Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

III

One sees little clearly through the mists of two thousand years, and we know few details of what seems to have been the first concerted revolt on the part of women. The visible cause was a trivial one, but it was the proverbial last drop, and served at least to bring dismay into the councils of men, and afterward, possibly, reflection. The Roman woman was patriotic and quite ready, at need, to give all and ask nothing. When money was required to carry on the Punic wars, she poured out her jewels and personal treasures with lavish generosity; nor did she murmur when the Oppian law decreed that she must no longer wear purple or many-colored robes, that her gold ornaments must weigh no more than half an ounce, and that she must walk if she went out, as the use of a carriage in the city was a forbidden luxury. These were small privileges, but they were about all she had, and when the crisis was past, she asked a repeal of the decree. She met the usual rebuff of those who seek to regain a lost point. Men saw in such a request only an “irruption of female emancipators,” dangerous alike to religion and the State. Cato, the austere, refused a petition which he regarded as a subversion of order and a rebellion against lawful masters. He said that the claim of women to any rights or any voice in public affairs was a proof that men had lost their majesty as well as their authority; such a thing could not have happened if each one had kept his own wife in proper subjection. “Our privileges,” he continues, “overpowered at home by female contumacy, are, even here in the forum, spurned and trodden under foot”; indeed, he begins to fear that “the whole race of males may be utterly destroyed by a conspiracy of women.” He rails at the matrons, who throng the forum, for “running into public and addressing other women’s husbands.” It “does not concern them what laws are passed or repealed.” He bewails the “good old days” when women were forced to obey their fathers, brothers, or husbands. “Now they are so lost to a sense of decency as to ask favors of other men.” “Women,” he says, “bear law with impatience.” They long for liberty, which is not good for them. With all the old restrictions, it is difficult to keep them within bounds. “The moment they have arrived at equality they will be our superiors”—a dangerous admission surely. He calls the affair a sedition, an insurrection, a secession of women.

But the matrons had some able defenders. Lucius Valerius, who had asked the repeal of this obnoxious law, spoke for them. He objects to calling a natural request by such hard names, and quotes from antiquity to prove that it is not a new thing for Roman matrons to come out in public, as they have often done so in the interest of the State, and “always to its advantage.” He recalls the various times when they saved Rome, and refers to the generosity with which they invariably responded to a call for help. No one objected when they appeared for the general good; why should they be censured when they asked a favor for themselves? In reply to the accusation of extravagance, he says: “When you wear purple on your own robe, why will you not permit your wife a purple mantle?”... “Will you spend more on your horse than on your wife?” Then he asks why women who have always been noted for modesty should lose it now through the repeal of a law that has not been in existence more than twenty years. One is tempted to quote at length from these speeches, because they show us how the Romans discussed certain questions that are familiar to-day. To be sure, it was only a woman’s privilege of dressing as she chose that they were considering, but it really involved her right to ask anything which her lord and master did not freely accord. We hear practically the same arguments, the same fears, the same special pleadings on both sides, at each new step in the social advancement of women.

The Roman matrons, however, were not discouraged by criticism. They flocked to the forum in greater numbers than ever. Women came in from the towns and villages to aid them. The senators were so astounded at their audacity that they solemnly implored the gods to reveal the nature of the omen. They stigmatized the leaders as “androgynes” or “he-women,” a term of contempt so freely applied in this country, less than fifty years ago, to those who bravely presented the claims of their sex to larger consideration, and who, silver-haired and venerable, are so widely honored to-day. We do not hear that there were any congresses or conventions, but these Roman ladies held meetings, went into the streets for votes, and appealed to nobles, officials, and strangers alike. They sought the tribunes in their houses, and used all their arts of persuasion. There were fair-minded men then as now, and the spirited rebels won their cause, though Cato revenged himself for his defeat by imposing a heavy tax on the dress, ornaments, and carriages of women. It is said that they put on their gay robes and jewels at once, and celebrated their victory by dancing in the legislative halls.

Not far from this time, possibly a little before, a dowry was set apart for women. But there was a growing jealousy of their increasing independence, and, a few years later, it was proposed to take away from them the right of inheritance. It was feared that too much property might fall into their hands, as had been the case in Sparta; also, that their taste for elegant living might lead to degeneracy of manners and morals. The irrepressible Cato again came to the front and declaimed against the arrogance and tyranny of rich women. After bringing their husbands a large dowry, he said, they even had the presumption to retain some of their own money for themselves and ask payment if they lent it to their masters! Men could not be expected to tolerate such insufferable insolence on the part of their “reserved slaves.” And so the decree was passed. But it was more honored in the breach than in the observance, and became a dead letter, as men themselves thought it unjust.

How far the gradual change in the laws was due to the efforts of women and how far to the justice of men, it is not easy to determine; but the astonished attitude of the latter when they felt that their time-honored supremacy was in peril shows better than anything else the real significance of the movement which was precipitated by so slight a cause. It is quite safe to say that without an emphatic protest there would have been no thought of justice. Traditions are only broken from the inside where they press heavily. In this case it was a daring and unheard-of thing to run against the current of centuries of passive submission; but “it is the first step that costs.” When the right of being heard had been once asserted, grave statesmen and jurists took up the matter and solved it as best they could, with an evident desire to be just and kind, as they understood it. It could hardly be expected that half of the human family would voluntarily relinquish the absolute ownership of the other half, or even believe it to be good for the other half that they should do so. Men are not so constituted. The institutions and customs that had come to them from their fathers they felt bound to pass on, as far as possible, intact. Besides, all vital changes must be slow, unless they are to be chaotic. But the leaven of a new intelligence worked surely, if not swiftly.

The masses of the Roman women never passed out of a condition which we should call subjection, though they did secure at last the use of their own fortunes, relative freedom in the marriage contract, and a certain protection against money-hunting and spendthrift husbands. In the reign of Augustus the wife was given a guaranty for her own property, and the husband was forbidden to alienate the dowry. The mother was in a measure freed from oppressive guardianship, which later ceased altogether. Under Hadrian she was permitted to make a will without consulting any one, also to inherit from her sons. In many regards the Romans after the Antonines were more just to women than are most of the civilized nations of to-day. But these changes were the work of centuries, and it is possible here to touch only upon a few essential points.

There was a second revolt more than a hundred years after the first, when the triumvirs levied on the rich women of Rome a tax which compelled many of them to sacrifice their jewels. They appealed to Octavia to use her influence, also to the able mother of Antony, both of whom favored them; but his wife, the Fulvia of unpleasant fame, treated them with intolerable rudeness. Again they thronged the forum; but they had made vast strides in intelligence, and this time the eloquent daughter of a famous orator was chosen to plead for them. It was no longer a simple matter of personal injustice, but also a moral question upon which thoughtful women had distinct opinions and the ability to express them. Hortensia spoke for peace. “Do not ask us,” she says, “to contribute to the fratricidal war that is rending the Republic.” Her appeal for justice recalls a plea so often heard to-day, in a form that is but slightly altered. “Why should we pay taxes,” she says, “when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the statecraft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful results?... When have taxes ever been imposed on women?” Quintilian refers to this address of a brilliant matron as worthy to be read for its excellence, and “not merely as an honor to her sex.”

These spirited and high-born women were sent home, as the others had been, but the people again came to their aid, and it was found best to limit the tax to a few who could bear the burden easily.