Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

I

Not long ago an able and eloquent man, well known in political life, made the astonishing statement that from the time Eve left paradise to the advent of the modern champion of her sex, “woman was apparently content with her subordination.” It is not proposed here to enter at all into the present phases of a subject that has been sufficiently discussed, or to define the precise point where those who belong to what our noble friend is pleased to call the “inferior and defective half of the race” may with reason protest; but as a matter of fact there has never been so prolonged and serious a commotion on the much-talked-of “woman question” as in the Rome of two thousand years ago; and perhaps no recorded moment in the history of women has been of such far-reaching importance as those struggles for justice and recognition. With possibly one exception, the points at issue were not quite the same as in the middle of the nineteenth century, but they involved many of the same privileges. The contention concerned not only a woman’s right to a voice in the control of her own property, but to some consideration in marriage, and a measure of personal liberty. The laws that grew out of it, in the slow process of years, have served as a basis for the codes that have more or less governed civilized countries ever since, and though these have often deviated far from the liberal standard of the statutes of Justinian, they have never fallen permanently to the old level. A certain marked resemblance in the character and growth of the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon woman gives us a special interest in these controversies and their practical outcome.

That the Roman woman had ample cause for protest could hardly be questioned to-day, even by the most determined advocate of the old order of things. The contrast between the character and ability so conspicuously shown by what she did at various times for her country, and the humiliation of her position, was too great. In the qualities of temperament and imagination which, if given free scope, make poets and artists, the Grecian women surpassed her. But the very traits of sensibility that constituted their fascination rendered them an easy prey to the rule of a master. Their chief legacy to posterity was an esthetic one. The talent of the Roman woman was of another sort. She was of a masterful type, striking in physique, strong in purpose, clear in judgment, with the pride and dignity of a race born to rule the world. It was through her practical wisdom in directing affairs, together with her courage, foresight, and indomitable will, that she gained in the end a degree of independence which perhaps we should hardly call by that name to-day, but which was relative freedom and left a permanent trace on after-ages.

Of the heroism, political sagacity, and moral value of the Roman women we have abundant evidence, but it is difficult to catch the outline of faces seen in half-lights, or of characters revealed only on one side. They did not write of themselves, or of each other, as women of later and, to some extent, even of earlier ages have done. There was no Sappho to sing of their joys and sorrows, or give us a clue to what they thought and felt. Men who wrote freely of affairs reserved small space for them, so we know little of their personal life, except through passing glimpses in a few private letters, and the cynical if not malicious pictures of satirists. The Romans were not a creative or imaginative race, and have left us none of the great ideals of womanhood that grace the pages of the Greek poets. No Helen with her divine beauty and charm, no Antigone with her strength of sacrifice, no Andromache with her tender and winning personality, shows us the manner of woman that lived in the minds and hearts of men. But if the delicacy of shading which reveals fine complexities of character is wanting, we have a few records of brave deeds and individual virtues that are likely to stand as long as the world to show us the quality that made them possible. Alcestis going serenely to her death for her weak and selfish lord is not more heroic than Lucretia, who saved the falling liberties of Rome by plunging the dagger into her heart and calling upon her husband to avenge her outraged honor. Iphigenia is not a more touching figure than the innocent Virginia, sacrificed, not to the gods, but to the brutality of wicked men.

From Tanaquil, whose ambition and prophetic insight led the first Tarquin to leave his simple Etruscan home for a Roman throne, to the wise Livia, who shared the power and glory of Augustus for more than half a century, women came to the front in many a public crisis. Men gave them no real liberty, but they did give them monuments. These are mostly gone now, but the records of them are left. Standing by the Capitol to-day and looking across the crumbling temples, columns, statues, and arches which have preserved for us the memories of Old Rome, one is forcibly reminded of the important part played by women in laying the foundations of the long faded glory that still lends these ruins so melancholy and picturesque a charm. The strength and courage of the Roman woman were immortalized in the equestrian statue of the daring Clœlia, in the Via Sacra, that stretches before us. Not far off was the temple of Juno, where the festivals of the Matronalia were held for centuries, in honor of the women who settled the contest between the Romans and the Sabines. Beyond the walls on the way to the Alban hills was the temple of Fortuna Muliebris, which bore lasting testimony to the wisdom and patriotism of Valeria, its first priestess; also to the gentle but powerful influence of Volumnia and Virgilia, who, led by her counsels, saved the city from a too ambitious son and brother. It was the spirit of the divine Egeria that whispered prophetic words of warning to Numa in the secluded grotto beyond the Aventine. The Sibyls held the secrets of divination, and in the vaults at our feet they deposited the books that foretold the destinies of Rome.

There still stands the little temple where the white-robed Vestals watched over the holy Palladium and took care that the sacred fire should never go out for eleven hundred years. Men on the heights of power bowed to the authority of these consecrated women, who occupied everywhere the place of honor, settled disputes, testified without oath, and brought pardon even to a criminal who met them by accident. All this, whether fact or legend, was a tacit recognition of the judgment, purity, and insight of woman. It might not be desirable to give her any rights civil or social, but, as a sort of compensation, men quieted their consciences and gave themselves a comfortable feeling of being just, if indeed they ever had any doubt on that point, by offering her more or less theoretical honor, and a shadowy place near the gods, where they could avail themselves of her wisdom without any personal inconvenience. In addition to this, they built her a little temple dedicated to the goddess Viriplaca, Appeaser of Husbands, where she could solace her bruised heart by confiding her wrongs and sorrows to this conciliatory divinity, who seems to have been useful mainly as a repository of tears, though her office was to compose differences. It has long since vanished, but it speaks volumes for the helplessness of women that it ever existed at all. It told the tragedy of many a Roman matron’s life.

II

We have seen a little of what these women were and what they did. What they suffered can be better gathered from a glance at their position and the share they had in the liberties they had done so much to foster and save. Of freedom the Roman woman of earlier times had none at all, though she was not secluded like her Athenian sisters, and her place in the family was a better one. Her character was formed, like that of our Puritan mothers, in times of toil and danger, when she worked side by side with men for a common end, and, in both, their strength of purpose and spirit of heroic sacrifice lasted long after the hard conditions of primitive life had passed. Besides, the natural talent for administration which shone through all her limitations was to a certain degree recognized by her husband, and she was often his counselor, as well as the instructor of his children, even beyond the seven years prescribed. But all this did not suffice to give her any liberty of thought or action, and she was to all intents and purposes a slave, subject to the caprices of a master who might choose to be kind, though, in case he did not, she had no protection either in law or custom; and we all know how soon the consciousness of absolute power warps the sensibilities of even the gentlest. “Created to please and obey,” says Gibbon, “she was never supposed to have reached the age of reason and experience.” She was under guardianship all her life, first of her father, then of her husband, and, at his death, of her nearest male relative. For centuries she had no right to her own property, no control of her own person, no choice in marriage, no recourse against cruelty and oppression. “The husband has absolute power over the wife,” said the stern old Cato; “it is for him to condemn and punish her for any shameful act, such as taking wine or violating the moral law.” To show what was possible in the way of surveillance, we are told that he was in the habit of kissing her, when he came home, to satisfy himself that she had not been drinking. One man who found his wife sipping wine beat her to death; another dismissed his weaker half because she was seen on the street without a veil; and a daring woman was sent away because she went to the circus without leave. Any man could spend his wife’s money, beat her, sell her, give her to some one else when he was tired of her, even put her to death, “acting as accuser, judge, jury, and executioner.” In the last case it was better to call her friends into council, perhaps even necessary, if they were powerful enough to ask for an explanation; but “a man can do as he likes with his own” was sufficient to cover any injustice or any crime. Even in the last days of the Republic, when the laws were greatly modified, the younger Cato, a man noted for his stoical virtues, gave his wife to his friend Hortensius, and after his death took her back—with a dowry added. What she thought of the matter signified little. It does not appear that she was even consulted. The family was the unit, and the man was the family.

It is fair to say that it was not women alone who suffered from this peculiar phase of Roman society, as men had little more freedom so long as their fathers lived; but it fell much more severely on those who were, in the nature of things, more helpless. The best they could hope for was a change of masters, which might be for the worse; and who was to protect them from their irresponsible protectors, even with all the safeguards supposed to be provided by law? For this evidently put them where Terence did the philosophers, along with horses and hunting-dogs, that were owned but not necessarily considered.