The other Stoic woman whom I shall mention is the well-known Arria, the wife of Pætus. Pliny gives the following narrative, received from her granddaughter: “Her husband, Cæcina Pætus, was sick; her son also was sick, both, to all appearance, by a fatal attack. The son died; a youth of exquisite beauty, of equal modesty, and dear to the parents as much because he was their son as for other reasons. She made all the preparations for the funeral, and paid the last rites to him, in such a way that her husband remained in ignorance of what was going on. Whenever she entered his chamber she pretended that her son still lived and was even improving in health. And when he often asked, ‘How is my boy?’ she would answer, ‘He had a good night, he took a little food eagerly.’ But when the tears, long kept in check, overcame her and began to stream forth, she would go outside and give herself up to a flood of grief, and then come back with dry eyes and calm countenance.”[104] It was this same woman who taught her husband how to die. He had received commands from the Emperor Claudius to put himself to death. He hesitated. His wife thereupon took a dagger, plunged it into her breast, drew it out and offered it to her husband, with the words, “Pætus, it does not pain.” There were many such Stoic women. What opinions did they entertain in regard to the education and position of their sex? We are well informed on this point.
A Stoic philosopher, C. Musonius Rufus, who flourished in the time of Nero, spoke or wrote treatises on the education of women and on marriage, and large fragments of his sayings or writings have come down to us. He argues that the same training and education must be suitable for both sexes. He affirms that this ought to be the case for training in all the mental qualities, but that possibly certain tasks may in some cases be more appropriate for man or for woman. The sum of his exposition is perhaps contained in the following words:[105] “I say that, as in the human race men have a stronger and women a weaker nature, each of these natures should have the tasks assigned to it which are most suited to it, and the heavier should be allotted to the stronger, and the lighter to the weaker. Spinning, as well as house-keeping, would, therefore, be more suitable for women than for men; while gymnastics, as well as out-of door work, would be fitter for men than for women; though sometimes some men might properly undertake some of the lighter tasks and such as seem to belong to women; and women, again, might engage in the harder tasks, and those which appear more appropriate for men, in cases where either bodily qualities or necessity or particular occasions might lead to such action. For perhaps all human tasks are open to all, and common both to men and women, and nothing is necessarily appointed exclusively for either; not that some things may not be more suitable for one, and others for the other nature, so that some are called men’s and others women’s occupations. But whatever things have reference to virtue, these one may rightly affirm to be equally appropriate to both natures, since we say that virtues do not belong more to the one than to the other.” Musonius applies his principle of equality to sexual relations and to marriage. He held that what was wrong in a woman was equally wrong in a man, or rather was more disgraceful to a man, inasmuch as he claimed to be a stronger being, and therefore more capable of controlling his passions. He therefore denounced all illicit amours as unjust and lawless. He also propounded a view which was afterwards adopted by the Christian writers, that all indulgence of the flesh not requisite for the propagation of the race was unworthy of a philosopher. But he differed from the great mass of the Christian writers, and regarded marriage as the happiest condition of life. He describes it as a community of life, and a mutual care for each other in health and sickness, and in every occurrence of life, and he brands a marriage when there is no community of feeling as worse than a desert. He argued that the man who does not marry must be inferior in his experience and usefulness to the man who does, and that therefore the solitary life is not advantageous even for the philosophers. And he urges that the whole of civilization rests upon the institution of marriage. “For,” says he, “the man who takes away marriage from the human race takes away the household, takes away the State, takes away the human race.”
The opinions of Musonius and the Stoics greatly influenced subsequent legislation in regard to marriage. But this is an obscure and disputable subject, and we can refer here only to the commencement of legislation on marriage. It was the Emperor Augustus who first drew up laws in regard to it. Before his time marriage was deemed essentially a private transaction, and no enactments had taken place in reference to it except as to the disposition of dowries. Family councils controlled it, and, like all other private acts, it was subject to the judgment of the Censors, who in this matter followed prevalent opinion. The prevailing opinion was that all Romans were bound to marry. The Censors put the question to every Roman, “On your word of honour have you a wife?” If the answer was in the negative the Censor weighed all the circumstances of the case, and, if he deemed the man negligent of his duty, he imposed on him a fine called uxorium. From the earliest times it had been reckoned a Roman’s imperative duty to marry. Dionysius embodies this practice in the statement that the “ancient law compelled all adults to marry.” The historians mention several instances in which the penalty for neglect of this custom was imposed by the Censors.[106]
We are told[107] that the Censors, M. Furius Camillus and M. Postumius Albinus, in 403 B.C., obliged all who had reached old age without marrying to pay a sum of money to the public treasury, and Valerius Maximus, in stating this fact, puts into their mouths words to the following effect: “As nature imposes on man the necessity of being born, so it imposes on him the obligation to produce birth, and your parents bind you by maintaining you to the obligation of maintaining their grandchildren. In addition to this, fortune has given you a long period to listen to her appeals to you to perform this duty, while, in the meantime, your years have wasted away, and you have remained without the name of either husband or father. Go, then, and pay the knotty coin which will be useful to a numerous posterity.” We need place no implicit belief in the exact details of this narrative, and Plutarch may be nearer the truth when he relates that the Censors induced, either by persuasion or penalties, the unmarried Romans of their day to wed the women who had been made widows by the devastating wars of Veii. But, whatever may have been the particular occurrences, there can be no doubt that the sentiments put by Maximus into the mouths of the Censors were the genuine sentiments of the Roman people, and they continued to be the same till the latest days of the Republic. We are told[108] that Quintus Metellus in his censorship, the date of which is uncertain, but it was either 131 B.C. or 101 B.C.—according as we accept the statement of Livy that it was Quintus Metellus Macedonicus, or the statement of Gellius that it was Quintus Metellus Numidicus—urged that all should be forced to marry liberorum creandorum causa, and delivered a speech on marriage which Augustus[109] deemed so convincing that he read it aloud in the Senate, and drew the attention of the people to it by edict. And Cicero, in his treatise ‘De Legibus,’[110] makes it part of the duty of Censors to prevent people being bachelors.
There would not be the same obligation on females to marry, but it is likely that every Roman citizen girl married. It is probable that the number of the females was not so great as that of the males. Every father had the right to expose his children, and, while he had no reason to make away with his male children, the necessity of providing dowries for females would induce him to think seriously before he took up and reared the female children that were born to him.
This, then, was the state of matters in the best times of the Republic; but this state was changed by the violent civil wars that preceded the establishment of the Empire. Then the great families of the commonwealth were decimated and family ties broken up. A feeling of the utter uncertainty of life and an indifference to its continuance pervaded all classes. Moreover, luxurious habits had become prevalent. Formerly sons with their wives lived in the house of their father, and constituted, in fact as in law, one family. Instances of this conjoint family life are recorded so late as the second century B.C. But now the expense of bringing up a family had come to be felt by many as a burden, and the trouble of family cares was regarded as an encroachment on the enjoyments of life. And hence arose an unwillingness to marry. People saw no good and felt no pride in having families. Their children might be a curse to them, or they might be exposed to lives of poverty, accusations, harassment, and proscription—lives, in fact, which were miseries, and not blessings. But Augustus held that the prevalence of such sentiments and practices was fatal to the welfare of a State, and the special circumstances of the time made them peculiarly dangerous to Rome. For the State had suffered enormous loss by its civil wars. Appian[111] asserts that at the census of Julius Cæsar it was said that the population was only half of what it had been before these wars. Dio Cassius[112] describes the scarcity of the population as terrible, and the number of women had decreased. Friedländer[113] estimates the free population of Rome in 5 B.C., omitting senators, knights, and soldiers, as consisting of 320,000 males and 265,600 females.
A remedy for this state of matters was urgently required, and Augustus believed that a remedy could be found only in legislation. Accordingly legislation was the remedy which he adopted. The accounts of this legislation are very confused. Mention is made of three Bills—one, Julia de adulteriis coercendis; a second, Julia de maritandis ordinibus; and a third, Lex Papia Poppæa. He commenced his legislation in the very beginning of his reign, in 28 B.C.; but as, on assuming the supreme power, he abrogated the decrees of the triumvirate, and claimed to be restoring the Republic, his Bills had to go through the ordinary processes of discussion in the Senate and proposal to the Assembly. This afforded scope for every form of obstruction, and, besides difficulties in passing the Bills, the laws met with fierce private resistance. The Lex Papia Poppæa probably embodied all the regulations which Augustus had made in regard to marriage, with such additions and amendments as experience had proved to be necessary. Its great object, was to encourage and reward marriage, and punish and prevent celibacy. Before passing his final law, the Lex Papia Poppæa, in 9 A.D., Dio Cassius[114] states that Augustus, knowing that the equites were eager for the abrogation of his previous laws, summoned the whole of them to a meeting. He divided them into two classes—those who had married and those who had not. He deplored the fact that the latter class was more numerous, and addressed to them strong words of reproof, and at the same time expounded the reasons why marriage should be praised and rewarded, and bachelors condemned and fined. The principal points of this speech are contained in the first two chapters of Dio Cassius, 56. “That first and greatest god,” he says, “who fashioned us divided the mortal race into two, the male and the female, in order, through the instinctive love of the one to the other, he might make that which was mortal eternal after a fashion from continual new births. And he who is born of a father is bound to become a father if the race is to continue. Every feeling of patriotism makes this a sacred duty. And what better means could there be than a chaste wife, guardian and manager of the house, a rearer of children, for cheering the man when he is in good health and attending to him when he is ill, sharing with him his good fortune and consoling him in misfortune, restraining the mad impulses of the young and tempering the unseasonable austerity of the old? What could be more delightful than to take up a child, the offspring of both, and rear and educate him, an image of the body and an image of the soul, so that the man himself reappear in this child when he grows to maturity.”
Julius Cæsar, painfully alive to the effects of the civil wars on the destiny of the Empire, had already offered rewards for a numerous offspring, and we find that in his agrarian law for the distribution of lands in Campania, he gave the lots to fathers of three or more children, of whom at the time there were twenty thousand. Augustus resolved to carry out this idea systematically. Any married woman who had three children received special privileges, and the jus trium liberorum became an honour, which was also conferred at first by the Senate, and subsequently by the Emperors, on distinguished women on whom nature had not bestowed the requisite number of children. Four children released a freedwoman from the guardianship of her patron, and three children put a free patroness on an equality with a patron.[115]
Similar privileges were conferred on men. The consul who had the greater number of children had precedence over him who had fewer, and the married consul took precedence of the unmarried. The candidate for office who had children was permitted to assume certain offices of state at an earlier age than the unmarried, and other privileges were bestowed on the married. Fines and disabilities were imposed on bachelors. The ages fixed for males were twenty and sixty, and for women twenty and fifty and whoever was unmarried within these ages was subjected to a tax, and could not become heir except to near relatives and could not receive legacies.
Such were some of the provisions of this Lex Papia Poppæa for the encouragement of marriage. Our information in regard to it is in many respects defective and unsatisfactory. The law was much discussed by subsequent jurists, and it is likely that some of the clauses, which are represented as the work of Augustus, were inserted by later legislators.