Part 8

It was doubtless this oppression that was responsible for a startling epidemic of husband-poisoning in the fourth century before Christ. The women who prepared the drugs were betrayed by a maid, and one hundred and seventy matrons--some of them patricians--were found guilty. The leaders were forced to take their own poisons, and died with the calmness of Stoics. Two hundred years afterward there was another epidemic of the same sort, and many eminent men paid the penalty of their cruelties with their lives. This mode of redressing wrongs became too common to be passed to the account of individual crime. It was the protest of helpless ignorance that had found no other weapon.

About this time, however, the Roman matrons took a more civilized and rational method of asserting their rights. It was an innovation to claim any, but they were too proud to accept the hopeless vassalage of the Athenian woman. Indignant at the inferiority of their condition, without recourse or refuge against cruelty and injustice, hampered by needless and petty restrictions, they rebelled at last.

III

One sees little clearly through the mists of two thousand years, and we know few details of what seems to have been the first concerted revolt on the part of women. The visible cause was a trivial one, but it was the proverbial last drop, and served at least to bring dismay into the councils of men, and afterward, possibly, reflection. The Roman woman was patriotic and quite ready, at need, to give all and ask nothing. When money was required to carry on the Punic wars, she poured out her jewels and personal treasures with lavish generosity; nor did she murmur when the Oppian law decreed that she must no longer wear purple or many-colored robes, that her gold ornaments must weigh no more than half an ounce, and that she must walk if she went out, as the use of a carriage in the city was a forbidden luxury. These were small privileges, but they were about all she had, and when the crisis was past, she asked a repeal of the decree. She met the usual rebuff of those who seek to regain a lost point. Men saw in such a request only an “irruption of female emancipators,” dangerous alike to religion and the State. Cato, the austere, refused a petition which he regarded as a subversion of order and a rebellion against lawful masters. He said that the claim of women to any rights or any voice in public affairs was a proof that men had lost their majesty as well as their authority; such a thing could not have happened if each one had kept his own wife in proper subjection. “Our privileges,” he continues, “overpowered at home by female contumacy, are, even here in the forum, spurned and trodden under foot”; indeed, he begins to fear that “the whole race of males may be utterly destroyed by a conspiracy of women.” He rails at the matrons, who throng the forum, for “running into public and addressing other women’s husbands.” It “does not concern them what laws are passed or repealed.” He bewails the “good old days” when women were forced to obey their fathers, brothers, or husbands. “Now they are so lost to a sense of decency as to ask favors of other men.” “Women,” he says, “bear law with impatience.” They long for liberty, which is not good for them. With all the old restrictions, it is difficult to keep them within bounds. “The moment they have arrived at equality they will be our superiors”--a dangerous admission surely. He calls the affair a sedition, an insurrection, a secession of women.

But the matrons had some able defenders. Lucius Valerius, who had asked the repeal of this obnoxious law, spoke for them. He objects to calling a natural request by such hard names, and quotes from antiquity to prove that it is not a new thing for Roman matrons to come out in public, as they have often done so in the interest of the State, and “always to its advantage.” He recalls the various times when they saved Rome, and refers to the generosity with which they invariably responded to a call for help. No one objected when they appeared for the general good; why should they be censured when they asked a favor for themselves? In reply to the accusation of extravagance, he says: “When you wear purple on your own robe, why will you not permit your wife a purple mantle?”... “Will you spend more on your horse than on your wife?” Then he asks why women who have always been noted for modesty should lose it now through the repeal of a law that has not been in existence more than twenty years. One is tempted to quote at length from these speeches, because they show us how the Romans discussed certain questions that are familiar to-day. To be sure, it was only a woman’s privilege of dressing as she chose that they were considering, but it really involved her right to ask anything which her lord and master did not freely accord. We hear practically the same arguments, the same fears, the same special pleadings on both sides, at each new step in the social advancement of women.

The Roman matrons, however, were not discouraged by criticism. They flocked to the forum in greater numbers than ever. Women came in from the towns and villages to aid them. The senators were so astounded at their audacity that they solemnly implored the gods to reveal the nature of the omen. They stigmatized the leaders as “androgynes” or “he-women,” a term of contempt so freely applied in this country, less than fifty years ago, to those who bravely presented the claims of their sex to larger consideration, and who, silver-haired and venerable, are so widely honored to-day. We do not hear that there were any congresses or conventions, but these Roman ladies held meetings, went into the streets for votes, and appealed to nobles, officials, and strangers alike. They sought the tribunes in their houses, and used all their arts of persuasion. There were fair-minded men then as now, and the spirited rebels won their cause, though Cato revenged himself for his defeat by imposing a heavy tax on the dress, ornaments, and carriages of women. It is said that they put on their gay robes and jewels at once, and celebrated their victory by dancing in the legislative halls.

Not far from this time, possibly a little before, a dowry was set apart for women. But there was a growing jealousy of their increasing independence, and, a few years later, it was proposed to take away from them the right of inheritance. It was feared that too much property might fall into their hands, as had been the case in Sparta; also, that their taste for elegant living might lead to degeneracy of manners and morals. The irrepressible Cato again came to the front and declaimed against the arrogance and tyranny of rich women. After bringing their husbands a large dowry, he said, they even had the presumption to retain some of their own money for themselves and ask payment if they lent it to their masters! Men could not be expected to tolerate such insufferable insolence on the part of their “reserved slaves.” And so the decree was passed. But it was more honored in the breach than in the observance, and became a dead letter, as men themselves thought it unjust.

How far the gradual change in the laws was due to the efforts of women and how far to the justice of men, it is not easy to determine; but the astonished attitude of the latter when they felt that their time-honored supremacy was in peril shows better than anything else the real significance of the movement which was precipitated by so slight a cause. It is quite safe to say that without an emphatic protest there would have been no thought of justice. Traditions are only broken from the inside where they press heavily. In this case it was a daring and unheard-of thing to run against the current of centuries of passive submission; but “it is the first step that costs.” When the right of being heard had been once asserted, grave statesmen and jurists took up the matter and solved it as best they could, with an evident desire to be just and kind, as they understood it. It could hardly be expected that half of the human family would voluntarily relinquish the absolute ownership of the other half, or even believe it to be good for the other half that they should do so. Men are not so constituted. The institutions and customs that had come to them from their fathers they felt bound to pass on, as far as possible, intact. Besides, all vital changes must be slow, unless they are to be chaotic. But the leaven of a new intelligence worked surely, if not swiftly.

The masses of the Roman women never passed out of a condition which we should call subjection, though they did secure at last the use of their own fortunes, relative freedom in the marriage contract, and a certain protection against money-hunting and spendthrift husbands. In the reign of Augustus the wife was given a guaranty for her own property, and the husband was forbidden to alienate the dowry. The mother was in a measure freed from oppressive guardianship, which later ceased altogether. Under Hadrian she was permitted to make a will without consulting any one, also to inherit from her sons. In many regards the Romans after the Antonines were more just to women than are most of the civilized nations of to-day. But these changes were the work of centuries, and it is possible here to touch only upon a few essential points.

There was a second revolt more than a hundred years after the first, when the triumvirs levied on the rich women of Rome a tax which compelled many of them to sacrifice their jewels. They appealed to Octavia to use her influence, also to the able mother of Antony, both of whom favored them; but his wife, the Fulvia of unpleasant fame, treated them with intolerable rudeness. Again they thronged the forum; but they had made vast strides in intelligence, and this time the eloquent daughter of a famous orator was chosen to plead for them. It was no longer a simple matter of personal injustice, but also a moral question upon which thoughtful women had distinct opinions and the ability to express them. Hortensia spoke for peace. “Do not ask us,” she says, “to contribute to the fratricidal war that is rending the Republic.” Her appeal for justice recalls a plea so often heard to-day, in a form that is but slightly altered. “Why should we pay taxes,” she says, “when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the statecraft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful results?... When have taxes ever been imposed on women?” Quintilian refers to this address of a brilliant matron as worthy to be read for its excellence, and “not merely as an honor to her sex.”

These spirited and high-born women were sent home, as the others had been, but the people again came to their aid, and it was found best to limit the tax to a few who could bear the burden easily.

IV

But the most serious conflict was on the marriage question. The attitude of the Roman man has been already touched upon--an attitude as old as the world. In theory, a woman might be as chaste as Lucretia, as wise as Minerva, as near to divinity as the Vestals; in fact, she was only the servant of men’s interests or passions, and when she ceased to be a willing or at least a passive one, the trouble began. So long as marriage gave a man added dignity and somebody to rule over, with no special obligations that were likely to be inconvenient, or that could not be shaken off at will, things went smoothly enough on his side. But when he had to deal with a being who demanded some consideration, perhaps some sacrifice, it was another affair. His privileges were seriously curtailed. If he married wealth, it was quite possible for the owner to become imperious and exacting, as it was not so easy to put away a wife when one must return her fortune. “I have sold my authority for the dowry I have accepted,” says Plautus. As to marrying from inclination, a man had little more freedom of action than a maiden, while his father lived. If he was a patrician he must marry within a limited class, much as he might like to go outside of it; and so long as this law continued to exist, the penalty for violating it was too severe to be braved. Besides, there were cares and restrictions in the marriage relation for pleasure-loving men. Wives without fortunes might be less exacting, but they were more expensive, which was worse, since men preferred to spend their money on themselves--a state of affairs toward which a certain class is rapidly drifting to-day, if it is not there already. Statesmen began to be alarmed. “If it were possible to do without wives, great cares would be spared us,” said Metellus in an address to the Senate; “but since nature has decreed that we cannot live without a wife, nor comfortably with one, let us bear the burden manfully, and look to the perpetuity of the State rather than to our own satisfaction.” It never seems to have occurred to these consistent descendants of Adam to consider the burdens of the woman at all. On her side, a rich woman hesitated to take a master, if she was independent enough to have any choice, which was rare, and without a dowry she was quite sure of finding a capricious one, who would not scruple to neglect her. Some guaranties she must have, and these men did not like to give. So men and women alike combined against the existing order of things, men for the right to do precisely as they pleased, women for the right of choice in husbands and of breaking chains when they became intolerable.

It has often been stated, by moralists over-anxious to make out a case, that this aversion to marriage, on the part of men, was due to the laxity of women. Of this I do not find any evidence. It was due in part to the restrictions already mentioned, and in part to the increasing luxury which, added to the long habit of absolute power, led to impatience of any domestic obligations, and a riot of the senses, as it has always done, before and since. Besides, there were the brilliant Oriental women who began to flock to Rome, bringing with them Hellenic tastes, with subtle fascinations that stole away the hearts of men and threatened a state of affairs similar to that which existed in Athens. This the spirited Roman women could not tolerate. To be thrust by strangers into a secondary place was not to be thought of by these proud patricians, who refused to put themselves in a position where such neglect was possible. They began to realize that the old virtues did not suffice to hold men’s wandering fancies. It was very well to carve on a woman’s tombstone, as a last word of praise, an epitaph like this: “Gentle in words, graceful in manner; she loved her husband devotedly; she kept her house, she spun wool.” But what availed it when this husband left her to the companionship of her duties and her virtues, while he gave what he called his affections to those who had fewer virtues and more accomplishments? It was not laxity of morals, but lack of intelligence and culture, that stood in the way of the Roman woman in the days when Greek literature, Greek art, and Greek refinement first came into fashion. That she protested against traditions which made it superfluous, if not dangerous, to cultivate her intellect, may fairly be assumed. But she had a powerful ally. On this point the Romans showed far more wisdom than the Greeks. When they saw their own daughters set aside for these fascinating rivals, they began to educate them.

Just when the movement toward things of the intellect began among Roman women, it is difficult to determine with any exactness. It was after the Eastern wars and probably about the time of the first revolt. It had not been long since men began to catch the spirit of Greek culture. For five hundred years after the foundation of Rome there was not a book written, nor even a poem or a song. As soon as men began to study and think, women were disposed to do the same thing. If they could not well fight, they had the ability to learn. The pretensions of sex were not emphasized, but individual attainment was not without recognition. We begin to find women who were noted not only for strength, wisdom, and administrative ability, but for literary taste and culture. The austere virtues of Cornelia, who lived in the second century before our era, are among the familiar facts of history. She has been often quoted as the supreme exemplar of the crowning grace of womanhood, and we know that she was honored at her death with a statue dedicated to the “Mother of the Gracchi.” Of her refinement, knowledge, and love of letters, less has been said, but it was largely because of these that she was able to train great sons. Cicero, who pronounced her letters among the purest specimens of style extant in his time, dwells upon the fact that these sons were educated in the purity and elegance of their mother’s language. Quintilian says that the “mother, whose learned letters have come down to posterity, contributed greatly to their eloquence.” Her passion for Hellenic poetry and philosophy was well known. It was a part of her heritage from her father, the illustrious Scipio, a great general with the tastes and abilities of a great scholar. Cato found fault with him and said he must be brought down to republican equality. This fiery radical and economist, who hated luxury, reviled women who had opinions, preached morals which he did not possess, whipped his slaves if anything was lost or spoiled, sold them at auction when they were sick or old, and put them to death if they did not please him,--this censor who was so generally disagreeable that when he died a wit said, “Pluto dreaded to receive him because he was always ready to bite,”--could not tolerate a man of refinement who shaved every day and patronized Greek learning, whatever glory he might reflect on his country. We do not know what he said about Cornelia, but it may be imagined, as he was the determined adversary of feminine culture.

The woman who brought up the Gracchi, and was so proud to show these “jewels” to her finery-loving friends, was no pedant, but in her last desolate years, when she was left alone with all her tragical memories, her hospitable home at Misenum was a center for learned Greeks and men of intellectual distinction. She was a woman of great force of character, and the composure with which she bore her misfortune, and talked of the deeds and sufferings of her sons, was sometimes thought to show a lack of sensibility. Plutarch, with his usual insight and cordial appreciation of women, said it indicated rather a lack of understanding on the part of the critics that they did not know the value of “a noble mind and liberal education” in supporting their possessor under sorrow and calamity. This heroic mother of heroic sons, who “refused Ptolemy and a crown,” was the first Roman matron of distinguished intellectual attainments of whom we have any definite knowledge, and the finest feminine representative of her age. Within the next century there were many others more or less prominent in social life.

With the advance in education many of the obstacles to marriage were removed, and the dangers that had lurked in the ignorance of Athenian women were averted. But the problem never ceased to be a troublesome one. With the increase of wealth men grew more self-indulgent, and less inclined to incur obligations of any sort. The despair of Augustus had its humorous side. He exhausted his wit in devising means to induce men to marry. In vain he gave honor and freedom to the married, exacted fresh penalties from bachelors, who were forbidden to receive bequests, and made laws against immorality. Fathers had precedence everywhere--in affairs, at the theater, in public offices. “For less rewards than these thousands would lose their lives,” he said. “Can they not tempt a Roman citizen to marry a wife?” Some who wished the privileges without the troubles compromised the matter by entering into formal contracts with children four or five years of age. Others took a wife for a year to comply with the law, and then dismissed her.

It is not the purpose here to pursue in detail this phase of Roman life, nor to trace the slow and obscure changes in the laws that followed the revolt of women from ages of oppression. This brief outline suffices to show that the women of two thousand years ago were far from accepting abject subservience without a protest; that they had the spirit and intelligence to combine in their own defense; that they won the privilege of virtually the same education which was given to men, and so much consideration that the Romans of the third and fourth centuries were more just to a woman’s rights of property than were the Americans in the first half of the nineteenth. Happily better counsels prevail here to-day; but it is a commentary on the instability of human affairs that, even on the higher plane of morals and intelligence from which we started, the battle had to be fought over again.

THE “NEW WOMAN” OF OLD ROME

· Wickedness of Imperial Days · · The Reverse of the Picture · · Parallel between the Romans and Ourselves · · Their “New Woman” · · Her Political Wisdom · Her Relative Independence · · Literature in the Golden Age · · Horace · Ovid · · Tributes to Cultivated Women in Letters of Cicero · · Literary Circles · Opinions of Satirists · · Reaction on Manners · · Tributes in Letters of Pliny and Seneca · · Glimpses of Family Life in Correspondence of Marcus Aurelius and Fronto · · Public Honors to Women ·

I

A great deal has been said of the Roman women of imperial days. Much of it is not to their credit, but the bad are apt to be more striking figures than the good, and to overshadow them in a long perspective. The world likes to put its saints in a special category, and worship them from afar. It seems fitting that they should sing hymns and pray for suffering humanity in a cloistral seclusion, but they are rarely quoted as representative of their age. On the other hand, it holds up its brilliant or high-placed sinners as examples to be shunned; but it talks about them and lifts them on a pedestal to show us how wicked they are, until in the course of centuries they come to be looked upon as representing the women of their time, when in fact they represent only its worst type. Two thousand years hence, no doubt a few conspicuous women noted to-day for brilliancy, beauty, or special gifts, rather than for flawless character, will stand out in more luminous colors than the great mass of refined and cultivated ones who have dazzled their generation less and graced it more. Possibly they may even furnish a text on which some strenuous moralist of the fortieth century will expatiate, with illustrations from our big-lettered journals, to show the corruption of our manners and the dangers that lie in the cultivation of feminine intellect! And yet we know that the moral standards of the world were never so high as in these days when the influence of women in the mass is greater than ever before.

Of the colossal wickedness of imperial Rome there is no question, and sinners were not rare among women. But the Julias and Messalinas did not represent the average tone of Roman society, any more than the too numerous examples of vice in high places reflect the average morality of the great cities of to-day. A careful study of those times reveals, beneath the surface of the life most conspicuous for its brilliancy and its vices, a type of womanhood as strong and heroic as we find in primitive days, with the added wisdom, culture, and helpfulness which had grown out of the freer development of the intellect.