As the Sabines who united with the Romans in founding Rome claimed relationship with the Dorians, we may reasonably expect to find among them somewhat of that womanly influence which characterized the Spartans, and some hint among their customs of an earlier age of female independence. Although the Sabine women did not “voluntarily” assume the position of wives to the Romans but were captured by them, when the two nations united, the Sabines were regarded rather in the light of conferring honour upon Rome than as detracting from its dignity.
Of the early Romans, Ortolan says:
The connubium, or right of marriage, did not exist between males and females of different cities unless by special agreement between those cities. Thus it was that the primitive Romans, according to tradition, were compelled to resort to ambuscade and force in order to carry off their first wives.[217]
The Roman family, like the Roman state, began with slavery. Of the Romans it has been said that they acquired their territory, their property, and even their wives by the lance.
With them the lance became the symbol of property, and even had a place in their judicial procedure. Their slaves were booty, their wives were booty, and their children, begotten of them, the fruit of their possessions.[218]
The right of fathers, under Romulus, to sell their sons, upon the accession of Numa the Sabine ruler, to the office of lawgiver, was withdrawn, and the reason given for it was consideration for women. According to Plutarch, Numa “reckoned it a great hardship, that a woman should marry a man as free, and then live with him as a slave.”[219]
In the life of Numa by Plutarch we have a hint of a former age of universal freedom. It was one of this ruler’s institutions, that once a year the slaves should be entertained along with their masters at a public feast, there to enjoy the fruits “which they had helped to produce.” The same writer assures us that some are of the opinion that this is a remnant of that equality which was in existence in the times of Saturn, when there was neither master nor slave, but all were upon the same footing. Plutarch quotes from Macrobius, who says that this feast was celebrated in Italy long before the building of Rome.
From all the facts to be gathered relative to the relations of the sexes in the age of Numa, it is plain that that freedom of action exercised by women in a former age among the Dorians, was rapidly declining, and that the early independence which has characterized the Sabine women was beginning to bring upon them the condemnation of their Roman lords. This is shown in the fact that it soon became Numa’s arduous task to institute certain restrictions on their former liberties. In a comparison between Lycurgus and Numa, Plutarch, in referring to this subject, observes:
Numa’s strictures as to virgins tended to form them to that modesty which is the ornament of their sex; but the great liberty which Lycurgus gave them, brought upon them the censure of the poets, particularly Ibycus.
The grossness which had been developed during the four or five hundred years following the age of Lycurgus, and the jealousy with which the movements of women had come to be regarded, are illustrated by the following stanza from Euripides: