The Women of the Caesars | Page 3

could frequent public places and have
recourse directly to the magistrates. We have record of the assembling
and of demonstrations made by the richest women of Rome in the
Forum and other public places, to obtain laws and other provisions
from the magistrates, like that famous demonstration of women that
Livy describes as having occurred in the year 195 B.C., to secure the
abolition of the Oppian Law against luxury.
What more? We have good reason for holding that already under the
republic there existed at Rome a kind of woman's club, which called
itself conventus matronarum and gathered together the dames of the
great families. Finally, it is certain that many times in critical moments
the government turned directly and officially to the great ladies of
Rome for help to overcome the dangers that menaced public affairs, by
collecting money, or imploring with solemn religious ceremonies the

favor of the gods.
One understands then, how at all times there were at Rome women
much interested in public affairs. The fortunes of the powerful families,
their glory, their dominance, their wealth, depended on the vicissitudes
of politics and of war. The heads of these families were all statesmen,
diplomats, warriors; the more intelligent and cultivated the wife, and
the fonder she was of her husband, the intenser the absorption with
which she must have followed the fortunes of politics, domestic and
foreign; for with these were bound up many family interests, and often
even the life of her husband.
[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]
Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
everything like the family of contemporary civilization? Have we
returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
forebears?
No. If there are resemblances between the modern family and the
Roman, there are also crucial differences. Although the Roman was
disposed to allow woman judicial and economic independence, a
refined culture, and that freedom without which it is impossible to
enjoy life in dignified and noble fashion, he was never ready to
recognize in the way modern civilization does more or less openly, as
ultimate end and reason for marriage, either the personal happiness of
the contracting parties or their common personal moral development in
the unifying of their characters and aspirations. The individualistic
conception of matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization
was alien to the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an
essentially political and social point of view. The purpose of marriage
was, so to speak, exterior to the pair. As untouched by any spark of the
metaphysical spirit as he was unyielding--at least in action--to every
suggestion of the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and
consolidating the state of which he was master, the Roman aristocrat
never regarded matrimony and the family, just as he never regarded
religion and law, as other than instruments for political domination, as
means for increasing and establishing the power of every great family,

and by family affiliations to strengthen the association of the
aristocracy, already bound together by political interest.
For this reason, although the Roman conceded many privileges and
recognized many rights among women, he never went so far as to think
that a woman of great family could aspire to the right of choosing her
own husband. Custom, indeed, much restricted the young man also, at
least in a first marriage. The choice rested with the fathers, who were
accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys. The
heads of two friendly families would find themselves daily together in
the struggle of the Forum and the Comitia, or in the deliberations of the
Senate. Did the idea occur to both that their children, if affianced then,
at seven or eight years of age, might cement more closely the union of
the two families, then straightway the matter was definitely arranged.
The little girl was brought up with the idea that some day, as soon as
might be, she should marry that boy, just as for two centuries in the
famous houses of Catholic countries many of the daughters were
brought up in the expectation that one day they should take the veil.
Every one held this Roman practice as reasonable, useful, equitable; to
no one did the idea occur that by it violence was done to the most
intimate sentiment of liberty and independence that a human being can
know. On the contrary, according to the common judgment, the
well-governing of the state was being wisely provided for, and these
alliances were destroying the seeds of discord that spontaneously
germinate in aristocracy and little by little destroy it, like those plants
sown by no man's hand, which thrive upon old walls and become their
ruin.
This is why one knows of every