Neither age nor
dignity served as a protection; deeds of lust were perpetrated amidst
scenes of carnage, and murder was added to rape. Aged women who had
passed their prime, and who were useless as booty, were made the objects
of brutal sport. Maidens were contended for by ruffians who ended by
turning their swords against each other."
The bloodshed and rapine were carried into the city of Rome itself. When
he saw that his case was hopeless, the ignoble, indolent Vitellius
wished to abdicate; but this neither his soldiers nor the people would
allow him to do. Flavius Sabinus was prefect of the city, and he, with
the soldiers of the Vespasian party, took refuge in the Capitol. There
were women who voluntarily took their places with these besieged men.
Among them was Verulana Gratilla, who, having neither children nor
relatives, followed the fortunes of the war for no other apparent reason
than the pleasure she derived from scenes of carnage. In this conflict
the Capitol was fired and the temple of the Empire reduced to ashes.
Yet, while all these things were occurring, the common people of Rome,
indifferent as to whether they were ruled by Vitellius or Vespasian,
looked on as if they were at a gladiatorial show. It was to them nothing
more than a spectacle, except that it was also an occasion for absolute
lawlessness and an incitement to frenzied indulgence in everything
vicious. So brutalized were the people that, while in some parts of the
great city the streets were filled with heaps of slain, in other parts,
to which the conflict did not extend, there prevailed revelry of the
most frantic kind, in which shameless women took a leading part.
The legions of Vespasian conquered; and with his enthronement Rome
returned to peace and sanity. The enormities in which she had indulged
since the reign of Augustus were for the time expiated.
In the Flavians, a new and healthy dynasty came to the throne of the
Cæsars, though not later than the third reign, that of Domitian, it also
was to succumb to the effects of the possession of unbounded power.
Vespasian had come from an obscure family living at Reate in the Sabine
country. His father had collected the revenue in the province of Asia,
where his statue had been erected with the inscription: _The Honest Tax
Collector_. His mother, whose name was Vespasia Polla, was descended
from a good Umbrian family. Tertulla, his grandmother by his father's
side, had charge of his education, and her memory was always held by him
in the highest regard; much more than appears is suggested in the remark
of Suetonius that, after his advancement to the Empire, Vespasian loved
to visit the place where he spent his childhood. The house and all the
surroundings were kept exactly in the same condition, so that amid
unchanged scenes he might live over again his boyhood days. It was a
simple country house, with no pretension to the splendor in which the
great mansions of the city vied with each other; yet it was artistic.
In those times, not even the simplest farmstead was without its
statuary; and we may well believe that, as Tertulla, in the courts of
Phalacrine, superintended the education of the future builder of the
Colosseum, she could point to examples of sculptured beauty to
illustrate those ideas of art which were included in every Roman's
training. In the great common room, where the work of the house was
done, and where, on winter evenings, the slaves were kept busy with
useful occupations, Polla presided, as had the matrons of the old days.
In the atrium she entertained her rural neighbors in simple style; and
there also she sometimes lectured her son, who greatly displeased her by
his tardiness in putting off his boyish ways. She was ambitious for him,
and longed to hurry him away to Rome, that in the stir of the city or
the camp he might win renown for the Vespasian name.
Polla little
understood that the time her son spent, idly, as she supposed, watching
the teams and cattle about the drinking troughs of the inner court, was
fortifying him to withstand the moral dangers of a court of another
sort. The rugged, straightforward, simple-mannered soldier, who honored
festival occasions by drinking from a silver cup which he treasured as a
keepsake from his grandmother, was such an emperor as the Romans had not
before seen the like of.
Flavia Domitilla was the wife of Vespasian; but she did not survive to
participate with him in the imperial dignity. Of her life and character
we know little. There is in existence but one likeness of her--a
colossal head found near Puteoli and now preserved in the Campana
Museum. This gives her the appearance of a strikingly handsome woman,
with a suggestion of pride, but not too powerful to overcome the aspect
of good nature. Suetonius says that she was at first the mistress of
Statilius Capella, a Roman knight. It may seem strange that a man of
Vespasian's character should marry a woman who had sustained such a
former relation; but in those times, wives with a past history in which
their present husbands had played no part were not so rare that they
were even remarkable. Domitilla enjoyed by birth all the legal
privileges of a Latin woman, but she was not a citizen of Rome until a
suit had been brought by her father for her in the courts. Possibly this
suit was instituted in regard to her inheritance of property; for the
privileges of citizenship, as they related to women, consisted of the
ability to receive legacies and bequeath property, and to form such
matrimonial unions as would be held valid when brought into question in
matters concerning property. It is very likely that the explanation of
the fact that Domitilla is spoken of as the mistress rather than the
wife of Statilius is to be found in the further fact that, he being a
Roman knight and she not yet a citizen of Rome, legal marriage could not
take place between the two. Suetonius tells us that after the death of
Domitilla, Vespasian renewed his union with his former concubine Cænis,
the freedwoman and former amanuensis of Antonia, whom he treated, even
after he became emperor, almost as if she had been his legal wife; and
it is safe for us to suppose that, had he been legally able to do so,
Vespasian would have made Cænis Empress of Rome.
Domitilla bore her husband three children: Titus and Doraitian, who
became emperors in succession, and Domitilla, who died before her father
attained to the purple.
The salutary influence of Vespasian's character was soon made apparent
in the improvement of Roman morals. He was not an energetic reformer;
but he curtailed those abuses which were most flagrant, and himself set
an example which those who desired his favor found it to their advantage
to follow. He expelled from the Senate those who were extraordinarily
vicious in their lives, and among them one who had, by request of Nero,
contended with a Greek girl in the arena. He required the Senate to pass
a decree that any woman who entered into a liaison with the slave of
another person should be herself considered a slave--a law which
indicates to what lengths the license of women had carried them during
the preceding reigns.
One act of cruelty to a woman stains the records of this reign. An
insurrection had been stamped out in Belgium; but Sabinus, the leader,
had made his escape. His house was burned; still he could easily have
escaped into Germany, but that he was unwilling to leave his young wife,
Eponia, unprotected as well as homeless. "He concealed himself in an
underground hiding place, whose entrance was known only to two faithful
freedmen. He was believed to be dead; and his wife, sharing the opinion
of those around her, had been for three days plunged in inconsolable
affliction. Being secretly informed, however, that Sabinus was alive,
she concealed her delight, and was conducted to his place of refuge,
where in the end she determined also to remain. After seven months, the
husband and wife ventured to emerge, and made a journey to Rome for the
purpose of soliciting pardon. But being warned in season that the
petition would be in vain, they left Rome without seeing the emperor,
and again sheltered themselves in their subterranean refuge. Here they
lived together during nine years. Being at last discovered, Sabinus was
taken to Rome, where Vespasian ordered his execution.
Eponia had
followed her husband, and she threw herself at the emperor's feet.
'Cæsar,' she cried, showing her two sons, who were with her, 'these have
I brought forth and nourished in the tombs, that two more suppliants
might implore thy clemency.' Those present were moved to tears, and even
Vespasian himself was affected; but he remained inflexible. Eponia then
asked to die with him whom she had been unable to save.
'I have been
more happy with him,' she said, 'in darkness and under ground, than thou
in supreme power,' Her second request was granted her.
Plutarch met at
Delphi one of their children, who related to him this sad and touching
story." Why this usually tolerant and always sensible emperor should
have been so inexorable on this occasion is a mystery.
There is another instance recorded, in which a woman of different
character, presenting a petition of another kind, received an
acquiescent response. A lady of rank pretending, as Suetonius puts it,
to be desperately enamored of Vespasian,--it must have been that she
hoped to achieve a permanent relationship with the widowed
emperor,--requested that which it would have been more consistent with
her modesty to have avoided. In addition to granting her petition,
Vespasian made her a present of four hundred thousand sesterces. When
his steward asked how he would have the sum entered in his accounts, he
replied: "For Vespasian's being seduced." Considering, however, the
parsimonious character which the historian attributes to this emperor,
we are more inclined to think that the sum must have been entered on the
credit side of the ledger.
Vespasian died in A.D. 79. The humor--which is the same thing as saying
the sanity--of the man is manifested in his remark, as he felt his life
ebbing away: "Well, I suppose I shall soon be a god."
Pliny says of
him, "Greatness and majesty produced in him no other effect than to
render his power of doing good equal to his desire."
Suetonius declares:
"By him the State was strengthened and adorned."
In this same year occurred the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
These two cities, by the manner in which they were by one event both
destroyed and preserved, have afforded us so much material for the study
of Roman home life that a reference to them is entirely in accord with
the plan of this book. Among the Romans, even more so than among
ourselves, woman's life was home life. As we look into those Pompeian
houses, which the catastrophe of a day rendered impregnable to the siege
of centuries, we see in reality before us much which the scraps of
information afforded by the ancient writers fail to make intelligible.
By a singular good fortune, we are in possession of the narrative
furnished by a trustworthy eyewitness of the disaster which overwhelmed
Pompeii; it is contained in the two letters which Pliny the Younger
wrote to Tacitus, informing him how Pliny and his mother watched the
eruption of Vesuvius while his uncle was perishing in the attempt to
rescue the wife of a friend and at the same time to satisfy his spirit
of inquiry. We will not recite the well-known account, except as it
refers to the women who, if for no other reason than that it was their
fate or fortune to be present on this memorable occasion, deserve a
mention in the history of Roman women. Pliny says: "On the twenty-fourth
of August, about one in the afternoon, my uncle was desired by my mother
to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape....
This extraordinary phenomenon excited his philosophical curiosity to
take a nearer view of it. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and
gave me the liberty, if I thought proper, to attend him.
I preferred to
continue my studies.... As he was coming out of the house, he received a
note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at
the imminent danger which threatened her; for her villa being situated
at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there was no way to escape but by sea;
she earnestly entreated him, therefore, to come to her assistance. He
accordingly changed his first design, and what he began with a
philosophical turn of mind he pursued with heroic purpose. He ordered
the galleys to put to sea and himself went on board, with an intention
of assisting not only Rectina, but several others, for villas stand
extremely thick upon that beautiful coast." In this design he was
unsuccessful; so he went to what is now called Castellamare, in the Gulf
of Naples. While there he was suffocated by the poisonous gases which
accompanied the eruption. In a second letter, Pliny describes his mother
and himself seeking to escape from the effects of a
"black and dreadful
cloud, bursting with an igneous, serpentine vapor, darting out a long
train of fire, resembling flashes of lightning, but much larger.... Soon
the cloud seemed to descend, and cover the whole ocean, as indeed it
entirely hid the island of Caprese and the promontory of Misenum. My
mother strongly conjured me to make my escape, at any rate, which, as I
was young, I might easily do; as for herself, she said, her age and
corpulency rendered all attempts of that sort impossible. However, she
would willingly meet death, if she could have the satisfaction of seeing
that she was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to leave
her, and taking her by the hand I led her on, she complying with great
reluctance, and with many reproaches to herself for retarding my
flight.... Darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or
when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up and all the
lights are extinct. Nothing was then to be heard but the shrieks of
women, the screams of children, and the cries of men.
Some calling for
their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and
only distinguishing each other by their voices; one lamenting his own
fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die from the very fear
of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part
imagining that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy
the gods and the world together.... Heavy showers of ashes rained upon
us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we
should have been crushed and buried in the heap." The mother and the son
escaped, however, and returned to Misenum, where in the midst of still
threatening danger they awaited news of the intrepid and fated
naturalist.
[Illustration 5:
_A POMPEIAN HOUSE
From a water-color by M. Hoffbauer, after a restoration by
Jules Bouchot from Pliny's description.
This interior, called the house of Pansa, is surrounded by
three streets and an alley. The view is from the vestibule.
In the centre is a basin, formed to receive water which fell
from the roof through an opening which also gave light to the rooms, the doors and portières of which are seen on
each side. Near to the basin was the altar for the household
god; the space beyond this was the dining room, which led to the peristyle, reception room, and garden. As in the
atrium, rooms opened into the peristyle and other parts.
The ground-floor exteriors were usually rented for shops.
Trade by the Roman nobility was always considered degrading,
especially if not extensive, says Cicero; they therefore traded by making their slaves or freedmen the ostensible merchants._]
Two-fifths of the city of Pompeii have now been cleared, and we can see
the external conditions of the Roman woman's life as it would have been
impossible for modern times to conceive them had it not been for that
ancient catastrophe. We can see the streets as they were in the days of
Agrippina; we can look into the shops where the women of ancient Italy
sought bargains across the marble counters; we can go to the temples
where they worshipped, to the theatre where they were thrilled and
amused; indeed, we have a theatre ticket, with the number of the seat
and the name of the play. Best of all, we can enter houses almost
intact, and examine the environments of that home life which in all ages
is the special domain of woman. No account of woman can be made complete
without a study of her home, and for this reason we quote freely from M.
Boissier's fine description of the Pompeian residence.
"The principal
rooms are all on the ground floor. The richest inhabitants build
themselves houses situated on four streets, thus occupying the whole
block. If they were economical, they cut off from this large plot of
ground some strips, which they let for a good sum; and we sometimes find
shops occupying the whole exterior of the house. While with us the front
is reserved for the best rooms, in Pompeii it was given up to business
purposes, or else closed with thick walls, in which there were no
openings. The whole house, instead of looking toward the street, faces
the interior. It communicates with the outer world only by the entrance
door, kept strictly closed and guarded; there are few windows, and these
only in the upper stories. Families wished to live in private, far from
the indifferent and from strangers.... The head of the house did not
desire to look into the street, and he was specially averse to having
persons in the street look into his house. Even within the mansion he
had divisions and distinctions. The part into which he welcomed his
visitors was not that to which he retired with his family; and it was
not easy to penetrate into this sanctuary, separated from every other
part by corridors, closed by doors or hangings, and guarded by porters.
The owner received when he wished, he remained in seclusion when so
inclined; and in case any client, more troublesome and obstinate than
usual, lingered in the vestibule to meet him on his way out, he had a
back door on a narrow street, which permitted him to escape....
"If the rooms are not large, they are numerous. The Roman used his
residence as he did his slaves; he had different rooms for each event of
the day, as he had servants for every necessity of life.
Each room in
his house is made precisely for the use to which it is destined. He is
not satisfied, as we are, with a single dining room; he has them of
various sizes, and he uses one or another at different seasons of the
year, or according to the number of friends whom he wishes to
entertain. The chamber where he takes his siesta during the day and that
to which he retires to sleep at night are very small, admitting light
and air only through the door, which is not a disadvantage in the South,
where coolness is promoted by darkness. Besides, he is there only while
he is asleep; for the rest he has his _atrium_ and his _peristylium_.
"Here he prefers to stay when he is at home. He is here not only with
his wife and children, but under the eyes of his servants, and sometimes
in their society. In spite of his fancy for seclusion and isolation, of
which I have spoken, he does not shun their company; for the family of
antiquity is more extensive than ours. It embraces, while recognizing
their inferiority, the slave and the freedman; so that the master, in
living with them, feels himself among his own people.
These open and
closed _atria_, where the family spends its time, are found in all
Pompeian houses without exception; they are indispensable to furnish
light for the rest of the dwelling. Consequently, all persons, even the
poorer classes, took pleasure in ornamenting them tastefully, and
sometimes with profusion. If the extent of ground permitted it, various
shrubs were planted, and a few flowers were made to grow."
Rome had for its next emperor Titus, who, in the two years of his reign,
showed himself the best and wisest ruler Rome had ever known. "I have
lost a day," he said, when at evening he could not remember having
afforded anyone assistance. He inherited his father's good sense, he had
profited by the elder's experience, and he came to the throne after
having tasted and become satiated with the vices common to his age. He
first married Arrisidia, the daughter of a knight. Of her we know
nothing further. After her death, he took to wife Marcia Furnilla, a
woman of very noble family, but probably of ignoble mind, for he
divorced her, and retained the custody of their daughter. This was a
Julia, who was true to the character common to the imperial women of
that name. We shall have occasion to discuss her a little later.
The woman with whose history the name of Titus was chiefly connected and
who exerted more influence upon his life than any other was Berenice,
the daughter of Agrippa the Great. She was a Jewess by race, but Roman
in sympathy as well as by allegiance; and for character she may well be
classed with such Roman ladies as Poppaea or Julia the daughter of
Augustus. She was first married to Herod of Chalcis; but he died, and
for a long while she remained a widow in the company and under the
protection of her brother Agrippa. During this time, the pair paid a
visit to Rome, and while on the way stopped at Cæsarea, where Festus was
governor. Here Berenice listened to the Apostle Paul, as he made his
eloquent plea in answer to his accusers and appealed to the tribunal of
Caesar. Berenice's continued widowhood, joined with the known laxity of
her morals, caused ugly stories to be set afloat regarding her relations
with her brother; whereupon she induced Polemon, King of Cilicia, to
become a proselyte to Judaism and marry her. This marriage seems to have
been unsatisfactory to both parties, for Berenice soon returned to
Jerusalem, and Polemon recanted from his Jewish faith.
At this time,
Titus was with his father in Judea, and, though Berenice was much older
than he, the young Roman was fascinated by her extraordinary beauty, so
much so that he took her with him on his return to Rome.
She was given
apartments in the palace, and there, to all appearance, she lived with
Titus as his wife. In fact, he would have made her his wife indeed, had
it not been for the strong prejudices of the Romans against foreign
alliances; but when he succeeded to the throne, rather than that his
rule should be impaired by any scandal, he sent Berenice away, though
the separation was the source of poignant grief to them both.
Titus died twenty-six months after he came to the throne, and his
brother Domitian--who, unfortunately for the history of Rome, possessed
a healthier constitution as well as an inferior disposition--reigned in
his stead. Domitian has been called the second Nero, the character of
his reign being very similar to that of Nero's rule.
This unworthy son
of Vespasian had disgraced his youth by vicious extravagances of all
kinds; but, on coming to the throne, he seemed to have reformed. This,
however, was only temporary. As has been remarked, on the day of
coronation there are few bad monarchs. All begin well; but the majority