SECT. VIII.
XLVIII. After all this recital of magnanimous women, there still remains something to be said on a particular, which the men point out as their weak side, and with respect to which, they charge them with the greatest want of constancy; that is, their not being firm in keeping a secret. Cato the Censor in this instance, would not admit of any exception whatever with regard to them, and condemned the trusting a secret to any woman, be she who she would, as one of the greatest errors a man could run into; but Cato’s own great niece Porcia, daughter of Cato the younger, and wife of Marcus Brutus, gave the lie to this assertion, she having obliged her husband, to confide to her the grand secret of the conspiracy against Cæsar, by the extraordinary proof she exhibited to him of her valour and constancy, in the great wound she voluntarily gave herself with a knife in the thigh.
XLIX. Pliny, quoting the Magi as his authors, tells us, that the heart of a certain bird, applied to the breast of a woman when she is asleep, will make her reveal all her secrets. And in another place, he says, the tongue of a certain snake will have the same effect. The magicians being obliged to search among the hidden secrets of Nature, for keys to unlock the doors of their hearts, is no proof, of the women’s being so easily brought to reveal what has been confided to them. But let us laugh with Pliny at these inventions; and let us grant, if you please, that there are very few women strict observers of a secret; but, in return to this, it is confessed on the other hand by the most experienced politicians, that there are very few men also, to whom you can confide secrets of importance; and truly, if such men were not very scarce commodities, princes would not hold them in such high estimation, as to think scarce any of their richest moveables equal to them in value.
L. Nor are there examples wanting, of women of invincible constancy in the article of keeping a secret. Pythagoras, when he found himself near dying, delivered all his writings, in which were contained the most hidden mysteries of his philosophy, into the custody of his prudent and dutiful daughter Damo; directing her at the same time, never to permit them to be published, which injunction she so punctually obeyed, that, even when she found herself reduced to extreme poverty, and could have sold those books for a large sum of money, she chose rather to endure the anguish and pinchings of want, than be deficient in point of the confidence reposed in her by her father.
LI. The magnanimous Aretaphila, whom we have already mentioned, having attempted to take away the life of her husband by a poisonous draught before she entered into a conspiracy against him, which was to be carried into execution by force of arms, was surprized and detected in the fact, and being put to the torture to discover who were her comforters and abettors, the force of the torment was so far from extorting the secret, or depriving her of the possession of herself, or the use of her reason, that, after owning she intended to give him the poison, she had the address to persuade the tyrant it was a love-philter, and contrived for the purpose of increasing his passion for her. In fact, this ingenious fiction had the effect of a philter, for Nicotratus’s love of her was afterwards greatly increased from this persuasion, that she, who was solicitous to excite in him an arduous and excessive desire for her, could not do otherwise than entertain a sincere tenderness and affection for him.
LII. In the conspiracy set on foot by Aristogiton, and which was begun to be executed, by putting to death Hipparchus, the brother of Hippias, a courtesan woman, who had been trusted with the secret, and knew all the accomplices, was put to the torture; but she, to convince the tyrant of the impossibility of extorting the secret from her, cut her tongue asunder with her teeth, and let the end drop before his face.
LIII. When the first indications of the conspiracy of Pison against Nero, began to shew themselves, many of the most illustrious men of Rome shrunk under, and gave way to the rigour of the torture. Lucan, for example, discovered his own mother as an accomplice, and many others their most intimate friends; and there was only one Epicharis, an ordinary and obscure woman, who was acquainted with the whole transaction, on whom neither whips nor fire, nor all the martyrdoms they could invent, had power to tear from her breast the least information.
LIV. I knew a certain one myself, who, being examined by the torture, touching an atrocious crime which had been committed by her master and mistress, resisted the force of that rigorous test, not to save herself, but only to skreen them; for so small a portion of the fault could be imputed to her, either on account of her ignorance of the magnitude of the crime, or from her having acted by the command of others, and from various circumstances of mitigation, that the law would not have condemned her to a punishment, any thing comparable to the severity of that she underwent.
LV. But of women, from whom the power of torture could not tear the secrets of their breasts, the examples are infinite. I heard a person who had been used to assist upon such occasions declare, that, although he had known many of them confess, rather than be stripped naked to prepare them for the execution of the punishment of the rack, the instances of their having confessed after undergoing this martyrdom of their modesty, were very rare. A truly great and shining excellence in the sex this, that the regard for their modesty, should have more weight with them than all the terrors of an executioner.
LVI. I do not doubt, but this parallel I have drawn of the sexes, may appear to many somewhat flattering to the women; but I shall reply to these, that Seneca, whose rigid Stoicism removes all doubts of his impartiality, and whose severity sets him at a great distance from all suspicion of flattery, has made a comparison not a jot less favourable to the side of the women, for he absolutely asserts them to be equal to the men, in all the valuable natural faculties and dispositions. These are his words: Quis autem dicat, naturam malignè cum muliebribus ingeniis egisse, & virtutes illarum in arctum retraxisse? Par illis mihi crede, vigor, par ad honesta (libeat) facultas est. Laborem, doloremque ex æquo si consuevere patiuntur. (in Consol. ad Marciam.)