· The Woman Question an Old One ·
· Character and Virtues of Early Roman Women ·
· Instances of Heroism ·
· Their Disabilities ·
· Primitive Roman Morals ·
· Servitude of Wives · Husband Poisoning ·
· The Oppian Law · The Revolt ·
· Crabbed Cato · Change in Laws ·
· Second Revolt · Hortensia ·
· The Marriage Question ·
· Intellectual Movement · Cornelia ·
Not long ago an able and eloquent man, well known in political life, made the astonishing statement that from the time Eve left paradise to the advent of the modern champion of her sex, “woman was apparently content with her subordination.” It is not proposed here to enter at all into the present phases of a subject that has been sufficiently discussed, or to define the precise point where those who belong to what our noble friend is pleased to call the “inferior and defective half of the race” may with reason protest; but as a matter of fact there has never been so prolonged and serious a commotion on the much-talked-of “woman question” as in the Rome of two thousand years ago; and perhaps no recorded moment in the history of women has been of such far-reaching importance as those struggles for justice and recognition. With possibly one exception, the points at issue were not quite the same as in the middle of the nineteenth century, but they involved many of the same privileges. The contention concerned not only a woman’s right to a voice in the control of her own property, but to some consideration in marriage, and a measure of personal liberty. The laws that grew out of it, in the slow process of years, have served as a basis for the codes that have more or less governed civilized countries ever since, and though these have often deviated far from the liberal standard of the statutes of Justinian, they have never fallen permanently to the old level. A certain marked resemblance in the character and growth of the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon woman gives us a special interest in these controversies and their practical outcome.
That the Roman woman had ample cause for protest could hardly be questioned to-day, even by the most determined advocate of the old order of things. The contrast between the character and ability so conspicuously shown by what she did at various times for her country, and the humiliation of her position, was too great. In the qualities of temperament and imagination which, if given free scope, make poets and artists, the Grecian women surpassed her. But the very traits of sensibility that constituted their fascination rendered them an easy prey to the rule of a master. Their chief legacy to posterity was an esthetic one. The talent of the Roman woman was of another sort. She was of a masterful type, striking in physique, strong in purpose, clear in judgment, with the pride and dignity of a race born to rule the world. It was through her practical wisdom in directing affairs, together with her courage, foresight, and indomitable will, that she gained in the end a degree of independence which perhaps we should hardly call by that name to-day, but which was relative freedom and left a permanent trace on after-ages.
Of the heroism, political sagacity, and moral value of the Roman women we have abundant evidence, but it is difficult to catch the outline of faces seen in half-lights, or of characters revealed only on one side. They did not write of themselves, or of each other, as women of later and, to some extent, even of earlier ages have done. There was no Sappho to sing of their joys and sorrows, or give us a clue to what they thought and felt. Men who wrote freely of affairs reserved small space for them, so we know little of their personal life, except through passing glimpses in a few private letters, and the cynical if not malicious pictures of satirists. The Romans were not a creative or imaginative race, and have left us none of the great ideals of womanhood that grace the pages of the Greek poets. No Helen with her divine beauty and charm, no Antigone with her strength of sacrifice, no Andromache with her tender and winning personality, shows us the manner of woman that lived in the minds and hearts of men. But if the delicacy of shading which reveals fine complexities of character is wanting, we have a few records of brave deeds and individual virtues that are likely to stand as long as the world to show us the quality that made them possible. Alcestis going serenely to her death for her weak and selfish lord is not more heroic than Lucretia, who saved the falling liberties of Rome by plunging the dagger into her heart and calling upon her husband to avenge her outraged honor. Iphigenia is not a more touching figure than the innocent Virginia, sacrificed, not to the gods, but to the brutality of wicked men.
From Tanaquil, whose ambition and prophetic insight led the first Tarquin to leave his simple Etruscan home for a Roman throne, to the wise Livia, who shared the power and glory of Augustus for more than half a century, women came to the front in many a public crisis. Men gave them no real liberty, but they did give them monuments. These are mostly gone now, but the records of them are left. Standing by the Capitol to-day and looking across the crumbling temples, columns, statues, and arches which have preserved for us the memories of Old Rome, one is forcibly reminded of the important part played by women in laying the foundations of the long faded glory that still lends these ruins so melancholy and picturesque a charm. The strength and courage of the Roman woman were immortalized in the equestrian statue of the daring Clœlia, in the Via Sacra, that stretches before us. Not far off was the temple of Juno, where the festivals of the Matronalia were held for centuries, in honor of the women who settled the contest between the Romans and the Sabines. Beyond the walls on the way to the Alban hills was the temple of Fortuna Muliebris, which bore lasting testimony to the wisdom and patriotism of Valeria, its first priestess; also to the gentle but powerful influence of Volumnia and Virgilia, who, led by her counsels, saved the city from a too ambitious son and brother. It was the spirit of the divine Egeria that whispered prophetic words of warning to Numa in the secluded grotto beyond the Aventine. The Sibyls held the secrets of divination, and in the vaults at our feet they deposited the books that foretold the destinies of Rome.
There still stands the little temple where the white-robed Vestals watched over the holy Palladium and took care that the sacred fire should never go out for eleven hundred years. Men on the heights of power bowed to the authority of these consecrated women, who occupied everywhere the place of honor, settled disputes, testified without oath, and brought pardon even to a criminal who met them by accident. All this, whether fact or legend, was a tacit recognition of the judgment, purity, and insight of woman. It might not be desirable to give her any rights civil or social, but, as a sort of compensation, men quieted their consciences and gave themselves a comfortable feeling of being just, if indeed they ever had any doubt on that point, by offering her more or less theoretical honor, and a shadowy place near the gods, where they could avail themselves of her wisdom without any personal inconvenience. In addition to this, they built her a little temple dedicated to the goddess Viriplaca, Appeaser of Husbands, where she could solace her bruised heart by confiding her wrongs and sorrows to this conciliatory divinity, who seems to have been useful mainly as a repository of tears, though her office was to compose differences. It has long since vanished, but it speaks volumes for the helplessness of women that it ever existed at all. It told the tragedy of many a Roman matron’s life.
We have seen a little of what these women were and what they did. What they suffered can be better gathered from a glance at their position and the share they had in the liberties they had done so much to foster and save. Of freedom the Roman woman of earlier times had none at all, though she was not secluded like her Athenian sisters, and her place in the family was a better one. Her character was formed, like that of our Puritan mothers, in times of toil and danger, when she worked side by side with men for a common end, and, in both, their strength of purpose and spirit of heroic sacrifice lasted long after the hard conditions of primitive life had passed. Besides, the natural talent for administration which shone through all her limitations was to a certain degree recognized by her husband, and she was often his counselor, as well as the instructor of his children, even beyond the seven years prescribed. But all this did not suffice to give her any liberty of thought or action, and she was to all intents and purposes a slave, subject to the caprices of a master who might choose to be kind, though, in case he did not, she had no protection either in law or custom; and we all know how soon the consciousness of absolute power warps the sensibilities of even the gentlest. “Created to please and obey,” says Gibbon, “she was never supposed to have reached the age of reason and experience.” She was under guardianship all her life, first of her father, then of her husband, and, at his death, of her nearest male relative. For centuries she had no right to her own property, no control of her own person, no choice in marriage, no recourse against cruelty and oppression. “The husband has absolute power over the wife,” said the stern old Cato; “it is for him to condemn and punish her for any shameful act, such as taking wine or violating the moral law.” To show what was possible in the way of surveillance, we are told that he was in the habit of kissing her, when he came home, to satisfy himself that she had not been drinking. One man who found his wife sipping wine beat her to death; another dismissed his weaker half because she was seen on the street without a veil; and a daring woman was sent away because she went to the circus without leave. Any man could spend his wife’s money, beat her, sell her, give her to some one else when he was tired of her, even put her to death, “acting as accuser, judge, jury, and executioner.” In the last case it was better to call her friends into council, perhaps even necessary, if they were powerful enough to ask for an explanation; but “a man can do as he likes with his own” was sufficient to cover any injustice or any crime. Even in the last days of the Republic, when the laws were greatly modified, the younger Cato, a man noted for his stoical virtues, gave his wife to his friend Hortensius, and after his death took her back—with a dowry added. What she thought of the matter signified little. It does not appear that she was even consulted. The family was the unit, and the man was the family.
It is fair to say that it was not women alone who suffered from this peculiar phase of Roman society, as men had little more freedom so long as their fathers lived; but it fell much more severely on those who were, in the nature of things, more helpless. The best they could hope for was a change of masters, which might be for the worse; and who was to protect them from their irresponsible protectors, even with all the safeguards supposed to be provided by law? For this evidently put them where Terence did the philosophers, along with horses and hunting-dogs, that were owned but not necessarily considered.
It is said, in praise of the morals of Rome during its first centuries, that there was not a divorce for five hundred years. The exact nature of this merit is seen more clearly when we find that a woman could not apply for a divorce, or expect a redress of any wrong, whatever might befall her; while a man simply sent away his wife, if she did not please him, without any formalities, and with slight, if any, penalties. This did not release her from perpetual servitude, though he was free to follow his inclinations, amenable to no law and no obligation. It is true, however, that Roman matrons prided themselves on their dignity. A certain respect was exacted for them, and familiarity in their presence was a punishable offense. They took every occasion also to show appreciation of their defenders. They mourned a year for Brutus, who died in avenging Lucretia’s honor, and did the same later for his upright colleague.
Many years afterward there was a temple of patrician chastity in which women assembled for sacred rites, but they found as many causes for contention as some of our societies do to-day. One noble matron lost caste by marrying a plebeian, and was excluded. She protested in vain. Her birth, her spotless fame, her devotion to her husband, counted for nothing so long as that husband did not belong to the elect. There was no lack of spirited words, but the matter did not end here. This slighted Virginia started another association on her own ground, set apart a chapel in her house, and erected an altar to plebeian chastity. The standards were to be much higher. She called together the plebeian ladies, and proposed that they emulate one another in virtue, as men did in valor. No woman of doubtful honor or twice married was admitted. Unfortunately, this organization in time opened its doors too wide, and shared the fate of many others.
On another occasion Quinta Claudia, one of the leading matrons of Rome, played so conspicuous a part that she won immortality and a statue of brass. She was at the head of a delegation appointed to meet the Idæan Mother, who was expected at Terracina, and whose coming was of great importance, as various strange happenings showed conclusively that Juno was angry and needed propitiation. It was decided that the most virtuous man in the State should accompany the matrons, but it was only after much tribulation that the Senate found one fit to be intrusted with the office, and this was a young Scipio. Unfortunately, the vessel containing the image went aground, and the augurs declared that only a woman of spotless character could dislodge it. Quinta Claudia was equal to the occasion. She seized the oar, with a prayer to Cybele; the boat moved from its place as if by magic, and was safely carried to its destination. The lady’s fair fame, which had been a little clouded, was forever established by a direct interposition of the gods. The matrons acquitted themselves with honor and, it is to be hoped, to the satisfaction of the goddess, who was duly installed in her temple.
All this goes to prove that the women of twenty centuries ago often combined in the interest of religion and morals, and were quite capable of managing public as well as private affairs; also that great value was attached to the austere virtues. The wise Cato is said to have erased the name of a Roman from the list of senators because he kissed his wife in the presence of his daughters—a worse penalty than the old Blue Laws imposed on the man who kissed his wife on Sunday. It is a pity that this crabbed censor, of many theoretical virtues and a few practical ones set in thorns, failed to appreciate the dignity and decorum of the Roman matron. It was this same rigid Cato who, in spite of the fact that he “preferred a good husband to a great senator,” was so inconsistently shocked that a Roman lady should presume to be a companion to her noble lord. He looked upon a wife as a necessary evil, and declared that “the lives of men would be less godless if they were quit of women.”
There was no question of love or inclination in arranging a Roman marriage. It was simply a contract between citizens, a State affair intended solely to perpetuate the race in its purity, and to preserve family and religious traditions. In its best form it was for centuries restricted to patricians, who alone were privileged to take the mystic bread together. This constituted a religious marriage, and only this could give their children pure descent or admission to the highest functions of the State. There were two lower grades of civil marriage, but each gave a man supreme control of his wife, without the dignity of consecration. Whatever cruelty and suffering might result from this one-sided relation,—and the possibilities were enormous,—a woman was expected to love the husband chosen by her friends, for himself alone, and a bridegroom’s presents were limited by custom, so that she might not be tempted to love him for what he could give her. She must go out to meet him, submit patiently to any indignities he might offer, and mourn him in due form when he died. Her death he was not required to mourn at all. His infidelities she must never see, as any complaint was likely to meet with a dismissal, and she knew that even her father would say it served her right for interfering in any way with a man’s privilege of doing as he liked.
That a woman ever did love her husband under such conditions proves that her heart was as tender as her capacity for self-sacrifice was great; also that men were by no means as wicked or tyrannical as they had the power to be. We know that liberty is not always insured by an edict, nor does cruelty or injustice invariably follow the lack of a decree against it. There are many notable instances of the devotion of Roman women and the affection of Roman men; indeed, it is quite certain that there was a great deal of happy domestic life. Men naturally accepted the traditions of a society into which they had been born, and women did not question them unless their burdens became intolerable, and even these they considered a part of their destiny, as good women had done before them—and have done since. But power is a dangerous gift for the best of us, and without some strong safeguard, moral or legal, brute force inevitably asserts itself over helplessness. In modern times a sentiment grown into a tradition has done much toward tempering the condition of women even under arbitrary rule, though their own increased intelligence has done more. Sentiment, however, was not a quality of the average Roman character. Men were masterful and passionate, eager of power and impatient of contradiction. To offset this, they often had a strong family feeling and a certain sense of justice, besides a natural love of peace in the home; but this did not suffice to curb the violence and cruelty of the wicked, nor to render the position of the high-spirited wife a possible one. The stuff out of which Lucretias and Cornelias are made is not the stuff to bear habitual oppression silently, beyond a certain point.
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.
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.
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 addre
