· 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 ·
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.
The Romans of the last century of the Republic had, like ourselves, their corrupt politicians, their struggles for office, their demagogues, and their wars for liberty—meaning their own. They had also their plutocrats, their parvenus, their love of glittering splendor, their rage for culture, their patrons of art, who brought the masterpieces over the seas, and, not least, their “new woman.” I use the phrase in its best, not in its extreme, sense; the exaggeration of a good type is always a bad one. This last product of a growing civilization did not claim political rights or industrial privileges, as we understand them; she did not write books of any note, or seek university honors in cap and gown; nor did she combine in world-wide organizations to better herself and other people: but she did a great many things in similar directions, that were quite as new and vital to the world in which she lived. If she did not say much about the higher education, she was beginning to have a good deal of the best that was known. The example of the learned as well as virtuous and womanly Cornelia had not been lost. It was no longer sufficient to say, in the language of an old epitaph, that a woman was “good and beautiful, an indefatigable spinner, pious, reserved, chaste, and a good housekeeper.” The conservative matron still prided herself on these qualities which had so long constituted the glory of her sex, but it was decreed that she must have something more. In the new order of things, she shared in the cultivation of the intellect, and ignorance had lost its place among the virtues. Girls were educated with boys, read the same books, and studied the same subjects. To keep pace with the age, a woman must be familiar with Greek as well as Roman letters. She must also know how to sing and dance. “This helps them to find husbands,” says Statius, who had little money to give his daughter, but felt sure she could marry well because she was a “cultivated woman.” The line of co-education, however, was drawn at singing and dancing, where it began with us. In earlier times these accomplishments and the knowledge of various languages were among the attractions of the courtezan.
The new Roman woman did not live her life apart from men, any more than did the women of the old régime. Probably it never occurred to her that it would be either pleasant or desirable to do so. She simply wished to be considered as a peer and companion. Nor does she seem to have been aggressive in public affairs. If she busied herself with them, it was in counsels with men, and her influence was mainly an indirect one. She had freed herself from some of the worst features of an irresponsible masculine rule, but she was still in leading-strings, though the strings were longer and gave her a little more freedom of movement. There were many women of the newer generation who added to the simple virtues of the home the larger interests of the citizen, and conspicuous political wisdom as well as great intelligence. We first hear of them in councils of State through the letters of Cicero, who gossiped so agreeably, and at times so critically, of passing events. He speaks of the companions and advisers he found with Brutus at Antium, among whom were the heroic Portia, wife of the misguided leader, his sister Tertulla, and his mother Servilia, a woman of high attainments and masterful character, who had been the lifelong friend of Cæsar. The influence of this able and accomplished matron over the great statesman did not wane with her beauty, as it lasted to the end, though she could not save him from the fatal blow dealt by her son. The tongue of scandal did not spare her, but at this time she was old and past the suspicion of seeking to gain her purposes by the arts of coquetry. Cicero feared her power, as her force of intellect and masculine judgment had great weight in the discussions of these self-styled patriots. She even went so far as to engage to have certain important changes made in a decree of the Senate, which, for a woman, was going very far indeed. One is often struck with the fact that so many great Romans chose their women friends for qualities of intellect and character rather than for youth or beauty. When ambition is uppermost it has a keen eye for those who can minister to it, and a woman’s talents, so lightly considered before, begin to have their due appreciation. To a friend who said to Cæsar that certain things were not very easy for a woman to do, he simply replied: “Semiramis ruled Assyria, and the Amazons conquered Asia.” It is known that he paid great deference to his mother, the wise and stately Aurelia, to whose careful training he owed so much. Later, women publicly recommended candidates for important offices. Seneca acknowledged that he owed the questorship to his aunt, who was one of the most modest and reserved as well as intelligent of matrons. “They govern our houses, the tribunals, the armies,” said a censor to the Senate. If their counsels were not always for the best,—and even men are not infallible,—they were usually in the interest of good morals and good government.
Nor was it uncommon for the Roman woman to plead her own cause in the forum. There was a senator’s wife who appeared often in the courts, and her name, Afrania, was applied to those who followed her example. The only speech that has come down to us was the celebrated plea of Hortensia for her own sex. This was much praised, not only by great men of that day but in after times. It showed breadth of intellect and a firm grasp of affairs. The privilege of speaking in the forum was withdrawn on account of the violence of a certain Calphurnia—an incident that might suggest a little wholesome moderation to some of our own councils and too zealous reformers. There were also sacerdotal honors open to aspiring women. The Flaminica Augustalis offered sacrifices for the people on city altars, and the services of various divinities were always in the charge of women. There was no systematized philanthropy such as we have to-day, but we hear of much private beneficence. Women founded schools for girls and institutions for orphans. They built porticos and temples, erected monuments and established libraries; indeed, their gifts were often recognized by statues in their honor. We hear of societies of women who discuss city affairs and consider rewards to be conferred on magistrates of conspicuous merit. The names of others appear in inscriptions on tombs; but their mission is not clear. There were also women who practised medicine; this, however, may not have implied great knowledge in an age when science, as we understand it, was unknown.
But a clearer idea of the representative Roman woman on her intellectual side, and of the estimation in which she was held, is gathered through her relation to the world of letters, and in the glimpses of a sympathetic family life which we find in the private correspondence of some great men.
In the golden age of Augustus politics had ceased to be profitable or even safe, and the educated classes turned to literature for occupation and amusement, when they did not turn to something worse. It was the fashion to patronize letters, and every idler prided himself on writing elegant verses. In the words of Horace:
Now the light people bend to other aims;
A lust of scribbling every breast inflames;
Our youth, our senators, with bays are crowned,
And rhymes eternal as our feasts go round.
Even Augustus wrote bad epigrams and a worse tragedy. Public libraries were numerous,—there were twenty-nine,—and busts of great masters were placed beside their works. Authors were petted and flattered, and they flattered their patrons in turn. These were the days when Horace lived at his ease on his Sabine farm, gently satirizing the follies and vices that were preparing the decay of this pleasure-loving world, posing a little perhaps, and taking a lofty tone toward the courtly Mæcenas and his powerful master, who honored the brilliant poet and were glad to let him do as he liked. “Do you know that I am angry with you for not addressing to me one of your epistles?” wrote Augustus. “Are you afraid that posterity will reproach you for being my friend? If you are so proud as to scorn my friendship, that is no reason why I should lightly esteem yours in return.” The epistle came, but the little gray-haired man, who saw so clearly and wrote so wisely, went on his way serenely among his own hills, stretching himself lazily on the grass by some ruined temple or running stream, and sending pleasant though sometimes caustic words to the friends he would not take the trouble to go and see unless peremptorily summoned. Such was the relation between the ruler of the world and those who conferred distinction on his reign. Ovid discoursed upon love, and became a lion, until he forgot to confine himself to theory, and went a step too far in practice. Then he was sent away from his honored place among the gilded youth who basked in the smiles of an emperor’s granddaughter, to meditate on the vanity of life and the uncertainty of fame, by the desolate shores of the Euxine.
In this blending of literature and fashion women had a prominent place, though not as writers. No woman of the educated class could write for money, and talent of that sort, even if she had it, would have brought her little consideration. Whatever she may have done in that direction was like foam on the crest of a wave. It vanished with the moment. At a later period there were a few who wrote poetry of which a trace is left. Balbilla, who was taken to Egypt in the train of Hadrian and the good Empress Sabina, went out to hear the song with which Memnon greeted his mother Aurora at dawn, and scratched some verses on the statue in honor of her visit. Possibly they were only the flattering trifles of a clever courtier, but they were graven on stone and outlasted many better things. Of wider fame was Sulpicia, the wife of a noted man in the reign of Domitian, who wrote a poem on “Conjugal Love,” also a satire on an edict banishing the philosophers, fragments of which still exist. She had the old Roman spirit, but was less conciliatory than the eloquent Hortensia of an earlier day, who was tired of the brutalities of war. She mourned the degeneracy of the age, calling for “reverses that will awaken patriotism, yes, reverses to make Rome strong again, to rouse her from the soft and enervating languor of a fatal peace.” The able but wicked Agrippina, of tragical memory, wrote the story of her life which gave to Tacitus many facts and points for his “Annals.” Doubtless there were other things that went the way of the passing epigrams and verses of Augustus and his elegant courtiers. Twenty centuries hence who will ever hear of the thousands, yes, millions of more or less clever essays and poems written by men and women to-day and multiplied indefinitely by a facile press? What will the future antiquarian who searches the pages of a nineteenth-century anthology know of us, save that every man and woman wrote, but nothing lived, except perhaps a volume or two from the work of a few poets, essayists, and historians, who can be counted on one’s fingers? Oh, yes; there are the novelists whose value is measured by figures and dollars, who multiply as the locusts do. Fine as we may think them to-day, how many of their books will survive the sifting of time? They may be piled in old libraries, but who will take the trouble to dive into a mass that literally has no bottom? Will the world forget that women did anything worth preserving? Yet our women are educated; some of them are scholars, most of them are intelligent; many write well, and a few surpassingly well.
But if women did not write, they used their influence to find a hearing for those who did. Of the learning of the time they had their share, though it may not have been very profound. Ovid tells us that “there are learned fair, a very limited number; another set are not learned, but they wish to be so.” He writes of a gay world which is not too decorous or too serious, but in the category of a woman’s attractions he mentions as necessary a knowledge of the great poets, both Greek and Latin, among whom he modestly counts himself. Women of fashion had poets or philosophers to read or talk to them, even at their toilets, while the maids brushed their hair. They discussed Plato and Aristotle as we do Browning and economics. They dabbled in the mysteries of Isis and Osiris as we do in theosophy and Buddhism; speculated on Christianity as we do on lesser faiths, and began to doubt their falling gods. Philosophy was “the religion of polite society,” but women have always been drawn toward a faith that appeals to the emotions. Then there were the recitations and public readings, in which they were actors as well as listeners.
We have glimpses of the more seriously intellectual side of the Roman woman in the private letters of Cicero, which show us also the pleasant family life that gives us the best test of its value and sincerity. The brilliant orator seems to have had a special liking for able and accomplished matrons. In his youth he sought their society in order to polish and perfect his style. He speaks in special praise of Lælia, the wife of Scævola with whom he studied law, also of her daughter and granddaughters—all of whom excelled in conversation of a high order; he refers often to Cærellia, a woman of learning and talent, with whom he corresponded for many years; and he says that Caius Curio owes his great fame as an orator to the conversations in his mother’s house. Many other women he mentions whose attainments in literature, philosophy, and eloquence did honor to their sex and placed them on a level with the great men of their time. This was in the late days of the Republic, when genuine talent was not yet swamped in the pretensions of mediocrity.
The praise of his daughter Tullia is always on his lips. She was versed in polite letters, “the best and most learned of women,” and he valued her companionship beyond anything in life. It seems that she was unfortunate in husbands, and they gave him a good deal of trouble; but when she died the light went out of his world. His letters are full of tears, and he plans the most magnificent of monuments. He would deify her, and draw from all writers, Greek and Latin, to transmit to posterity her perfections and his own boundless love. But precious time was lost in dreams of the impossible, and swift fate overtook him before any of them crystallized. Instead of the splendid temple that was to last forever, only a few crumbling stones of his villa on the lonely heights of Tusculum are left to-day to recall the young, beautiful, and gifted woman in whose “sweet conversation” the great statesman could “drop all his cares and troubles.” Here she looked for the last time across the Campagna upon the shining array of marbles, columns, and palaces that were the pride of Rome in its glory, and went away from it all, leaving behind her a fast vanishing name, the fragrance of a fresh young life, and a desolate heart.
But if these charming pictures reveal a sympathetic side of the intimate life of the new age, they give us also the shadows that were creeping over it. The great man, who said so many fine things and did so many weak ones, has always a tender message for the little Attica, the daughter of his friend, but he fears the fortune-hunters, and objects to a husband proposed for her, because he has paid court to a rich woman who is old and has been several times married. For his own wife, Terentia, he has less consideration. She is not facile enough, and finds too much fault with his way of doing things. Perhaps she presses her influence too far, and fails to pay proper deference to his authority. To be sure, he calls her “my light, my darling,” says she is in his thoughts night and day, praises her ability, and trusts her judgment until his affairs begin to go wrong. All this, however, does not prevent his sending her away after thirty years of devotion, and marrying his lovely young ward, who is rich enough to pay his debts. The latter is divorced in turn because she does not sufficiently mourn the loss of his idolized daughter, and his closing years are burdened with the care of restoring her dowry, which draws from him many a bitter complaint. There is a strange note of irony in the tone of the much-married, much-sinning, and perfidious Antony, who publicly censures the “Father of his Country” for repudiating a wife with whom he has grown old. But the high-spirited Terentia solaced herself with his friend Sallust, and married one or two others after his death. Evidently no hearts were broken, as she lived some years beyond a century.
In the literary circles of a later generation we hear of noble ladies of serious tastes meeting to converse about the poets. Juvenal and Martial ridiculed them as Molière did the Précieuses centuries afterward. “I hate a woman who never violates the rules of grammar, and quotes verses I never knew,” says Juvenal. “A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism.” He objects to being bored at supper with impertinent questions about Homer and Vergil, or misplaced sympathy with the unhappy Dido, who, no doubt, ought to have taken her desertion philosophically instead of making it so unpleasant for her hero lover. He even suggests that women blessed with literary tastes should put on the tunics of the bolder sex and do various mannish things which are sometimes recommended by the satirists of to-day. It is with a sigh of regret that he recalls the “good old days of poverty and morals,” when it was written on a woman’s tombstone that she “spun wool and looked after her house.” “A good wife is rarer than a white crow,” is his amiable conclusion.
All this goes to prove that in the first century women passed through the same ordeal of criticism as they have in the nineteenth. The satirists of to-day are no kinder to the Dante and Browning clubs, and mourn equally over the “good old days” when they were in no danger of a rival or a critic at the breakfast-table. Doubtless that age had its little pretensions and affectations, as every other great age has had—not excepting our own. There were women who talked platitudes about things of which they knew nothing, and men who did the same thing or worse on other lines laughed at them just as men do now at similar follies, though often without the talent of a Juvenal or a Martial, and, it is fair to say, without their incredible coarseness. The coming of women into literature has made the latter practically impossible.
But even Martial had his better moments. He speaks of a young girl who has the eloquence of Plato, the austerity of the philosophers, and writes verses worthy of a chaste Sappho. One might imagine that his enthusiasm had run away with his prejudices, if Martial could be supposed to have had enthusiasms, as he warmly congratulates the friend who is to marry this prodigy. Possibly he preferred her as the wife of some one else, as he stipulates for himself, on another occasion, a wife who is “not too learned.”
There was a great deal to censure in this dilettante world. The fashionable life of Rome had drifted into hopeless corruption, in spite of the efforts of good men and women to stem the tide. Long before, the Senate had ordered a temple to Venus Verticordia, the Venus that turns hearts to virtue; but the new goddess was not eminently successful among the votaries of pleasure, who preferred to offer incense to the more beautiful and less respectable one. The old patricians had their faults and sins, but the new moneyed aristocracy was a great deal worse, as the noblesse oblige had ceased to exist, and there were no moral ideals to take the place of it. “First let us seek for fortune,” says the satirist; “virtue is of no importance. Hail to wealth!” “His Majesty Gold” was as powerful as he is to-day, and his worship was coarser. “He says silly things, but money serves for intellect,” remarks a wit of the time. Literature declined with morals. “These are only stores and shops, these schools in which wisdom is sold and supplied like goods,” said one who mourned over the degeneracy of the times. That women should suffer with the rest was inevitable. They are not faultless; indeed, they are very simply human. If they are usually found in the front ranks of great moral movements, they are not always able to stand individually against the resistless tide which we call the spirit of the age.
The changes which a century or so had wrought in the position and education of women reacted on manners. The pagan virtues were essentially masculine ones, and even women had always been more noted for courage and stoical heroism than for the softer Christian qualities which are called feminine. In the old days they had been subservient because they were virtually slaves. For the same reason they were expected to be blindly obedient. Their servile attitude toward men was a duty; tradition gave it the force of a sentiment. Nor did the fact that many Roman women had risen above their conditions, and shown great dignity and strength, alter this general relation. It was not in their nature, however, to be timid, or tender, or clinging. Sensibility was a weakness and a trait of inferior classes. Love was a passion, or a duty, or a habit, but not a sentiment. The new woman of the golden age of Augustus was strong, dignified, self-poised, and commanding. The fashionable set accented this tone and became haughty, arrogant, and masculine in manner. It looked upon the conservative matron who was disposed to preserve old traditions as antiquated. The change, in its various gradations, was quite similar to that which passed over Anglo-Saxon women in the century that has just closed. We also have our golden mean of poise and dignity, as represented by the conservative who are yet of the new age in culture, breadth, and intelligence; we, too, have a few of the emancipated who like to demonstrate their new-found independence by a defiance of social conventions; then we have our ultra-fashionable parvenus who fancy arrogance a badge of position, and pronounced manners a sign of modish distinction. Of these classes, the first and the last were the most defined in Roman society, but it is mainly in the last that we find the degeneracy of morals which made a large section of it infamous.
Of the women of the conservative ruling classes we have pleasant glimpses in the letters of Pliny, which picture an intelligent and sympathetic family life that constantly recalls our own. His wife, Calphurnia, sets his verses to music and sings them, greatly to his surprise and delight. She has a taste for books and commits his compositions to memory. He says she has an excellent understanding, consummate prudence, and an affection for her husband that attests the purity of her heart. It is not his person but his character that she loves, so he is assured of lasting harmony. When absent, he entreats her to write every day, even twice a day. If he has only his wife and a few friends at his summer villa, he has some author to read to them, and afterward music or an interlude. Then he walks with his family and talks of literature. The charming little domestic traits, so unconsciously revealed in these letters, are as creditable to himself as to the wife who adores him. There is a touch of sentiment that we rarely find in pagan life.
These letters throw many side-lights on other households. Pliny has a word of profound sympathy for the sorrow of a friend who lived thirty-nine cloudless years with a wife whose virtues would have made her “an ornament even in former times,” and was left desolate by her loss. We find a touching allusion to the fortitude of Fannia, who has the qualities of a “heroine of ancient story.” She was banished for supplying materials for her husband’s “Life.” “Pleasing in conversation, polite in address, venerable in demeanor,” she is quoted as a model for wives. She was a worthy granddaughter of the famous Arria, who refused to survive her husband when he was condemned to death, and gave him courage by first plunging the dagger into her own breast, saying, “Pætus, it does not hurt,” as she drew it out and passed it to him. Another of his friends lost a daughter of fourteen, who, he says, combined the wisdom of age and the discretion of a matron with the sprightliness of youth and the sweetness of virgin modesty. She was devoted to reading and study, caring little for amusements. Pompeius Saturninus read him some letters from his wife which were so fine that he thought he was listening to Plautus and Terence in prose; indeed, he suspects the husband of writing them himself, in spite of his denial, though he considers him deserving of equal praise, whether he wrote them or trained her genius to such a degree of perfection. It is worthy of note that, while these letters show us the intelligent companionship between husbands and wives which had taken the place of the old relations of superior and inferior, as well as the fine attainments of many women and the honor in which they were held, they also pay the highest tribute to virtues that still shone brightly in an age when it had become a fashion to speak of them as things of the past.
“Morals are gone,” said Seneca. “Evil triumphs. All virtue, all justice, is disappearing. That is what was exclaimed in our fathers’ days, what they are repeating to-day, and what will be the cry of our children.” If we may credit the history of that age, there was reason enough for the cry, but there was another side to the dark picture. This critical philosopher did not spare the vices and follies of the great ladies of his time, and any tribute of his to the talents and virtues of women is of value, as it is not likely to incline to the side of flattery. In his letters of consolation to his mother, Helvia, he mentions the fact that she is “learned in the principles of all the sciences,” in spite of the old-fashioned notions of his father, who “feared letters as a means of corruption for women.” More liberal himself, he exhorts her to return to them as “a source of safety, consolation, and joy.” To Marcia he writes in a tone that is appreciative, though a trifle patronizing: “Who dares say that nature in creating woman has gifted her less generously, or restricted for her the sphere of the virtues? Her moral strength, do not doubt it, equals ours.... Habit will render her, like us, capable of great efforts, as of great griefs.” An incident of his own family life is worth repeating, as it shows a pleasant and not uncommon side of domestic relations at a period when Roman morals were at the worst. His wife was solicitous for his health. “As my life depends upon hers,” he says, “I shall follow her advice, because in doing so I am caring for her. Can anything be more agreeable than to feel that in loving your wife you are loving yourself?” The devotion on her side was more heroic, if less reasonable. When he was politely advised to take himself to some other world where he would be less in the way of his civil superiors, she insisted upon dying with him. He tried in vain to dissuade her, but, finding her persistent, he gave his consent, saying: “Let the fortitude of so courageous an end be alike in both of us, but let there be more in your death to win fame.” Her veins were opened with his; but Nero did not need to get rid of her just then, so the attendants quickly bound her wounds and saved her. This devoted Paulina had only the satisfaction of sacrificing her color, as she was noted for her extreme pallor to the end of her life.
We have other letters from a thinker and seer of the next century, which give us as sympathetic an insight into the private life of the Antonines as Cicero and Pliny give us into that of their own contemporaries in the two preceding ones. Nowhere does Marcus Aurelius appear in so human a light as in this correspondence with Fronto, the distinguished master and philosopher, which came to us at a late day out of the silence of ages. It reveals one of the rare friendships of the world, and incidentally throws a pleasant light on the family relations of the wisest and simplest of emperors.
History has cast a cloud over the wives of the Antonines—whether justly or not we can never know. In an age of great vices, even virtue is not safe, and the scandal-lover has always delighted to tear f
