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]
There was a further extension of the conubium when Rome, in the middle of the fourth century before Christ, admitted to its citizenship some of the Italian, especially Latin, towns which it had subdued. The bestowal of the citizenship on the libertini, or freedmen, still further extended the conubium. In 89 B.C. the Italians received the conubium by the Lex Julia and Plautia. During the later days of the Republic, and in the time of the Empire, the citizenship was conferred on men in various parts of the world, and especially on various towns in the provinces. Soldiers also, who had served for a certain time, and had allied themselves to foreign women, had these alliances converted into legitimate marriages. In fact, the right of intermarriage had become of much less value. In early days the privileges of patricians were great, and it was worth while to take care that these should be secured only to genuine patrician offspring, especially as only genuine patrician offspring could perform due sacrifice and worship to the gods of the family and the State. Even in the days from the Punic wars to the end of the Republic, Roman citizenship was at once valuable and honourable; for the Roman citizen paid no taxes, and in an indirect way might share in the plunder of the world, and he enjoyed peculiar advantages in the eye of the law. But these advantages vanished with the advance of the Empire, which reduced all to a dead level of subjection, and at length, in 212 A.D., one of the most hated of tyrants, Caracalla, conferred the citizenship on all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, and with it the conubium. After this, any man might marry any woman, and the factitious distinctions which had ruled the ancient world vanished for ever. The world owes no gratitude to Caracalla for this grand consummation; for his only motive in conferring the citizenship on all was that all might be compelled to pay taxes, and that aliens might not escape, as some of them had hitherto done.
The outline of the history of what we may call the external emancipation of woman now given is, we have no doubt, substantially correct and based on trustworthy sources; but when we come to deal with the moral progress of women, and their position in the midst of Roman society, great difficulties meet us, which attach to all early Roman history.
Rome, according to the usual account, was founded in 753 B.C. There is no trace of any regular literature between that date and 390 B.C., when the city was burned to the ground. The Romans, no doubt, knew the art of writing at an early period; but any records kept by them were of the most meagre kind, and nearly all of them must have perished in the conflagration of 390. One hundred and seventy years have to pass before regular histories of Rome began to be written, and nearly all the literature and monuments during these 170 years have disappeared. We are thus without authentic documents for the minute history of the Roman people for 500 years of their existence. During this period the position of women underwent important changes; but, owing to this absence of documents, we are unable to explain these changes. We have, however, a very definite tradition to start with. This tradition presents itself everywhere in the works of Roman poets and historians, and pervades the ideas even of the late jurists, and we may feel confident that it is substantially correct. This tradition is to the effect that the position of the Roman matron was quite different from that of the Greek matron in the time of Pericles. The Roman matron was mistress in her own household. As the husband took charge of all external transactions, so the wife was supreme in household arrangements. The marriage was a community in all affairs, and within the home the utmost diligence, reverence, and harmony prevailed. The wife sat in the atrium, or principal hall, dispensing the wool to the maidservants, and herself making the garments of her husband and family. She did not cook or do what was regarded as menial work. She dined with her husband, sitting while he reclined, when they were alone. She received the friends of her husband, and dined with them also. She walked in and out with great freedom, and she nursed and brought up her own children.
This is a bright and beautiful picture, and some of the traits remained true to the end of Roman history. Many stories are told of the affection of husband for wife, wife for husband, children for parents, and parents for children. Thus we are informed of the father of the Gracchi, that he caught a couple of snakes in his bed, and, on consulting the haruspices, or diviners, he was told that he must not kill or let go both: that if he killed the male, he himself (Tiberius) would die; if he killed the female, his wife Cornelia would die. Tiberius did not hesitate in his choice. He loved Cornelia. He was elderly, she was young. He therefore killed the male snake, and a short time after this occurrence he died. The story is no doubt true, as the authority for it was his famous son Caius.[70]
Nothing could be more striking than the affection of Cicero for his daughter. He writes to her in the most endearing terms, cared for her every want, and was inconsolable for her loss when death carried her away. There are numerous instances in which wives resolved to share the ill-fortune of their husbands to endure calamity along with them, and to die rather than survive them.
This ideal remained with Roman men till the end of the Empire. It is the standard by which Juvenal metes out his criticism on the women of his own day, and many of the ill-natured judgments uttered against the sex are based on the old-fashioned conception of a Roman matron’s duties.