Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

As has been said, Roman society was not wholly corrupt, even though an adulterous Messalina, an unprincipled Poppæa, or a cruel and ambitious Agrippina, shared the throne. Contemporary with these were women who still with pure hands and sincere hearts invoked the ancient goddess of chastity. There were those who had mother love for their children, but were free from deadly ambition. Among the more ordinary homes were many that were graced with the same family loyalty and tender affection as beautify our homes to-day.

The young women of the days of Claudius were not obliged to search in the musty annals of past times for examples of feminine honor and virtue. They had all known Antonia, the virtuous daughter of Octavia and Antony, who, like Agrippina, had honored her widowhood by a long and irreproachable chastity. Yet the maidens of Messalina's age may have been the less attracted by the example of Antonia because, while she retained the old Roman purity of morals, she also exemplified the old Roman severity of manners. Claudius, her son, never ceased to stand in awe of her, and during his childhood her severity to him was such that it is supposed that it helped to induce his imbecility. When her daughter Livilla had been betrayed into crime by means of the arts of Sejanus, Antonia was even more inexorable than Tiberius, against whom the plot had been laid, and she caused the young woman to be starved to death. It was not an instance of cruelty, it was simply the old Roman justice, in which personal or even maternal feeling was allowed no place. Antonia's goodness was not of the attractive kind. We must imagine her as a proud, puritanical old matron, who made herself a terror to wrong doers. She courageously rebuked her grandson Caligula for his enormities; but the young ruffian, who possessed neither the mind nor the conscience to respect age or kinship, in return caused Antonia to be put to death--though it is possible that the actual deed may have been her own.

It was asked of old: "Can a clean thing come out of an unclean?" The affirmative answer to this question is found in the person and character of Octavia, the daughter of Messalina the infamous. Indeed, the axiom that "like produces like" cannot be applied to moral character; so many instances are met with of bad offspring from noble parentage and virtuous children from immoral antecedents that they cannot be regarded as exceptions to the rule.

Octavia was fortunate in nothing but her character. She was the plaything of a relentlessly adverse fate. The whole of her short life is an illustration of the fact that goodness of disposition does not protect its possessor from the worst evils of existence. That this young girl remained virtuous amid the whirl of immorality in which she was reared, with no lovable example and no motherly advice, is a proof of the invincibility of a good disposition if nature has woven it into a human character.

As a little child, Octavia had been petted and fondled by her father, the poor old Emperor Claudius, who, dull and phlegmatic as he was, would have been a good-hearted man if he had not been thrust into a position for which he was totally unfitted. He loved to take Octavia and her little brother Britannicus to the theatre and hold them with a father's pride before the admiring eyes of the people. This was all the love that Octavia ever knew. One of her earliest and saddest experiences was to be sent by Messalina out upon the road to Ostia, to meet Claudius and plead vainly for that unworthy mother's life. Then Agrippina came to the palace; and with her in the double capacity of empress and stepmother, Octavia found no cause of thankfulness for the change. Hitherto she at least had not been used as a mere tool to effect some other's political ambitions. Her father Claudius had betrothed her to Lucius Silanus, a celebrated and favorite Senator. Had this match been allowed to remain undisturbed, it is possible that Octavia's lot might have been peaceful and happy; but a false charge against Silanus was trumped up by the perfidious Vitellius, so that the former was degraded from the Senate, and immediately afterward he committed suicide, Octavia lived on and encountered the terrible misfortune of being betrothed to Nero, whom Seneca was advising to "compensate himself with the pleasures of youth without compunction." Agrippina threw Octavia to her son, just as a rope might be tossed to a mountain climber to enable him to ascend a difficult pass; when its use has been served, it is looked upon as a piece of mere cumbersome baggage. So Nero considered his wife, after he had obtained the Empire. When he expressed his dislike for her, the plain-spoken Burrhus said: "Very well, send her away; but of course you will give up her dower with her;" which was nothing less than the throne of Claudius.

Had Octavia been supported by some all-powerful and sympathetic relative like Augustus, she might have survived and have shown as great patience with the vices of Nero as her ancestral namesake showed with those of Antony; but she was left unprotected amidst numerous opposing forces which, when not aimed with deadly hatred against her, were indifferent to her welfare, with the consequence that she was speedily and mercilessly crushed.

The first woman who took the place which Octavia never held in Nero's affections was the Greek freedwoman Acte. The wild young emperor would have divorced his wife and married the Greek forthwith, but he was still under the domination of the powerful Agrippina. This first thwarting of the imperial will was the beginning of Agrippina's downfall. It was not long before she and the young wife saw a fearful presage of their own fate when the young Britannicus fell dead upon the banquet floor, poisoned by the diabolical art of Nero's instrument, Locusta. Octavia, though so young, was not entirely ignorant as to what the perils of her situation demanded. She had received early lessons in a terrible school. Consequently, when Nero declared to the alarmed guests that her brother was habitually afflicted with the falling sickness, she disguised her sisterly grief and composedly retained her place at the banquet.

But the time came when Agrippina had also fallen a victim to her son's inhumanity, and Nero, responsible to no human being, had become enamored by the more attractive fascinations of a more unprincipled woman than Acte. "Why does not Nero," the tyrant asks of himself, "banishing all fear, set about expediting his marriage with Poppæa? Why not put away his wife Octavia, although her conduct is that of a modest woman, since the name of her father and the affection of the people have made her an eyesore to him?" With Poppæa urging him on and the villainous Tigellinus exercising his diabolical ingenuity to find a plausible excuse, it was not long before the courage of Nero was equal to the audacious act of driving from the imperial palace the woman through connection with whom he had his right of tenure there. Octavia was divorced by process of law, under the allegation that she was barren. At first she was awarded the house of Burrhus and the estate of Plautus, whom Nero had recently put to death. The divorce being sought by her husband for no fault of hers, he was obliged, if the strict letter of the law had been observed, to give up with her the whole of her dowry; but for men like Nero, who execute the laws, a mere pretence of legality suffices. Poppæa had brazenly endeavored to trump up a far more serious charge against the woman she injured; but it could not be made to hold. She bribed one of Octavia's domestics to assert that her mistress had participated in an amour with Eucerus, an Alexandrian flute player; but this accusation was so preposterously inconsistent with Octavia's well-known character that, even though they tortured her servants, they could gain no evidence which they dared to set before the people in substantiation of the charge. There could be no stronger testimony to the amiability and lovableness of Octavia, as well as to the purity of her character, than the fidelity with which her servants defended her reputation from all aspersions, even while they were undergoing the most intense torture. One brave maid, while being examined upon the rack, spat in the face of Tigellinus, who was urging a confession, and declared aloud that "the womb of Octavia was purer than his mouth." It was among slaves like these that the first Christian martyrs were found; women who gave their bodies to the most excruciating torture, but could not be induced to deny their faith.

Soon after Octavia's divorce, she was banished into Campania, where she was kept in close confinement, and a guard of soldiers was placed over her. But though the Senate and the nobility had become absolutely enslaved to the imperial tyrant's will, there was always the people to reckon with. The common women talked loudly but sympathetically of Octavia's persecuted innocence. The men took up the cry; they made it heard in the theatre and they scribbled it upon the walls. The people could not be individualized. They had not but one neck, as Caligula had so maliciously wished. Their number and individual insignificance rendered it possible for them to express their mind with impunity. Nero hastened to recall Octavia to the city.

That was a day of proud but dangerous joy for the unfortunate young empress. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that all the world believed in her innocence. In their happiness, the multitude went to the Capitol and thanked all the gods for her return. They threw down the statues of Poppæa, and wherever they could find one of Octavia they wreathed It with flowers and removed it to the Forum or to some temple. They even went to the palace to applaud Nero for bringing back his banished wife, but were driven thence by the soldiery.