140 THE WIVES OF THE CAESARS. 



voluptuous and costly luxury which originated with the Caesars, and 

 carried its destructive influence through the declining ages of the 

 empire. 



The early Roman people were alternately employed in husbandry 

 and warfare pursuits which equally conduced to individual vigour, 

 abstinence and independence: and so exclusively devoted were this 

 wise and simple people to the tillage of the soil, and the contingent 

 perils of the camp, that five hundred years elapsed before the dawn 

 of foreign arts on its austere and grave community.* The continent 

 and sober morals of the men were faithfully reflected in the modest 

 virtues of their wives and daughters. The duties of the wife and 

 mother were the studies of the Roman matron ; ignorant of artificial 

 or refined amusement, her occupations centred in familiar offices 

 alone ; her pleasures were the pleasures of utility ; her glory was to 

 give a race of labourers and soldiers to the state. Her very recrea- 

 tions were essentially domestic. The spindle, web, and loom, and 

 the garment of the thrifty conqueror, by turns the tiller and defen- 

 der of his native soil, was invariably the produce of his wife, his 

 daughters, and the maidens of his household. 



With what a wise concern the rude but politic Romans strove to 

 cherish and perpetuate the native manners of their rising state, is 

 variously attested by their institutions ; by an austere and lasting 

 tutelage, the magisterial censorship, tribunals of domestic law, pro- 

 visions touching dowry, and sumptuary regulations on points of luxury 

 and decoration ; all directly levelled at the maintenance of feminine 

 decorum and simplicity. Besides, they had their temples dedicated 

 to a goddess who presided over modesty and the peace of married 

 life ; a divinity whose worship could propitiate the affection and 

 fidelity of hushands. The senate dignified, by its decrees, the females 

 who had served the state ; as in the instance of the wife and mother 

 of Coriolanus, who prevailed upon a son and husband, who had 

 spurned the power of the fathers and the prayers of the priesthood. t 

 Rome was ransomed by the females of the city from the spoliation 



* The pleasures of imagination, taste, and luxury were foreign to the early 

 Romans, who avoided till the later periods of the commonwealth the open system 

 of concubinage which they afterwards obtained. Their effect on the Athenians, 

 with whom, notwithstanding, the purity of' wives was held in sacred reverence, 

 is thus described by M. Thomas, in his eloquent, generous, acute, and learned 

 Essai sur les Femmes. " Enfin les lois et les institutions publiques, en autori- 

 sant la re'traite des femmes, mettaient au grand prix a la saintete des manages ; 

 mais dans Athe'nes, 1' imagination, le luxe, le gout des r,rts et des plaisirs etaient 

 en contradiction avec les lois. Les courtisanes venaient done, pour anisi dire, 

 au secours des mosurs. Le vice r^pandu hors des families ne revoltait pas ; le 

 vice interieur, et qui troublait la paix des maisons, etait un crime. Par une 

 bizarrerie e'trange et peut-etre unique, les homines etaient corrompus, et les 

 mosurs domestiques, austeres. II semble que les courtisanes n'etaient point 

 regarde'es comme de leur sexe ; et par une convention, a laquelle les lois et les 

 moeurs sepliaient, tandis qu'on n' estimait les autres femmes que p.ir les ver- 

 tus, on n'estimait celles Id quepar les agremens. 



f " Cumque nullis civium legationibus flecteretur, & Veturia matre, el Volum- 

 nia uxore matronarum numero cumitatis, motus. * * * ibi templum Fortunae 

 muliebri constitutum est." Sex Aur. Victor, de Vir Illust. 19. The commen- 

 tator adds, " Senatus populusque decrevere ; quia e mulieribus salus urbi/uerat." 



