WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 25 



dignified, courageous women of ancient Rome, who gave 

 to the world so many and so great men in every sphere of 

 human endeavor. "She was,' 7 as Tacitus informs us, "a 

 greater power in the army than legates and commanders, 

 and she, a woman, had quelled a mutiny which the em- 

 peror's authority could not check/' 1 She was, indeed, as 

 has well heen said, "a woman to whom one might address 

 an epic but never a sonnet." 



I have referred to these distinguished women because 

 they are embodiments of the best types of the noble, patri- 

 cian families who made the great Roman empire the ad- 

 miration of all time, and because they exhibit the won- 

 derful advance that had been made in the general status 

 of women since the days of Pericles and Aspasia. I have 

 referred to them, also, to show what women are capable of 

 achieving in the difficult and complicated affairs of public 

 life, when they are accorded the necessary freedom of 

 action and when they are properly equipped for work by 

 education and by association with men of learning and 

 experience. Comparing the secluded and illiterate Greek 

 wife with the free and highly accomplished Roman matron, 

 we find almost as much difference between the two as there 

 is between a child and a fully developed woman all the 

 difference there was between the unsophisticated young 

 wife, not quite fifteen, of whom Xenophon gives us such a 

 charming picture, 2 and the highly educated and compe- 

 tent mother of the Gracchi. 



Of the Greek maiden we are told that, before her mar- 

 riage she "had been most carefully brought up to see and 

 hear as little as possible and to ask the fewest questions"; 

 that her whole experience before her marriage "consisted 

 in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and in 



i"Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legates, quara 

 duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsis- 

 tere non quiverit. " Annales, Lib. I, Cap. 69. 



*(Economicus, VII, 5, 6. 



