weave and spin, and his wife and sister made most of the clothes he wore.1 The skill of wives in domestic economy, and especially in spinning, was frequently noticed in their epitaphs.2 Intellectual culture was much diffused among them,3 and we meet with several noble specimens, in the sex, of large and accomplished minds united with all the graceful ness of intense womanhood, and all the fidelity of the truest love. Such were Cornelia, the brilliant and devoted wife of Pompey, Marcia, the friend, and Helvia, the mother of Seneca. The Northern Italian cities had in a great degree escaped the contamination of the times, and Padua and Brescia were especially noted for the virtue of their women.5 In an age of extravagant sensuality a noble lady, named Mallonia, plunged her dagger in her heart rather than yield to the embraces of Tiberius. To the period when the legal bond of marriage was most relaxed must be assigned most of those noble examples of the constancy of Roman wives, which have been for so many generations household tales among mankind. Who has not read with emotion of the tenderness and heroism of Porcia, claiming her right to share in the trouble which clouded her husband's brow; how, doubting her own courage, she did not venture to ask Brutus to reveal to her his enterprise till she had secretly tried her power of endurance by piercing her thigh with a knife; how once, and but once in his presence, her noble spirit failed, when, as she was about to separate from him for the last time, her eye chanced to fall upon a picture of the parting interview of Hector and Andromache? 7 Paulina,

the wife of Seneca, opened her own veins in order to accompany her husband to the grave; when much blood had already flowed, her slaves and freedmen bound her wounds, and thus compelled her to live; but the Romans ever after observed with reverence the sacred pallor of her countenance-the memorial of her act.1 When Pætus was condemned to die by his own hand, those who knew the love which his wife Arria bore him, and the heroic fervour of her character, predicted that she would not long survive him. Thrasea, who had married her daughter, endeavoured to dissuade her from suicide by saying, 'If I am ever called upon to perish, would you wish your daughter to die with me?' She answered, 'Yes, if she will have then lived with you as long and as happily as I with Pætus.' Her friends attempted, by carefully watching her, to secure her safety, but she dashed her head against the wall with such force that she fell upon the ground, and then, rising up, she said, ‘I told you I would find a hard way to death if you refuse me an easy way.' All attempts to restrain her were then abandoned, and her death was perhaps the most majestic in antiquity. Pætus for a moment hesitated to strike the fatal blow; but his wife, taking the dagger, plunged it deeply into her own breast, and then, drawing it out, gave it, all reeking as it was, to her husband, exclaiming, with her dying breath, My Pætus, it does not pain."2

The form of the elder Arria towers grandly above her fellows, but many other Roman wives in the days of the early Cæsars and of Domitian exhibited a very similar fidelity. Over the dark waters of the Euxine, into those unknown and inhospitable regions from which the Roman imagination recoiled with a peculiar horror, many noble ladies freely followed their husbands, and there were some wives who

refused to survive them. The younger Arria was the faithful companion of Thrasea during his heroic life, and when he died she was only persuaded to live that she might bring up their daughters.2 She spent the closing days of her life with Domitian in exile; 3 while her daughter, who was as remarkable for the gentleness as for the dignity of her character,4 went twice into exile with her husband Helvidius, and was once banished, after his death, for defending his memory.5 Incidental notices in historians, and a few inscriptions which have happened to remain, show us that such instances were not uncommon, and in Roman epitaphs no feature is more remarkable than the deep and passionate expressions of conjugal love that continually occur.6 It would be difficult to

find a more touching image of that love, than the medallion which is so common on the Roman sarcophagi, in which husband and wife are represented together, each with an arm thrown fondly over the shoulder of the other, united in death as they had been in life, and meeting it with an aspect of perfect calm, because they were companions in the tomb.

7

In the latter days of the Pagan Empire some measures were taken to repress the profligacy that was so prevalent. Domitian enforced the old Scantinian law against unnatural love. Vespasian moderated the luxury of the court; Macrinus caused those who had committed adultery to be bound together and burnt alive. A practice of men and women bathing together was condemned by Hadrian, and afterwards by Alexander Severus, but was only finally sup

1 Tacit. Annal. xvi. 10-11; Hist. i. 3. See, too, Friedländer, tome i. p. 406.

2 Tacit. Ann. xvi. 34.

3 Pliny mentions her return after the death of the tyrant (Ep. iii. 11).

4Quod paucis datum est, non minus amabilis quam veneranda.' -Plin. Ep. vii. 19.

8

pressed by Constantine. Alexander Severus and Philip waged an energetic war against panders. The extreme excesses of this, as of most forms of vice, were probably much diminished after the accession of the Antonines; but Rome continued to be a centre of very great corruption till the influence of Christianity, the removal of the court to Constantinople, and the impoverishment that followed the barbarian conquests, in a measure corrected the evil.

Among the moralists, however, some important steps were taken. One of the most important was a very clear assertion of the reciprocity of that obligation to fidelity in marriage which in the early stages of society had been imposed almost exclusively upon wives.2 The legends of Clytemnestra and of Medea reveal the feelings of fierce resentment which were sometimes produced among Greek wives by the almost unlimited indulgence that was accorded to their husbands;3 and it is told of Andromache, as the supreme instance of her love of Hector, that she cared for his illegitimate children as much as for her own. In early Rome, the obligations of husbands were never, I imagine, altogether unfelt; but they were rarely or never enforced, nor were they ever regarded as bearing any kind of equality to those imposed upon the wife. The term adultery, and all the legal penalties connected with it, were restricted to the infractions by a wife of the nuptial tie. Among the many instances of magnanimity recorded of Roman wives, few are more touching than that of Tertia Æmilia, the faithful wife of Scipio. She discovered that her husband had become

1 Lampridius, A. Severus.

2 In the oration against Neæra, which is ascribed to Demosthenes, but is of doubtful genuineness, the licence accorded to husbands is spoken of as a matter of course: 'We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us

legitimate children, and to be our faithful housekeepers.'

3 There is a remarkable passage on the feelings of wives, in different nations, upon this point, in Athenæus, xiii. 3. See, too, Plutarch, Conj. Præc.

4

Euripid. Andromache.

enamoured of one of her slaves; but she bore her pain in silence, and when he died she gave liberty to her captive, for she could not bear that she should remain in servitude whom her dear lord had loved.1

4

Aristotle had clearly asserted the duty of husbands to observe in marriage the same fidelity as they expected from their wives,2 and at a later period both Plutarch and Seneca enforced this duty in the strongest and most unequivocal manner." The degree to which, in theory at least, it won its way in Roman life is shown by its recognition as a legal maxim by Ulpian, and by its appearance in a formal judgment of Antoninus Pius, who, while issuing, at the request of a husband, a condemnation for adultery against a guilty wife, appended to it this remarkable condition: 'Provided always it is established that by your life you gave her an example of fidelity. It would be unjust that a husband should exact a fidelity he does not himself keep.' 5

1 Valer. Max. vi. 7, § 1. Some very scandalous instances of cynicism on the part of Roman husbands are recorded. Thus, Augustus had many mistresses, Quæ [virgines] sibi undique etiam ab uxore conquirerentur.'-Sueton. Aug.lxxi. When the wife of Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, complained of the tastes of her husband, he answered, 'Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis.'-Spartian. Verus.

2 Aristotle, Econom. i. 4-8-9. Plutarch enforces the duty at length, in his very beautiful work on marriage. In case husbands are guilty of infidelity, he recommends their wives to preserve a prudent blindness, reflecting that it is out of respect for them that they choose another woman as the companion of their intemperance. Seneca touches briefly, but unequivocally,

on the subject: 'Scis improbum esse qui ab uxore pudicitiam exigit, ipse alienarum corruptor uxorum. Scis ut illi nil cum adultero, sic nihil tibi esse debere cum pellice.' -Ep. xciv. 'Sciet in uxorem gravissimum esse genus injuriæ, habere pellicem.'-Ep. xcv.

'Periniquum enim videtur esse, ut pudicitiam vir ab uxore exigat, quam ipse non exhibeat.'— Cod. Just. Dig. xlviii. 5-13.

5 Quoted by St. Augustine, De Conj. Adult. ii. 19. Plautus, long before, had made one of his characters complain of the injustice of the laws which punished unchaste wives but not unchaste husbands, and ask why, since every honest woman is contented with one husband, every honest man should not be contented with one wife? (Mercator, Act iv. scene 5.)