Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

During the reign of the demented Caligula, the women of the court present no figure of political importance, and are not interesting except as they illustrate the depravity of the times. This emperor was possessed with an exaggerated idea of the divinity that was inherent in the Augustan race. Therefore he deemed that, like the kings of Egypt, he should conserve that dignity by marrying his own sister. Suetonius will have us believe that all three of the sisters of Caligula were dishonored by their brother; but Drusilla was his favorite. She had been given to Cassius Longinus, but Caligula took her from him and kept her as though she were his lawful wife. He made a will appointing her heiress of his private estates and also of the Empire; and at her death he ordered for her a public mourning, and threatened capital punishment against any person who should laugh or bathe or seek any amusement during the period. It was also declared that she had been received among the heavenly deities; and as Panthea, the universal goddess, her worship was enjoined upon all the cities of Italy and the provinces.

The other sisters, Agrippina and Julia, became involved in a conspiracy with Marcus Æmillius Lepidus against the life of their brother; and when the plot was discovered, though the lives of these women were spared,--probably owing to Caligula's intense respect for the Julian blood,--their property was confiscated and they were both sent into exile. Agrippina, however, was first compelled to perform a most unpleasant office. The family of Lepidus begged that his ashes might rest in the family mausoleum at Rome, and the disordered mind of Caligula recalled a journey which his mother had made, bearing the ashes of Germanicus. So he forced Agrippina, who had schemed to marry Lepidus in the hope of gaining for him the succession, to carry the urn that contained his remains from Germany to Rome, and never once allowed her, night or day, to rest from bearing her burden.

Of the wives of Caligula, Suetonius says: "Whether in repudiating them or retaining them he acted with greater infamy, it is difficult to say." Being at the wedding of Caius Piso with Livia Orestilla, he ordered the bride to be carried to his own house; but within a few days divorced her, and two years after banished her, because, as was thought, upon her divorce she had returned to her former husband. Lollia Paulina, who was married to a man of consular rank in command of an army, having been mentioned to Caligula as much resembling her grandmother, who had been a famous beauty, the emperor suddenly called her from the province where she resided with her husband, and married her; but he soon repudiated her, interdicting her from ever afterward marrying another man. He loved with a most passionate and constant affection Cæsonia, who was neither handsome nor young, and who was the mother of three daughters by another man; but she was a woman of excessive wantonness. He would frequently exhibit her to the soldiers, riding by his side, dressed in a military cloak, with shield and helmet. To his friends he showed her in a guise far less elaborate and much more improper. After she had borne a child to him, she was honored with the title of wife. Caligula named the infant Julia Drusilla, and, carrying it around the temples of all the goddesses, he laid it on the lap of Minerva, from whom he begged the care of bringing up and instructing this daughter. He considered her as his own child, for no better reason than that her temper was so savage that even in infancy she would attack with her nails the faces and eyes of the children at play with her.

Cæsonia could hardly have enjoyed her position, especially on those occasions when her demoniacal husband would amuse himself with the idea of having it in his power to sever her neck at any time that it might please him so to do. She was killed at the time of his assassination; and, fortunately, her vicious offspring perished with her. The manner in which Cæsonia met her death seems to indicate that the woman not only possessed courage, but also that she cherished some sort of affection for her husband. The conspirators hesitated over the question as to whether she should share his fate; but it was only for a few minutes. It was believed by many that it was through her love philtres and licentious practices that his mind had become disordered and that therefore she was, in a sense, the author of his evil doings. It being determined that she should die, the men who went in search of her found Cæsonia embracing the body of Caligula as it lay upon the ground, and they heard her bewailing the fact that he had not been governed by her advice. Whether that advice had been to restrain himself in his madness, or to follow with vengeful measures a clue which she had given him in regard to the conspiracy, those who heard her could not decide. Their minds were predisposed to believe in the latter explanation. When she saw Lupus, the man who had her death in charge, approaching, she sat up, all besmeared as she was with her husband's blood, and, baring her throat, requested the assassin not to be awkward in finishing the tragedy. She received the death stroke cheerfully, and the little daughter, who was by her mother's side, perished by the same sword.

To his own intense astonishment, Claudius suddenly found himself proclaimed and accepted as Emperor of the Romans. There is no evidence to show that Messalina had anticipated this change of fortunes any more than had her husband. Finding herself, however, in the position of empress, she had no mind to do otherwise than maintain herself secure in its enjoyment. The times were such that this could be done only by means of merciless expedients. This fact should constantly be kept in mind as we study the women of imperial Rome. No individual can be governed by the ideas that are prevalent in the society in which he lives and, at the same time, dispense with the methods ordinarily employed by that society. The Romans of the period which we are now reviewing believed that the best, as well as the easiest, way in which to placate an enemy or to outwit a rival was to destroy him. Messalina had no desire to do better than her surroundings warranted; in fact, she represents the climax of immorality. There were two causes which led her freely to dispense destruction among her associates. First, there were plenty of women who would gladly have rivalled her in the affection of the amorous Claudius; and while she did not in the least reciprocate her husband's affection, its retention was necessary to the maintenance of her position. Again, her innumerable amours were constantly furnishing weapons against herself, and it was only by inspiring dread that she could restrain her enemies from making use of them to her own destruction.

In such a position as she found herself, and among such surroundings, it is not surprising that Messalina was bad. Raised, when only a mere girl, to a dizzy height; flattered and sought after by all the most dissolute of the imperial court; the wife of a doting husband who, as she quickly discovered, was absolutely under her influence; all this would have tested a woman in whose character good impulses were perceptibly present. So far as can be learned, Messalina possessed no such impulses; on the contrary, everything in her contributed to the strength of the evil influences of her environment. Her glaring immoralities, combined with the consummate art with which she contrived to befool her husband, have rendered this woman's history a monument of conjugal infidelity for all the ages.

We may be fairly certain as to Messalina's personal appearance, for there are a number of cameos and busts of her in existence, though, of course, some of these are ideal and others are not well executed. Baring Gould, who has made a careful study of the sculptured portraits of the Cæsarian family, regards it as certain that in the onyx cameo which is in the Cabinet of Antiques at Vienna and in the bust now preserved in the Uffizi Palace we have what may be considered correct representations of Messalina. Of the former, he says: "The hair is arranged in small curls covered with a species of crown wreathed with corn. This is the usual mark of the deification of an empress as Ceres. The brow is low, the nose straight and a little retrousse at the end, the mouth remarkable for the thinness of the lips; the chin is not prominent, and a peculiar feature is the slope from the chin to the throat, forming a marked contrast in formation to that of Livia opposite. The mouth turns down, but there is a slight contraction in the corner." Of the bust, he tells us: "The profile there has a remarkable likeness to the type-giving face on the cameo. The hair is in curls, but hangs down in plaits behind, the brow is low, the eyes full, and the mouth with its thin lips and cruel expression seems thoroughly to express the character of the woman as known to us by history. The head is flat. There is insolence in the mouth, and a curl in the corner, noticeable also in the gem. One eye is larger than the other. They are not in line. The nose has been restored, so that we cannot compare it with that on the cameo. The rest agrees perfectly, though the slope from the chin is not so perceptible in the bust owing to the difference in position of the head. The brows are straight, not arched. Not only are the eyes of different shapes, but the chin is on one side. The end of the chin is square, the mouth is small, the lips fuller on the left side than on the right, and the right corner drawn up. The expression of the face is different when seen from each side, owing to the singular lack of uniformity in the sides of the face. In the same gallery is a so-called young Britannicus, and the resemblance of this child, as far as the formation of the lower part of the head goes, to the Messalina above described is remarkable. Still more remarkable is that of the beautiful statue in the Lateran, where the resemblance is very close. The boy's lips are fuller, but the whole structure of the jaws and chin, and the curl of the lower lip, are the same as in the Messalina of Florence. If this be Britannicus, then the bust at Florence is that of his mother; and it is hard to say who else can be intended by this charming statue in military costume.

"A medical man of large experience, who at my request studied the bust of Messalina in the Florence gallery, informs me that it is that of a woman physically unsound; the flattening of the top of the head indicates an imperfect mental development, and the general aspect of the face, evidently a close study from life without any attempt at hiding blemishes and idealizing, is that of a woman whose span of life would naturally be short. There would probably be malformation of the chest. The face is that of one with feverish blood, whose flame of life burnt too fast. The face is not in itself sensual, nor at all animal, but it is insolent and cruel. The low, flat brow as well as the low, flat head show that she was deficient in all the higher and nobler qualities. In this bust the formation of the throat is peculiar. M. Mayor remarks: 'Thin lips, evil smile, ears hardly visible, jaw advancing and remarkably massive, eyes close together, profoundly sunk under their arcade, nostrils fine and flexible, lips asymmetrical, the upper lip lifted on the right, as in a beast prepared to bite, the same characteristic feature observed in Caligula and commented on by Darwin. Facial asymmetry. The left eye highest and furthest from the nose (the same noticeable in Nero and Claudius, etc.). The look cruel rather than voluptuous. An ironical smile, the by no means uncommon mask worn by pathological corruption and nymphomania,'" M. Menière, in a book entitled Medical Studies from the Latin Poets, also gives it as his opinion that Messalina was a victim of nymphomania. He says: "At the Salpêtrière, there are Messalinas, cases which have absolutely nothing to do with morals." This probably may safely be accepted as the true explanation of the case, if one can rid one's mind of two suspicions. The first of these is that this much-talked-of asymmetry may be nothing other than inferior or careless artistic work. The sculptor may not have been able, or he may not have given himself the time, to carve both sides of the face so absolutely alike as to defy the criticism of sharp scientists, bent on discovering a cause for the poetical effect found in Juvenal and others. The mention of the satirist suggests our second suspicion, which is that in his astonishing account of the criminal appetites of Messalina he is straining after effect.

Now, in regard to the first of these suspicions, we have the assurance of eminent students of art that, in their sculpture, the Romans were exceedingly jealous of exact representation. Viktor Rydberg says: "It is impossible to reproach the Roman art of portraiture with flattery. It gave what the Romans insisted on--rigid fidelity to nature. It made no exception in favor of the Cæsars and their house, not even for the women. Proofs of this almost repulsive fidelity to nature are to be found. An empress, arrived at a more than mature age, is to be represented as Venus. It is possible that she would be glad to decline the honor. She belongs to that period in life when old ladies drape their withered beauties; but she has duties as Cæsar's spouse, and must resign herself to her fate. The goddess of love was the ancestress of the Julian race; and so her attributes, but not her beauty, descend to the empress. The artist has to immortalize her undraped charms, and he does it with almost brutal frankness, so that the little cupid, with finger to his mouth, at her feet, seems to sigh: 'Oh! for a curtain.'" All this may be very true of particular instances; but we know that there were cases when the artist did idealize, as would any sculptor who would place the head of a Cæsar on the trunk of a Greek god, if he were so required. Again, at no period of the world's history has the fraternity of artists been undiversified by members of varying ability, and the task of representing Messalina may have fallen into the hands of an inferior workman. Yet, after all, it is quite possible that the asymmetry in question may have characterized the face of the voluptuous empress; still, it should require something more than a little inequality of feature in a statue not absolutely identified to cause to accept, without a large grain of salt, Juvenal's statement in regard to the wife of Claudius. That Messalina was in the habit of stealing forth from the imperial palace at night to occupy a booth in a brothel as a common demirep under the name of Lycisca is almost too improbable for credence. It is possible that in this Juvenal enlarges on some allusion made by Agrippina the Younger, who wrote the empress's memoirs and who was never a friend to Messalina.

The palace of Claudius was full of freedmen--men who had been emancipated from slavery and had found the means to amass wealth and attain influence--and of Greek adventurers. These men performed services for the emperor and his wife which as yet were not submitted to by the aristocratic or even the equestrian families. Such men as these had been the only associates of Claudius before his advancement, and they retained great influence with him during his reign. Messalina also was obliged to consider them. Their silence, in regard to her intrigues, had to be purchased; she was obliged to ally herself with them, in order that she might retain her influence over her husband; their selling of appointments and taking of bribes she had to countenance; and at last she fell into their toils and was brought to ruin by their machinations.