Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

Even Augustus wrote bad epigrams and a worse tragedy. Public libraries were numerous,—there were twenty-nine,—and busts of great masters were placed beside their works. Authors were petted and flattered, and they flattered their patrons in turn. These were the days when Horace lived at his ease on his Sabine farm, gently satirizing the follies and vices that were preparing the decay of this pleasure-loving world, posing a little perhaps, and taking a lofty tone toward the courtly Mæcenas and his powerful master, who honored the brilliant poet and were glad to let him do as he liked. “Do you know that I am angry with you for not addressing to me one of your epistles?” wrote Augustus. “Are you afraid that posterity will reproach you for being my friend? If you are so proud as to scorn my friendship, that is no reason why I should lightly esteem yours in return.” The epistle came, but the little gray-haired man, who saw so clearly and wrote so wisely, went on his way serenely among his own hills, stretching himself lazily on the grass by some ruined temple or running stream, and sending pleasant though sometimes caustic words to the friends he would not take the trouble to go and see unless peremptorily summoned. Such was the relation between the ruler of the world and those who conferred distinction on his reign. Ovid discoursed upon love, and became a lion, until he forgot to confine himself to theory, and went a step too far in practice. Then he was sent away from his honored place among the gilded youth who basked in the smiles of an emperor’s granddaughter, to meditate on the vanity of life and the uncertainty of fame, by the desolate shores of the Euxine.

In this blending of literature and fashion women had a prominent place, though not as writers. No woman of the educated class could write for money, and talent of that sort, even if she had it, would have brought her little consideration. Whatever she may have done in that direction was like foam on the crest of a wave. It vanished with the moment. At a later period there were a few who wrote poetry of which a trace is left. Balbilla, who was taken to Egypt in the train of Hadrian and the good Empress Sabina, went out to hear the song with which Memnon greeted his mother Aurora at dawn, and scratched some verses on the statue in honor of her visit. Possibly they were only the flattering trifles of a clever courtier, but they were graven on stone and outlasted many better things. Of wider fame was Sulpicia, the wife of a noted man in the reign of Domitian, who wrote a poem on “Conjugal Love,” also a satire on an edict banishing the philosophers, fragments of which still exist. She had the old Roman spirit, but was less conciliatory than the eloquent Hortensia of an earlier day, who was tired of the brutalities of war. She mourned the degeneracy of the age, calling for “reverses that will awaken patriotism, yes, reverses to make Rome strong again, to rouse her from the soft and enervating languor of a fatal peace.” The able but wicked Agrippina, of tragical memory, wrote the story of her life which gave to Tacitus many facts and points for his “Annals.” Doubtless there were other things that went the way of the passing epigrams and verses of Augustus and his elegant courtiers. Twenty centuries hence who will ever hear of the thousands, yes, millions of more or less clever essays and poems written by men and women to-day and multiplied indefinitely by a facile press? What will the future antiquarian who searches the pages of a nineteenth-century anthology know of us, save that every man and woman wrote, but nothing lived, except perhaps a volume or two from the work of a few poets, essayists, and historians, who can be counted on one’s fingers? Oh, yes; there are the novelists whose value is measured by figures and dollars, who multiply as the locusts do. Fine as we may think them to-day, how many of their books will survive the sifting of time? They may be piled in old libraries, but who will take the trouble to dive into a mass that literally has no bottom? Will the world forget that women did anything worth preserving? Yet our women are educated; some of them are scholars, most of them are intelligent; many write well, and a few surpassingly well.

But if women did not write, they used their influence to find a hearing for those who did. Of the learning of the time they had their share, though it may not have been very profound. Ovid tells us that “there are learned fair, a very limited number; another set are not learned, but they wish to be so.” He writes of a gay world which is not too decorous or too serious, but in the category of a woman’s attractions he mentions as necessary a knowledge of the great poets, both Greek and Latin, among whom he modestly counts himself. Women of fashion had poets or philosophers to read or talk to them, even at their toilets, while the maids brushed their hair. They discussed Plato and Aristotle as we do Browning and economics. They dabbled in the mysteries of Isis and Osiris as we do in theosophy and Buddhism; speculated on Christianity as we do on lesser faiths, and began to doubt their falling gods. Philosophy was “the religion of polite society,” but women have always been drawn toward a faith that appeals to the emotions. Then there were the recitations and public readings, in which they were actors as well as listeners.

We have glimpses of the more seriously intellectual side of the Roman woman in the private letters of Cicero, which show us also the pleasant family life that gives us the best test of its value and sincerity. The brilliant orator seems to have had a special liking for able and accomplished matrons. In his youth he sought their society in order to polish and perfect his style. He speaks in special praise of Lælia, the wife of Scævola with whom he studied law, also of her daughter and granddaughters—all of whom excelled in conversation of a high order; he refers often to Cærellia, a woman of learning and talent, with whom he corresponded for many years; and he says that Caius Curio owes his great fame as an orator to the conversations in his mother’s house. Many other women he mentions whose attainments in literature, philosophy, and eloquence did honor to their sex and placed them on a level with the great men of their time. This was in the late days of the Republic, when genuine talent was not yet swamped in the pretensions of mediocrity.

The praise of his daughter Tullia is always on his lips. She was versed in polite letters, “the best and most learned of women,” and he valued her companionship beyond anything in life. It seems that she was unfortunate in husbands, and they gave him a good deal of trouble; but when she died the light went out of his world. His letters are full of tears, and he plans the most magnificent of monuments. He would deify her, and draw from all writers, Greek and Latin, to transmit to posterity her perfections and his own boundless love. But precious time was lost in dreams of the impossible, and swift fate overtook him before any of them crystallized. Instead of the splendid temple that was to last forever, only a few crumbling stones of his villa on the lonely heights of Tusculum are left to-day to recall the young, beautiful, and gifted woman in whose “sweet conversation” the great statesman could “drop all his cares and troubles.” Here she looked for the last time across the Campagna upon the shining array of marbles, columns, and palaces that were the pride of Rome in its glory, and went away from it all, leaving behind her a fast vanishing name, the fragrance of a fresh young life, and a desolate heart.

But if these charming pictures reveal a sympathetic side of the intimate life of the new age, they give us also the shadows that were creeping over it. The great man, who said so many fine things and did so many weak ones, has always a tender message for the little Attica, the daughter of his friend, but he fears the fortune-hunters, and objects to a husband proposed for her, because he has paid court to a rich woman who is old and has been several times married. For his own wife, Terentia, he has less consideration. She is not facile enough, and finds too much fault with his way of doing things. Perhaps she presses her influence too far, and fails to pay proper deference to his authority. To be sure, he calls her “my light, my darling,” says she is in his thoughts night and day, praises her ability, and trusts her judgment until his affairs begin to go wrong. All this, however, does not prevent his sending her away after thirty years of devotion, and marrying his lovely young ward, who is rich enough to pay his debts. The latter is divorced in turn because she does not sufficiently mourn the loss of his idolized daughter, and his closing years are burdened with the care of restoring her dowry, which draws from him many a bitter complaint. There is a strange note of irony in the tone of the much-married, much-sinning, and perfidious Antony, who publicly censures the “Father of his Country” for repudiating a wife with whom he has grown old. But the high-spirited Terentia solaced herself with his friend Sallust, and married one or two others after his death. Evidently no hearts were broken, as she lived some years beyond a century.

In the literary circles of a later generation we hear of noble ladies of serious tastes meeting to converse about the poets. Juvenal and Martial ridiculed them as Molière did the Précieuses centuries afterward. “I hate a woman who never violates the rules of grammar, and quotes verses I never knew,” says Juvenal. “A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism.” He objects to being bored at supper with impertinent questions about Homer and Vergil, or misplaced sympathy with the unhappy Dido, who, no doubt, ought to have taken her desertion philosophically instead of making it so unpleasant for her hero lover. He even suggests that women blessed with literary tastes should put on the tunics of the bolder sex and do various mannish things which are sometimes recommended by the satirists of to-day. It is with a sigh of regret that he recalls the “good old days of poverty and morals,” when it was written on a woman’s tombstone that she “spun wool and looked after her house.” “A good wife is rarer than a white crow,” is his amiable conclusion.

All this goes to prove that in the first century women passed through the same ordeal of criticism as they have in the nineteenth. The satirists of to-day are no kinder to the Dante and Browning clubs, and mourn equally over the “good old days” when they were in no danger of a rival or a critic at the breakfast-table. Doubtless that age had its little pretensions and affectations, as every other great age has had—not excepting our own. There were women who talked platitudes about things of which they knew nothing, and men who did the same thing or worse on other lines laughed at them just as men do now at similar follies, though often without the talent of a Juvenal or a Martial, and, it is fair to say, without their incredible coarseness. The coming of women into literature has made the latter practically impossible.

But even Martial had his better moments. He speaks of a young girl who has the eloquence of Plato, the austerity of the philosophers, and writes verses worthy of a chaste Sappho. One might imagine that his enthusiasm had run away with his prejudices, if Martial could be supposed to have had enthusiasms, as he warmly congratulates the friend who is to marry this prodigy. Possibly he preferred her as the wife of some one else, as he stipulates for himself, on another occasion, a wife who is “not too learned.”

There was a great deal to censure in this dilettante world. The fashionable life of Rome had drifted into hopeless corruption, in spite of the efforts of good men and women to stem the tide. Long before, the Senate had ordered a temple to Venus Verticordia, the Venus that turns hearts to virtue; but the new goddess was not eminently successful among the votaries of pleasure, who preferred to offer incense to the more beautiful and less respectable one. The old patricians had their faults and sins, but the new moneyed aristocracy was a great deal worse, as the noblesse oblige had ceased to exist, and there were no moral ideals to take the place of it. “First let us seek for fortune,” says the satirist; “virtue is of no importance. Hail to wealth!” “His Majesty Gold” was as powerful as he is to-day, and his worship was coarser. “He says silly things, but money serves for intellect,” remarks a wit of the time. Literature declined with morals. “These are only stores and shops, these schools in which wisdom is sold and supplied like goods,” said one who mourned over the degeneracy of the times. That women should suffer with the rest was inevitable. They are not faultless; indeed, they are very simply human. If they are usually found in the front ranks of great moral movements, they are not always able to stand individually against the resistless tide which we call the spirit of the age.