Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

Tiberius refused to permit the apotheosis of Livia; but after his death the highest honors which a superstitious people could devise were paid to her memory. Claudius caused her to be deified, and the worship of Livia was constituted one of the functions of the Vestals. An idealized statue of her was placed in the temple of Augustus. Medals were impressed with the image of her head, and it was ordered that when the women of Rome had occasion to swear, it should be "By Livia."

On the whole, the Roman people, who understood Livia's character better than it is possible for us to do at this late day, judged her very kindly. Her virtues, which were conjugal and domestic, were always popularly respected, though not generally followed. Her pride and cruel vices were readily condoned, because they were considered indispensable to the policy of rulers. Her husband was a successful statesman; he maintained his position on the throne and accomplished much for the best interests of the Empire. Livia was a successful politician; she kept the people enamored of her supremacy, but furthered no interests save those of herself and her son.

Soon after the death of Livia, Agrippina was banished to the island of Pandataria, where her mother Julia had been confined for so many repentant years. It seems that her redoubtable spirit would not allow her to submit to this tyranny without a struggle; and so brutal were the soldiers in enforcing the emperor's command upon her who had once been known as "The Mother of the Camps," that she lost the sight of one of her eyes. After four years of miserable exile, she ended her life in the "high Roman manner" by voluntary starvation.

In the Capitol Museum there is a seated figure of Agrippina. It is one of the noblest pieces of statuary in the world. In it is seen none of that feminine sweetness which endeared the young wife of Germanicus to the hearts of the Roman legions; but there is that proud consciousness of moral dignity which Livia could not rival and that imperial manner which Tiberius could not cow. It is a sad, strong-hearted woman. One could fancy that a composite of all the noblest Roman matrons might have made just such a picture. Or it might be the goddess Roma, in whose personification are included the femininity of her daughters and also the sternness of her sons.

In the daughter of Germanicus we have another Agrippina, who was a much more adroit politician than her mother. She was shrewder even than Livia, and more unprincipled; and was favored beyond parallel in position, for she was daughter by adoption of Tiberius, mother of Nero, sister of Caligula, and wife of Claudius. The last mentioned relation gave her a much more effective position of vantage than Livia had enjoyed--first, on account of Claudius's incapacity, and also because the Romans had allowed themselves to drift further away from the old republican ideas. Hereafter we shall study the character of Agrippina and shall be compelled to place her among those notorious women who helped to make the Neronian age the most corrupt period in the world's history. Here we notice but briefly her political ambitions. She managed the emperor, securing with slight persuasion the appointment or the dismissal of the most important State officers. She established colonies in her own name. Nor was she satisfied to remain merely the power behind the throne. When Caractacus the British king was carried prisoner to Rome, and for his courageous bearing gained for himself his wife and his brothers from the emperor, the prisoners did homage not only to Claudius, but also to Agrippina. The empress occupied a second throne and received an equal share of the gratitude of the prisoners and the plaudits of the people. Here was seen, as Tacitus remarks, a spectacle strange and unauthorized by any former custom. A woman had never before presided over the Roman ensigns. Agrippina boldly claimed to be a partner in the Empire which her ancestors had wrested from the ancient republican suffrage.

It was with Agrippina the Second as it had been with Livia, every political aspiration was concentrated upon one object--the elevation of her own son to the imperial rule, and all the activities emanating from her energetic, resourceful nature were employed in hewing a path for Nero's advancement. Woe befell the persons who stood in that path or seemed likely at any time to have it in their power and inclination to impede that advancement. They were ruthlessly cut down in that unrelenting manner of which only an ambitious woman is capable. There were no public works, nothing broad-minded, no thought of the common good: the sole motif of the Roman woman in politics was personal preferment.

VIII

THE ROMAN WOMAN IN LITERATURE

There was in ancient Rome a street called Argiletus, which we learn from Martial was occupied principally by booksellers. Here those works which are cherished not alone for their antiquity, and some others possibly as good but which in the misfortunes of many centuries have disappeared, were bought fresh from their authors' hands and sold to the eager lovers of literature. Here, when a new piece by Virgil or Horace was announced, the reading public would flock, urged by the most commendable form of curiosity known to the cultured human mind. Here hundreds of scribes were employed in the multiplication of copies of those classics over which in later days have labored scores of generations of youthful students, with deep regret that those classics were not written in their own mother tongue. Those shops, or taberna libraria, were the lounging places of the famous men who created this literature and of those who did good service to posterity by constituting themselves the patrons of the geniuses of their age, who otherwise would have been as indigent and as barren as are the neglected authors of our own times. The men and women who received an ancient author in the name of a poet are entitled to receive a poet's reward. In the shops of Secundus and the Sosii brothers, the literati of Rome and their admirers gathered to indulge in that most fascinating of all conversational intercourse: book talk.