V
The wicked side of the Roman woman—and this was sometimes very wicked indeed—has been sufficiently emphasized. It is more agreeable and perhaps more profitable to consider her better side. Her talent was essentially administrative, and we find many illustrations of it among those who were conspicuous in public life. There were strong and wise women who had great power; as a rule, it was held wisely. Many of them, indeed most of them, brought moral questions to bear upon State problems, with a keen discriminating insight into conditions that troubled the hearts of wise men. Their number was small, as no woman below the rank of an empress was eligible to the smallest position of influence, aside from the religious offices, which were largely perfunctory; but it was sufficient to show a quality of womanhood that was not only strong, but intrinsically fine and noble.
Of these, as we have seen, the most striking representative was Livia. Among those who followed more or less in her footsteps was Plotina, the able and accomplished wife of Trajan. Trained in the philosophy of the Stoics, her head was turned neither by prosperity nor misfortune. She entered the palace, on her husband’s elevation to the throne, with serene dignity, and said that she could leave it with equal calmness. With less ambition than the first empress, she had a finer moral sense, also the gravity and firmness of a matron of the old school. She loved truth and justice better than the pageantry of courts, and ignored the claims of an artificial society. A woman of brilliant intellect, noble character, and exalted aims, she led a simple life in the midst of luxury, and used her power not only to raise the tone of morals and to foster a taste for letters, but to expose political corruptions, suppress abuses, diminish unjust taxes, and promote financial reforms. It was through her influence that Hadrian was adopted, a favor which he recognized by extending her authority in his reign, and writing hymns in her praise. The trace of asceticism in her character and manners did not please the idlers who liked to bask in the sunshine of a gay and luxurious court. She was censured and talked about, with little enough reason as it seems, as no records have left a shadow on her reputation. Her fault, in the eyes of bad men, lay in her moral force. To frown upon vice, to oppose corruption in high places, was an unwarranted interference with their natural rights. But good men sustained her. At her death she was placed in the ranks of the gods and honored with a temple dedicated to the “Mother of the People.”
A more conspicuous example of the ability of the women who figured in the public life of Rome is found in Julia Domna, the Syrian wife of Septimius Severus, who is said to have owed his success to her wise counsels. She was not simply an ambitious woman who schemed for place and power. To a genius for diplomacy she added the fascinations of beauty, wit, and imagination. She had a knowledge of history, philosophy, geometry, and the sciences of her time, was a patron of art, and made her court a center of all that was left of literature and culture in an age of decadence. Her husband evidently did not object to a learned woman, as he had a special admiration for Arria “because she read Plato.” Then this clever wife—who was called “Julia the philosopher,” surrounded herself with savants, and loved to discuss great subjects—put her versatile intellect to his service and advancement. Her youth was not free from rumors of follies, but no woman of note escaped these, even if she were pure as Diana. Her father was a “priest of the Sun,” and she was always a student, with a tendency toward Oriental mysticism. She ruled wisely and made the fortune of her family. In her last years she sought refuge from many sorrows in the resources of her intellect, but these failed to bring her happiness. The wicked Caracalla, who did not profit by his mother’s wisdom, killed his brother in her arms, and finally broke her heart.
Her sister, Julia Mæsa, shared her abilities, and, with the aid of her daughters, secured the throne for her grandson. She was no doubt ambitious, but was known as wise, just, and moderate. This family, which ruled Rome for many years, was a remarkable one, but its credit was sustained mainly by its women. One of the daughters of Julia Mæsa was Soæmias, who was the first woman to take her place in the Senate and attach her name to legislative decrees. She also presided over the Little Senate, a sort of “woman’s club,” which regulated morals, dress, etiquette, and other matters pertaining to her sex. It was accused of gossip and scandal; but as this accusation has been made against every association of women, from the coterie of Sappho to the modern sewing-society and the last luncheon club, it cannot be taken too seriously. Let the man who lounges about the clubs of to-day,—as his Greek and Roman predecessors did about the porticos, gymnasia, or baths,—and has never heard or repeated any gossip of his fellow-men and -women, throw the first stone.
But Soæmias had a bad son, the Heliogabulus of infamous note, whom she could not save or reform, and she was wise enough to pave the way for the succession of her sister’s more reputable one, after his death. This sister, Mamæa, was virtually regent during the minority of Alexander Severus, whose purity of character and conduct she guarded with the greatest care. She tried to apply the moral ideals of womanhood to the men of the period, and found the task a difficult and thankless one. Without assuming the trappings of power, she administered the affairs of the empire with wisdom and judgment. An able, humane, and thoughtful woman of conservative tendencies and limited ambition for herself, she declined to sit in the Senate, but chose a body of just and learned counselors to decide upon public questions, while she discussed Christianity with her friend Origen, founded a school for the free education of orphans, gave her son a serious training for his future responsibilities, and worked for the moral betterment of a world that did not wish to be bettered in that way. Her standards were too high, and she reformed too much for people who found license and corruption more to their interest and liking. The Senate was jealous of her wise and just counselors, who could not be used as tools for unscrupulous ends. Impatient, at last, of their interference, and incensed at a woman who wished a moral government, it passed a law excluding women from its ranks and “devoting to the infernal gods the head of the wretch by whom this decree should be violated.” With singular consistency, however, it voted her an apotheosis after ridding itself of the restraining influence of her virtues by practically sending her to a violent death.