1864.] 299 [P"°«- 



very infrequent infidelity to the marriage vow was instantly visited 

 by ignominious punishment, and unpardonable dishonor, (xix.) 



This praise of the philosophical historian and censor of Homan 

 morals, is given in manner to point the contrast with the corrupt 

 manners of his own country. He had witnessed the effects of the 

 vices that had largely brought marriage into disuse, at a period when 

 Eome had been greatly depopulated by foreign and domestic wars; 

 an evil which Augustus had sought to remedy by bringing marriages 

 into credit by rewards and privileges, and celibacy into discredit by 

 disfavor and penalties; and the censures of Tacitus stand in accord 

 with those of Horace, and Juvenal, and St. Paul. In Asia the con- 

 dition of woman was that of constrained seclusion ; and, where not 

 under restraint in Southern Europe, she enjoyed to abuse her liberty; 

 led to do so by he who should have been the protector of her virtue. 

 It was only when Christianity met the uncorrupted manners and 

 better natural character of the uncivilized German nations, that came 

 together the fitting elements needed to reconcile the European freedom 

 of woman with her inviolate purity ; and to make woman and the family 

 instruments of the world's most perfect civilization and happiness. Yet 

 we must never forget that Rome in her better days had her Lucretia^ 

 Cornelia, Portia, and even in evil times had her Agrippina, Arria, Cae- 

 cina, Fannia, Sophronia, Valeria, Paulina. Even then woman had the 

 glory of resisting the tide of corruption, as she soon after had the glory 

 of martyrdom in the establishment of the Christian faith, that was to do 

 more than restore her to her former virtue and influential position. 



Greece, the most cultivated of ancient nations, placed woman in a 

 higher position than the Asiatics, yet placed her not so high as we 

 see her, as the trusted counsellor and friend of her husband, as well 

 as influential matron of the hou.sehold. "The wife is housewife and 

 nothing more," says Heeren. "Even the sublime Andromache, 

 after that parting which will draw tears as long as there are eyes 

 which can weep and hearts which can feel, is sent back to the 

 apartments of the women, to superintend the labors of the maid- 

 servants." " We meet with no trace of those elevated feelings, that 

 romantic love, as it is very improperly termed, which results from a 

 higher regard for the female sex. That love and that regard are traits 

 peculiar to the Germanic nations, a result of the spirit of gallantry, 

 but which we vainly look fur in Greece. Yet here the Greeks stand 

 between the East and the West. Although he was never to revere 

 the female sex as beings of a higher order, he did not, like the Asiatic, 

 imprison them by troops in a harem." (Heeren's Greece, 95.) 



