ON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OE THE ROMANS. 207 



character, between the age of Papirius and Camillus, of Fabricius 

 and Curius, and that when Cataline and his accomplices disgraced 

 the annals of Rome. Let us picture to ourselves a Roman senate, 

 refusing: to quit their seats on a mistaken but determined principle 

 of honour when the town was actually taken by the Gauls, and 

 when to remain was martyrdom. Let us imagine, at another 

 period of the same republic, the senate on their seats, and listening 

 in abject terror to the cries of thousands of citizens who were in 

 the act of being murdered by the rampant vengeance of Sylla ! In 

 the one example they sacrificed their lives to a mistaken but truly 

 sincere spirit of national honour : in the other they were too happy 

 in purchasing their personal safety by a tacit, trembling acquies- 

 cence in scenes of the most lawless and horrible butchery. 



Connected with this part of the subject, an observation may be 

 made which is, in my opinion, of great weight and importance. 

 Whilst the Roman character preserved its stern, but nevertheless 

 noble elevation, the women were treated with a degree of respect 

 of which we have but few parallels, if any, in ancient history. With 

 the adoption of the oriental luxuries, this system was broken 

 through ; and I do not scruple to assign it as a cause, no less than 

 as an effect, of the rapid demoralization of the Romans. 



The women, at the moment when Romulus and the Sabines were 

 about to sheath their swords in the hearts of each other, had saved 

 Rome and reconciled their new to their old connexions. Thence- 

 forward — as the tradition is — the matrons were esteemed to be an 

 order of the most honourable kind. When the people were divided 

 into three tribes, and each of these into ten curies, the latter were 

 named after their respective matrons. And moreover, it may be 

 interesting to some to know, that a married lady could never be 

 compelled by her husband to do any household drudgery, if she did 

 not like it. Spinning and weaving were supposed to be the proper 

 departments of a matron. Every man was expected to give the 

 precedence to a married woman : to insult her was a public offence. 

 When the Roman had a right to sell even his children, to dispose 

 in this manner of his wife was held a monstrous crime. There 

 were only three legal grounds of divorce — adultery, attempts to 

 poison his children, or counterfeiting her husband's keys — which is 

 a singular equalling of what certainly appear to be very different 

 offences. If a husband put his wife away for any other reason, she 

 had certain exceedingly valuable claims upon his property. And it 

 is remarkable, that the levity which crept in, at a later period, 

 respecting these regulations, should have been the first beginning of 



