We learn from the sepulcral inscriptions that the Romans had the same familiar substitutes as ourselves for the formal appellations of father and mother, mamma and tata. The following inscription is found at Rome: D.M. ZETHO CORINTHUS TATA EJUS ET NICE MAMMA. VIXIT. ANN. I. D. VI.[88] These again had their affectionate diminutives, mammula and tatula. It is probable, however, that the use of them was confined to freedmen, and to that class of society. In one instance[89] a man erects a monument to his aged bonne, NONNÆ SUÆ. The word is not found in classical Latinity; but it is the undoubted original of nun, and may suggest that conventual vows were originally taken chiefly by aged females. In Italy at the present day it is the familiar name for grandmother.
The inscriptions of children on the tombs of their parents, as might be expected, are more brief and general, expressive of gratitude and filial piety: MATRI DULCISSIMÆ, PIENTISSIMÆ, or PIISSIMÆ, CARISSIMÆ, OPTIMÆ; PATRI AMABILI, OPTIMO; or conjointly PARENTIBUS OPTIMIS, is the usual style of these inscriptions. The monument of Meia records that she was the mother of seven sons who had joined in raising a monument of Parian marble to her memory.
Meia fui, felix septem circumdata natis;
Dum vixi adstabat turba tenella mihi.
Ut mihi grata vicem natorum turba referret
Hoc mihi de Pario marmore struxit opus.[90]
I must observe here, by way of caution, that the authors of fictitious inscriptions have been nowhere more active than in producing sentimental inscriptions. That on Julia Alpinula was received as genuine by Johannes Müller, the historian of Switzerland and pronounced by Lord Byron to be the most pathetic of human compositions. JULIA ALPINULA HIC JACEO. INFELICIS PATRIS INFELIX PROLES DEÆ AVENTICÆ SACERDOS. EXORARE PATRIS NECEM NON POTUI. MALE MORI IN FATIS ILLI ERAT. VIXI ANN. XXIII. The hint was taken from Tacitus (Hist. 1, 68), where Cæcina is said to have put Julius Alpinus, the chief man of Aventicum, to death. It was sent by Paulus Gulielmus, a notorious literary impostor, to Lipsius, but the original has never been seen, and it is now universally admitted to be a forgery. Not a few of the poetical inscriptions in Burmann’s “Anthologia” are of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was certainly, however, by no fraud of the author that the beautiful lines in Jortin’s “Lusus Poetici” beginning,—
Quæ te tam tenera rapuerunt Pœta juventa,
have been received into collections as ancient.
Among the sepulcral inscriptions arising out of the relations of life, those of husbands and wives are naturally the most common. The celebrated speech of Metellus Numidicus the Censor, when exhorting the Romans to marriage, does not indicate a high appreciation of the female sex. “If,” said he, “O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all like to be free from the annoyance; but since nature has so arranged things that we can neither live comfortably with them nor at all without them, we should put up with a temporary inconvenience for the sake of a permanent benefit.” Gellius, who reports the speech, naturally remarks that this was no very powerful recommendation of matrimony, and that he should rather have said that in general marriage had no troubles; that if they sometimes seem to occur, they were few and light and easy to be borne, and were thrown into the shade by greater pleasures and advantages; and that the troubles which did arise did not happen to all, nor by the fault of nature, but from the fault and injustice of husbands. Castricius, on the other hand, vindicated Metellus, and maintained that as Censor he was bound to tell the whole truth, known to himself and admitted by every one else.[91] On such a subject it is not fair to take the evidence of books, in which, in ancient times at least, only one side is heard; or of satirists, who are, one and all, caricaturists, and very generally ill-tempered men; or of poets, whose own lives were flagrantly licentious; nor to draw conclusions respecting the character of Roman women generally from a few notorious examples of vice in elevated stations. I believe that we may obtain a truer as well as a more favourable conception of the conjugal relation in the imperial times, from the sepulcral inscriptions. They proceed from the middle classes, who give its moral character to a community; they are very numerous, and I cannot but believe the testimony which they bear to the general happiness of the married state.
The few inscriptions on women which have come down to us from the times of the republic, show what were the practical, unostentatious, and home-keeping qualities which were prized in the Roman matron, yet not without those gifts of pleasant speech and graceful carriage which set off the more solid virtues of female character.
Hospes quod deico paullum est: asta ac pellige.
Heic est sepulcrum pulcrum pulcrai feminæ.
Nomen parentes nominarunt Claudiam.
Suom mareitom corde dilexit souo.
Gnatos duo creavit: horunc alterum
In terra linquit, alium sub terra locat.
Sermone lepido, tum autem incessu commodo,
Domum servavit, lanam fecit. Dixi. Abei.[92]
The same qualities are predominant in an inscription of later date. HIC SITA EST AMYMONE MARCI OPTIMA ET PULCHERRIMA, LANIFICA, PIA, PUDICA, FRUGI, CASTA, DOMISEDA.[93] Intellectual accomplishments, however, were not overlooked. JULIÆ LUC. FILIÆ TYRANNIÆ VIXIT ANN. XX.M.VIII. QUÆ MORIBUS PARITER ET DISCIPLINA CŒTERIS FEMINIS EXEMPLO FUIT, AUTARCIUS NURUI. LAURENTIUS UCSORI.[94] The married life of the Romans appears to have been remarkably free from those domestic differences which Paley, according to a well-known anecdote, considered to be a useful corrective of its dulness. CONJUX INCOMPARABILIS, CUM QUA VIXI XXX ANNOS SINE QUERELA; SINE JURGIO; SINE DISSIDIO; SINE ÆMULATIONE; SINE ULLA ANIMI LÆSIONE, are testimonies constantly occurring on the part of husbands to their wives. The collection of Fabretti contains several inscriptions, declaring that this harmony had continued during half a century of married life.[95] The monuments erected by wives to their husbands are less numerous, but they bear the same testimony to conjugal harmony. D.M. D. JUNI PRIMIGENIO QUI VIXIT ANNIS XXXV JUNIA PALLAS FECIT, CONJUGI KARISSIMO ET PIENTISSIMO DE SE BENEMERENTI, CUM QUO VIXIT ANNIS XV MENSES VI DULCITER SINE QUERELA.[96] We find a husband recording on the tomb of his wife his vow never to contract a second marriage. TEMPIUS HERMEROS CONJUGI CARISSIMÆ FECIT CON (sic) QUA VIXIT ANNOS XVIII SINE QUERELA. CUJUS DESIDERIO JURATUS EST SE POST EAM UXOREM NON HABITURUM.[97] It is not an unfrequent sentiment, that the death of the wife was the very first cause of sorrow that she had given to her husband, as in the following example at Rome. T. FL. CAPITO CONJUGI CASTISSIMÆ PIISSIMÆ ET DE SE OPTIME MERITÆ, DE QUA NULLUM DOLOREM NISI ACERBISSIMÆ MORTIS EJUS ACCEPERAT.[98]