Roman Women

by Alfred Brittain

The next day, she sent messengers to call her husband and her father. They hastened to her at once, the former bringing with him Brutus, who was to be the leader in liberating Rome from the infamous race of Tarquin. When Lucretia had told her story, she made her relatives first swear that the criminal should not go unpunished. To this they savagely pledged themselves; but they tried to console her with the fact that, her mind being pure, she had incurred no guilt. Lucretia replied; "It remains for you to see to what is due to Tarquin. As for me, though I acquit myself of guilt, from punishment I do not discharge myself; nor shall any Roman woman survive her dishonor in pleading the example of Lucretia." Thus saying, she drew a knife which she had concealed in her garments, and plunged it into her heart.

Brutus, while they were all overcome with grief, gently drew the weapon from the wound; and holding it up, dripping as it was with Lucretia's life blood, he cried: "By this blood, most pure before the pollution of royal villainy, I swear, and I call you, O gods, to witness my oath, that I shall pursue Lucius Tarquin the Proud, his wicked wife, and all their race, with fire and sword, and all other means in my power; nor shall I ever suffer them or any other to reign at Rome." In this oath Collatinus and the others joined. They carried the dead body of Lucretia to Rome, and succeeded in giving the populace the last incentive necessary to drive out the already hated Tarquins. Thus the misfortunes of noble Lucretia brought vengeance upon the wickedness of Tullia; for the historian says that "she fled from her house, both men and women cursing her wherever she went and invoking on her the Furies, the avengers of parents."

What portion of these stories of the women of legendary Rome may be accepted as fact, and what must be relegated to the realm of fiction, it is not within the capacity of research to ascertain. Probably we shall not be far wrong if we consider these legends as moralizings founded on facts. Tullia represented to the Romans all the viciousness against which women were warned; in Lucretia, there were accumulated all the virtues to which a woman was taught to aspire. They were pictorial moral discourses; and, just as the moral character of a modern age might be discovered from the sermons of the period, so these legends represent what was lowest and highest in the ethical conceptions of earliest Rome.

II

NOBLE MATRONS OF THE REPUBLIC

After the revolution, of which the tragedy of Lucretia was the traditional cause and which ended forever monarchical rule in Rome, our subject begins to emerge from the haziness of legendary narratives into the clearer light of veritable history. It now becomes possible for us to catch glimpses of the women of Rome, living and moving amid scenes that were real and under conditions which undoubtedly prevailed.

Roman society at the beginning of the Republic was most distinctly and rigidly classified. Not only were the people divided by the circumstances of birth into separate classes, but the law preordained for every person his precise station, his duties, his privileges, and his limitations. The citizen could no more go beyond these than he could transfer himself into another order of creation; for law, in Rome, was as absolute as it was rigid. Speaking generally, there were two orders, the patrician and the plebeian. A common opinion of the old writers was that out of the influx of adventurers who crowded to Rome at its founding Romulus chose one hundred Senators, their qualification being that they could name their fathers. Their children were called patricians. In the third century before Christ, when the plebeians had wrested many privileges and offices from the unwilling higher class, Publius Decius, himself a plebeian, uses this theory of the origin of the patricians to great advantage. Contending in debate for the right of his order to serve in the priesthood, he said: "Have ye never heard that the first-created patricians were not men sent down from heaven, but such as could cite their fathers; that is, nothing more than freeborn? Well, I can cite my father; he was a consul; and my son will be able to cite a grandfather." This excessive pride which Roman citizens took in the fact that they could trace their paternity through more or less generations must not be understood as reflecting, in any way, upon the character of the early matrons; it arose simply from the fact that they could so surely name their ancestry as to eliminate possibility of descent from one of the common herd of unenfranchised inhabitants.

These latter were the plebeians. This class was made up of the descendants of the ancient people who of old had inhabited the country, ordinary foreigners who were attracted to the city, and the children of captives who had been given their liberty. At first, the plebeians enjoyed no rights whatever. They lived, it is true, under the shelter of the walls of the city, but on the outside. They possessed no right of suffrage, and were not allowed to interfere in any public affair. But they were free. They held property and engaged in handicrafts and in commerce. It soon came to pass that the increase of their number and their importance rendered their repression by the nobles more and more difficult. Under King Servius the plebeians became citizens; and, as is the case in every land, the internal history of Rome contains nothing more interesting than the indomitable and successful struggle of this lower class to wrest ever larger privileges from the tenacious rulers. It was not, however, until B.C. 444 that equality of rights had made sufficient progress for matrimonial alliances to be countenanced between patricians and plebeians. By the commencement of the Christian era all practical distinction between these two classes had vanished.

In addition to the two principal orders, there was that of the clients. These were in reality vassals, who preferred dependence on the great and wealthy to living independently in a precarious liberty. They were called by the names of their patrons and were numbered in the latter's tribe. By enactments of law, the patron was made responsible for the support and protection of his clients. In return, the patrician could depend upon his clients to fight his battles, support his cause, and prove themselves loyal retainers of his house in both good fortune and evil. The subservience of these clients, and the conscienceless zeal with which they furthered the designs, even the most wicked, of their masters, are well illustrated in the part which Marcus Claudius played in the persecution of Virginia by the decemvir Appius. Another dependent class was that of the slaves. At first the number of these was comparatively small; but as the conquering arms of Rome spread over the world her avaricious sway, the captives dragged in barbarous triumph to the city grew out of all proportion to the population. They enjoyed fewer rights and suffered under a regime more inhuman than in any other slaveholding nation in history.