her lovers in sickness, to rejoice greatly when they succeed in anything honourable, to love tenderly those who love her. Having carried on a cheerful and perfectly unembarrassed conversation with her, with no kind of reproach on his part, either expressed or implied, and with no trace either of the timidity or effrontery of conscious guilt upon hers, the best and wisest of the Greeks left his hostess with a graceful compliment to her beauty.1

My task in describing this aspect of Greek life has been an eminently unpleasing one, and I should certainly not have entered upon even the baldest and most guarded disquisition on a subject so difficult, painful, and delicate, had it not been absolutely indispensable to a history of morals to give at least an outline of the progress that has been effected in this sphere. What I have written will sufficiently explain why Greece, which was fertile, probably beyond all other lands, in great men, was so remarkably barren of great women. It will show, too, that though chastity and sensuality were regarded, as among ourselves, as respectively the higher and the lower sides of our nature, the degree of license which it was thought advisable to accord to the latter was widely different from what modern public opinion would sanction. The Christian doctrine, that it is criminal to gratify a powerful and a transient physical appetite, except under the condition of a lifelong contract, was altogether unknown. Strict duties were imposed upon Greek wives. Duties were imposed at a later period, though less strictly, upon the husband. Unnatural love was stigmatised, but with a levity of censure which to a modern mind appears inexpressibly revolting. Some slight legal disqualifications rested upon the whole class of heteræ, and, though

1 Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 11.

more admired, they were less respected than women who had adopted a domestic life; but a combination of circumstances had raised them, in actual worth and in popular estimation, to an unexampled elevation, and an aversion to marriage became very general, and illicit connections were formed with the most perfect frankness and publicity.

If we now turn to the Roman civilisation, we shall find that some important advances had been made in the condition of women. The virtue of chastity may, as I have shown, be regarded with justice in two different ways. The utilitarian view, which commonly prevails in countries where a political spirit is more powerful than a religious spirit, regards marriage as the ideal state, and to promote the happiness, sanctity, and security of this state is the main object of all its precepts. The mystical view which rests upon the feeling of shame that is naturally attached to sensual indulgences, and which, as history proves, has prevailed especially where political sentiment is very low and religious sentiment very strong, regards virginity as its supreme type, and marriage as simply the most pardonable declension from ideal purity. It is, I think, a very remarkable fact, that at the head of the religious system of Rome we find two sacerdotal bodies which appear respectively to typify these ideas. The Flamens of Jupiter and the Vestal Virgins were the two most sacred orders in Rome. The ministrations of each were believed to be vitally important to the State. Each could officiate only within the walls of Rome. Each was appointed with the most imposing ceremonies. Each was honoured with the most profound reverence. But in one important respect they differed. The Vestal was the type of virginity, and her chastity was guarded by the most terrific penalties. The

Flamen, on the other hand, was the representative of Roman marriage in its strictest and purest form. He was necessarily married. His marriage was celebrated with the most solemn rites. It could only be dissolved by death. If his wife died, he was degraded from his office.1

Of these two orders, there can be no question that the Flamen was the most faithful expression of the Roman society. The Roman religion was essentially domestic, and it was a main object of the legislator to surround marriage with every circumstance of dignity and solemnity. Monogamy was, from the earliest times, strictly enjoined, and it was one of the great benefits that have resulted from the expansion of Roman power, that it made this type dominant in Europe. In the legends of early Rome we have ample evidence both of the high moral estimate of women, and of their prominence in Roman life. The tragedies of Lucretia and of Virginia display a delicacy of honour, a sense of the supreme excellence of unsullied purity, which no Christian nation could surpass. The legends of the Sabine women interceding between their parents and their husbands, and thus saving the infant republic, and of the mother of Coriolanus averting by her prayers the ruin impending over her country, entitled women to claim their share in the patriotic glories of Rome. Temples were even erected to commemorate their acts. A temple of Venus Calva was the record of the devotion of Roman ladies, who, in an hour of danger, cut off their long tresses to make bowstrings for the soldiers.2 Another temple preserved to all posterity the memory of the filial piety of that Roman girl who, when her mother was condemned to be starved to death, ob

1 On the Flamens, see Aulus Gell. Noct. x. 15.

2 Capitolinus, Maximinus Junior.

tained permission to visit her in prison, and was discovered feeding her from her breast.1

The legal position, however, of the Roman wife was for a long period extremely low. The Roman family was constituted on the principle of the absolute authority of its head, who had a power of life and death both over his wife and over his children, and who could repudiate the former at will. Neither the custom of gifts to the father of the bride, nor the custom of dowries appears to have existed in the earliest period of Roman history; but the father disposed absolutely of the hand of his daughter, and sometimes even possessed the power of breaking off marriages that had been actually contracted.2 In the forms of marriage, however, which were usual in the earlier periods of Rome, the absolute power passed into the hands of the husband, and he had the right, in some cases, of putting her to death.3 Law and public opinion combined in making matrimonial purity most strict. For five hundred and twenty years, it was said, there was no such thing as a divorce in Rome, and even after this example, for many years the marriage tie was regarded as absolutely indissoluble. Manners were so severe, that a senator was censured for indecency because he had kissed his wife in the presence of their daughter. It was considered in a high degree disgraceful for a Roman mother to delegate to.

1 Pliny, Hist. Nat. vii. 36.

This appears from the first act of the Stichus of Plautus. I should imagine this cannot have applied to the marriage of confarreatio. The power appears to have become quite obsolete during the empire, but the first legal act (which was rather of the nature of an exhortation than of a command) against it was issued by Antoninus Pius, and it was only definitely abolished under Diocletian. (Laboulaye, Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des femmes, pp. 16-17.)

3 Aul. Gell. Noct. x. 23.

4 Val. Maximus, ii. 1. § 4; Aul. Gellius, Noct. iv. 3.

5 This is noticed by Plautus.

• Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 4.

a nurse the duty of suckling her child. Sumptuary laws regulated with the most minute severity all the details of domestic economy." The courtesan class, though probably numerous and certainly uncontrolled, were regarded with much contempt. The disgrace of publicly professing themselves members of it was believed to be a sufficient punishment, and an old law, which was probably intended to teach in symbol the duties of married life, enjoined that no such person should touch the altar of Juno. It was related of a certain ædile, that he failed to obtain redress for an assault which had been made upon him, because it had occurred in a house of ill-fame, in which it was disgraceful for a Roman magistrate to be found.5 The sanctity of female purity was believed to be attested by all nature. The most savage animals became tame before a virgin.6 When a woman walked naked round a field, caterpillars and all loathsome insects fell dead before her.7 It was said that drowned men floated on their backs, and drowned women on their faces; and this, in the opinion of Roman naturalists, was due to the superior purity of the latter.8

It was a remark of Aristotle, that the superiority of the Greeks to the barbarians was shown, amongst other things, in the fact that the Greeks did not, like other nations, regard their wives as slaves, but treated them as helpmates and companions. A Roman writer has appealed,

1 Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxviii.

2 See Aulus Gellius, Noct. ii. 24.

3 More inter veteres recepto, qui satis pœnarum adversum impudicas in ipsa professione flagitii credebant.'-Tacitus, Annal. ii. 85.

4 Aul. Gell. iv. 3. Juno was the goddess of marriage.

5 Ibid. iv. 14.

The well-known superstition about the lion, &c., becoming docile before a virgin is, I believe, as old as Roman times. St. Isidore mentions that rhinoceroses were believed to be captured by young girls being put in their way to fascinate them. (Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii p. 35.) 7 Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii. 23. 8 Ibid. vii. 18.