47. Honorable Status of Roman Women.—Calvus is the lordly senator when his litter swings him down to the Curia by the Old Forum to participate in what is still the most venerable council in the world, but in his own house his authority is divided. He is not even sure that one-half the power is really his. In all private matters his sway is shared by his spouse Gratia.

Many are the evils inflicting Imperial Rome, but oppression of women is not one of them. By the age of Hadrian it has long since come to pass what Cato the Elder sadly predicted three centuries earlier, when Roman women were learning the way to freedom: “On the day that women are our equals, they will be our masters.”

Roman women are, indeed, excluded from seats in the Senate and from the long-defunct right to vote in the public assemblies.[25] They cannot command armies nor receive governorships, although every now and then an angry senator vainly proposes a resolution that governors shall not take their wives along with them to their provinces, lest the latter constitute themselves the real rulers of the district. Women do not act as judges or jurors. Nay more: legally they are under legal disabilities calculated to stir the rage of their “equal suffrage” sisters of a later day. They have always the status of minors, and are subject to the legal control of either father, guardian, or husband to their dying hour.

All this is true, yet, what of it? The jurists have long ago devised fictions of the law whereby the women have practically as complete control of their property as have their brothers; and the government of the Empire is peculiarly a government of backstairs intrigues and of secret influence. What chance have mere men against women in such warfare? Custom also assigns to women an amount of freedom in most social matters which makes Imperial Rome a feminine paradise that can only be matched by Twentieth Century America.

48. Men Reluctant to Marry.—Long since leaders of the bolder sex have had to reason with their fellow citizens on the necessity of marriage as a patriotic duty. The pragmatic old censor Quintus Metellus in 102 B.C. delivered a kind of a lay sermon: “If we could get along without wives, fellow citizens (Quirites) we should all spare ourselves the tedium of marriage, but nature has ordained that we can neither live pleasantly with wives, nor exist at all without them—therefore let us sacrifice our personal interests to those of society.” After him Emperor Augustus enacted stiff laws to decrease the alarming number of bachelors, and to give special privileges to the parents of three children. This does not prevent many prominent Romans from looking upon a wife as a kind of expensive bondage often to be shunned altogether.

49. Rights and Privileges of Married Women.—The great majority of all Romans are married. Even the slaves are allowed to join in a kind of unofficial wedlock known as contubernium, which only a very harsh master will dissolve. As for the free married women they go everywhere and do almost everything. No husband’s permission is needed when they visit the Forum or theater. They can sue and be sued or give testimony in the courts without his intervention. They manage their own property. Gratia, for example, is well off in her own right. Her estates are in charge of a dapper young freedman Ephorus, who is incessantly visiting her, and who never dreams of taking orders from her husband. So long as Gratia is barely faithful to Calvus he has no right to complain. He thanks his “Good Genius,” therefore, that things are not as in his friend Probus’s house, where the mistress’s factotum is suspected of being on altogether too familiar terms with his fair employer.

Nevertheless, this freedom is supposed to carry with it corresponding responsibilities. Every Roman woman theoretically is responsible for her husband’s good name and for the wise ordering of his family. No right-minded woman dismisses the hope that at the end they will put the great words on her tombstone: “She counselled well. She managed well. She spun wool.”

The control of the vast familia of slaves is usually in a matron’s hands, a duty calculated to bring out every executive quality within her. She largely conducts the education of her sons, no less than of her daughters. No Roman is ashamed to admit (as an Athenian in Pericles’s day might have been ashamed) that in the great crises of life he took the authoritative advice of his mother.[26] Roman civilization is, therefore, for better or worse, a civilization to which women no less than men have been suffered to apply the full powers of their genius. It is a “hundred per cent civilization”; whereas, that of Athens, considering the manner in which Athenian women were confined and ignored, was hardly more than a “fifty per cent civilization.”

50. Selection of Husbands for Young Girls.—It is a fact, however, that in one great and vital matter Roman women are not free agents. They usually have their husbands, at least their first husbands, chosen for them by their parents. This comes to pass largely because usage requires that girls should be married so young that no rational romance on their part is really possible.

Custom amounting to law requires that a girl shall be at least twelve, and a boy fourteen before marriage. In the case of girls this minimum is often adhered to pretty closely, but betrothals can be arranged still earlier. Cicero’s daughter Tullia was betrothed at ten and married at thirteen—a very common arrangement. Nobody imagined she had the least right to complain. Marriage involves a great shift in family relations, and the control of the family pertains strictly to the pater familias and to his matrona. They will ordinarily exercise loving pains in selecting a suitable spouse for a daughter, but the decision must be very largely theirs.

Boys as a rule marry much later, often not until well into manhood. They can demand inevitably a certain right of choice, although the parents still exercise a marked authority. As for bachelors, if they indulge in various coarse “affairs” with dancing girls, only very peevish persons are critical. After marriage, however, they must treat their wives with reasonable outward respect, if by no means always with austere faithfulness. In any case a girl is likely to be married off too young either to resist her parents’ choice or to pick out intelligently any proper husband for herself.[27]

51. A Marriage Treaty among Noble-Folk.—When Gratia’s parents decided she was old enough to “become settled” they applied to a distinguished kinsman, an ex-consul, to help them to find a suitable bridegroom. This noble gentleman looked over a list of his younger friends, selected Calvus, and wrote a careful letter commending him, praising his lineage, and his firm hopes of official distinction, and telling how “he had a frank, open countenance, fresh colored and blooming and a handsome well-knit figure”; in short “he was quite the fellow to deserve so fine a girl.” The great man went on to add that the favored candidate had a respectable fortune, for “though I dislike to speak of the financial aspects of the matter, still one must consider the tendencies of the day.” Not one word was said as to how Gratia herself might want to be consulted; her consent was taken for granted.[28]

Gratia’s parents, therefore, approached Calvus’s guardian, his uncle. He being satisfied as to dowry and social adjustments, both young people were informed of what had been determined for them. Gratia and Calvus alike had always expected some such arrangement and capitulated with reasonable grace. The ensuing marriage, founded not on any romance, but on a cold-blooded study of what supposedly made for domestic happiness, in this case at least has been fortunate and fruitful. The wedded pair have come truly to love one another, and they dwell in great harmony. In this general manner marriages are arranged every day in Rome.

Of course these are first marriages. Let Gratia become a widow, or let her imitate so many of her friends and divorce her husband, and her second spouse will ordinarily be of quite her own choosing; and Calvus, of course, in selecting again, would be completely his own master.

52. A Betrothal in Wealthy Circles.—Gratia’s daughter Junia is only ten, yet her parents are already beginning to think about betrothals; but only a block up the street there has just been the excitement of an actual wedding. Aulus Statilius Pomponius is only an eques, but the gods have blessed him with a hundred million sesterces ($4,000,000). He and his wife have a daughter who will inherit vast possessions, and wealth is a splendid substitute for lineage. They have found a young Gaius Ulpius Pollio, already in the Senate, who claims a distant cousinship to the Emperor himself. Pollio is none too wealthy and is already a widower, but Statilia and her mother are infinitely delighted at an alliance with the edges of an imperial house. Nothing has lacked, therefore, for an ultra-fashionable wedding, the talk of the entire capital.

First came the betrothal, a great social concourse in Pomponius’s atrium, a throng of equites and senators with their wives, jewels flashing, countless tongues gossiping, with Statilia led in by her father to the center of the circle to meet the bridegroom-to-be. Statilia said not a word through the entire proceedings. All Pollio’s dealings were with her father, and in clear voice the two men exchanged the legal formulas: “Do you promise to give your daughter, Statilia to me, to be my wedded wife?” said the younger man.

“The gods bring luck! I betroth her.”

“The gods bring luck!”

After that technically Statilia became a bride-elect; she was a sponsa. Either side had legally the right still to break the agreement, but it was socially ruinous to do so. Pollio presented Statilia with various valuable toilet articles, and especially with a ring to be worn on the third finger of the left hand, because everybody said that “a nerve ran directly from this particular finger to the heart.” It was the engagement ring of a later age almost precisely.

53. Adjusting the Dowry.—Then followed weeks of frantic preparation: the women busy with the things which always have made women busy over weddings long before the days of Romulus and Remus; Pomponius and Pollio with wrestling over the very nice legal adjustments of Statilia’s dowry. How much would the old eques give in all, in cash, land, and banker’s securities? How much for his daughter’s special use? How much as dos, the funds which the new son-in-law could touch? How could the property be arranged so that if the marriage ended presently in a divorce (as spiteful wagers were already being laid that it might) the dos could be given back to Statilia without grievous loss of principal?

At one time the betrothal almost had to be cancelled, such extreme shrewdness was shown on both sides. But finally the matter was adjusted. Three noble friends for either side pressed their seal rings in witness to the contracts. The day came for the wedding.

64. Dressing the Bride.—Family exigencies required a springtime wedding, when there were a great many unlucky days to be avoided; but an expert Etruscan haruspex at length found a day that satisfied Statilia and her parents’ scruples. On the night before the great event she laid all her playthings, her childish amulet (bulla), and her childish garments on the altar of the paternal Lares whose protection she was quitting forever. Then she went to bed in a tunica recta, a fine, yellow garment woven in one piece, supposedly an article of extremely good omen.

The next day the bride was dressed personally by her mother with unusual care. However expensive her ornaments she had to wear this same one-piece tunic next to her skin, the gown being held around the waist by a band of wool tied with a complicated “knot of Hercules.” She wore, of course, all the jewels loaded upon neck, ears, arms, and fingers which by the contract she was to bring Pollio in her trousseau. Her long hair had been parted according to ancient custom by a spear into six locks, braided now with ribbons weighted down with pearls. Her shoes were of finest white leather covered with more pearls. Over her head streamed a long, gauzy flame-colored veil of silk—worth very literally more than its weight in gold.[29] Pressing down this bridal veil was a garland of flowers picked, as custom required, by the bride’s own hand, and interspersed with sprigs of the sacred “verbena” herbs. Pollio, when he presented himself, was in the best gala costume of a senator, but there were no special “wedding garments” for the bridegroom, corresponding to the bridal veil.

55. The Marriage Ceremonies.—The afternoon was at hand, and the insulæ in neighboring quarters emptied their plebeian throngs to gaze at the gilded litters which went swinging up to the house of Pomponius, the armies of scarlet-clad running footmen, the pompous freedmen marching beside their patron’s sedans, the bravery of purple robes, the flash of gold and of jewels. Of course, the atrium had been hung with garlands. The air inside was heavy with the perfumes of flowers, of costly unguents, and of the finest Arabian incense, while the noble guests elbowed and pushed one another to get near the altar near the tablinum and win the best sight of the happy pair.

Roman marriages are pretty strictly civil ceremonies. There is no legal requirement for any religious rites. Hardly anybody now is married according to the stale old formula of the confarreatio, when the betrothed couple became wedded by eating a cake which had just been consecrated by the Pontifex Maximus. A much simpler form is now used, but before the ceremony there always has to be the sacrifice.

Amid a decently pious hush a sheep is led to the side of the water tank (impluvium) in the atrium; the shrewd-eyed old haruspex, trailing his long robe and muttering jargon that passes for Etruscan, is aided by two skillful assistants in killing the creature promptly and avoiding disgusting gore; then in ripping open its belly and examining with expert eye the still quivering entrails. (See p. 429.) It is proper now for Statilia to turn pale and clutch the arm of her mother. What if the signs were unfavorable? “Whoever heard of bad omens being discovered at a great wedding?” cynically whispers a senator. “Bene—good!” announces the haruspex with a leer. “Bene! Bene!” echo all the guests. The soothsayer retires. The wedding can proceed.

The final ceremony is very simple. First the tablets of the marriage contract and the transfer of the dowry are produced, read, and, if not already witnessed, are signed by the proper attestors. Then a young matron-of-honor, Statilia’s pronuba, leads the bride up to Pollio. She thrusts out her hand from under her great veil and takes the hand of her husband-elect. Everybody listens while he, and not any priest or official for him, puts the direct question: “Will you be my mater familias?” “Yes,” answers Statilia, perhaps a little too readily; and then she asks him openly: “And will you be my pater familias?” “Yes,” and immediately there is a general shout of congratulation.

These decisive words once spoken, Pollio, his bride, and her parents unite in placing a cake of coarse bread upon the altar, uttering brief dedications of the food to Jupiter and Juno, and also to the quaint rural gods Tellus, Picumnus, and Pilumnus who will bless the estates of the new couple. The cakes are presented in a basket held by a young boy, Statilia’s cousin, her camillus, both of whose parents are required to be living. The company now redoubles its cry of “Good luck! Good luck! felicitas!”—and everybody is assuredly in excellent appetite for the ensuing wedding feast.

56. The Wedding Procession.—This is not the place for describing a great banquet (see p. 113); it is enough here to state that Pomponius is obliged to justify his wealth by a prodigal hospitality. Vain has proved Augustus’s law limiting the cost of wedding feasts to one thousand sesterces ($40). Such regulations win only laughter!

As the climax after the dainties comes the distribution of pieces of the huge wedding-cake (mustaceum), made of fine meal steeped in new wine and served upon bay leaves. By this time everybody has drunk enough good Massic and Falernian to be excited and talkative, it has become twilight in the street, and Pomponius’s chief freedman (the master of ceremonies) gives the signal: “The procession!”

In the vestibule musters a squad of flute players and torch bearers. As the music strikes up, good form requires Statilia to cast herself into her mother’s arms and weep and scream violently. Good form equally requires Pollio to tear her thence with playful violence—“a remembrance,” people say, “of the Romans’ rape of the Sabines.” Statilia promptly ceases struggling and submits cheerfully to being led through the door.

The wedding procession is an indispensable part of the ceremony. Probably if Pollio lives in another city, some family friend will now loan his residence for “leading home the bride.” As it is, the bridegroom fortunately possesses a handsome house about a mile distant on the Quirinal. For all her wealth Statilia has to walk the entire way.

First go the flute players bringing the crowds out of all the insulæ when they cross the Subura; then long files of the younger guests of both sexes, talking vivaciously, and flourishing white-thorn torches; then the camillus and a youthful assistant bearing ostentatiously the bride’s spindle and distaff, token of the household labors presumably ahead of her; then the bride herself, led on either hand by a boy both of whose parents are living, while a third of like good fortune carries a special torch of honor. Pollio himself walks just behind the bride, and is kept busy tossing walnuts to all the children in the crowd in token of the fact that he has now (for the second time) put away childish things. After them, with more flambeaux and in merry disorder, taking pains to exhibit their fine robes and jewels, follow all the older relatives and friends of both parties. The torchlight, the music, the brave colors, and gems gleaming out of the darkness make the scene bewitching. No wonder all the gaping crowds join in the marriage shouts “Io Talasse!”[30] or in the oft-repeated “Felicitas!”

57. At the Bridegroom’s House.—The guests and many of the spectators fail not also to raise the “Fescinne songs” proper for marriage processions; old folk songs very coarse, and interspersed with extremely broad quips and personalities. At last the house of Pollio is reached. It is a blaze of light from vestibule to garden, and all the decuriæ (squads of ten) of slaves are mustered to greet their new domina.

At the entrance Statilia stops to wind the door pillars with bits of wool, and to touch the door itself with oil and fat, the emblems of plenty. She is then promptly lifted over the threshold to avoid an ill-omened stumble, and is immediately confronted by her husband who has slipped in before her and who now presents her with a cup of water and a glowing fire brand, token that she is entitled to the protection of his family Lares. Statilia accepts these and in clear voice repeats the very ancient and famous marriage formula, “Where thou art Gaius, I am Gaia” (Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia).

The invited guests now sweep inside and there is more elbowing while Statilia produces three silver coins; one of these she gives to her husband as emblem of her dowry; one she lays on the altar for the Lares of her new home; one she casts back into the street, a gift to the “Lares of the Highway” who guarded the door. Then her marriage torch is blown out, and tossed away to be scrambled for as emblem of supreme good luck by all the younger guests. The matron of honor has already arranged the luxurious marriage chamber, and the happy pair are led inside and the door shut upon them, while all their friends join in the rollicking “nuptial song” just outside the portal. There is nothing left now for the guests to do but to go home; all being invited, however, to return to Pollio’s house the next day to join in a second great feast, with Statilia this time presiding as mistress of the establishment.

58. Honors and Liberties of a Matron.—Before her marriage Statilia had been a mere girl, completely controlled by her parents, unable to appear in public save under severe restrictions, and apparently with hardly a will of her own. The day after entering Pollio’s house she finds herself become by one act a noble matrona, with the destinies of a huge retinue of slaves and freedmen at her disposal, enjoying a great property, meeting her husband’s friends as their equal, going where she pleases, saying what she pleases, almost (within wide limits) doing what she pleases.

Abroad in crowds, her dress, the stola matronalis, secures the young married woman extreme respect. Every March, she, with all the other honorable wives in Rome, enjoys the honors of the matronalia, an official festival, kind of “Mother’s day” devoted to celebrating the virtues of the gracious heads of each household. On this day no less than on her birthday, she receives presents from her husband, her family, and all her dependents. Finally, being a Senator’s wife, when she comes to die, she probably will be entitled to a great state funeral, with a formal eulogy in the Forum as if she were a public personage. No wonder that Roman girls yearn eagerly for marriage! It is their astonishing emancipation.

59. Unhappy Marriages and Frivolous Women.—Will a fashionable alliance like that of Statilia and Pollio turn out happily? There are scoffers even among the friends who bore the torches. Nobody expects Pollio (a gay young aristocrat) to prove an example of austere faithfulness, although he must never do anything to insult his wife publicly. As for Statilia the cynics about the fair sex are very many. Long ago Ovid has written, “Every woman may be won if only she’s rightly tempted.” If a young wife is light-minded, she has plenty of opportunities to acquire lovers, and at the great festivals and banquets, at the theaters, gladiator fights, and circuses women have every chance to meet intriguing men without interference by their husbands.

The very fact that as unmarried girls Roman matrons were denied all chance for lawful romances, now makes devious love affairs seem all the more racy. Any number of fine ladies have indulged in unwise “friendships” with dissolute actors, public dancers, or even gladiators. In many a mansion there is a handsome freedman or even a slave who can become extraordinarily familiar with his mistress. There are said to be coarse-grained mothers who actually teach their married daughters how to push intrigues and to smuggle in or out love-letters under the very noses of their husbands; and there are plenty of young men, rich, “noble,” and very idle, who spend their time philandering with married ladies.

With every deduction and allowance for scandal the number of such unsteady women is very great. “What snakes are driving you mad,” cried Juvenal, “that you think of taking a wife? Why not leap from a high window or from the Æmilian bridge rather than submit to a she-tyrant?”

However, even if women lead lives that are outwardly respectable, there are plenty of minor charges against Roman ladies. Some are utterly extravagant; haunting the fine shops along the Via Lata and running up ruinous bills. Some are laughed at for taking up music, poetry, or Greek antiquities as shallow fads and “chattering in a mixture of Latin and Greek, and making their tongues go incessantly like a gong.” Some are said to take fencing lessons and to waste their days practicing on a dummy antagonist with a foil, and learning to handle a shield as if intending to join the army. Others are never happy unless they know all the latest news: “What the Thracians and the Seres (Chinese) are doing”; “Who has just married a notorious widow”; “Whether a comet threatens the King of Parthia.” Others are utterly selfish and heartless; they will weep at the loss of a pet sparrow, but treat their slave girls with hideous brutality, and “let a husband die to save a lap-dog’s life.” Worst of all are certain women actually suspected of giving their unloved husbands a dose of poison when various reasons make a divorce inconvenient.

60. Divorces, Easy and Frequent.—However, divorce is the regular outcome of very many unlucky marriages. Every Roman girl, when her parents tell her “We have chosen for you—”; knows in the back of her mind: “Marriage will give me freedom. If this wedlock isn’t a success, my next husband will probably be my own choosing.”

The first divorce mentioned in Roman history was in 231 B.C. when a certain Ruga put away a truly beloved wife, out of a high sense of public duty—because she bore him no children. The public was shocked at such action then, but soon it was shocked no longer. Under the later Republic lucky was the nobleman or noblewoman who was not divorced at least once. Cicero divorced Terentia after a long wedded life seemingly because he wanted a new marriage portion; Cato the Younger (immaculate Stoic) repudiated his wife to please a friend, then calmly took her back again at the friend’s death.

Under the Empire things hardly seem to have become any better. “Trial marriages” are not a recognized institution; but surely they exist. It is direfully easy for either a man or woman to take the initiative. No court proceedings are necessary. “Take away your property!” spoken formally and before witnesses is sufficient to break up the household, although the more usual method is to “send a messenger”; i.e. dispatch a delegation of friends to the other party to break the news. Vainly did Augustus try by legislation to make divorces less prompt and convenient. The whole proceeding is still grievously popular and simple.

Of course, divorced persons are under no stigma in the fashionable set. Many a time a couple has separated, married elsewhere, separated again, and then resumed the old wedlock. Women are charged with “flitting from one home to another, wearing out the bridal veil”; and indeed, spicy instances are cited of ladies who boasted “eight husbands in five autumns, a fact worthy of commemoration on their tombs”; or of reckoning the years not by the annual consuls but by their annual husbands.

61. Celibacy Common: Old Families Dying Out.—Under such conditions what wonder many a rich Roman prefers celibacy! They often proclaim the “advantages of childlessness.” Old men of property without children are fawned upon with offers of every kind of service. Social and even public honors are thrust upon them. Their atria are crowded every morning with genteel visitors; their least wishes anticipated—all in the desperate hopes that “when their tablets are opened” they will have remembered the swarm of lackeys in their wills. Indeed, adventurers have been known to go far in Rome by making a false show of wealth, concealing the fact they actually have children, and “seeming bilious and complaining of indigestion.” Everybody apparently will give them favor or credit. It is a familiar scandal.

Under such circumstances what wonder most of the old Republican families have died out by the age of Hadrian, that the Calvi feel very isolated; and that of the strictly patrician families only the famous Cornelii appear now to survive.

62. Nobler Types of Women.—But do the above stories represent the true moral condition of most women in Rome? Certainly not, or society could not exist. In the first place such women represent the rotten crust of the nobility; the ordinary equestrian and middle-class women are still relatively modest and moral, efficient managers, good mothers, and, if they are poor, hard workers. In the second place, even among the upper Senatorial nobility, there are plenty of matronæ of the very best type; true props to their husbands, wise mothers to their children, kindly mistresses to their slaves. Gratia has many friends whose households are schools of virtue, and many a Roman, from the Imperial Augustus down, has confessed that his wife has been his tower of strength.

63. Famous and Devoted Wives.—People still talk of the famous Arria, wife of Cæcina Pætus, who, when the Emperor Claudius ordered him to commit suicide, and he could hardly pluck up courage for a manly exit from life, as an example plunged the dagger in her own breast, then held it out to her husband, saying, “Pætus, it doesn’t hurt me.” Her own daughter, the younger Arria, and Fannia, the wife of the philosopher Helvidius Priscus, grossly murdered by Nero, won hardly less reputations for fortitude. Pliny the Younger has recorded a more humbly born Italian dame, who, when her husband was suffering from incurable ulcers, but lacking the hardihood to kill himself alone, tied herself to him and with him jumped into the lake at Larium so that both were drowned.

Fortunately the days of tyrannous emperors seem long since over. Wives usually can show their virtue by living for their husbands and not by dying with them. Rather lately there passed away an old man, Domitius Tullus. Vast was his wealth but it brought him no pleasure; he was so crippled and racked in every limb “that he could only enjoy his great riches by looking at them. He was so helpless that he had to get others to clean and wash his teeth.” He had a young and a very pretty wife; but so far from neglecting him or trying to hasten his end, she kept him alive for years by extraordinarily faithful personal care. Lately, too, the venerable Senator Macrinus has lost his wife, “who if she had lived in the good old days would have been counted an exemplary woman. They lived together for thirty-nine years, with never a single quarrel or disagreement.”[31]

These are simply random cases. Of course, many people know the tribute Pliny the Younger paid to his own wife Calpurnia, much younger than himself but absolutely devoted to her husband: “She has a keen intelligence, she is wonderfully economical, and she loves me.” He went on to add that she read all his literary effusions most carefully, sat behind a curtain to listen when he gave public recitations before a male audience, and that when he had to argue in court had relays of runners to keep her informed as to how well he was impressing the judges. When the twain were separated she “would embrace his letters as though they were himself,” while he (if he got no new letters from her) “would read over her old letters and take them up again and again as though they were new ones.”

64. The Story of Turia.—One day when Gratia had caught young Junia overhearing a very uncanny story of a rich old lady who kept a whole troupe of profligate actors for her own private amusement, she took her out upon the magnificent avenue of stately tombs along the Appian Way to visit the memorial to a venerated ancestress,—a certain Turia who had lived in the troubled days of the Second Triumvirate, and who by her rare courage, fortitude, and intelligence had saved her husband the noble Vespillo from disgrace and death.

Turia’s husband in a long inscription recited how she had saved his life in the Civil Wars at sore peril to her own, and how she had lived with him afterward in perfect affection and harmony, although, being childless, such was her devotion to him that she actually offered to let Vespillo divorce her that he might have children by a second marriage, promising very literally “to be a sister” to his new wife. But her husband repudiated the strange idea with anger: “That you should have ever thought it possible we could be separated save by death was most horrible to me. The one sorrow that was in store for me was that I was destined to survive you.”

And thus the tablet concluded: “You were a faithful and obedient wife; you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly; you were assiduous in your spinning; you followed our family and national religious rites and admitted no foreign superstitions; you did not dress conspicuously, nor make any kind of household display. Your management of our house was exemplary; you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been your own. You had innumerable other excellencies, common to the best type of matrons, but these I mention are peculiarly your own.”[32]

Turia has been dead over a hundred years, but there are still high-born women in Rome who are her equals. One of them, Calvilla, has a fine young son now about thirteen, who owes an infinite debt to his mother, and whom the Emperor will presently select as the heir presumptive to the throne. History will call him Marcus Aurelius.