gave her a much more effective position of vantage than Livia had
enjoyed--first, on account of Claudius's incapacity, and also because
the Romans had allowed themselves to drift further away from the old
republican ideas. Hereafter we shall study the character of Agrippina
and shall be compelled to place her among those notorious women who
helped to make the Neronian age the most corrupt period in the world's
history. Here we notice but briefly her political ambitions. She managed
the emperor, securing with slight persuasion the appointment or the
dismissal of the most important State officers. She established colonies
in her own name. Nor was she satisfied to remain merely the power behind
the throne. When Caractacus the British king was carried prisoner to
Rome, and for his courageous bearing gained for himself his wife and his
brothers from the emperor, the prisoners did homage not only to
Claudius, but also to Agrippina. The empress occupied a second throne
and received an equal share of the gratitude of the prisoners and the
plaudits of the people. Here was seen, as Tacitus remarks, a spectacle
strange and unauthorized by any former custom. A woman had never before
presided over the Roman ensigns. Agrippina boldly claimed to be a
partner in the Empire which her ancestors had wrested from the ancient
republican suffrage.
It was with Agrippina the Second as it had been with Livia, every
political aspiration was concentrated upon one object--
the elevation of
her own son to the imperial rule, and all the activities emanating from
her energetic, resourceful nature were employed in hewing a path for
Nero's advancement. Woe befell the persons who stood in that path or
seemed likely at any time to have it in their power and inclination to
impede that advancement. They were ruthlessly cut down in that
unrelenting manner of which only an ambitious woman is capable. There
were no public works, nothing broad-minded, no thought of the common
good: the sole motif of the Roman woman in politics was personal
preferment.
_VIII_
THE ROMAN WOMAN IN LITERATURE
There was in ancient Rome a street called Argiletus, which we learn from
Martial was occupied principally by booksellers. Here those works which
are cherished not alone for their antiquity, and some others possibly as
good but which in the misfortunes of many centuries have disappeared,
were bought fresh from their authors' hands and sold to the eager lovers
of literature. Here, when a new piece by Virgil or Horace was announced,
the reading public would flock, urged by the most commendable form of
curiosity known to the cultured human mind. Here hundreds of scribes
were employed in the multiplication of copies of those classics over
which in later days have labored scores of generations of youthful
students, with deep regret that those classics were not written in their
own mother tongue. Those shops, or _taberna libraria_, were the lounging
places of the famous men who created this literature and of those who
did good service to posterity by constituting themselves the patrons of
the geniuses of their age, who otherwise would have been as indigent and
as barren as are the neglected authors of our own times.
The men and
women who received an ancient author in the name of a poet are entitled
to receive a poet's reward. In the shops of Secundus and the Sosii
brothers, the literati of Rome and their admirers gathered to indulge in
that most fascinating of all conversational intercourse: book talk.
While it is probable that the presence of women was not so marked and
frequent in these haunts of the cultured fraternity as it is in the book
shops and publishing houses of modern times, this does not signify that
the ladies of Rome did not take a deep and influential interest in
literature. Did not Augustus dedicate a public library in the name of
his sister Octavia? There was in the Roman world a reading public so
great as to appear to us nothing less than marvellous in view of the
lack of the printing press; but slaves who could be set to copying were
plentiful, and if a lady wished a copy of the poems of Propertius or
Catullus she could procure it for a small sum in the street Argiletus,
or she could borrow it from a friend and have it transcribed at home.
Great attention was paid to the education of girls in Greek and Latin
literature. Even those of the poorer class received this instruction;
for such an accomplishment, especially if assisted by personal
attractions, often availed in place of a rich dowry to secure a
desirable match. Women also were not rare who, like Sempronia, could
write verses of sufficient merit to be mentioned by the serious
historians of their times, though unfortunately their productions have
not been preserved to us. Mommsen, commenting on the flood of literature
which characterized the period of the commencement of the Empire,
assures us that "The female world also took a lively part in these
literary pursuits; the ladies did not confine themselves to dancing and
music, but by their spirit and wit ruled conversation and talked
excellently on Greek and Latin literature; and when poetry laid siege to
a maiden's heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered
likewise in graceful verses. Rhythm became more and more the fashionable
plaything of the big children of both sexes."
If it can be shown that the law of the "survival of the fittest"
operates with any degree of inevitability in the preservation of books,
we shall be obliged to conclude that few of the writings that owed their
existence to the lady authors of ancient Rome were remarkable for their
merit. It is difficult even to indulge a natural desire to be gallant by
assuming that to the accidents of time may be attributed the loss of
much that was worthy of preservation; for the number of female writers
who are mentioned in contemporary works as having attained to any great
degree of excellence in authorship is remarkably limited. Some, however,
there are. Pliny says: "Pompeius Saturninus has lately read to me some
letters he says are from his wife. I fancied myself listening to Plautus
or Terence in prose. Whether they are his wife's, as he affirms, or his
own, as he denies them to be, he is entitled to equal credit: in the one
case, for producing such compositions; in the other, for transforming
his wife, a mere girl when he married her, into such a learned and
finished woman." Martial also tells of a young woman who, he says, had
the eloquence of Plato, the austerity of the Porch, and composed verses
worthy of a chaste Sappho. Sidonius Apollinaris recites a list of Latin
poetesses; but of them all there is only one whose work may be read at
the present time. We do not refer to Balbilla, who wisely engraved her
verses and also her genealogy upon the leg of the statue of Memnon; the
fact that these have endured is attributable solely to the lasting
nature of the medium upon which they were written.
Sulpicia, the only Roman poetess whose work is still extant and well
authenticated, lived in the time of the Emperor Domitian. She came of a
famous patrician family, many members of which had been able men of
affairs in their time. She was a great and highly respected friend of
the poet Martial, to whose two epigrams on herself and her husband we
are indebted for almost all that we know of this talented woman. Her
husband's name was Calenus; and with him she lived for fifteen years, in
a felicity of reciprocated conjugal affection which, notwithstanding the
degeneracy of the age, seems to have been ideal. Martial bears testimony
not only to her surpassing ability as a votary of the poetic muse, but
also to the fact that in her life and character she exemplified a purity
such as would beautify any age or society.
There is in existence but one poem known to have been written by
Sulpicia; it was called forth by an act of tyranny which she rebuked
with as much beauty as spirit. During the reign of Domitian, the
philosophers were banished from Rome by edict of the emperor. Those
against whom this measure was particularly directed were of the Stoic
school; this fact helps to explain the cause of their expulsion and also
the poem which Sulpicia wrote upon the occasion. Their tenets inculcated
an independence of thought and manner which was entirely at variance
with that servility which could allow the people to rest peacefully
under the despotism of such a ruler as was Domitian. The philosophers
were considered, and probably justly so, a menace to the government of
the tyrant. Whether Sulpicia was directly connected with these people
and whether she was included in the edict of banishment, we do not know;
in any case, it is quite clear that her sympathies were entirely with
the expelled philosophers. Her satire on this incident bewails the
weakness that had evidently fallen upon the Roman race, causing men to
submit so easily to such tyranny as that to which her friends were
subjected. She asks if "the Father of the Gods" is about to allow the
Romans to revert to primeval barbarism, "to stoop again to acorns and
the pure stream"; or if he has forsaken them for the care of other
nations. She declares that "adversity alone is salutary for a State,"
"for when the love of country urges them to defend themselves by arms,
and to regain their wives, held prisoners with their household gods,
they combine like wasps when their home and citadel is assaulted." Then
she implores her divine patroness that at least her husband may not be
unwilling to abandon this inglorious ease and to leave Rome and its
vicinity, since all the good and estimable have been driven from it. The
poem is a noble, high-spirited production; and it proves Sulpicia to
have been a woman of extraordinary intelligence and a fearless exponent
of principles and ideas which the majority of men in her time found it
more convenient to forget.
Sulpicia was also the author of a poem on conjugal affection which is
most highly commended by Martial; but unfortunately it has been lost.
Indeed, from the reference in the beginning of her satire to her
"thousand sportive effusions," we gather that she was a prolific writer
and that all her poetry was not of the philosophic or didactic kind.
With this brief reference to Sulpicia, our account of woman's creative
participation in Roman literature must end for want of material. The
real part which the women of the Roman world played in the formation of
the literature of their time must be sought rather in the view which the
authors present of their character and the inspiration which the poets
drew from their love and friendship. That is to say, we meet the Roman
woman in the poetic art of her nation as the model and also as the
motive, but not as the artist. But it is very essential that we should
give attention to both these phases of feminine life.
Hitherto we have
dealt only with historic personages, and those of the highest class; to
obtain a complete view of the Roman woman, it is necessary to see her in
that broader light in which she is sketched by the makers of other
literature than history. And in order that our attention may not be
confined to the women of one class, we must take notice of those ladies
of whom the poets sing and to whom they address their effusions.
First let us consider the woman drawn by Roman creative art. In her
image, as it is portrayed in literature, we see the real person of flesh
and blood, as she appeared to the literary artists.
Virgil says: "Woman
is a fickle and ever changeable creature;" and yet he must have found in
the women of his time the qualities with which he endowed Queen Dido.
She is a Roman woman, because she is the creation of a Roman. She is an
ideal queen; yet one who governs her kingdom in the same manner in which
a noble matron presided over the activities of her household,
"dispensing justice and laws to her subjects" from the middle room, or
atrium, of the temple, and "in equal portions distributing their tasks
or settling them by lot." Furthermore, she is a true woman. She is the
sole contribution of Roman poetry to that gallery of imaginary men and
women who, having their existence only in literature, are immortal
because they faithfully represent the real. In Dido, Virgil, though he
calls her a Sidonian, shows how a woman of pagan Rome could love; and
how, her heart being broken and her pride injured by rejection, she
could die in the high-spirited manner peculiar to her prideful race.
But in all Latin poesy there is no other character such as Dido. When we
turn to Plautus and Terence, we learn a great deal about women, but we
encounter none that live and move and have a being.
These authors did
not lay their scenes in the houses of the patricians or in the seats of
the mighty; they show us a class of women that we have not hitherto met.
Having studied the highest, we now turn to the lowest stratum of Roman
society. We are introduced to a class of people who traffic in female
beauty; and much insight is gained into that laxity of morals which was
countenanced both by the laws and customs of ancient Rome. Here we are
informed of the multitude of girls who were carefully trained and
educated, both in mind and person, that they might make profit for their
owners by the prostitution of their charms. We meet these girls as they
are being sent to school in order that, at the same time, their
intellects may be developed and their commercial value enhanced. In
these plays, we are shown the women of the brothel; and we are less
astounded at the greatness of their number than we are at the
complacency with which their existence was tolerated in Roman society.
These women were principally unfortunates who had been captured in war
or were born in slavery, and the only redeeming feature in the picture
of their situation is the intimation that now and again one, by signal
success in a bad business, might hope to earn her freedom.
It is said that because a sacrifice of virtue is made by one class of
women, the members of another class are enabled to live purely. If we
accept Juvenal's description of the character of the Roman women as a
true one, it must be concluded that the morality of the more fortunate
ladies gained little by the immorality of those who were courtesans
perforce or by profession; but in satire it is essential to fasten upon
the worst, and to hold it up to public ridicule as representative of the
whole. There is no balance, no justice, no offsetting the indecent by
that which is noble and good. The Roman woman was not at any period
such a morally deformed creature as Juvenal paints her; nor could the
ladies who patronized literature have been quite so disagreeable as he
would have us believe. It is certain that he was not blessed with a
patroness, or, in his description of the Roman
"bluestocking," the
shafts of satire would not have been embittered with so much prejudice.
Yet, as indicating how some men regarded the devotion to belles-lettres
which was affected by the women, we will quote what the great satirist
says on the subject. After depicting some monstrously disagreeable
females, he declares:
"But she is more intolerable yet, Who plays at critic when at table set: Calls Virgil charming, and attempts to prove Poor Dido right in venturing all for love.
From Maro and Mæonides she quotes
The striking passages, and, while she notes Their beauties and defects, adjusts her scales, And accurately weighs which bard prevails.
The astonished guests sit mute; grammarians yield, Loud rhetoricians, baffled, quit the field; Even auctioneers and lawyers stand aghast, And not a woman speaks.--So thick and fast The wordy shower descends, that you would swear A thousand bells were jangling in your ear, A thousand basins clattering. Vex no more Your trumpets and your timbrels, as of yore, To ease the laboring moon; her single yell Can drown their clangor, and dissolve the spell She lectures too in Ethics, and declaims On the Chief Good!--but, surely, she who aims To seem too learned, should take the male array; A hog, due offering, to Sylvanus slay, And, with the Stoic's privilege, repair To farthing baths, and strip in public there.
Oh, never may the partner of my bed With subtleties of logic stuff her head; Nor whirl her rapid syllogisms round, Nor with imperfect enthymemes confound.
Enough for me. If common things she know, And boast the little learning schools bestow.
I hate the female pedagogue, who pores O'er her Palaemon hourly; who explores All modes of speech, regardless of the sense, But tremblingly alive to mood and tense; Who puzzles me with many an uncouth phrase From some old canticle of Numa's days; Corrects her country friends, and cannot hear Her husband solecize without a sneer."
It may be that the horror of learned women which was affected by Juvenal
arose from his realization of that proverb which declares the inability
of two who are engaged in the same trade to maintain intimate and happy
relations. Whether or not he was so unfortunate as to learn this by
personal experience, we have no means of ascertaining; but it is certain
that while many of the Roman authors gained inspiration and influence
from the women with whom they were connected, others discovered in their
matrimonial relations a want of harmony unfavorable to the cultivation
of the muse. In Terentia, for example, Cicero was burdened with a wife
who entirely lacked that power of sympathy which is the glory of
womanhood. Terentia did not appreciate her brilliant husband; and she
could not anticipate the honor in which she might have been held by
posterity, had she proved herself the devoted wife of so famous a man.
But, after all has been said, she probably knew Cicero better than he is
known by posterity. He alleged that she was so overbearing that at last
he was compelled to divorce her; but in Terentia the old adage was
justified which says that what is one man's poison is another man's
pleasure, for, being repudiated by Cicero to the great relief of
himself, she was at once accepted by the historian Sallust; and in as much
as there appears to have been no other motive for their union, it seems
probable that the bond between them was that of sentiment.
Then there was that other Terentia, who was such a trial to the patience
of Mæcenas, the great patron of literature in the days of Augustus. Her
he repudiated so often, and yet received back so regularly, that it was
said of him that he had been married a thousand times, and yet all the
while had but one wife.
There was another class of women which furnished many of the names
intimately connected with Roman poetry, not for what these women
themselves did, but because of their intimate relations with the poets.
As the exquisite tracery of primordial ferns is sometimes found embedded
in the carboniferous strata, so these women, whose names would otherwise
have perished with their generation, were, by the chances of their birth
and fortune, brought into connection with literary men, and their memory
has thus been preserved in Latin poesy. It is to Martial himself that we
are indebted for the information that, returning to his country home
after many years of absence in Rome, he finds comfort for the lack of
his urban pleasures and conveniences in the society of Marcella, a lady
of uncommon intellectual development and grace of person. Her relation
to the poet was rather that of patroness than mistress.
It would seem
unimportant either way; yet she assisted in the production of literature
more durable than the Empire, and her name is known to posterity.
Every reader of Horace knows of Lydia, Glycera, Phyllis, and Barine. Who
were they? To have found them in that ancient Rome, it would have been
necessary to go, not to houses such as have been described as the homes
of the imperial women, but to those _insulæ,_ or huge tenements, in
which the great mass of the people lived. There these women inhabited
one room or many, according as their poverty or wealth would warrant.
The latter depended largely upon their youth and beauty; for these women
were light-o'-loves, who were inured to the changes and chances of their
position, and could turn from one lover to another with as few heart
pangs as were suffered by their inconstant friends. In many cases, they
were the daughters of unnaturalized foreigners, whom Roman citizens
could not marry and to whom no lot other than that of the mistress was
open. That such women were the intimates of Horace is revealed by the
manner in which he descants in his Satires on the danger attending
liaisons with married women--so also is the sincerity of that affection
to which he swears in his Odes. Speaking of those ladies who were not
eligible for marriage bonds, he says: "When I am in the company of such
an one, she is my Ilia and Ægeria; in short, I give her any tender
name."
The favorite of Horace seems to have been Lydia, of whose undistinguished
fame he tells, but does not inform us on what account she was famous.
Among the amorous epistles in which he addresses her, there is more than
one that reveals his jealous knowledge of the fact that he is not the
sole recipient of her favors. As a punishment for her occasional
inhospitable treatment of him, he writes an insulting ode in which it is
averred that she has grown too old for lovers and that her slumbers will
no more be disturbed by the serenade. Horace possessed the ability, and
did not lack the meanness, to castigate these women in his poetry after
the most shameful manner; and that not for their moral delinquencies,
but because of the suspension of their preferences for himself. Witness
the manner in which he gloats over the fading of the charms of Lyce, who
had sometime disdained his advances: "Wrinkles and snowy hair render
you odious. Now neither Coan purples nor sparkling jewels restore those
years which winged time has inserted in the public annals. Whither is
your beauty gone? Alas! or whither your bloom? Whither your graceful
deportment? What have you remaining of her, of her who breathed loves
and ravished me from myself? Happy in accomplishments next to Cynara,
and distinguished for an aspect of graceful delicacies.
But the Fates
granted but a few years to Cynara, intending to preserve Lyce for a long
time, to rival in years the aged raven; that the fervid young fellows
might see, not without excessive laughter, that torch, which once so
brightly scorched, now reduced to ashes."
As a finale at once to his love epistles and amorous relationships, he
invites Phyllis to an entertainment in his country villa on Maecenas's
birthday; and among the provisions for this festive occasion he mentions
a caskful of Albanian wine, upward of nine years old, besides parsley
for the weaving of chaplets, and ivy to bind her hair.
"Come, then, last
of my loves: learn with me such measures as you may recite with your
lovely voice; our gloomy cares shall be mitigated with an ode."
Through Ovid we learn of Corinna, who was his mistress and the heroine
of his love elegies; but his passion for her was no more sincere than we
should expect from that manual of libertinism--his _Ars amatoria_. This
work is the glorification of animalism and indirectly a defamation of
woman. It assumes with the most undisguised frankness that the root and
source of the principal part of the attention which men pay to women is
their availability for the purpose of satisfying amatory desire, and it
alleges the theory that any woman will capitulate the citadel of her
honor, if only it be besieged with