The Private Life of the Romans. Harold Whetstone Johnston
the pair.
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| FIGURE 16. THE MARRIAGE COUCH |
89 The husband met the wife in the atrium and offered her fire and water in token of the life they were to live together and her part in the home. Upon the hearth was ready the wood for a fire, and this the bride kindled with the marriage torch which had been carried before her. The torch was afterwards thrown among the guests to be scrambled for as a lucky possession. A prayer was then recited by the bride and she was placed by the prōnuba on the lectus geniālis (Fig. 16), which always stood on the wedding night in the atrium. Here it afterwards remained as a piece of ornamental furniture only. On the next day was given in the new home the second wedding feast (repōtia) to the friends and relatives, and at this feast the bride made her first offering to the gods as a mātrōna. A series of feasts followed, given in honor of the newly wedded pair by those in whose social circles they moved.
90 The Position of Women.—With her marriage the Roman woman reached a position unattained by the women of any other nation in the ancient world. No other people held its women in so high respect; nowhere else did they exert so strong and beneficent an influence. In her own house the Roman matron was absolute mistress. She directed its economy and supervised the tasks of the household slaves but did no menial work herself. She was her children's nurse, and conducted their early training and education. Her daughters were fitted under their mother's eye to be mistresses of similar homes, and remained her closest companions until she herself had dressed them for the bridal and their husbands had torn them from her arms. She was her husband's helpmeet in business as well as in household affairs, and he often consulted her on affairs of state. She was not confined at home to a set of so-called women's apartments, as were her sisters in Greece; the whole house was hers. She received her husband's guests and sat at table with them. Even when subject to the manus of her husband the restraint was so tempered by law and custom (§36) that she could hardly have been chafed by the fetters which had been forged with her own consent (§73).
91 Out of the house the matron's dress (stola mātrōnālis, §259) secured for her the most profound respect. Men made way for her in the street; she had a place at the public games, at the theaters, and at the great religious ceremonies of state. She could give testimony in the courts, and until late in the Republic might even appear as an advocate. Her birthday was sacredly observed and made a joyous occasion by the members of her household, and the people as a whole celebrated the Mātrōnālia, the great festival on the first of March, and gave presents to their wives and mothers. Finally, if she came of a noble family, she might be honored, after she had passed away, with a public eulogy, delivered from the rostra in the forum.
92 It must be admitted that the education of women was not carried far at Rome, and that their accomplishments were few, and rather useful and homely than elegant. But the Roman women spoke the purest and best Latin known in the highest and most cultivated circles, and so far as accomplishments were concerned their husbands fared no better. Respectable women in Greece were allowed no education at all.
93 It must be admitted, too, that a great change took place in the last years of the Republic. With the laxness of the family life, the freedom of divorce, and the inflow of wealth and extravagance, the purity and dignity of the Roman matron declined, as had before declined the manhood and the strength of her father and her husband. It must be remembered, however, that ancient writers did not dwell upon certain subjects that are favorites with our own. The simple joys of childhood and domestic life, home, the praises of sister, wife, and mother may not have been too sacred for the poet and the essayist of Rome, but the essayist and the poet did not make them their themes. The mother of Horace must have been a singularly gifted woman, but she is never mentioned by her son. The descriptions of domestic life, therefore, that have come down to us are either from Greek sources, or are selected from precisely those circles where fashion, profligacy, and impurity made easy the work of the satirist. It is, therefore, safe to say that the pictures painted for us in the verse of Catullus and Juvenal, for example, are not true of Roman women as a class in the times of which they write. The strong, pure woman of the early day must have had many to imitate her virtues in the darkest times of the Empire. There were mothers then, as well as in the times of the Gracchi; there were wives as noble as the wife of Marcus Brutus.
CHAPTER IV
CHILDREN AND EDUCATION
REFERENCES: Marquardt, 80–134; Voigt, 322 f., 397 f., 455 f.; Göll, "Gallus," II, 65–113; Friedländer, I, 456 f., III, 376 f.; Ramsay, 475 f.; Smith, lūdus litterārius; Harper, education; Baumeister, 237, 1588 f.; Schreiber, Pl. 79, 82, 89, 90; Lübker, Erziehung.
94 Legal Status.—The position of the children in the familia has been already explained (§§31, 32). It has been shown that in the eyes of the law they were little better than the chattels of the Head of the House. It rested with him to grant them the right to live; all that they earned was his; they married at his bidding, and either remained under his potestās or passed under another no less severe. It has also been suggested that custom (§32) and pietās (§73) had made this condition less rigorous than it seems to us.
95 Susceptio.—The power of the pater familiās was displayed immediately after the birth of the child. By invariable custom it was laid upon the ground at his feet. If he raised (tollere, suscipere) it in his arms, he acknowledged it as his own by the act (susceptiō) and admitted it to all the rights and privileges that membership in a Roman family implied. If he refused to do so, the child became an outcast, without family, without the protection of the spirits of the dead (§27), utterly friendless and forsaken. The disposal of the child did not ordinarily call for any act of downright murder, such as was contemplated in the case of Romulus and Remus and was afterwards forbidden by Romulus the King (§32). The child was simply "exposed" (expōnere), that is, taken by a slave from the house and left on the highway to live or to die. When we consider the slender chance for life that the newborn child has with even the tenderest care, the result of this exposure will not seem doubtful.
96 But there was a chance for life, and the mother, powerless to interpose in her infant's behalf, often sent with it some trinkets or trifling articles of jewelry that would serve perhaps to identify it, if it should live. Even if the child was found in time by persons disposed to save its life, its fate might be worse than death. Slavery was the least of the evils to which it was exposed. Such foundlings often fell into the hands of those whose trade was beggary and who trained children for the same profession. In the time of the Empire, at least, they cruelly maimed and deformed their victims, in order to excite more readily the compassion of those to whom they appealed for alms. Such things are still done in southern Europe.
97 Dies Lustricus.—The first eight days of the life of the acknowledged child were called prīmordia, and were the occasion of various religious ceremonies. During this time the child was called pūpus (§55),