It was some communistic theory of the day that Aristophanes attacked, but he was not bitter in his ridicule. It has always to be remembered that it was the business of the Dionysiac priests, as we may call the comic poets, to show the laughable side of even the most solemn things, and often little harm was meant by these merry outbursts. Aristophanes, moreover, had changed greatly from what he was in the time when, in the ‘Acharnians,’ he had bitterly attacked Aspasia. He had become gentle to strangers. He did not dislike the Spartans and their ways. Though he said many harsh things against women, he also said many good things for them. It was through them that, in the ‘Lysistrata,’ he urged on the Athenians the duty of reconciliation and peace. And now, in the ‘Ecclesiazusæ,’ he gives a kindly picture of what the women would do if they had the reins of power in their hands. This was the only form of government that the Athenians had not tried, and as all the rest had notoriously failed, there could be no great harm in entrusting the women with the administration of affairs. The gentle spirit of women might prevail. And surely under such a government men would be happy. The women would see to it that there would be no poor in the city, theft and slander would cease, and all would be content. Plato’s speculations and Aristophanes’s fun, however, were of no use. The city-State was too small an organization for the progress of man. It was destined to give way before a more humanizing government. And so the petty States had to yield to the Empire of Alexander, and with the change began a great change in the position of women. But this change had to be carried out under another and greater rule. The Romans swept over Greece and established a firmer and more comprehensive empire than that of Alexander.
BOOK II.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT ROME.
CHAPTER I.
THE GOOD SIDE.
In early Rome we find the same state of matters as we have found in Greece. The city is the unit. This city-State consists of citizens who have all equal rights and privileges. All outside of the city have at first no rights within its territories, and if they come within the city, they have no claim to justice or consideration except what they can obtain through a citizen. In all ancient cities there was always a large number of slaves, men or women who either themselves or whose ancestors had been taken captive in war or stolen from their homes. Thus there were three classes of the population—citizens with full rights and privileges, aliens with no rights of their own, and slaves who were regarded as mere property. But the development of the city of Rome follows a different course from that of the Greek cities. The Romans gradually extended the privileges of citizenship till the unit was no longer a city, but a nation, and finally it became the civilized world. Aliens make no prominent figure in Rome, as they did in Athens, unless we consider the plebeians as aliens, and in the process of time the plebeians became citizens, and every civil distinction between them and the original citizens vanished. Besides, the Censor had the right to put the name of an alien on the list of citizens, and no doubt many foreigners became Roman citizens in this way. The slaves also had a more advantageous position in Rome. The road to citizenship was at an early period laid open for them. Their masters manumitted many of them, and they became freedmen. These freedmen came to be numerous and influential, and the Censor Appius Claudius in 312 B.C.[67] admitted them all to the full rights of citizenship. They were not, indeed, allowed to enjoy the honours of the State, but this same Appius Claudius granted to the sons of freedmen admission into the Senate, and his right-hand man, Cn. Flavius, curule ædile of the year 304, was the son of a freedman. Thus, in course of time, the slave became the freedman, the freedman’s son became an ingenuus, or freeborn citizen, with all the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship.
In Roman society there were these same three classes of women—the full citizen, the alien, and the slave. The Roman citizen could marry only a woman who was the daughter of a Roman citizen. Marriage with any other was impossible. The very object of marriage was to produce a race of citizens, and, therefore, both father and mother must belong to the class of citizens. It was for this reason that such care was taken of the purity of Roman women, and such a broad distinction was drawn between the conduct of the man and the woman. There must be no suspicion of spuriousness in regard to the Roman citizen. But the offspring of the man with a foreign woman or a slave did not become a citizen, and, therefore, the State was perfectly indifferent as to what relations might exist between a male citizen and alien women or slaves, and society was equally indifferent.
We have already seen what was the result of this state of matters in Greece. In Rome the result was different. The alien women attained to less prominence even than the alien men, and in this account of the position of women in Roman society we may pass them without notice. A few foreign women appear in the early history of Rome, and play a prominent part; but the tales are borrowed from Greek stories of the times of the Tyrants, and do not fit in with strictly Roman ideas. During the best period of Roman history alien women are never mentioned, except in plays borrowed from the Greek, and it is only when we come to the later days of the Republic that we begin again to hear the names of a few. But their presence is owing to the prevalence of Greek ideas and Greek customs, and even the few that are mentioned keep in the background.
The female slaves also do not demand our attention. The female slave was treated simply as a cow or sheep. If she produced healthy offspring, it was so much gain to her master, and he did not care who was the father. Of course she could not marry, and all her children were the property of her owner. Sometimes a male slave and a female slave were allowed or compelled to live together, and there was something like a marriage. But they had no right to their own children, and no obligations towards them except such as were imposed upon them by their proprietors. At the same time, as their fertility was a source of revenue to their masters, they were often treated very kindly. In olden times, the female slave who had three children was allowed a dispensation from hard work, and if she had more she sometimes obtained her freedom. The Romans had a great liking for the slaves who were born within their households, and often brought them up along with the younger members of the family, with whom they thus became intimate. This close connexion tended to lessen the sense of absolute proprietorship in many cases, and the slave woman was treated with consideration. It was no doubt through such influences that the lot of the slave woman was ameliorated, and when we come to the times of the Empire, we see laws made to protect them, and freedom frequently conferred upon them.[68]
It is, then, the matrons alone who are conspicuous in Roman history. Every citizen girl married and became a matron, and it is that class exclusively which we shall discuss.
Now, the first remark that has to be made is that Rome gave the same expansion to marriage as to citizenship, and thereby produced a revolution in the position of woman: a revolution, however, gradual in its extension and gradual in its effects, but of most momentous consequence to the world, for it broke down completely the old constitution of city-States, by which their privileges were conferred on men as members of families, and established a new and world-wide constitution by which men obtained their privileges as men. In the earliest stages it is possible that the right of intermarriage may have existed between Roman citizens and citizens of various towns of Latium. Certainly the legends make Roman princes marry into Latin families. But on the establishment of the Republic the right of intermarriage existed only between patricians of the city. A patrician man could not marry a plebeian woman, nor a plebeian man a patrician woman. The children of either marriage could not be patricians; they could only be plebeians, and were not under the control of the father. But after various struggles this wall of separation between patrician and plebeian was broken down, and the Lex Canuleia, in 442 B.C., conferred the conubium, or right of intermarriage, on the plebeians. Livy puts speeches into the mouths of the proposers and opposers of this measure. They have no claim to be historical; but they reveal the fact that Livy thought the objections to the extension of the conubium were as much religious as civil.[69]