Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

I

If one wishes to gain a clear notion of the dominant traits of the Roman woman of twenty centuries ago, there is no better way than to walk observantly through the old galleries where so many of them still live in marble, side by side with the men who made or marred their fortunes. There, graven in stone, one sees at a glance the strength, the passion, the pride, the ambition, that left its stamp upon an age. There too is the weakness, the sensuality, the arrogance, the cruelty, that ruined a life and brought misery upon a generation. Most of these women belonged to a class that held a conspicuous place in the public view by virtue of its position. Some were wicked, a few were great, and many were good though they rarely get the credit of it. To make them live again is not easy, perhaps not possible, but we gather from many a record curious and interesting facts regarding them. Their surroundings are measurably familiar to us. We know how they looked, how they dressed their hair, how they wore their robes, how they carried themselves. With here and there a trait, an act, a passing word, an anecdote, in their relations to men and society, we may compose a picture which, if not exact, will give a fair idea of the manner of women they were.

There were three matrons in the family of the first emperor who may be taken as representatives of three dominant types of Roman womanhood. In Livia, we have the woman of affairs; in Octavia, the woman of the family; in Julia, the woman of the gay world. The first had before all things the genius of administration which was the special gift of her race; the second united the sweetest family affections with loyalty and moral strength; the last was of the numerous and dangerous class that made of society an occupation, and of pleasure an end.

Of the long line of capable women who had so strong and so lasting an influence in Roman affair—sometimes for good and sometimes for ill—the first and the best known was Livia. Standing as she did in the blazing light that shines upon a throne, we see her on many sides—if not always clearly, at least in bold outlines. That she had beauty, tact, fascination, and a gracious address, doubtless counted for much in her youth; but it was through her wise judgment, far-seeing intellect, well-poised character, and keen practical sense of values that this remarkable woman shared the fortunes and held the affection of Augustus for more than half a century, and had a voice in the destinies of Rome for seventy years. She has been given the purity of Diana, the benevolence of Ceres, the wisdom and craft of Minerva. There are many busts and statues of her, but they vary, and it is not possible to know which best represents the real woman. We see her in marble as Ceres—a commanding figure, with strength in every line. The passion that lies in the delicate, half-sensuous curve of the lips is overshadowed by the will that shows itself in the firm poise of the head, and the intellect that sits in the ample forehead and looks out of the serene eyes. “In features Venus, in manner Juno,” says Ovid, who had ample reason to know the power of this discreet matron. She frowned upon the license of the gay set to which he belonged, and it is not unlikely that she had something to do with the hopeless exile that pressed so heavily on his last years. But he declares that “she has raised her head above all vices,” dwelling upon her strength and the fact that “with the power to injure, she has injured no one.”

Whatever the faults of Livia may have been, no shadow rested on her womanly honor. Probably she had no choice when, at eighteen, the emperor took her from her husband—who found it best to submit amiably where the caprices of his sovereign were concerned—and made her his wife, this complaisant but elderly soldier of culture and influence acting as her father or guardian in the ceremony, and dying soon after. If he bore any ill will it does not appear, as he left his two children to the care of his successor. At the same time, Augustus sent away his own wife, the too jealous and exacting mother of Julia, on the day of his daughter’s birth. The only failing of Scribonia seems to have been that she was imperious and did not bear her wrongs with sufficient equanimity.

This new union lasted fifty-two years, and the last recorded words of the husband were, “Livia, farewell, and do not forget our love.” To some one who asked her how she retained her influence so long, she replied: “That comes from my moderation and my honesty. I have done with joy all that he wished, without trying to meddle with his affairs or showing the least jealousy as to his infidelities, which I never seemed to see.” As a recipe for the management of husbands the last might be open to grave objection, from a woman’s point of view, but it was the undisputed privilege of Roman men, indeed of all men in early times,—to say nothing of later ones,—to be made comfortable under any circumstances; and they made no pretense to morality. As to meddling, Livia evidently did it as though she did it not, as it was well known that she tempered the harshness of her husband and modified many of his stern decrees.

Perhaps a better explanation of his devotion might have been found in the rare union of beauty and intelligence with the domestic virtues which he took so much pleasure in extolling. In the waning of her personal charms, she took care not to lose the attractions of a versatile intellect and agreeable manners, also to sheathe in velvet the delicate, closely welded chains of daily habit. She knew how to submit and she knew how to rule. Since life is always a series of compromises, perhaps its finest art lies just here. Maintaining the traditions of her sex, she wove and made her husband’s clothes. As she had six hundred or more attendants to fold her own garments and minister to her comfort, it is not likely that these domestic duties weighed very heavily. Doubtless a little supervision sufficed for a great deal of credit. A well-managed household does not imply doing things one’s self so much as the knowledge and ability to put the machinery in running order; and Livia was before all things executive, which has much more to do with brains than with virtues.

Like her husband, or because of him, she hated luxury and ostentation in her daily life. Her house was small and simple, but decorated with taste. The pleasures of sense had little weight with her; indeed, there was a trace of asceticism in her character and in her way of living. She had various theories which we call fads. These are specially noticeable in an epicurean age, when a fortune was spent on a dinner. She limited herself to a diet of fruits and vegetables, drank a certain wine that suited the health better than the palate, and had great faith in the virtues of cold water. Augustus was cured of a grave malady by cold baths, but rumor said that the young Marcellus died of them. Just why Livia was blamed is not clear, as the treatment was prescribed by Musa, the great physician; but it was new, and she had made it a fashion.

That she had many lovable traits is shown not only by the lifelong devotion of her husband, but in the adoring affection of those who served her. In recent years a large columbarium has been found which she consecrated to the ashes of her numerous household, each of whom had his little urn with a fitting inscription. She used her large fortune generously, helped the persecuted, established a school for poor but well-born children, and did a great many charitable things. It may be true that she was cruel to her enemies, but she was loyal to her friends and untiring in their interests. Wisely holding the threads of a large and diverse patronage, she kept herself in touch with the intelligence of the new age, and was inspired by a broad and catholic public spirit. She is said to have built and endowed the Temple of Concord, also a portico rich in ancient paintings, which bore her name. If she was at home at the wheel or loom and looking after the personal comfort of her husband, she was equally so in the coteries of the learned and in the councils of State. She was called cold, but there were slumbering depths of feeling in that strong soul which few had fathomed. When her son Drusus died, it is said that only the tender interference of her husband prevented her from starving herself to death in the violence of her grief. But she quickly regained her poise, and went about her duties public and private with no outward sign of the sorrow that had come to her like a bolt out of a clear sky. She had much of the fortitude of the Stoics in the days when philosophy was the fashionable religion. But she went to the wise and learned Arius for help and consolation, as women of later ages have gone to a spiritual adviser. Seneca holds her up as a model of strength and well-regulated sensibility. He dwells upon her heroic qualities and contrasts her favorably with the more emotional Octavia, who mourned her life away over the death of her son and other domestic misfortunes.

There was another and less sympathetic side to her character. Without imagination, and little touched with sentiment, her life seems to have been guided by a calm reason which was always at the service of a towering ambition—a trait which, sooner or later, is sure to make the gentlest man or woman hard and cruel toward any one who stands in its way. This ambition was her master passion, and in its direction lay her faults. To her judgment and discrimination was added the craft of a diplomatist. Her grandson Caligula called her a “Ulysses in petticoats.” That she had any hand in the singular falling away, one after another, of her husband’s direct heirs, or that she ever passed the point where intrigue becomes crime, is the purest surmise. She had too many enemies in his family, who feared and envied her, to escape calumny; but though many dark rumors were in the air, nothing was ever proved. One youth was ill and died in Gaul, another in the far East. It is too much to suppose that she could safely have helped them out of the world at that distance, even had she wished to do so. That she schemed long and successfully to raise her son Tiberius to the throne is certain. That he repaid her with a great deal of ingratitude is equally so. Perhaps he could not forget that it was her ambition which compelled him to send away his much-loved wife, Vipsania,—whom he could never meet afterward without tears,—to marry the already notorious Julia, for whom he had a distinct aversion. But no one then stopped to consider sensibilities. If Livia was sometimes hard and cruel, she lived in an age when people who did many kind and generous things had no hesitation in walking over a rival, crushing an enemy, or even courteously suggesting to a friend who became inconvenient that it would be wise for him to take himself out of the world. The man of to-day is content with crushing rivals and ruining enemies in the name of high-sounding virtues, but he has grown humane, and lets them live. The time when fierce ambitions drove innocent victims out of life is gone by. But we can judge people only by the standards of their own day, and there is much evidence that Livia surpassed those of her time in justice and compassion.

Fortune certainly favored the aspiring empress. Her gentle sister-in-law, Octavia, died in good time for her ends. The brilliant Julia, who won hearts and stood in her way, plunged recklessly to her own ruin, taking with her into a hopeless exile the wronged but troublesome Scribonia. Of this step-daughter’s sons, two were dead in a far country, and the remaining one was chained for his vices to a desolate rock in the sea. Of her daughters, one followed in the footsteps and the fate of her unfortunate mother; the other was the first Agrippina, a proud, imperious woman with her mother’s beauty and her father’s inflexible will and courage. This granddaughter of Augustus, so noted for her virtues, her talents, and her sorrows, had followed her husband’s fortunes with wifely devotion, commanded the adoring soldiers in his absence, and returned heartbroken, with his ashes, to stir up Rome against his supposed murderer, whose wife, one of Livia’s friends, was implicated. Sure of the justice of her cause and the sympathy of the people, she defied the cruel Tiberius and the cool Livia,—who was bent upon saving her possibly innocent favorites,—to be finally sent to starve on the rocky islet where her erring mother had expiated her follies and her vices. She was a tragical figure, this spirited and haughty Agrippina with the face and air of a Minerva and the fiery spirit of Mars, who paid so heavy a penalty for her virtue and her loyalty. It is said that Livia interceded for her, though without avail; also that she supported the second hapless Julia until her death. Whether this was a stroke of diplomacy, or the impulse of a pitying heart, we cannot know.

The center of a hostile group, it is clear that Livia’s rôle was a difficult one, and the skill with which she disentangled these conflicting interests is the best proof of her insight and worldly tact. She had the instinct of leadership which divines men, women, and possibilities, and is swift to bend circumstances to its own ends. If she had her full share of troubles and chagrins, she hid them within her heart, kept her own counsel in perilous crises, and pursued her way with the calmness of a strong soul. By a singular fatality, every human barrier was swept from her path, some by fate and their own misdoings, some by more kindly nature, and some by intrigues, the mysteries of which we cannot fathom. In the end she dominated friends and enemies alike.

But, in spite of her success, the last of her eighty-eight years were burdened with griefs. Her heart was wounded in the tenderest point by the son for whom she had toiled and schemed; her pride was humiliated, and her hopes were dashed. That she played the sovereign and became capricious and exacting, was perhaps in the nature of things. No one was ever more flattered and honored by an admiring people. The Senate paid court to her, her receptions were officially announced, her signature was attached to decrees, she was attended by lictors when she went out, and had an altar on which her name was adored. She had a conspicuous place among the white-robed vestals and was made a priestess of Augustus. When she was ill the world mourned; when she recovered there were fêtes and votive offerings. “A woman in all things more comparable to the gods than to men, who knew how to use her power so as to turn away peril and advance the most deserving,” said one of her contemporaries. She remained to the end a stately figure among women who have held the reality of power without its titles, not through the arts of the coquette, but through tact, wisdom, foresight, and intellectual force. With less temperament and esthetic quality, she recalls Aspasia in her vigor, her mental grasp, and her power to hold the affection of a great man in an age when such love seems to have been rare. Perhaps we find a closer resemblance in Mme. de Maintenon, who combined her strength, her cold reason, and her political sagacity with a finer modern culture. It may be that the latter used her power less wisely, but she was a sadder woman. She reached the goal of her ambition only after the loss of her illusions, if she ever had them, and the task of catering to the caprices of a spoiled monarch was too much for her. The records of her life reveal too surely the tragedy of a soul; she lacked the stoical endurance to suffer and make no sign. Livia apparently never ceased to love the husband of her youth, and they worked in sympathy. With this firm foundation of happiness, all things were possible. One can point to no mistakes that were made through her counsels, and their weight is shown in the letters of Augustus himself. Of her wisdom and moderation, no better evidence is needed than the unparalleled cruelties of her son as soon as her restraining influence was gone.

We have able and gifted women to-day who are companions or mothers of great rulers, but I can recall no one not a reigning queen who has a like influence or has received equal honors. Have women of masterful character lost the subtle art of fascination to make it available, or are modern rulers smaller men, who fear a rival? With us, women of this type find their place as presidents of charitable associations or powerful clubs, or leaders of a conservative society. Sometimes they are better known as wives and helpers of men with political aspirations. But we rarely hear of them in the latter rôle, as they are usually lost in a glory which they often make but do not visibly share.