These quit their homes, ambitious to display,
Amidst the youths, their vigour in the race,
Or feats of wrestling, whilst their airy robe
Flies back and leaves their limbs uncovered.[220]
It is evident that not only in private life, but in their desire for public activity also, the independence of the Sabine women failed to comport with the ideas already in vogue among their Roman husbands regarding the “proper sphere” of women. Consequently their behaviour was thought to be
too bold and too masculine, in particular to their husbands; for they considered themselves as absolute mistresses in their houses; nay, they wanted a share in affairs of state, and delivered their sentiments with great freedom concerning the most weighty matters.[221]
A woman even appeared in the Forum to plead her own cause, whereupon the grave senators ordered that the oracles be consulted that the true import of the singular phenomenon might be revealed.[222]
Plutarch, who lived in the first century of the Christian era, after having recounted these misdemeanours, assures us that “what is recorded of a few infamous women is a proof of the obedience and meekness of Roman matrons in general.”[223]
Doubtless, in Plutarch’s time, Roman women had lost much of that influence which characterized the female sex in an earlier age; it is not, therefore remarkable that by this writer the Sabine women should have been regarded as too forward and as altogether infamous. That their conduct was not all that could be desired by the outlaws and bandits who founded Rome, and who had stolen them for wives, is evident; and the regulations of their rulers respecting them show plainly that much judicious training and a vast amount of repression were required before they were fitted for the peculiar duties devolving upon them as sexual slaves.
We are told by Plutarch that the regulations established by Lycurgus, instead of encouraging that licentiousness of the women which prevailed at a later period, operated to render adultery unknown amongst them; yet this writer forgets to mention the fact that in Sparta, in the time of this ruler, there was no demand for prostitution by a class who held all the wealth and power, and who were therefore in a position to regulate this matter to suit their own tastes and inclinations. On the contrary, the female sex was free, not only in the matter of sexual relations, but in the exercise of all their natural tendencies, and in the direction of all their movements. The idea of sex, which among later and more thoroughly sensualized nations became first and foremost, among the Dorians, so far as equal rights, obligations, and duties were concerned, was ignored or left to nature to regulate.