A Short History of Women's Rights From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

The age of legal capability for the Roman woman was after the twelfth year, at which period she was permitted to make a will. However, she was by no means allowed to do so entirely on her own account, but only under supervision. This superintendence was vested in the father or, if he was dead, in a guardian; if the woman was married, the power belonged to the husband. The consent of such supervision, whether of father, husband, or guardian, was essential, as Ulpian informs us, under these circumstances: if the woman entered into any legal action, obligation, or civil contract; if she wished her freedwoman to cohabit with another's slave; if she desired to free a slave; if she sold any things mancipi, that is, such as estates on Italian soil, houses, rights of road or aqueduct, slaves, and beasts of burden. Throughout her life a woman was supposed to remain absolutely under the power of father, husband, or guardian, and to do nothing without their consent. In ancient times, indeed, this authority was so great that the father and husband could, after calling a family council, put the woman to death without public trial. The reason that women were so subjected to guardianship was "on account of their unsteadiness of character," "the weakness of the sex," and their "ignorance of legal matters." Under certain circumstances, however, women became sui iuris or entirely independent: I. By the birth of three children (a freedwoman by four); II. By becoming a Vestal Virgin, of whom there were but six; III. By a formal emancipation, which took place rarely, and then often only with a view of transferring the power from one guardian to another. Even when sui iuris a woman could not acquire power over any one, not even over her own children; for these an agnate—a male relative on the father's side—was appointed guardian, and the mother was obliged to render him and her children an account of any property which she had managed for them. On the other hand, her children were bound to support her.

So much for the laws on the subject. They seem rigorous enough, and in early times were doubtless executed with strictness. A marked feature, however, of the Roman character, a peculiarity which at once strikes the student of their history as compared with that of the Greeks, was their great respect for the home and the materfamilias. The stories of Lucretia, Cloelia, Virginia, Cornelia, Arria, and the like, familiar to every Roman schoolboy, must have raised greatly the esteem in which women were held. As Rome became a world power, the Romans likewise grew in breadth of view, in equity, and in tolerance. The political influence wielded by women was as great during the first three centuries after Christ as it has ever been at any period of the world's history; and the powers of a Livia, an Agrippina, a Plotina, did not fail to show pointedly what a woman could do. In the early days of the Republic women who touched wine were severely punished and male relatives were accustomed solemnly to kiss them, if haply they might discover the odour of drink on their breath. Valerius Maximus tells us that Egnatius Mecenas, a Roman knight, beat his wife to death for drinking wine. Cato the Censor (234-149 B.C.) dilated with joy on the fact that a woman could be condemned to death by her husband for adultery without a public trial, whereas men were allowed any number of infidelities without censure. The senator Metellus (131 B.C.) lamented that Nature had made it necessary to have women.

The boorish cynicism of a Cato and a Metellus—though it never expressed the real feelings of the majority of Romans—gave way, however, under the Empire to a generous expression of the equality of the sexes in the realms of morality and of intellect....