Clodia was married to Quintus Metellus, to whom Cicero affords a most honorable tribute; but she did not allow the fact of her marriage to place any restraint upon the licentiousness of her conduct. Her luxurious house by the Tiber was a meeting place, not for men of learning, but for all the idle, fashionable, and dissolute young men of the city. Her reputation has been pilloried forever by the eloquent advocate in his defence of Marcus Coelius. This young man was accused of having attempted to poison Clodia, in order to rid himself of the necessity of paying back some gold he was said to have borrowed from her. The real truth appears to be that this prosecution was mainly instituted by Clodia, who considered herself slighted by Coelius, who had been her lover, but whose ardor was waning. The character and manner of life of this irrepressible young Roman matron may be gathered from the following arraignment of her in Cicero's oration. "If I am to proceed in the old-fashioned way and manner of pleading, then I must summon up from the Shades below one of those bearded old men,--not men with those little bits of imperials which she takes such a fancy to, but a man with that long, shaggy beard which we see on the ancient statues and images,--to reproach the woman, and to speak in my stead, lest she by any chance get angry with me. Let, then, some one of her own family rise up, and above all others that great blind Claudius of old time. For he will feel the least grief, inasmuch as he will not see her. And, in truth, if he can come forth from the dead, he will deal with her thus; he will say: 'Woman, what have you to do with Coelius? Why have you been so intimate with him as to lend him gold, or so much an enemy as to fear his poison? Was he a relation? A connection? Was he a friend of your husband? Nothing of the sort. What was the reason, then, except some folly? Even if the images of us, the men of your family, had no influence over you, did not even my own daughter, that celebrated Claudia Quinta, admonish you to emulate the praise belonging to our house from the glory of its women? Did not that Vestal Claudia recur to your mind, who embraced her father while celebrating his triumph, and prevented his being dragged from his chariot by a hostile tribune of the people? Why had the vices of your brother more weight with you than the virtues of your father, of your grandfather, and others In regular descent ever since my own time--virtues exemplified not only in the men, but also in the women? Was it for this that I broke the treaty which was concluded with Pyrrhus, that you should every day make new treaties of most disgraceful love? Was it for this I made the Appian Way, that you should travel along it escorted by other men besides your husband?'"
This reincarnation of the severe old ancestor ought to have been sufficient to strike terror and repentance into any woman's heart. But Cicero was more concerned with exonerating Coelius than he was about reforming Clodia, and doubtless he had more hope of convicting her of being a follower of undue courses than he had of converting her from her ways. So he goes on: "But if you wish me to deal more courteously with you, I will put away that harsh and almost boorish old man; and out of these kinsmen of yours here present I will take some one, and, before all, I will select your youngest brother, who is one of the best-bred men of his class, who is exceedingly fond of you, and who, on account of some childish timidity, I suppose, and some groundless fears of what may happen by night, always, when he was but a little boy, slept with you, his eldest sister. Suppose, then, that he speaks to you in this way: 'What are you making this disturbance about, my sister? Why are you so mad? You saw a young man become your neighbor; his fair complexion, his height, his countenance, and his eyes made an impression on you; you wished to see him oftener; you were sometimes seen in the same gardens with him, being a woman of high rank; you are unable with all your riches to detain him, the son of a thrifty and parsimonious father. He rejects you, he does not think your presents worth so much as you require of him. Try someone else. You have gardens on the Tiber, and you carefully made them in that particular spot to which all the youths of the city come to bathe. From that spot you may every day pick out people to suit you. Why do you annoy this one man who scorns you?'"
If the orator was just in all that he insinuates against her, Clodia, the wealthy, fashionable, and doubtless beautiful daughter of the great patrician family, was well qualified to be the high priestess of Aphrodite for the city of Rome.
V
ROMAN MARRIAGE
The position of woman in ancient Rome was always one of honor and respect. A Roman matron enjoyed many more social privileges and a much greater independence than did the Greek wife. In Athens the women were treated as children; and the more respectable their character, the more completely were they shut out from the social life and the public amusements of the men. In Rome, on the contrary, though the wife was subordinate to her husband and, as a rule, did not make herself conspicuous in public affairs, she was in no way secluded, and was everywhere treated with the highest respect. In the home, she was the mistress of the whole household economy, supervising the instruction of the children and governing the domestic slaves. She stood side by side with her husband, sharing in all his dignities, and in all matters pertaining to the family wielding an authority second only to his. Somewhere between the civilizations of Greece and Rome was the boundary line, starting from which the status of woman degraded to the Oriental or developed into the Occidental type. In the one case, subject to the jealous veil, the espionage of eunuch slaves, the debasing, soul-benumbing servilities of the harem; in the other, living in the open, the sole mate of one man, and, subject to her husband alone, clothed with all authority in her home. While Greece looked to the East, and subjected her women to some of those customs which characterized the harems of Babylon, Rome was essentially Western, and its women enjoyed a goodly portion of dignity and honor. Both Greeks and Romans were of the same branch of the great Aryan race, and the indications are that in the earliest times their women enjoyed equal freedom; but Greece, to a certain extent, fell under the influence of Semitic ideas, which saw in the wife a voluptuous possession to be jealously guarded. The Roman woman, on the other hand, was taught to prize and protect her own virtue.
The comparatively free and respected position of the matrons of republican Rome accounts in no small degree for the glory and greatness of the State. Where woman is treated as a slave, there is no genuine love of liberty. Great men can only be born of noble mothers; and nobility, feminine as well as masculine, can only flourish in freedom. Veturia and Cornelia were mistresses in their homes; they knew no restraint in their goings save the requirements of honor, they were respected by their husbands and reverenced by all men; therefore, in ways natural to such mothers, they were able to fit their sons for deeds worthy of men.
In the Roman house there were no secluded women's quarters corresponding to those of eastern nations; and the Roman women walked abroad, frequented the public theatres, and took their places at festive banquets with the men, Conelius Nepos, writing on this subject, says: "What Roman is ashamed to bring his wife to a feast; and does she not occupy the best room in the house, and live in the midst of company? But in Greece the case is far otherwise; for a wife is neither admitted to a feast, except among relations, nor does she sit anywhere but in the innermost apartment of the house, which is called the gynæconitis, and into which nobody goes who is not connected with her by near relationship." The most important room in the Roman house was the atrium. Here, in the midst of her slaves, the mistress pursued her domestic occupations; here was placed the lectus genialis or adversus, in ancient times the real, afterward the symbolical, bridal bed, her own proper seat of honor.
Notwithstanding this independent position of the women, Roman marriage, if it be judged by the strict letter of its laws and customs, was not very indulgent to the weaker sex. But, as we have indicated in preceding chapters, the power of the father of the family was much greater in theory than it was in reality. Roman wedlock was of two kinds: matrimonium justum and non justum; that is, marriage in due form, and marriage without the perfect ceremonies. The first required the right on either side to fulfil a lawful marriage according to the ancient rites. In the earliest times, equality of condition was demanded, patricians and plebeians being allowed to marry only in their own class. After B.C. 445, this restriction was removed; but it was still necessary that both parties to the contract should be citizens. But even in cases where the ancient rites were not permitted, marriage, if it took place, was regarded as none the less lawful and binding. Among the Romans, first cousins were not allowed to marry, though in the days of the emperors the restrictions of consanguinity were not strictly adhered to; Agrippina was married to Claudius, who was her uncle.