Part 9

We do not, however, mean to allege that with the greater privileges and increased freedom which entered into woman's life the old virtues and time-honored excellences entirely disappeared. As Cornelia graced with her learning and dignity the Rome of Cato's day, so did Cæcilia with her charity and her goodness the Rome of Cicero. That orator was undoubtedly prejudiced in her favor on account of the great kindness she showed to Roscius, his client; but he could not have eulogized this matron as he did, had not public opinion concurred with him in setting her up as a model for all other women. "An incomparable woman," her accomplished relations had no less honor conferred on them by her character than she received by their dignity. Thus an unbroken chain of noble-minded matrons may be traced through the darkest days of Rome's decadent morality. Nevertheless, though virtue did not cease to be exemplified by the few, or to be extolled by the writers, the growing depravity of the times made it constantly easier for unprincipled and impudent women to find their conduct accepted as the ordinary rule of life.

One chief cause--perhaps it is more correct to call it an accompaniment--of the breaking-down of the ancient ideals is found in the increasing tendency to deprecate the indissolubleness of marital bonds. Divorce became common and easy, so that the student of Roman biography finds it increasingly difficult to trace his characters through the many involutions of their various matrimonial alliances. Pompey married five times. Concerning his first two wives, Plutarch makes the following comment: "Sylla, admiring the valor and conduct of Pompey, ... sought means to attach him to himself by some personal alliance, and his wife Metella joining in his wishes, they persuaded Pompey to put away Antistia, and marry Æmilia, the stepdaughter of Sylla, she being at that very time the wife of another man, living with him, and with child by him. These were the very tyrannies of marriage, and much more agreeable to the times under Sylla than to the nature and habits of Pompey, that Æmilia, great with child, should be, as it were, ravished from the embraces of another for him, and that Antistia should be divorced with dishonor and misery by him for whose sake she had just before been bereft of her father--for Antistius was murdered in the Senate because he was suspected to be a favorer of Sylla for Pompey's sake. Antistia's mother, likewise, after she had seen all these indignities, made away with herself, a new calamity to be added to the tragic accompaniments of this marriage; and that there might be nothing wanting to complete them, Æmilia herself died, almost immediately after entering Pompey's house, in childbed."

Down to a very late date, a divorce is not met with in the annals of Rome; but with what unconcern the undoing of the marriage knot came to be regarded is well illustrated in the life of Cato the Younger. Attilia, his first wife, was put away for misconduct. Then he married Marcia, against whose reputation no blighting wind of scandal ever raged. Among the dearest friends of her husband was Hortensius, known as a man of good position and excellent character. Evidently, as the sequel shows, in all seriousness he sought to persuade Cato that the latter's daughter Portia, who was married to a man to whom she had borne two children, might be given to him. His argument was that she, as a fair plot of land, ought to bear fruit; but that it was not right that one man should be provided with a larger family than he could support, while another had none. Cato answered that he loved Hortensius very well, and much approved of uniting their houses; but he could not approve of forcibly taking away his daughter from her husband. Then Hortensius was bold enough to request that Cato, who, he thought, had enough children, should relinquish to him his own wife. Cato, seeing that he was in earnest, consented to do this, stipulating first that his wife's father should be consulted. No objection being raised in that quarter, a marriage was performed between Marcia and Hortensius, Cato assisting at the ceremony. In all this there is no mention made of Marcia's consent being given or even asked. Some years afterward, Cato, wanting someone to keep his house and take care of his daughters, took Marcia again, Hortensius being now dead and having left her all his estate. Cæsar, upon this, reproached Cato with covetousness; "for," he said, "if he had need of a wife, why did he part with her? And if he had not, why did he take her again? unless he gave her only as a bait to Hortensius, and lent her when she was young, to have her again when she was rich." The historian answers this by quoting the verse of Euripides:

"'To speak of mysteries-the chief of these Surely were cowardice in Hercules.'

"For," he says, "it were much the same thing to reproach Hercules for cowardice and to accuse Cato of covetousness." The explanation of this singular action, the cold nature which Cato inherited from his grandfather the Censor being taken into consideration, seems to lie in the fact that the Roman idea of the necessary guardianship over women precluded any just conception of their rights in the disposal of their own persons. The giving and the taking of a woman in marriage was wholly the business of her father and her suitor; nothing was required of her in the transaction save thankful obedience. Cato was perfectly at liberty to give away his wife, if he so desired; this right was guaranteed to him by the simple fact that she was his property.

For the same reason, while chastity on the part of the wife was regarded as an absolute essential, the same virtue was by no means considered as necessary to the good character of the man. The demand for purity in the wife was largely based on the idea of proprietary rights which the husband had in her person; hence the man could divorce the woman for infidelity, but the reverse was not conceded. Plautus introduces upon the stage two matrons, one of whom complains of her husband, and the other consoles and exhorts her thus: "Listen to me. Do not quarrel with your husband; let him love whom, and let him do what, he pleases, since you have everything you want at home; keep in mind the fearful sentence: 'Begone, woman!'"

The new era which had dawned in Rome brought a certain freedom of circumstances and activity within the reach of women; but it did not give them in the marriage contract any more liberty than they had of old. The only women who were allowed the disposal of their own persons were the courtesans. There are many evidences that these were not regarded with the disrespect in which their class is held in modern times. For an example, Flora, who was famous in the last days of the Republic, received on account of her exquisite beauty the high honor of having her statue dedicated to the temple of Castor and Pollux; which may be regarded as a kind of precedent for artists who in an Italy of a much later date employed their mistresses as models for their Madonnas. That this class of women did not hesitate to place a high value upon themselves is proved by the instance of Tertia, to whom Verres presented a Sicilian city. Lucretius speaks of the cost of their favors, giving us also an interesting picture of the gayly dressed wanton:

"Amply though endowed. His wealth decays, his debts with speed augment, The post of duty never fills he more, And all his sick'ning reputation dies. Meanwhile rich unguents from his mistress laugh, Laugh from her feet sott Sicyon's shoes superb; The green-rayed emerald o'er her, dropt in gold, Gleams large and numerous; and the sea-blue silk; Deep-worn, enclasps her. What his sires amassed Now flaunts in ribbands, in tiaras flames Full o'er her front, and now to robes converts Of Chian loose, or Alidonian mould; While feasts and festivals of boundless pomp, And costliest viands, garlands, odors, wines, And scattered roses ceaseless are renewed."

The Voconian law, which had been enacted in the days of the elder Cato, the purpose of which was the prevention of large accumulations of property in female hands, did not prevent women from becoming rich in the manner suggested above. A man might give away all his property while alive; the law only vetoed excessive legacies. By its provisions, no woman was allowed to receive by inheritance property exceeding the value of one hundred thousand sesterces. "Since with the growing power of the Empire the riches of private persons were increasing, fear was felt lest the minds of women, being rather inclined by nature to luxury and the pursuit of a more elegant routine of life, and deriving from unbounded wealth incentives to desire, should fall into immoderate expenses and luxury, and should subsequently chance to depart from the ancient sanctity of manners, so that there would be a change of morals no less than of the manner of living." These were the reasons for the enactment of this measure. It was the kind of law which was dear to the heart of the Censor, and it was with great delight that he lent his aid to its passage. The people were a little doubtful as to its justice; but Cato put an end to all hesitation by inveighing, with his usual asperity, against the tyranny of women and their insufferable insolence when opulent. He complained that oftentimes, when they brought a rich dowry to their husbands, they kept back a large part of the money, and then made loans to their husbands as though these were mere debtors. The historian says that this assertion, enforced with a loud voice and good lungs, moved the people to indignation, and they voted to pass the law. It was exceedingly characteristic of the sentiments of the ancient Romans to be convinced by Cato as he strenuously objected to that in women which he strongly advocated as a rule for men.

There are two feminine names which, though belonging to women who were contemporaries, well represent different aspects of the transition from the old Rome of uncultured simplicity to the new Rome of immoral refinement. One is Cornelia, who was the fifth wife of Pompey the Great; the other is Clodia, the sister of Clodius the Turbulent. One conjoined the new learning with the ancient purity of life, the other united luxurious living with an abandoned career; one was a worthy successor of her worthy namesake of a former generation, the other was a forerunner of the amazing female characters of the most depraved days of the Empire.

Cornelia, like the mother of the Gracchi, belonged to the renowned family of the Scipios. Though but a very young woman when she was married to Pompey, she had already been the wife of that son of Crassus who was slain in Parthia. That her first marriage was a happy one may be argued from the fact that when Pompey fell into misfortune, and she, for some sentimental reason, imagined herself as uniting him to woes which rightly belonged to her own fate, she reproached herself for not having followed the husband of her youth in his death, as she had designed.

Plutarch informs us that the young lady possessed other attractions besides those of youth and beauty. She was highly educated, as might be expected in a daughter of Metellus Scipio; she was an accomplished performer upon the lute; she understood geometry, and was accustomed to listen with profit and appreciation to lectures on philosophy. The historian takes great satisfaction in informing us also that, with all this, she had escaped that pretentiousness and unamiability which too frequently spoiled the effect of learning in women of unusual acquirements.

Owing to the terrible civil strife which afflicted Rome in the last days of the Republic, and to Pompey's leading share in it, Cornelia's home was frequently the martial camp of her husband. The Empire of Rome had grown to be the whole extent of civilization, and Cornelia's learning found ample opportunity, through her travels, to become reinforced by that liberality of mind which is the result of wide observation. She appears to have gained the high regard of her husband's army; for once, after a struggle with Cæsar, in which Pompey was for the moment victorious, some of the soldiers, of their own accord, sailed to Lesbos to carry to her the joyful tidings that the war was ended. Her pleasure in this news was of short duration; for it was soon to be her unhappy lot to accompany her husband to Egypt, in his flight from the all-subduing Cæsar. There she witnessed his assassination by the perfidious hands from which he sought protection.

It is unfortunate that the after career of Cornelia is lost sight of by history; but even this silence in a manner speaks in her favor; for, while the natural nobility of her character could not suffer by the quenching of the strong light which shone around Pompey, there is some warrant for assurance, in the very fact that her doings were not the subject of comment, that her life continued honorable.

Clodia was a woman of altogether different character. She was of the great Claudian _gens_; and no member of that powerful family ever lived so quietly as not to be the subject of discourse in Rome. To be one of the Claudii meant to be impetuous and dominant, either in good or in evil. It was a Vestal of this family who, when her father was refused a triumph by the Roman people, placed herself in his chariot so as to prevent his being interrupted in his progress through the city. Clodia, studied from the point of heredity, might have been either good or bad; but she would have contravened all precedents in her family had she not been extreme in one or the other. As it was, she made a fitting sister for that Clodius who stormed in Rome during the days of Cicero and kept the city by the ears, both on account of his ambitions and his ill-considered exploits.

Clodia was married to Quintus Metellus, to whom Cicero affords a most honorable tribute; but she did not allow the fact of her marriage to place any restraint upon the licentiousness of her conduct. Her luxurious house by the Tiber was a meeting place, not for men of learning, but for all the idle, fashionable, and dissolute young men of the city. Her reputation has been pilloried forever by the eloquent advocate in his defence of Marcus Coelius. This young man was accused of having attempted to poison Clodia, in order to rid himself of the necessity of paying back some gold he was said to have borrowed from her. The real truth appears to be that this prosecution was mainly instituted by Clodia, who considered herself slighted by Coelius, who had been her lover, but whose ardor was waning. The character and manner of life of this irrepressible young Roman matron may be gathered from the following arraignment of her in Cicero's oration. "If I am to proceed in the old-fashioned way and manner of pleading, then I must summon up from the Shades below one of those bearded old men,--not men with those little bits of imperials which she takes such a fancy to, but a man with that long, shaggy beard which we see on the ancient statues and images,--to reproach the woman, and to speak in my stead, lest she by any chance get angry with me. Let, then, some one of her own family rise up, and above all others that great blind Claudius of old time. For he will feel the least grief, inasmuch as he will not see her. And, in truth, if he can come forth from the dead, he will deal with her thus; he will say: 'Woman, what have you to do with Coelius? Why have you been so intimate with him as to lend him gold, or so much an enemy as to fear his poison? Was he a relation? A connection? Was he a friend of your husband? Nothing of the sort. What was the reason, then, except some folly? Even if the images of us, the men of your family, had no influence over you, did not even my own daughter, that celebrated Claudia Quinta, admonish you to emulate the praise belonging to our house from the glory of its women? Did not that Vestal Claudia recur to your mind, who embraced her father while celebrating his triumph, and prevented his being dragged from his chariot by a hostile tribune of the people? Why had the vices of your brother more weight with you than the virtues of your father, of your grandfather, and others In regular descent ever since my own time--virtues exemplified not only in the men, but also in the women? Was it for this that I broke the treaty which was concluded with Pyrrhus, that you should every day make new treaties of most disgraceful love? Was it for this I made the Appian Way, that you should travel along it escorted by other men besides your husband?'"

This reincarnation of the severe old ancestor ought to have been sufficient to strike terror and repentance into any woman's heart. But Cicero was more concerned with exonerating Coelius than he was about reforming Clodia, and doubtless he had more hope of convicting her of being a follower of undue courses than he had of converting her from her ways. So he goes on: "But if you wish me to deal more courteously with you, I will put away that harsh and almost boorish old man; and out of these kinsmen of yours here present I will take some one, and, before all, I will select your youngest brother, who is one of the best-bred men of his class, who is exceedingly fond of you, and who, on account of some childish timidity, I suppose, and some groundless fears of what may happen by night, always, when he was but a little boy, slept with you, his eldest sister. Suppose, then, that he speaks to you in this way: 'What are you making this disturbance about, my sister? Why are you so mad? You saw a young man become your neighbor; his fair complexion, his height, his countenance, and his eyes made an impression on you; you wished to see him oftener; you were sometimes seen in the same gardens with him, being a woman of high rank; you are unable with all your riches to detain him, the son of a thrifty and parsimonious father. He rejects you, he does not think your presents worth so much as you require of him. Try someone else. You have gardens on the Tiber, and you carefully made them in that particular spot to which all the youths of the city come to bathe. From that spot you may every day pick out people to suit you. Why do you annoy this one man who scorns you?'"

If the orator was just in all that he insinuates against her, Clodia, the wealthy, fashionable, and doubtless beautiful daughter of the great patrician family, was well qualified to be the high priestess of Aphrodite for the city of Rome.

V

ROMAN MARRIAGE

The position of woman in ancient Rome was always one of honor and respect. A Roman matron enjoyed many more social privileges and a much greater independence than did the Greek wife. In Athens the women were treated as children; and the more respectable their character, the more completely were they shut out from the social life and the public amusements of the men. In Rome, on the contrary, though the wife was subordinate to her husband and, as a rule, did not make herself conspicuous in public affairs, she was in no way secluded, and was everywhere treated with the highest respect. In the home, she was the mistress of the whole household economy, supervising the instruction of the children and governing the domestic slaves. She stood side by side with her husband, sharing in all his dignities, and in all matters pertaining to the family wielding an authority second only to his. Somewhere between the civilizations of Greece and Rome was the boundary line, starting from which the status of woman degraded to the Oriental or developed into the Occidental type. In the one case, subject to the jealous veil, the espionage of eunuch slaves, the debasing, soul-benumbing servilities of the harem; in the other, living in the open, the sole mate of one man, and, subject to her husband alone, clothed with all authority in her home. While Greece looked to the East, and subjected her women to some of those customs which characterized the harems of Babylon, Rome was essentially Western, and its women enjoyed a goodly portion of dignity and honor. Both Greeks and Romans were of the same branch of the great Aryan race, and the indications are that in the earliest times their women enjoyed equal freedom; but Greece, to a certain extent, fell under the influence of Semitic ideas, which saw in the wife a voluptuous possession to be jealously guarded. The Roman woman, on the other hand, was taught to prize and protect her own virtue.

The comparatively free and respected position of the matrons of republican Rome accounts in no small degree for the glory and greatness of the State. Where woman is treated as a slave, there is no genuine love of liberty. Great men can only be born of noble mothers; and nobility, feminine as well as masculine, can only flourish in freedom. Veturia and Cornelia were mistresses in their homes; they knew no restraint in their goings save the requirements of honor, they were respected by their husbands and reverenced by all men; therefore, in ways natural to such mothers, they were able to fit their sons for deeds worthy of men.

In the Roman house there were no secluded women's quarters corresponding to those of eastern nations; and the Roman women walked abroad, frequented the public theatres, and took their places at festive banquets with the men, Conelius Nepos, writing on this subject, says: "What Roman is ashamed to bring his wife to a feast; and does she not occupy the best room in the house, and live in the midst of company? But in Greece the case is far otherwise; for a wife is neither admitted to a feast, except among relations, nor does she sit anywhere but in the innermost apartment of the house, which is called the gynæconitis, and into which nobody goes who is not connected with her by near relationship." The most important room in the Roman house was the atrium. Here, in the midst of her slaves, the mistress pursued her domestic occupations; here was placed the _lectus genialis_ or _adversus_, in ancient times the real, afterward the symbolical, bridal bed, her own proper seat of honor.

Notwithstanding this independent position of the women, Roman marriage, if it be judged by the strict letter of its laws and customs, was not very indulgent to the weaker sex. But, as we have indicated in preceding chapters, the power of the father of the family was much greater in theory than it was in reality. Roman wedlock was of two kinds: _matrimonium justum_ and _non justum;_ that is, marriage in due form, and marriage without the perfect ceremonies. The first required the right on either side to fulfil a lawful marriage according to the ancient rites. In the earliest times, equality of condition was demanded, patricians and plebeians being allowed to marry only in their own class. After B.C. 445, this restriction was removed; but it was still necessary that both parties to the contract should be citizens. But even in cases where the ancient rites were not permitted, marriage, if it took place, was regarded as none the less lawful and binding. Among the Romans, first cousins were not allowed to marry, though in the days of the emperors the restrictions of consanguinity were not strictly adhered to; Agrippina was married to Claudius, who was her uncle.