“Pe. By Hercules, it is a splendid thing to be a bachelor. If a good wife were to be got anywhere in the world, that would alter the case; but where am I to find such an one? And do you think, am I to bring to my house a woman who will never say to me, ‘Buy a nice warm coat for yourself, to keep the cold away this winter,’ but, on the contrary, who will awake me out of sleep before the cocks crow, and say to me, ‘Now, dear, give me some money to make a present with to my mother on the calends of March; or give me some money to buy stuff for making sweetmeats; give me some money to give to the witch and the dream interpreter,’ &c.? Then I don’t need children. I have plenty of relatives. I live as I like—no one to interfere with me—and when I die I shall leave my possessions to my friends; they know that, and take good care of me. They come and see what I am doing and what I wish. Before daybreak they are at my door, asking how I slept in the night. They sacrifice, and then send the best part to me. They invite me to breakfast and dinner, to all their feasts, and they all vie with each other in sending me gifts. Of course I know why—but what matters that? They nurse me and bestow gifts on me.”
The wives, then, in Plautus, are not represented in the most amiable colours. The old men stand in most awful dread of their old girls, as they called them. Dæmones, for instance, is afraid to look at Palæstra and Ampelisca, lest his wife fly upon him. Menæchmus gives a most vivid picture of the prying propensities of his wife. And some of them have wonderful command of abusive language, and rate their husbands in no measured terms. They even play most insolent tricks on them, as in the ‘Casina.’ But bad as some of these wives may have been with their extravagance and their tongues, they are not accused of unfaithfulness. The Romans and Greeks agreed with the French in making the fathers select the wives for their sons, but they differed from them in having divorce procurable on comparatively easy terms. And this circumstance makes a wide difference in the plots of their respective dramas. The plot of such a piece as ‘La petite Mariée’ would be as utterly repulsive to a Roman audience as to an English. There is not one instance throughout the twenty plays of Plautus in which the virtue of a married woman is assailed. We might except, from a modern and an early Christian point of view,[243] Jove’s amour with Alcmena, but in the Roman opinion Alcmena and her husband were honoured by this marked token of a god’s favour. There is one instance in which the man himself, the braggart soldier, supposes that he has committed the crime. He is led to believe that a courtezan is really a married woman and that she is dreadfully in love with him, and he yields to the deception. He is severely punished for it in the end, and acknowledges that he has well merited what he has received.
The absence of freedom before marriage is not, however, without its evil consequences. The young men had generally got attached to some handsome slaves before they married, and the old men seemed very much inclined to renew their youthful recollections by pranks of a similar nature. This is the cause of the most serious quarrels between husband and wife. In one passage the unfairness of the position of husband and wife in this respect is set forth, though not by a wife, but by a slave:—
“By Castor, wives live on hard terms, and much more unfair—poor wretches that they are—than their husbands. For if the husband has his courtezan without the knowledge of his wife, and she comes to know, he gets off scot-free; but if the wife go but to the outside without the knowledge of her husband, the husband has a case made for him, and she is divorced. Would that there were the same law for husband as for wife! For a good wife is content with one husband, why should not a husband be content with one wife?”[244]
When the wife thinks that she is badly used, she generally sends for her father. She expects him either to effect a reconciliation, or procure the return of her dowry and a divorce. In some cases, as in that of Menæchmus, the father takes the side of the husband and counsels submission.
Though there are some bad wives, there are also some very good. Foremost among these is Alcmena in the ‘Amphitruo.’ She is a true, loving, faithful wife. She greets her supposed husband on his return from war with the kindliest welcome. She is never impure even in any single thought, but is simply chaste throughout, even in scenes which might have tempted the poet to pander to his rough audience. She is astonished and amazed at the suspicions of her real husband, but no consideration will make her confess to a crime which she has not committed. She always retains the dignity of stainless purity. But if jealousy is to rule his soul, she is willing to part from him, and asks her dowry:—
“Valeas: tibi habeas res tuas, reddas meas.
Juben’ mihi comites?
“Jup.Sanan’ es?
“Al.Si non jubes,