Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

Galba, who was an old man when he came to the throne, had been in his youth a great favorite of the Empress Livia. By her he had been advanced in fortune and position. His mother's name was Mummia Achaica, the daughter of Catulus; but she probably died when he was very young, and he owed the benefits of his training to Ocellina, his stepmother, who was a very remarkable woman in more than one respect. Beautiful and very wealthy, she herself made the advances in courtship to Galba's father. The elder Galba became consul and was of considerable importance in the State; but he was a very short man and deformed. There is an interesting story to the effect that once, when Ocellina was pressing her suit, Galba, in order that if there were to be any disillusionment on her part in regard to himself it might take place before he gave her his hand, took off in her presence the toga which hid the deformity of his back. The incident shows a praiseworthy ingenuousness of disposition on the part of Galba; it also indicates, what is of more interest to us, the fact that Roman ladies were not unaccustomed to making matrimonial advances in person and with unmistakable directness of purpose. Galba, the future emperor, was adopted by Ocellina as her own son; and it is safe to assume that the honesty of his character was in a large degree the result of her training as well as an inheritance from his father.

Galba was married to Æmilia Lepida, a descendant of the triumvir; but she died during the reign of Claudius, and he never afterward married, even though he was ardently sought by Agrippina the Younger, who had been cuffed by his mother-in-law for seeking to usurp the place of Lepida while the latter still lived.

During the short eight months of his reign, Galba was almost entirely ruled by the influence of Titus Vinius and Piso Licinianus, both of whom perished with him, the latter having been designated by him as his successor. Vinius met a fate which he richly deserved, and which, unfortunately for many Romans, he escaped, though barely, in the days of Caligula. At that time, he disgraced himself as the accomplice and paramour of Cornelia, the wife of his commander, Sabinus, she who paraded the camp at night in the dress of a common soldier. Cornelia, however, expiated her crime by her devotion to her husband in his misfortune at a later day. Vinius attained to fortune by means of methods which are well illustrated by the indignity to which he submitted his daughter Crispina at the hands of the depraved Tigellinus. During Galba's reign, the people, believing Nero to have been incited to his worst acts by Tigellinus, demanded the latter's execution, Vinius preserved him from their rage, and thereupon Tigellinus gave a splendid banquet as a thanksgiving for his deliverance. This entertainment Crispina attended, accompanied by her father, who allowed her to receive from their host an immense sum of money. Tigellinus on the same occasion commanded his chief concubine to take from her own neck an extremely valuable necklace and place it upon that of Crispina. But she was soon compelled to expend her ill-gotten gains in a most pitiable manner. After the death of Galba, Piso, and Vinius, the soldiers amused themselves by carrying their heads about the city on the points of spears. When Crispina and Verania, the wife of Piso, visited the camp for the purpose of imploring the heads of their relatives, in order that they might be disposed of with funereal honor, Crispina was not allowed to take that of her father until she had purchased it at a cost of twenty-five thousand drachmas.

Otho, who had been the husband of Poppæa Sabina, was the next emperor; but his reign lasted less than four months, and his only praiseworthy act is the noble manner in which he died. Then came the brief and shameful reign of Vitellius. Rome needed only to come under the rule of a glutton to have exhibited by turn upon her throne a monstrous example of every form of vice to which human nature can become addicted.

This man was the son of that Vitellius who had so shamelessly flattered Messalina and so basely deserted her in her extremity of need. His mother's name was Sextilia, and she is reported to have been a most excellent and respectable woman, whose character was formed on the model of the ancient morals. Her death is said to have been brought about by her son, in order that the prediction of a German prophetess might be certain of fulfilment, she having told him that, he would reign in security, if he survived his mother. He is accused of having denied her proper nourishment during her illness. Suetonius, however, adds, "that being quite weary of the woeful state of affairs, and apprehensive of the future, she obtained without difficulty a dose of poison from her son."

Petronia was the first wife of Vitellius. A separation took place which was probably mutually agreed upon, for Petronia bequeathed her property to their son; first requiring, however, that he be released from his father's authority, Vitellius agreed to this; but shortly after, the son died by poison believed to have been administered by his father. A woman named Galeria Fundano became the second wife of Vitellius; but of her nothing more is known than that Tacitus speaks of her gentle disposition.

With Vitellius, to reign meant merely to feast royally. In this, however, he was only the leading and most noteworthy exponent of a vice characteristic of his time. Gluttony, among the Romans, had come to be exalted to an art; and, in proof that the women of those days were not exempt from it, historians inform us that it was common for individuals of the female sex to be afflicted with the gout. Suetonius thus describes the kind of feasting to which Vitellius accustomed the nobility of Rome: "At a supper given him by his brother, on the day of his arrival in Rome, there were served two thousand rare fishes and seven thousand birds. But Vitellius threw into the shade all this profusion by using on his own table a huge dish, which he named the Shield of Minerva. In it were livers of plaice, brains of pheasants and peacocks, flamingoes' tongues, roe of lamprey, and a thousand other things which the ships of war had sought from the remotest border of the Euxine to the Pillars of Hercules."

This dish of Vitellius was made of silver. What its exact weight was we do not know; but inasmuch as a freedman of Claudius had constructed one of five hundred pounds weight, which was evidently inferior, we can well believe the ancient writer when he tells us that the Shield of Minerva was of such prodigious size that a special furnace had to be constructed for its manufacture. It was kept as a monument of extravagance until the time of Hadrian, who caused it to be melted.

The brief reign of Vitellius was closed in a paroxysm of civil strife, which ended within the walls of the city itself. For more than a hundred years,--ever since the sack of Perusia, in which Fulvia played so prominent a part,--the women of Italy had been free from the bitter experiences of war. They knew nothing of the cruelties and atrocities which followed in the wake of ancient battle, except from stories told by grandmothers at nightfall. Now they were to suffer those evils themselves.

In warfare, more than in any other experience, man reverts to his original barbarous, or rather purely animal, type. It is noticeable also that in war, and especially in civil war, women regain some of that ferocity which characterizes the female of the lower types of animals. In the reign of terror during the French Revolution, there were many women who showed themselves as bloodthirsty as any of the men who composed the Committee of Public Safety. So, in the struggles which accompanied the short-lived reigns of these three Roman emperors there were many women who engaged in the battles; and there were some who distinguished themselves by conduct not often exhibited to the discredit of the female sex. Triaria, for example, who was the wife of Lucius Vitellius, the brother of the emperor, is described as having been a woman of the most furious spirit. When Dolabella, who had married Petronia, was in danger of his life, Triaria warned a friend who sought to save him that it would not be good for that friend to seek the exercise of clemency; and when Tarracina was sacked by the Vitellian soldiers, this same Triaria, armed with the sword of a soldier, urged on the men to murder and rapine.