Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

As to the character of Poppæa, Josephus credits her with being very religious, and Tacitus says that she was much given to consulting with soothsayers and eastern charlatans. Yet it may have been that, notwithstanding her wild profligacy and shameless ambition, Poppæa felt the vacuity of the glittering show by which she was surrounded, and that at times a restless conscience compelled her to grope among the tangled mysteries of the spiritual life. At the same time, it has been suspected--and the suspicion is not totally without warrant--that the Roman Jews, in their bitter animosity against the Christians, were aided by the empress in instigating that persecution which rendered the reign of Nero so superlatively infamous.

It was rare for an imperial consort to come to other than a violent end; and Poppæa was no exception to the rule. Her death was the act, though unpremeditated, of her husband. One day, she found fault with him for returning later than she desired from a chariot drive. Angered by her upbraidings and brutal by nature, he kicked her, and, being in a condition of pregnancy at the time, she shortly afterward died of the blow. It is said that her body was not consumed by fire, as was the custom of the Romans, but embalmed in Jewish fashion and placed in the tomb of the Julian family. She was, however, given a splendid funeral; and there is no stronger witness to the terrible moral apathy which characterized the times than the fact that her murderous husband delivered on the occasion a laudatory oration. From the rostrum, he magnified "her beauty and her lot, in having been the mother of an infant enrolled among the gods." There being nothing else in her character to extol, he treated her gifts of fortune as having been so many virtues. It is impossible to doubt that the ancient historian is correct when he asserts that though the people were obliged to put on an appearance of mourning, they could but rejoice at the death of this woman, when they remembered her lewdness and her cruelty; and although, as Pliny tells us, all Arabia did not produce in a whole year as many spices as were consumed at the funeral of Poppæa, there was no incense, material or eulogistic, by which it was possible to overcome the evil odor of her life.

The reign of Nero was typical of other ages that were to follow. The Roman people were to drink still deeper of the dregs of servility, and they were to become yet more morally apathetic, before they would awaken to better things. Poppæa was simply a woman of her time, and she was followed by generations of women, both of high and low degree, who were like-minded with herself. Imperial prostitutes and plebeian courtesans run riot through all the long drawn out decadence of the Roman Empire; but, although a veritable picture of the Roman woman could not be given without the inclusion of such types as those delineated in this and the preceding chapter, we will at least spare ourselves and the reader further recital of vice and crime by confining the exemplification to this one period. We have not refrained from including the worst features and employing the darkest colors that history warrants, in order that, to use the expression of Tacitus, we may not have to repeat instances of similar extravagance.

Although Nero was a monster of iniquity, he was not denied the disinterested love of women. That strange, strong passion which holds woman's heart to the most unworthy objects and feeds itself with idealizations made the name of Nero dear to some when it was execrated by all the world besides. And when at last he was driven from the throne, and, uttering the words: "I yet live, to my shame and disgrace," drove the suicidal dagger through his throat, there were women who tenderly cared for that body which sycophantic courtiers extolled while it lived and neglected when it was dead and powerless. His nurses Ecloge and Alexandra, who had cared for him when he was an innocent boy, and that Acte who had been his first love and who had never entirely lost her influence over him, laid his ashes in the tomb of his fathers, and grieved over a death which gave to the world at large great cause for rejoicing.

XI

GOOD WOMEN OF NERO'S REIGN

The immoralities which characterized the reigns of some of the first emperors must be considered as abnormal outbreaks rather than as permanent conditions. The element of corruption is always present in the social body. As a rule, it reveals itself only to those who look for it in the slums and prisons and criminal haunts, but at times and under certain conditions it breaks out with excessive virulence, and, to adopt a Biblical figure, there seems to be no soundness in the whole body. Such conditions were present during the period we have been studying. Many circumstances combined to bring all the corruption and immorality which are usually veiled or disguised into prominent view and to make them fashionable. The accidents of birth placed upon the imperial throne men who were morally insane; consequently, the evil-disposed found themselves in a paradise of crime, while the ambitious, the covetous, and the cowardly were enabled to gain their ends and preserve their safety only by becoming caterers to and companions in their masters' lusts.

It is very easy, however, for a student of history to encourage an exaggerated idea of Roman depravity, even as it was in the days of Messalina and Poppsea. Whence do we obtain our picture of the Rome of those times? Partly from historians; but very largely from such writers as Juvenal, Petronius, and Apuleius. The historians confined their accounts to the prominent people of their times, and it not unfrequently happened that the most prominent and successful were the least commendable from the moral standpoint. The moralists necessarily placed the worst in the boldest relief, in order to ensure a more telling effect. Seneca held such writers up to ridicule, when he said: "Morals are gone; evil triumphs; all virtue, all justice, is disappearing; the world is degenerating. This is what was said in our fathers' days, it is what men say to-day, and it will be the cry of our children." And yet, the world does not grow worse. As for the society portrayed by Petronius and Apuleius, these men sought their characters among the low pothouses and the brothels of Rome. The morals of the ordinary Roman home must not be judged by a scene either in a house of ill fame or in the palace of a crazy and dissolute tyrant, any more than the common life of Herculaneum or Pompeii is to be conjectured solely from the obscene pictures found on the walls of their ruined dwellings.

In this present chapter, the women we shall cite are chiefly those who were ennobled in their deaths rather than in their lives. That is to say, though they lived well, had it not been for their brave manner of dying their names would not have been preserved in history.