Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

These, it may be, were only casual incidents; but they indicate the sort of rule under which Rome had come, and they must have formed powerful precedents in future rulings in such cases. Laws were also passed which helped to relieve the burden of legal injustice which from the first had rested upon the Roman woman. A father had it always in his power to compel his son to put away his wife, and could thus, if he chose, shatter the life of a faithful, loving woman and drive her from her home. Marcus Aurelius amended this tyrannical law, so that it could only be executed for great and just cause. Under the old code, a child was always subject to the condition of his mother at his birth; hence, if a free woman, after conception, was relegated to servitude by sentence of law, her child was born a slave. Hadrian decreed that if a woman was free at any time during her pregnancy, her child should be free. This would seem to be more of a relief to the child so born than to the mother; but, apart from the mother sympathy, the parent of a free son would be much more likely to regain her own liberty. This emperor also decided that women should have the power to dispose of the whole of their property by will, on obtaining the consent of their guardians. It was soon afterward decreed that such a will should be valid without such consent, and this made the property rights of the Roman woman as untrammelled as such laws have been in any country, almost down to the present time. There was also a modification of the law of inheritance, so that women were allowed to take from their sons; but to avail herself of this new law a freedwoman must have had no less than four children.

This material comfort and security of life would, of itself, hardly suffice to substantiate Gibbon's opinion as to the superior happiness of this particular period of the world's history; but there was something more. Human life is not rendered felicitous solely by the abundance of the things which a people possesses; there must be the power to make the most of and enjoy them. It is with the life of a nation as it is with that of an individual--the happiest age is that immediately previous to the beginning of decadence; prior to that, the attention and energy are wholly taken up with the process of acquiring. The Roman Empire was now, as it were, balanced and resting on the summit of its greatness.

With one or two exceptions, never in the history of the world has so large a proportion of the citizens of a nation been capable of so fully appreciating the highest mental enjoyments. Art in those days was closely inwoven with the life of the people; they lived artistic lives. The women of that day moved habitually among those objects which the ladies of our time go to museums to admire. Their eyes were every day accustomed to rest upon the beautiful structures and statuary which are the wonder and the models of modern times. Every home, however modest, had about it much of the artistic; every public building was a magnificent example of architecture. Nothing was purely utilitarian, for life was not sordid. With an ample supply of the necessaries and luxuries of existence, and perfect protection through wise and beneficently administered laws, this added grace and beauty which pervaded everything lacked little to make the life of women in the days of Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines broader and happier than it has been in any other period, ancient or modern.

There were, however, two classes of persons which must not be left out of the estimate; and it may be suggested that a proper understanding of the conditions of their existence may detract greatly from the foregoing appreciation of the period under discussion: these are the slaves and the poor. But, inasmuch as what has been said is of the nature of a comparison, it can be justly answered that the poor we have always with us, and until recently the institution of slavery has been a cherished one. At any rate, it was rare that a Roman slave woman was ill fed, while compulsory hunger is by no means uncommon in modern times.

Since so large a portion of those Roman slaves were women, it will be quite pertinent to our subject if we take a glance at this institution of slavery as it existed in the ancient world.

It is estimated that at one time no less than one-fifth of the population of Rome was in a condition of compulsory servitude. The number was kept up by birth, by the slave market, and by war. In ancient times, the creditor could sell the family of the debtor; the father also could dispose of his children in the same manner. These barbarous measures, however, were less resorted to as manners grew milder, though the laws permitting them were not repealed until the time of Diocletian. Parents had the legal right to expose their unwelcome children, and whoever chose to take the abandoned infants owned them as slaves; but Trajan granted to such children the perpetual right of claiming their freedom, on condition that they could prove that of their parents.

By the ancient law, the slave was nothing but a chattel. He possessed no rights, he had no will of his own, he was not a person, and could not seek protection from the law. Over him his master owned absolute power of life and death. Women slaves were wholly subject to their owner's will. They might be required to bear offspring for the mere sake of increasing their master's number of servants, with absolutely no regard to any sentiment they might cherish relative to such a matter. A slave could not legally marry; and for many centuries no union of that nature was held to have any binding force. When it is considered that a large proportion of the slaves owned by Roman masters were secured as the spoils of war, or by kidnapping, and consequently included many persons of both sexes who were well born and educated, it is seen how peculiarly cruel was slavery in those times.

Gradually, principles of humanity prevailed in the softening of this condition, and it is probable that instincts of humanity on the part of the majority of owners induced them to do better than the law demanded. In the house of Columella, every slave woman who had three children was set free from labor, and she who had more was emancipated. During the period of the Antonines, laws were passed prohibiting masters from selling slaves to fight in the arena unless these had been convicted of some crime by public authority. They were not allowed to be left by will with the understanding that they were to fight with beasts. The killing of slaves became punishable as for murder; and even the slave's honor came to be protected, for a complaint could be lodged against the master for an attempt on the slave's modesty. Regard was also paid to the natural feelings of these unfortunate persons; for while those in a condition of slavery could not legally marry, yet, where the nuptial union had been formed it was not permitted that the husband and wife should be separated by sale. Thus we see that the Roman slaves, from a condition of absolute inhumanity in the days of the early Republic, came in the time of the Antonines to be so hedged about with the protection of the law that there was left little to be desired save the possession of their own persons. Still, it is not meant to be asserted that even in this mild period there was not ample scope for cruelty on the part of barbarous or ill-natured owners. Juvenal describes with great indignation how women would cause their female attendants to be unmercifully whipped. But a just complaint of intolerable treatment was, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, legal ground for compelling the emancipation of the slave, or at least for providing him or her with a kinder owner.

Paganism has often been accused of having paid no attention whatsoever to public charities. On the contrary, during the period with which we are now occupied institutions of poor-relief were founded and were as remarkable for the wisdom with which they were organized as for the spirit of beneficence which they manifested. There was abundance of evidence in Pliny's time to show that his beautiful words were not mere rhetoric: "It is a duty to seek out those who are in want, to bring them aid, to support, and make them in a sense one's own family." Has the modern spirit anything better to say than this sentence which was inscribed upon a tomb: Therc is in life but one beautiful thing, and this is beneficence. The Romans of the Antonine period put this sentiment into practical operation in more ways than one. Nerva conceived the project of rendering State aid to poor parents to enable them to rear their children. Trajan, his successor, adopted this scheme and developed it on a magnificent scale. As early as the year 100, there were, in the city of Rome, as we learn from Pliny, no less than five thousand children who received this assistance. So much consideration was shown in the arrangement for this distribution, that it was ordered that the apportionment of the sick or absent should be reserved until it was sent for. From the Inscription of Veleia, one of the longest which have come down to us, and the table of the Bæbiani for the apportionment of food among the poor, we learn of the poor-relief system under which two hundred and sixty-four boys and thirty-six girls were supported. "The boys received annually one hundred and ninety-two sesterces [$9.20], the girls one hundred and forty-four [$6.90]. The foundation was established for a definite number of children, a number that did not change so long as the foundation was not increased; but the assistance varied, doubtless with the price of provisions, in different localities; thus, at Veleia, sixteen sesterces per month; at Tarracina, twenty." The writer of the above demonstrates by authorities and examples that from sixteen to twenty sesterces per month was sufficient to support a Roman child. He continues:

"It cannot be affirmed that the institution was in a general measure established in the whole of Italy; but coins, inscriptions, and even sculptures, enable us to discover it in many places. Thus the bas-reliefs of the Arch of Beneventum represent men carrying boys on their shoulders, and four women, their heads adorned with mural crowns, conducting young girls to Trajan. Do these women represent the four towns of the vicinity, or are they the symbol of all the cities of Italy which had profited by the same benefaction? The second hypothesis is the more probable, and Dion confirms it.