prerogative. The laws, which were rigidly--even slavishly--interpreted
according to the letter and never according to the spirit, considered
the individual from the standpoint of his value to the State, and rarely
from that of his own rights. The woman's value to the State was entirely
submerged in that of her husband. Therefore, we find that it was only
with the greatest difficulty that edicts granting privileges to woman
could be passed, unless it were in payment for some special act of
loyalty on her part to the State. Hard and inflexible in their ideas of
life were those old Romans, practical and unsentimental in their
relations with each other, narrow in their conceptions, proud to
arrogance of their State, and reverencing only their institutions.
But in course of time they broke through their insularity with the force
of their own arms. Victorious contact with other States gave them a
larger acquaintance with the fruits of civilization, and the spoils of
conquest afforded them the means to enjoy it. Hence, during the latter
half of the republican period we see life in Rome rapidly undergoing a
change. As typical of this new state of things, as it affected the
character, status, and condition of women, there is only one woman whom
we need to select. In Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus and the
wife of Sempronius Gracchus, is found the ideal of Roman femininity of
that day. She was in every way worthy of her patrician ancestry, which
had produced a greater number of eminent men than any other family,
twenty-one consulships being held by the Cornelii in eighty-six years.
Cornelia lived in a Rome which we can understand and appreciate; we
begin to recognize social features upon which the imagination can lay
hold and from them piece together some idea of the reality. Hitherto
the data has been too foreign and too meagre for any great success in
this; but when we read of Cornelia providing herself with a country
house, riding to public worship, listening to the gossip of her friends
respecting each other's jewelry, and interesting herself in Greek
literature, we discover that the main features of a Roman matron's life
were not essentially dissimilar from those which characterize polite
feminine society in our own time. Indeed, there is more to evoke our
sympathetic appreciation in the Rome of B.C. 150 than in the Europe of
A.D. 1000 or in the Asiatic civilizations of to-day. We feel more at
home in the patrician villas than in the mediæval castles; just as we
find more that is applicable to modern life in the Roman poets than we
do in the bards of chivalry. In studying the period when the ancient
civilization of Italy was at its best, we discover habits of thought,
bits of life, and social customs, which really startle us with their
similitude to those to which we ourselves are accustomed.
The city, in the time of Cornelia, showed few outward signs of the
magnificence it was to acquire under the emperors. The houses were
mostly of brick, though domestic architecture had become quite ambitious
in its character, Cornelia herself having built, as has been said, a
very expensive villa at Misenum; those of the wealthy were filled with
costly furniture and precious works of art, which the Romans first
learned to admire in the countries which they subdued; and having
acquired a taste for beautiful things, they made no scruple of
appropriating them. Rome had now grown wealthy with the spoils of her
extensive victories, and, as always comes to pass with the advent of
riches, there had been brought about a great differentiation in the
condition of the population. Polybius gives us a picture of the
extravagant style in which Æmilia, the mother of Cornelia, appeared in
public. "When she left home to go to the temple," says he, "she seated
herself in a glittering chariot, herself attired with extreme luxury.
Before her were carried with solemn ceremony the vases of gold and
silver required for the sacrifice, and a numerous train of slaves and
servants accompanied her." And this notwithstanding the Oppian law,
which limited matrons to a half-ounce of gold on their wearing apparel
and prohibited them from riding in carriages in the city, and which had
not yet been repealed. As this modish lady passed through the streets of
Rome with her brilliant retinue, exciting the envy of other matrons, and
bestowing gracious recognition upon white-robed, stately patricians, she
must have beheld as many signs of abject, suffering poverty as are
prevalent in our own great cities. By this time, the plebeian order had
been raised to equal legal privilege with the patrician, and society had
now come to be divided into the enormously rich and the extremely poor.
The former rendered their position secure by means of extortion in the
provinces; the condition of the latter was made hopeless by the fact
that all labor was performed by slaves. A state of things unknown to the
old times was now prevalent in Rome: men and women were idle, willingly
or perforce, according to their circumstances.
The position of women had also changed. They were now beginning to make
a stand for their rights--a thing undreamed of in the old days. The
father of the family was no longer allowed to execute his arbitrary
power entirely unquestioned. Livy narrates an incident which illustrates
this development and bears interestingly upon the character of Æmilia
and the history of Cornelia. He relates that "the Senators, happening to
sup one day in the Capitol, rose up together and requested of Africanus,
before the company departed, to betroth his daughter to Gracchus; the
contract was accordingly executed in due form, in the presence of this
assembly. Scipio, on his return home, told his wife Æmilia that he had
concluded a match for her younger daughter. She, feeling her female
pride hurt, expressed some resentment at not having been consulted in
the disposal of their common child, adding that, even were he giving her
to Tiberius Gracchus, her mother ought not to be kept in ignorance of
his intention; to which Scipio, rejoiced that her judgment concurred so
entirely with his own, replied that she was betrothed to that very man."
It has been well said that the words which Plautus puts into the mouth
of Alcmena may be applied to the character of Cornelia, who was thus
bestowed by her great father upon a no less worthy man:
"My dower is
chastity, modesty, and the fear of the gods; it is love to my kindred;
it is to be submissive to my husband, kind toward good people, helpful
to the brave." She also received a _dot_, an accompaniment of marriage
which was beginning to be highly considered among the matrons of Rome as
of more practical value than the above-mentioned moral qualities. It
consisted of fifty talents of gold. But the time had not yet arrived
when the riches of virtue and goodness were entirely unappreciated;
there were still matrons who could enter, with faces neither brazen nor
abashed, the temple erected to chastity; and upon the tombs of many of
them might have been truthfully inscribed, as upon that of Claudia:
_Gentle in words, graceful in manner, she loved her husband devotedly;
she kept her house, she spun wool_. Among these chaste matrons Cornelia
excelled; her fame remains as that of the highest type of the
pure-principled, noble-minded, cultured Roman matron.
She lived in
entire sympathy with her husband; and we may well believe that it was
partly owing to her influence that the generous Sempronius Gracchus
found it in himself to command an army enlisted from among the slaves,
and to emancipate them upon the battlefield as a reward for the bravery
which his leadership incited.
Plutarch, in his lives of the sons of Gracchus, repeats a story which,
though characterized by the superstitions of the times, indicates in
what estimation Cornelia was held by her husband and all who knew her.
It relates that Gracchus once found in his bed chamber a couple of
snakes, and that the soothsayers, being consulted concerning the
prodigy, advised that he should neither kill them both nor let them both
escape; adding that if the male serpent were killed, Gracchus would die,
and, if the female, Cornelia would perish. Therefore, as he extremely
loved his wife, he thought that it was much more his part, who was an
old man, to die than it was hers, who as yet was but a young woman; so
he killed the male serpent and let the female escape.
Soon after this,
he died, leaving his wife and the twelve children which she had borne to
him. "Cornelia, taking upon herself all the care of the household and
the education of her children, approved herself so discreet a matron, so
affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a widow, that
Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing
to die for such a woman; who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her
his crown and would have married her, refused it, and chose rather to
live a widow. In this state she continued, and lost all her children,
except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the Younger, and two
sons, Tiberius and Caius." The daughter, Sempronia, seems to have been
in every respect unlike her mother. Unattractive and childless, she
neither loved nor was loved by her husband; and, indeed, suspicion was
cast upon her of having brought about his death.
Cornelia was well equipped to undertake the education of her children.
What is told of her indicates a woman who was alert to advance with all
that was progressive in her time. The spirit of literature had but
recently attained its reincarnation, and that for the first time upon
Roman soil. It was begotten, as it was again fifteen centuries later, by
the immortal genius of Greek poesy. The Romans conquered Greece
physically; but Hellenic learning subjugated Roman ideas. The Scipios
were the ardent supporters of Greek culture; and in this, as in all
other respects, Cornelia took a foremost position among the
representatives of her gifted family.
She provided for her children the most erudite of Greek masters, and
spared no efforts in training their minds in the love of all that was
graceful and cultured. In the justly renowned eloquence of her sons,
there was recognized a gift which they inherited from their mother, as
was testified by Cicero, who had seen her letters. She possessed the
ability and also the courage to incite them to noble deeds for their
country. It was probably not so much ambition for herself as for them
which caused her to reproach her sons with the fact that she was still
known as the widow of Scipio and not as the Mother of the Gracchi. But
they lost no time in earning for her, both on account of their deeds on
the battlefield and by their devotion to the civil affairs of the State,
the distinction of this latter title.
The Roman Republic had so far degenerated as to submit to be governed by
an oligarchy consisting of a few proud and wealthy families--the worst
of all forms of government. The Senators were flagrantly using their
power to accumulate enormous riches and to monopolize the land by
seizing upon the public domain. Middle-class independence was rapidly
diminishing, and the growing masses of the people were oppressed by a
poverty from which they had no means of freeing themselves. The Gracchi
sought to relieve these evils by passing laws limiting the amount of
land which might be held by one person, and offsetting the power of the
nobility by securing the economic independence of the people. The
Gracchi were reformers; and they each in turn attained to dictatorial
power. But though they secured the enactment of their measures, they
could not put them into effect; and in the end,--as is frequently the
case with reformers,--because they were far-sighted enough to see evil
in that which the majority of the rulers considered good, there was
nothing for them but martyrdom. This they suffered in turn: Caius taking
up the work where Tiberius was compelled, by assassination, to
relinquish it.
The parting of Caius from his wife on the morning of his own death is a
scene from a heroic tragedy. He could not be persuaded to arm himself,
with the exception of a small dagger underneath his toga. As he was
going out, Licinia stopped him at the threshold, holding him by one hand
and their little son by the other. She pleaded that he would not expose
himself to the murderers of his brother. "Had your brother," she urged,
"fallen before Numantia, the enemy would have given back what then had
remained of Tiberius; but such is my hard fate, that I probably must be
a suppliant to the floods or the waves, that they would somewhere
restore to me your relics. For since Tiberius was not spared, what trust
can we place either in the laws or in the gods?" But Caius, gently
withdrawing himself from her embraces, departed; and Licinia, falling in
a faint, was carried as though dead into the house of her brother
Crassus.
Cornelia bore the death of her two sons with her characteristic nobility
of mind. She removed to her seaside home at Cape Misenum; and there she
surrounded herself with learned men, and especially delighted in
entertaining the exponents of Greek literature. She was held in the
highest esteem by all; and her friends desired no greater privilege than
to listen to her reminiscences of her father, Scipio Africanus. She
would proudly add: "The grandsons of that great man were my children.
They perished in the temple and grove sacred to the gods. They have the
tombs that their virtues merited, for they sacrificed their lives to the
noblest of aims,--the desire to promote the welfare of the people." Such
was Cornelia; and she was the noblest of the matrons of the Republic. No
greater thing can be said of her than that she gloried most in the
reflected honor which came upon her as being the mother of the Gracchi;
yet she has been deservedly given a high place among the great and good
women of all time.
III
WOMAN'S PART IN RELIGION
In these modern times and in Christian countries, we are accustomed to
seeing religious matters take a more prominent place in the life of the
women than in that of the men. This is because our form of religion
concerns itself more with the emotions and with those subjects which
appeal to sentiment than it does with the practical affairs of life.
Wherever the details or the appliances of worship are brought into
intimate relation with the common occupations in which a people are
engaged, it at once becomes less peculiarly the province of women. For
instance, where there is union between Church and State, according to
the extent to which that union exists, and owing to the fact that women
are to a large extent shut out of the management of State affairs, the
Church more particularly engages the attention of the male portion of
the population. Also, where, as in Asia, an undertaking is supposed to
be liable to miscarriage unless entered into conformably with the
prevailing religious rites, men are less likely to be negligent in
paying their respects to the gods. When, as in mediæval Europe, every
phase of human activity was under the supervision of the Church, the
arts finding in it a large proportion of their subject matter, and
every transaction needing its sanction, woman's influence in religion
was much less predominant than it now is. All of which goes to show that
there is less of material self-seeking in feminine worship than in that
of men.
Never was the intimate relation between the material and the spiritual
more strongly accentuated than in ancient Rome. The acts of the gods and
goddesses were a part of the lives of the people.
Nothing existed or
came to pass in State, society, or private life without its cause being
attributed to the supernatural. The consequence was that every Roman
citizen looked upon the worship of his deities as a practical duty, the
neglect of which entailed practical consequences. At the same time, the
possession by woman of an important place in religion was assured, not
only by her nature, but also by the fact that reverence for the
supernatural was conjoined with every phase of life.
Worship was no less
a private interest than a public affair. It entered into everything.
Consequently, a woman's religious duties and privileges were exactly
coextensive with the activities of her life. According to Roman
theology, the supernatural world was the precise counterpart of the
natural world. Everything had its special deity. There were the powerful
gods and goddesses who presided over the national interests, over war
and peace, prosperity and chastisement, counsel and justice; there were
the divinities who were to be depended upon for the natural phenomena,
the seasons, the weather, germination, and harvest; there were also
minor spirits upon whose pleasure depended the success of every human
action.
According to the Roman conception, nothing took place without the
assistance of some special divinity whose province it was to further
that particular form of activity. It is said that Varro, at the close of
the era of the Republic, was able to enumerate thirty thousand of these
gods and goddesses. Roman life, public and private, was never for a
moment dissociated from religion. The Senate met for deliberation in the
temple of Jupiter; an important part of the general's duty on the
battlefield was to invoke the god of war; the infliction of punishment
on wrong-doers was a sacrifice to offended deity; all public
entertainments were held in honor of the gods; all the ordered events in
an individual's life were religious ceremonies; for even a family meal
was not supposed to be partaken of without a portion being set apart for
the household gods; and always on entering a house reverence was first
made to the Lares. Hence it necessarily followed that the part woman
took in religion was commensurate with her part in Roman life. It can
hardly be said that her position in this respect was a subordinate one.
If Mars, the god of battle, was the central object of Roman worship, an
equal devotion was paid to Vesta at the communal hearth which symbolized
the existence and the well-being of the city; and as it was more
particularly the province of men to invoke the warlike deity, so from
among the women, who were the home-keepers, were selected the honored
guardians of the sacred fire. It is also important to observe another
fact. Though there were priests appointed to conduct the ceremonies of
public worship, they were in no sense intermediaries.
Every suppliant
addressed himself directly to the divinity. He might consider it to his
advantage to consult the professional men, who were skilled in the
knowledge of how most persuasively to approach the gods; but the act of
intercession was each person's own affair, and did not need the
intervention of a proxy. Therefore, the women were as free to address
the gods as were the men; and, in fact, in the many matters which
concerned their sex particularly, and in other things in which it
seemed fitting, they alone could properly do so.
Bespeaking the favor of a particular deity consisted in paying that god
more or less extra attention; generally it was a very simple process.
There is in existence a painting, found at Rome, which represents two
women offering incense to Mars, their husbands probably being absent
with the army. Each of these matrons has brought a portable altar, and
into the rising flames, before a small figure of the deity, they are
dropping the fragrant oblation. This sacrifice may have taken place in
the open air; probably in the Forum. Thus easy was it for women to pay
their devotions and to invoke protection for those in whose welfare they
were interested. The practical Romans looked upon their relations to the
deities as partaking somewhat of the nature of commerce; for a certain
amount of attention they were justified in expecting a corresponding
amount of protection. They even practised what might truly be called
pious frauds upon the powers whom they worshipped. In certain cases, it
seemed to them that, inasmuch as the gods could not make use of the
reality, an inexpensive substitute might well take its place. For
instance, it is a relief to know that the yearly sacrifice of men which
the Vestals made to Father Tiber from the Sublician Bridge had nothing
in it more human than representations of men made out of osiers; but
when we read of the heads of poppies and even onions being presented to
Jupiter, in order that he might practise his thunderbolts upon them,
instead of upon the heads of the citizens, the instinct of
self-preservation is more apparent than is the reasoning faculty which
they attributed to the god. The Romans studied economy in their
religion. Their meat offerings constituted the family meal; and a pig
seemed to them the more proper object to sacrifice to the gods, in that
its flesh was a favorite article of diet with themselves.
In many instances, the Romans committed, as they believed, the fortunes
of the State to the religious zeal of the women. There were several
divine protectresses whose worship was the exclusive duty of the gentler
sex. The most important of all was Vesta; to permit her sacred flame to
expire was one of the greatest of public calamities. The fact that these
offices held by women were looked upon by the Romans as of exceeding
importance could but reflect a dignity upon womanhood and enhance the
respect in which the sex was held. In fact, though women held no
recognized place in civil and State affairs, in religion they attained
much nearer to equal rights with the men. If a man were a priest, his
wife was a priestess. So firmly did women assert the authority gained
through possession of religious office, that in the reign of Tiberius it
was deemed necessary to pass a law that in things sacred the priestess
of Jupiter should be subject to her husband.
One of the most interesting features of Roman religion was the worship
of Vesta and the institution of an order of virgins devoted to her
service. Nothing more clearly illustrates than this the fact that Roman
religion was suggested by racial customs. A study of the earliest
history of the Aryan race shows that during the migrations of the tribes
it would naturally fall to the duty of the young girls to kindle the
camp fire whenever their people stopped to rest; and as the primitive
method of procuring fire by rubbing together dry sticks rendered this no
easy matter, it was important to preserve the flame when once it was
produced. Then, too, the camp fire signified much; it stood for comfort,
sustenance, health, family, and social community; it was either the
source or the representation of the best in primeval life. The bright
flame was to the tribesmen a beneficent deity, a goddess, of course;
for by it the work of women was especially furthered--a chastity-loving
goddess, for what so pure as fire? Hence the idea that virgins, such as
those who enkindle the useful flame, should attend the communal hearth
consecrated to the honor of the divinity and symbolical of the life of
the tribe.
Numa Pompilius, the second of Rome's legendary kings, is said, as
already mentioned, to have instituted the college of the Vestal Virgins