those golden ornaments were may be gathered from the account of a voluntary contribution which was made in Rome at a later period. Funds were required to equip a fleet against Philip of Macedon, the ally of Hannibal. Lævinus the consul, urging upon his fellow Senators the duty to set an example of public generosity, says: "Let us bring into the treasury to-morrow all our gold, silver, and coined brass, each reserving rings for himself, his wife and children, and a bulla for his son; and he who has a wife or daughters, an ounce weight of gold for each. Let those who have sat in a curule chair have the ornaments of a horse, and a pound weight of silver, that they may have a salt-cellar, and a dish for the service of the gods ..." Notwithstanding the fact that, in response to this appeal, the needs of the fleet were abundantly provided for, the indication is that at this period, about B.C. 280, the decorative tastes of the Roman ladies had in no wise acquired that luxuriousness with which they afterward became characterized. There was no ornament so common as the ring, the place of which, in these early times when only one was worn, was the third finger of the left hand. It was used for the purpose of sealing letters and papers, and long before the end of the Republic the custom arose of setting rings with precious stones. Indeed, the people of the early Republic were not unacquainted with most exquisite work of the goldsmiths' art; but there was still prevalent that consciousness of the surpassing value of personal excellences which could afford to be independent of outward adornment, and of which Cornelia's reference to her sons as her jewels was a surviving echo.

But the times were soon to change. Hitherto we have seen the Roman matrons living the simple, diligent, unsophisticated lives of women who were fitting mates for men who held to the plow for support, but dared not let drop the sword. Until then, Rome had been nothing but a city struggling for existence--sometimes a precarious existence. Instances there were when her fortunes waned almost to the vanishing point; when the tide of progress seemed to hang at the ebb. The god of victory, though honored as the tutelary deity of Rome, was frequently partial to her Italian neighbors; her walls were entered and her houses razed by the barbarian Gauls; and once she was at the point of being deserted by her citizens, the majority of whom could hardly be restrained by the ideals of religion from removing the State and the Capitol to Veii. Yet her star of empire persisted and, despite temporary eclipses, remained in the ascendant.

How did those centuries of varying civic fortune affect the status of the women? They were, by the necessities of their circumstances, trained to endure hardship. The temple of Janus was never closed, for warfare was unceasing; and it was usual for the widow's wailing death dirge to be embittered by the fact that the husband had been slain in his strength and prime. Slavery and outrage, the concomitants of barbarous warfare, were always included within the possibilities of a Roman matron's fate. Under such circumstances civilization necessarily advanced slowly; it is only as life and liberty and leisure are secured that existence can acquire the social graces. Hence the probability is that, during the first two and a half centuries of the Republic,--that is, until Rome was fully launched upon her career of conquest,--the position and the habits and manner of life of the women did not greatly change. It is true that there was a continuous internal development of the State; but this manifested itself in an accentuation of those laws which reveal the hardness of the old Roman character, rather than in any tendency toward the easement of the individual lives of the citizens. Never has personal privilege been so completely subjugated to State prerogative. The laws, which were rigidly--even slavishly--interpreted according to the letter and never according to the spirit, considered the individual from the standpoint of his value to the State, and rarely from that of his own rights. The woman's value to the State was entirely submerged in that of her husband. Therefore, we find that it was only with the greatest difficulty that edicts granting privileges to woman could be passed, unless it were in payment for some special act of loyalty on her part to the State. Hard and inflexible in their ideas of life were those old Romans, practical and unsentimental in their relations with each other, narrow in their conceptions, proud to arrogance of their State, and reverencing only their institutions.

But in course of time they broke through their insularity with the force of their own arms. Victorious contact with other States gave them a larger acquaintance with the fruits of civilization, and the spoils of conquest afforded them the means to enjoy it. Hence, during the latter half of the republican period we see life in Rome rapidly undergoing a change. As typical of this new state of things, as it affected the character, status, and condition of women, there is only one woman whom we need to select. In Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus and the wife of Sempronius Gracchus, is found the ideal of Roman femininity of that day. She was in every way worthy of her patrician ancestry, which had produced a greater number of eminent men than any other family, twenty-one consulships being held by the Cornelii in eighty-six years. Cornelia lived in a Rome which we can understand and appreciate; we begin to recognize social features upon which the imagination can lay hold and from them piece together some idea of the reality. Hitherto the data has been too foreign and too meagre for any great success in this; but when we read of Cornelia providing herself with a country house, riding to public worship, listening to the gossip of her friends respecting each other's jewelry, and interesting herself in Greek literature, we discover that the main features of a Roman matron's life were not essentially dissimilar from those which characterize polite feminine society in our own time. Indeed, there is more to evoke our sympathetic appreciation in the Rome of B.C. 150 than in the Europe of A.D. 1000 or in the Asiatic civilizations of to-day. We feel more at home in the patrician villas than in the mediæval castles; just as we find more that is applicable to modern life in the Roman poets than we do in the bards of chivalry. In studying the period when the ancient civilization of Italy was at its best, we discover habits of thought, bits of life, and social customs, which really startle us with their similitude to those to which we ourselves are accustomed.

The city, in the time of Cornelia, showed few outward signs of the magnificence it was to acquire under the emperors. The houses were mostly of brick, though domestic architecture had become quite ambitious in its character, Cornelia herself having built, as has been said, a very expensive villa at Misenum; those of the wealthy were filled with costly furniture and precious works of art, which the Romans first learned to admire in the countries which they subdued; and having acquired a taste for beautiful things, they made no scruple of appropriating them. Rome had now grown wealthy with the spoils of her extensive victories, and, as always comes to pass with the advent of riches, there had been brought about a great differentiation in the condition of the population. Polybius gives us a picture of the extravagant style in which Æmilia, the mother of Cornelia, appeared in public. "When she left home to go to the temple," says he, "she seated herself in a glittering chariot, herself attired with extreme luxury. Before her were carried with solemn ceremony the vases of gold and silver required for the sacrifice, and a numerous train of slaves and servants accompanied her." And this notwithstanding the Oppian law, which limited matrons to a half-ounce of gold on their wearing apparel and prohibited them from riding in carriages in the city, and which had not yet been repealed. As this modish lady passed through the streets of Rome with her brilliant retinue, exciting the envy of other matrons, and bestowing gracious recognition upon white-robed, stately patricians, she must have beheld as many signs of abject, suffering poverty as are prevalent in our own great cities. By this time, the plebeian order had been raised to equal legal privilege with the patrician, and society had now come to be divided into the enormously rich and the extremely poor. The former rendered their position secure by means of extortion in the provinces; the condition of the latter was made hopeless by the fact that all labor was performed by slaves. A state of things unknown to the old times was now prevalent in Rome: men and women were idle, willingly or perforce, according to their circumstances.