[183] Ibid. p. 52. Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, p. 11. Amélineau L’évolution des idées morales dans l’Égypte Ancienne, p. 68 sqq. Flinders Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, p. 131 sq. Brugsch, Aegyptologie, p. 61 sq.
In Greece, also, a wife appears to have been a more influential and independent personage in ancient times, in Homeric society, than she became afterwards.[184] In the historic age her position was simply that of the domestic drudge; her virtues were reduced to the maintenance of good order in her household and obedience to her husband; her greatest ornament was silence.[185] Aristotle, always a faithful exponent of the most enlightened opinion of his age, gives the following description of what he considers to be the ideal relation of a woman to her husband:—“A good and perfect wife ought to be mistress of everything within the house…. But the well-ordered wife will justly consider the behaviour of her husband as a model of her own life, and a law to herself, invested with a divine sanction by means of the marriage tie and the community of life…. The wife ought to show herself even more obedient to the rein than if she had entered the house as a purchased slave. For she has been bought at a high price, for the sake of sharing life and bearing children, than which no higher or holier tie can possibly exist.”[186] So also, according to Plutarch, the husband ought to rule his wife, but by sympathy and goodwill, as the soul governs the body, not as a master does a chattel.[187] The law invalidated whatever a husband did by the counsel, or at the request, of his wife, whereas the wife, on her part, could transact no business of importance in her own favour, nor by will dispose of more than the value of a bushel of barley.[188] Yet whatever may have been the exact compass of the husband’s power in Greece, it was not unlimited. At Athens a woman could demand divorce if she was ill-treated by her husband, in which case she merely had to announce her wishes before the archon.[189]
[184] Hermann-Blümner, Lehrbuch der griechischen Privatalterthümer, p. 64 sqq. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, p. 53.
[185] Dickinson, Greek View of Life, p. 161. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 234. ‘State of Female Society in Greece,’ in Quarterly Review, xxii. 172 sqq.
[186] Aristotle, Œconomica, i. 7. Cf. Idem, De animalibus historia, ix. 1. 2 sqq.
[187] Plutarch, Conjugalia præcepta, 33.
[188] Isaeus, Oratio de Aristarchi hereditate, 10, p. 259. Döllinger, op. cit. ii. 234.
[189] Glasson, Le mariage civil et le divorce, p. 152 sq. Meier and Schömann, Der attische Process, p. 512.
In Rome, in ancient times, the power which the father possessed over his daughter was generally, if not always,[190] by marriage transferred to the husband.[191] When marrying a woman passed in manum viri, as a wife she was filiæ loco, that is, in law she was her husband’s daughter.[192] And since the Roman house-father originally had the jus vitæ necisque over his children, the husband naturally had the same power over his wife. But from her being destitute of all legal rights we must not conclude that she was treated with indignity. On the contrary, she generally had a respected and influential position in the family;[193] and though the husband could repudiate her at will, it was said that for five hundred and twenty years a condita urbe there was no such thing as a divorce in Rome.[194] As Mr. Bryce points out, we cannot doubt that the wide power which the law gave to the husband “was in point of fact restrained within narrow limits, not only by affection, but also by the vigilant public opinion of a comparatively small community.”[195] Gradually, however, marriage with manus fell into disuse, and was, under the Empire, generally superseded by marriage without manus, a form of wedlock which conferred on the husband hardly any authority at all over his wife. Instead of passing into his power, she remained in the power of her father; and since the tendency of the later law, as we have seen, was to reduce the old patria potestas to a nullity, she became practically independent.[196]
[190] Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 64. Maine, Ancient Law, p. 155.