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Title: Woman in the golden ages

Author: Amelia Gere Mason

Release date: February 14, 2022 [eBook #67405]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Century co

Credits: Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN IN THE GOLDEN AGES ***





  _Woman in the
  Golden Ages_


  _By_

  _Amelia Gere Mason_

  [Illustration: Decorative image]

  _New York_
  _The Century Co._
  _1901_




  Copyright, 1901, by
  THE CENTURY CO.

  _Published October, 1901._

  THE DEVINNE PRESS.




  TO THE
  REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN
  OF TO-DAY




PREFACE


In this series of detached essays I have tried to gather and group
the most salient and essential facts relating to the character,
position, and intellectual attainments of women in the great ages
of the world. It is not an easy matter to trace with any exactness
the lives of women of classic times, as they were largely ignored by
men who chronicled events. If the historians gave them any place at
all, it was an insignificant one, concerning only their relations to
men, and they were more inclined to sing the praises of those who
ministered to masculine caprices than of those distinguished for any
merit whatever. There were exceptions in the cases of a few women
of very remarkable gifts; but even these were subject to the worst
aspersions, for the simple reason that they had the courage of their
talents and convictions. This fashion of considering women only as
convenient appendages of men may account largely for the space given
to those of more beauty and sensuous charm than decorum--a fact which
has doubtless misled after-ages. It accounts also for the reckless
flings of satirists and comedians, who were even less to be trusted in
early times than they are to-day. Truth compels me to recall more or
less the contemptuous attitude of men, as it was too large a factor in
determining the position of women to be omitted. But in no case has it
been exaggerated, or set down in a spirit of antagonism.

The most striking points in the lives of world-famous women are
sufficiently familiar. True or false, they are often quoted in proof
of one theory or another. But a few isolated facts gathered at random
count for little. It is only in the grouping of many facts of many ages
that the real quality of the old types of womanhood can be clearly
discerned. One is constantly confronted, however, with discrepancies
in the records. This may be readily understood when we consider the
impossibility of getting a correct version of things that happen next
door to us. Reports of events and estimates of character are about as
various as the people who offer them. One can only accept those which
have the most inherent probability, or are given by the chronicler who
has the best reputation for veracity. So far as possible, I have relied
upon contemporary writers for the facts of their own age; but I am also
indebted largely to the research of the great modern historians. In the
few classic or Italian translations, I have usually availed myself of
those nearest at hand, if they had the stamp of authority, though they
might not always be the latest, perhaps not even the best.

These essays are limited mainly to the golden ages of Greece, Rome, and
the Renaissance, with a brief interlude that serves as a transition
from pagan to medieval times. The mantle of the great Italians fell
upon the women of the golden age of France, who reached the summit of
the power and influence of their sex in the past. The personality and
intellectual influence of these women I have considered at length in
“The Women of the French Salons.”

The inevitable “woman question” is not touched except as it may appear
in the effort to show, in a small degree, the intellectual quality
and influence of some of the representative women of the past, and
to vindicate them from charges which are often as untrue as unjust.
Without any pretension to profound learning or philosophic criticism,
I have simply presented the most significant facts available, with
their various settings, and a few plain conclusions which may be
insufficient, but which are at least sincere and carefully considered.
In estimates of people I have taken the most charitable view possible
without sacrificing truth to imagination. It is the safer side in which
to err, as the world has always been much more active in the spread of
calumny than of praise, especially where women are concerned.

There is no pretense to historical continuity, or to a serious study of
present conditions, in the single modern essay. It simply considers one
phase of our own age, which we doubtless claim to be altogether golden.

The work has been a labor of love. If I have succeeded in throwing any
fresh light upon the women of long ago, many of whom are already half
mythical, or in giving a clear impression of what we owe them, my long
and pleasant hours among old chronicles and forgotten records will not
have been in vain.

  AMELIA GERE MASON.

 August, 1901.




  CONTENTS


                                              PAGE

  PREFACE                                      vii

  INTRODUCTION                                xiii

  WOMAN IN GREEK POETRY                          1

  SAPPHO AND THE FIRST WOMAN’S CLUB             25

  GLIMPSES OF THE SPARTAN WOMAN                 51

  THE ATHENIAN WOMAN, ASPASIA, AND
  THE FIRST SALON                               69

  REVOLT OF THE ROMAN WOMEN                    105

  THE “NEW WOMAN” OF OLD ROME                  137

  SOME FAMOUS WOMEN OF IMPERIAL ROME           167

  MARCELLA, PAULA, AND THE FIRST CONVENT       205

  THE LEARNED WOMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE         241

  THE LITERARY COURTS AND PLATONIC
  LOVE                                         291

  SALON AND WOMAN’S CLUB                       353




INTRODUCTION


It has been quite gravely asserted of late that “woman has just
discovered her intellect.” As a result of this we are told with great
earnestness that the nineteenth century belonged to her by virtue
of conquest, and that she is entering upon a new era of power and
intelligence which is to usher in the millennium.

On the other hand, we are assured with equal persistency that the
divine order of things is being upset: that women are spoiled by
over-education; that the time-honored privileges of men are ruthlessly
invaded and their mental vigor endangered; that morals are suffering;
that all the good old ideals are in process of destruction; and that we
have the dismal prospect of being ruled, to our sorrow, by a race of
Minervas who neglect their families, if they have any, and insist upon
running things in their own way, to the ruin of social order--all of
which has been said periodically since the beginning of the world.

With these serious questions I do not attempt to deal any further
than to picture, to the best of my ability in a limited space,
the position of women in the great ages of the past, and the
personality, aspirations, and achievements of a few of their most
famous representatives, so far as this is possible after the lapse of
centuries. From a multiplicity of facts which point their own moral,
each one of us may draw his or her special lessons.

It is quite true that the woman of to-day is putting her intellect to
new uses; possibly she has become more vividly conscious of it. We know
also that the average intelligence of all classes of women, as well
as of men, was never so high as now. But the intrinsic force of the
human intellect is not measured by averages. A thousand satellites do
not make a sun, though they may shine for ages by the light of one.
Then, whatever our achievements may be--and I do not underrate them--it
would reflect rather seriously on the feminine mind to suppose that
it could lie practically dormant all these centuries, even under the
heavy disabilities which were imposed upon it. The fact that women
have always been in subjection and on the whole very much oppressed
and trampled upon, especially in the early ages, makes it all the more
remarkable that they have left so many striking examples, not only
of the highest wisdom and intelligence, but of the highest executive
power, ever since Deborah sat as a judge in Israel, Miriam sang
immortal songs of heroic deeds, and Semiramis conquered Asia.

No doubt our own deserts are great, and we do well to burn a fair
amount of incense to them; but possibly the smoke of it is so dense
that we fail to see all the fine things that have been done before
us. Other women have been as clever as we are, and as strong, if not
individually stronger; many have been as good, a few perhaps have been
more wicked than most of us; and the majority have had a great deal
more to complain of. “There is nothing new under the sun” was written
so long ago that it seems as if there could have been nothing old.
Even the “new woman” has her prototypes in the past, who have thought,
written, lectured, ruled, asserted themselves, and been honored as well
as talked about in their day. Men have prophesied strange revolutions
in human affairs because of them, and sometimes have sent them back to
the chimney-corner and silence, as one of our own chivalrous writers
says they will do again if this irrepressible being who presumes to
have opinions makes things too uncomfortable for them. But the world
has gone on marrying and giving in marriage, and growing in the main,
let us hope, happier and better, while the social condition of women
has steadily improved, with an occasional reaction, in spite of the
fears of the timid and the sneers of the cynical.

It may be safely said that there was not much in the lives of the
women of two or three thousand years ago which we should care to
repeat. Their field was, as a rule, narrow and restricted, their
privileges were few, their burdens and sorrows were many. To go
outside the sphere prescribed for them called for great talent and
great courage, since respectability was usually regarded as synonymous
with insignificance. But even in this aspiring, much-knowing,
self-gratulatory, woman-honoring twentieth century, whenever we are
told that the feminine intellect is inherently weak and has never
created anything worthy of immortality, we point with pride to Sappho,
the one woman poet of the world whose claim to the first rank has
never been disputed. If we wish to illustrate the social and political
influence of woman, we cite Aspasia, the trusted confidante and adviser
of the greatest statesmen and philosophers, as well as the presiding
genius of the first salon of which we have any knowledge. Yet these
women lived in the dawn of the present order of things. We may recall
the scholarly mind and masterly executive qualities of Zenobia, which
perhaps have never been exceeded; the profound learning and brilliant
oratory of Hypatia, who was torn in pieces because of them by the
fanatical Alexandrian mob; Cornelia, gifted and austere, adding the
courage of a Stoic to the tenderness of a mother; Livia, wise, tactful,
and far-seeing; Marcella, saint and _grande dame_, a savante,
a leader, and a heroine. Other figures of the classic ages, grave
and thoughtful, clever and brilliant, or mystical and sweet, pass in
stately array before us, each supreme in her own field. It may have
been an intellectual gift that she had; it may have been a masterful
character, or a heroic virtue, or a spirit of sublime self-sacrifice,
or a faith so exalted that it has illuminated all the centuries. Each
of these traits has its illustrious examples among the women of long
ago.

Passing ages of darkness, in which here and there the talent of a
Countess Matilda or an Héloïse shone brightly through the mists of
ignorance and superstition, we find the women of a new era delving side
by side with men in the mines of classic lore, and bringing to their
work the same enthusiasm, the same untiring patience. We find them,
too, versed in all the learning of their time. If we are disposed to
plume ourselves overmuch on our intellectual glories, it may serve as
a lesson in humility to recall the wonderful women of the Renaissance,
who filled chairs of philosophy and law in the universities, sustained
public theses, spoke in Latin before learned societies, wrote pure
Greek and studied Hebrew, preached in cathedrals were sent on special
embassies and consulted on grave affairs of State by popes and kings.
With all our latter-day prestige and the chivalry of modern men, it
would be difficult to imagine Leo XIII or the German Emperor consulting
a woman on serious questions of policy, or even listening to one unless
she were a queen with power that must be reckoned with. If they did, it
would be behind closed doors where no one could know it. Yet we have
wise women and able ones.

When men lost themselves in metaphysical abstractions it was the “new
woman” of the Renaissance who lent wings to their minds and stimulated
creation. A touch from her uncaged intellect thrilled the learning
of the age and put into it a soul. A Vittoria Colonna inspires a
Michelangelo, writes an immortal _in memoriam_, and brings poetry
to the service of religion. An Olympia Morata pauses in her high
intellectual flight to give an object-lesson in moral courage and the
virtues of a gentle womanhood. A Catherine of Siena thinks as well as
loves, writes as well as prays; the head of Christendom is moved by her
wise counsels, and the currents of the world are changed.

It was woman, too, who married thought to life, presided at the
birth of society, and diffused the seeds of the new knowledge. She
took philosophy out of the obscurity of ponderous tomes, and made
men reduce it to clear terms with the logical processes left out, so
that the unlettered might read. If men held the palm of supremacy in
reason and abstract thought, women illuminated them by sentiment
and imagination, so touching the world to living issues. The swift,
facile, intuitive intellects of women complemented the slower and more
logical minds of men, and it is this union that creates life in all its
larger, more enduring forms. It was the social gifts of women added
to a flexible intelligence that raised conversation to a fine art. A
Duchess Leonora, an Isabella d’Este, a Duchess Elisabetta, call about
them the wit, learning, talent, and genius of an age, and in this
atmosphere poets, artists, and men of letters find an audience and an
inspiration. Each gives of his best, which is fostered and turned into
new channels. Standards are raised by the association of various forms
of excellence, and society reaches a higher altitude of living and
thinking. To be sure, the day comes when it matters more to talk and be
talked about than it does to know. The rank weeds of mediocrity spring
up in profusion and overshadow the flowers. The ideals droop and the
brilliant age ends. But it has fulfilled its mission, and all ages end,
great and small, luminous and dark alike.

Did men degenerate in the intellectual companionship of women? To what
glorious heights did they attain in the dark ages, when no woman’s
voice was heard, except in prayer? What heights have they reached in
any period that did not find its ideals in brute force, when, at least,
a few women of light and leading did not stand at their side, though
only by courtesy, instead of sitting at their feet?

Did women lose in morals when they gained in intelligence, as men so
often delight to tell us? Quite the reverse, if I have read history
aright. In seasons of moral decadence it is the women of serious
education who have been among the first to lift their voices against
the sins of the period in which they lived. If they were often swept
along by the current which they had no power to stem, it was because
of their helplessness, not of their knowledge. They were not faultless
but human, and subject at all periods to the same conditions that were
fatal to men, who claimed supremacy in strength. If they have sometimes
broken on the rocks of superstition, it was because they had too little
intelligence, not too much.

Have they lost the tender instincts of wifehood and motherhood? The
records of the world are full of the unselfish devotion of great wives
and great mothers, and the men who shine most conspicuously on the
pages of history, from Cæsar and the Gracchi to George Washington and
Daniel Webster, have been the sons of able and intelligent women. A
cultivated intellect is not a guaranty of virtue, but it has never yet
made a woman forget her love and allegiance to a strong and noble man,
or turn a cold ear to the artless prattle of a child, though vanity
and weakness and folly have done so very often. But it has many a time
given her the power and the impulse to rear a world-famed monument to
the one, and to give the best work and thought of a self-sacrificing
life for the glory of the other. It is not simply heredity, but the
atmosphere and companionship of the first years, that make or mar a
destiny. But let us not confound intelligent women with pedants and
pretenders, or great women with small ones on a pedestal of any sort,
self-erected or other.

All this I trust will be made clear by illustration in these pages,
together with the fact that the intellects of at least a few women have
been very much awake in all the golden ages of the world, and exercised
on many of the same problems that confront them to-day. The question of
equality has been discussed in every period. It is needless to pursue
these discussions here any further than to recall them. It does not
signify whether women have or have not done this, that, or the other
thing as well as men--whether they have or have not been conspicuous
for creative genius, or scientific genius, or any other special form
of genius. It is as idle to ask whether they are, on the whole, equal
or inferior to men, as to ask whether an artist is equal to a general,
an inventor to a philosopher, or a poet to a man of science. There are
certain things that will always be done better by men; there are other
things of equal value to the happiness and well-being of the race,
and worthy of equal honor, that will always be done better by women;
there are still other and many things that may be done equally well by
either. The final proof of ability lies in its tangible result, and it
is a waste of words to speculate on unknown quantities, or to say that
under certain conditions women might have attained specific heights
which they have not attained. No doubt it is true, but one cannot
deal with shadows. We have to consider things as they are, with the
possibilities toward which they point.

But the past we have, with its achievements and its lessons. We find
that women, with all their restrictions and in spite of denunciations
from men which seem incredible, have long ago touched their highest
mark in poetry, in wisdom, in administration, in learning, and
in social power. In the great ages of the flowering of the human
intellect, a rare few have always stood on the heights, beacon-stars
which sent out their rays to distant centuries. As the world has
advanced they have increased in number more than in altitude; but
barriers have been removed, one after another, until they have
practically ceased to exist. It is worth while, however, to bear in
mind that four hundred years ago a woman, with many disabilities,
had ample facilities for reaching her full intellectual stature with
honor and without hindrance. Why did her sex lose these privileges so
liberally accorded to men, in the “land of the free” and the early
nineteenth century?

We too have our stars--our women who think, our women who know, our
women who do; we too have our special distinctions--our triumphs in
new fields in which we have had no rivals. But I have touched only a
single phase of modern life. There are too many fresh and difficult
problems to be disposed of in an essay. Then we can hardly hear the
message of the age for the din of the voices. It is true enough that
the old ideals are disappearing. What we do not know yet is whether,
apart from the intelligence which gives all life a fresh impulse and
meaning, the new ones forced upon us by the march of events are better.
It suffices here to say that what really signifies to the woman of
to-day is to expand in her own natural proportions, to maintain her
own individuality without the loss of her essential charm, to temper
strength of soul with tenderness, to strive for achievement instead
of the passing honors of the hour, to preserve the fine and dignified
quality of an enlarged and perfected womanhood. It is not as the poor
copy of a man that she will ever come into her rightful kingdom. Duty
or necessity may lead one into strange and hard paths, but the crown of
glory is not for those who fling away their birthright to join in the
strident chorus of the eager crowd that kneels before the glittering
altars of the money-gods, or to follow the procession that throngs the
dusty highways and, lifting its eyes no more to the mountain-tops,
sings its own apotheosis in the market-place.




WOMAN IN GREEK POETRY

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Denunciation of Woman in Early Poets ·
  · Kindlier Attitude of Homer ·
  · Penelope · Nausicaä · Andromache · Helen ·
  · Contemptuous Attitude of the Dramatists ·
  · Their Fine Types ·
  · Iphigenia · Alcestis · Antigone ·
  · Consideration for Women in the Heroic Age ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

“The badness of man is better than the goodness of woman,” says a
Jewish proverb. And worse still, “A man of straw is better than a
woman of gold.” As men made the proverbs, these may be commended for
modesty as well as chivalry. The climax is reached in this amiable
sentiment: “A dead wife is the best goods in a man’s house.” Under such
teaching it is not at all surprising that the Jews began their morning
invocations, two thousand years ago, with these significant words:
“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast not
made me a heathen, who hast not made me a slave, who hast not made me a
woman.”

These are very good samples of the manner in which women were talked
of in ancient days. In Egypt, however, they fared rather better. We
are even told that men pledged obedience to their wives, in which case
they doubtless spoke of them more respectfully. At all events, they had
great political influence, were honored as priestess or prophetess,
and had the privilege of owning themselves and their belongings. But a
state of affairs in which

  Men indoors sit weaving at the loom,
  And wives outdoors must earn their daily bread,

has its unpleasant side. How it was regarded by women does not appear,
but if they found a paradise they were speedily driven out of it.
Evidently men did not find the exchange of occupations agreeable. Two
or three centuries before our era, a Greek ruler came to the throne,
who had other views, and every woman awoke one morning to the fact
that her day was ended, her power was gone, and that she owned nothing
at all. Everything that she had, from her house and her land to her
feathers and her jewels, was practically confiscated, so that she could
no longer dispose of it. These women had rights, and lost them. Why
they were taken away we do not know. Possibly too much was claimed. But
all this goes to prove that “chivalrous man” cannot be trusted so long
as he holds not simply the balance of power, but the whole of it.

Apart from this little episode, the early world never drifted far from
the traditions of the Garden of Eden, where Adam naturally reserved
the supremacy for himself, and sent obedient Eve about her housewifely
duties among the roses and myrtles. If these were soon turned into
thorns and thistles, it was only her proper punishment for bringing
into the world its burden of human ills.

The changes were rung on this theme in all races and languages.
The esthetic Greeks surpassed the Jews in their denunciations, and
exhausted their wit in cynical phrases that lacked even the dignity of
criticism. No writers have abused women more persistently. It is an
evidence of great moral vitality that, in the face of such undisguised
contempt, they were able to maintain any prestige at all. If we may
credit the poets who gave the realistic side of things, there was
neither honor nor joy in the life of the average woman who dwelt in the
shadow of Helicon. It was bare and cheerless, without even the sympathy
that tempers the hardest fate. This pastoral existence, which seems
so serene, had its serpent, and that serpent was a woman. A wife was
a necessary evil. If a man did not marry, he was doomed to a desolate
age; if he did, his happiness was sure to be ruined. Out of ten types
of women described by the elder Simonides, only one was fit for a wife,
and this was because she had the nature of a bee and was likely to add
to her husband’s fortune. As the proportion was so small, the risk may
be imagined. Her side of the question was never taken into account
at all. The comfort of so insignificant a being was really not worth
considering. “A man has but two pleasant days with his wife,” says the
satirist; “one when he marries her, the other when he buries her.”

Hesiod mentions, among the troubles of having a wife, that she insists
upon sitting at table with her husband. Later, when the Greeks found
their pleasure in fields of the intellect which were closed to women,
even this poor privilege was usually denied her, and always when other
men were present. Hesiod was evidently a disappointed man, and took
dark views of things, women in particular, but he only followed the
fashion of his time in making them responsible for the troubles and
sorrows of men. It was the old, old story: “The woman gave me, and I
did eat.” She was the Pandora who had let loose upon the world all the
ills, and kept in her box the hope that might have made them tolerable.
If she found her position an unpleasant one, she had the consolation
of being told that she was one of the evils sent into the world by the
gods, to punish men for the sin of Prometheus. The other was disease.

This is a sorry picture, but it reflects the usual Greek attitude
toward women, and cannot be ignored, much as we should like to honor
the sense of justice, and the heart as well as the intellect of men of
so brilliant a race.


II

There is another side, however, upon which it is more pleasing to
dwell. By some curious paradox, the Hellenic poets, who delighted in
saying such disagreeable things, have given us many of the finest types
of womanhood, though these women lived only in the imagination of great
men, or so near the border-land of shadows as to be half mythical.
It may be said to the credit of Homer that he never joined in the
popular chorus of abuse. His women are not permitted to forget their
subjection, but the high-born ones at least are treated with gentle
courtesy, and he indulges in no superfluous flings at their inferiority
or general worthlessness. Many of them hold places of honor and power.
These women of a primitive age, who stand at the portals of the young
world luminous and smiling, or draped in the stately dignity of antique
goddesses, still retain the distinction of classic ideals. They look
out from the misty dawn of things with veiled faces, but we know that
love shone from their soft eyes, and words of wisdom fell from their
rosy lips.

  The vulgar of my sex I most exceed
  In real power, when most humane my deed,

says the gentle Penelope, as, tear-dimmed and constant, she weaves and
unweaves the many-colored threads, and waits for her royal lord, who
basks in the smiles of Calypso over the sea, and forgets her until he
tires of the fascinating siren and begins to long for his home. If
there was a trace of artfulness in the innocent device of the faithful
wife, it was all the weapon she had to save her honor.

There is no lovelier picture of radiant girlhood than the graceful
Nausicaä, as she takes the silken reins in her white hands, and drives
across the plains in the first flush of the morning to help her maids
“wash their fair garments in the limpid streams.” When the snowy robes
are laid in the sun to dry, they play a game of ball, this daughter of
kings leading all the rest. We hear the echo of her silvery laughter,
and see the flash of her shining veil as her light feet fly over the
greensward. But the dignity of the princess asserts itself with the
forethought and sympathy of the woman in the discreet words with which
she greets the destitute stranger, and modestly directs him to her
royal mother. Her swift eye notes his air of distinction, his courteous
address, and she naïvely wishes in her heart that the gods would send
her such a husband. It is to Arête that she bids him go, to the beloved
queen who shares the throne of Alcinous with “honors never before given
to a woman.” Simple is this gentle lady and gracious, whether she sits
in her stately palace working rare designs in crimson and purple wools,
or gives wise counsel to her husband, or goes abroad among the people,
who adore her as a goddess,

  To heal divisions, to relieve the oppressed,
  In virtue rich, in blessing others, blessed.

A more touching though less radiant figure is Andromache, who shows
no trace of weakness as she folds her child to her bosom, after the
tender farewell of her brave husband, and goes home, sad and prophetic,
to “ply her melancholy loom,” and brood over the hopelessness of her
coming fate.

These are the great Homeric types, women of simple and noble outlines,
untouched by the fires of passion, wise, loyal, efficient, and brave,
but rich in sympathy and all sweet affections. The central figures of
the fireside, with needle and distaff in hand, they were not without a
fine intelligence which, after the fashion of primitive times, found
its field in the every-day problems of life. The mysteries of knowledge
and speculation had not opened to them.

    There is no fairer thing
  Than when the lord and lady with one soul
  One home possess.

This was the poet’s domestic ideal, and the ages have not brought a
better one, though they have brought us many things to make it more
beautiful.

But what shall we say of Helen, the alluring child of fancy and
romance, who stands as an eternal type of the beauty that led captive
the Hellenic world? Even this fair-haired daughter of the gods, who
set nations at variance, and did so many things not to be commended,
gathers a subtle charm from the domestic setting which the poet’s art
has given her. She sits serenely in the midst of the woes she has
brought, teaching her maidens to work after strange patterns, and
weaving her own tragic story in the golden web. It does not occur to
her that she is very wicked; indeed, she thinks regretfully that, after
all, she is worthy of a braver man. The tears that fall do not dim her
brightness. Gray-haired men go to their death under the spell of her
divine loveliness, but forget to chide. She is the helpless victim of
Aphrodite, who is indulgently charged with all her frailties. Twice
ten years have gone since she sailed away from Sparta, but when her
forgiving husband takes her home she has lost none of that mystic
beauty which is “never stale and never old.” She takes her place as
naturally as if she had not left it, plays again the pleasant rôle of
hostess, and looks with care after the comfort of her guests. When
Telemachus goes to see her, and recalls the uncertain fate of the
wandering heroes, she gives him the “star-bright” veil her own hands
have wrought to help dry the tears she has caused to flow. But she is
troubled by no superfluous grief. What the gods send she tranquilly
accepts.

When the poets began to analyze, the glamour of this witching goddess
was lost, and she became a sinning, soul-destroying woman, a human
Circe that lured men to ruin. But the Greeks did not like to see their
idols slandered or broken, so in later times they gave her a shadowy
existence on the banks of the Nile, where we catch a last glimpse of
her, sitting unruffled among the palms, in all the splendor of her
radiant beauty, twining wreaths of lotus-flowers for her golden hair,
and learning rare secrets of Eastern looms, while men fought and died
across the sea for a phantom. It is not upon these fanciful pictures,
however, that we like to dwell. The Helen who lives and breathes
for us is the Helen of Homer, fair and sweet, more sinned against
than sinning, pitying the sorrows she cannot cure, but saved by her
matchless charm from the chilling frost of mortal censure.

These women of Homer were mostly wives and daughters of kings. Whether
it was because he had been greeted with gentle words and caressing
smiles by the fair patricians to whom he recited his verses that he
painted them in such glowing colors, or because the women of the heroic
age really had the unstudied grace and simple dignity that spring from
conscious freedom, we cannot know. But it is certain that the measure
of honor and liberty which they enjoyed was a privilege of caste rather
than of sex, though it gave them a virile quality, and added a fresh
luster of spontaneity to their domestic virtues.

The lesser women had small consideration. We find the captives, even of
royal descent, tossed about among their masters with no regard to their
wishes, or rights--if they had any, which seems doubtful. The gentle
Briseïs, a high priest’s daughter, and as potent a factor in the final
disasters of the Greeks as the divine Helen herself, was the merest
puppet in the hands of the so-called heroes who quarreled over her, and
Chryseïs was only saved from the same fate by the kind interference of
Apollo. The bitterest drop in the cup of Hector was the thought of his
wife led away weeping by some “mail-clad Achaian,” with no one to hear
her cries or save her from the hopeless fate of weaving and carrying
water at the bidding of another. The women of the people fared little
better, if as well. Ulysses had no hesitation in putting to death a
dozen of his wife’s maids whose conduct did not please him, and he
threatened his devoted nurse Euryclea with a like fate, if she revealed
the secret of his identity, which she had been the first to divine.


III

It is difficult to comprehend the attitude of the dramatists of the
golden age toward women. They have left many fine and powerful types;
they have created heroines of singular moral grandeur and a superb
quality of courage that led them to face death or the bitterest fate as
serenely as if they were composing themselves to pleasant dreams; but
there was no insult or injustice too great to be heaped upon their sex.

  There is not anything, nor will be ever,
  Than woman worse, let what will fall on man,

says Sophocles. Æschylus, who is, on the whole, the most kindly
disposed, makes Eteocles call the Theban maidens a “brood intolerable,”
“loathed of the wise,” and emphasizes his opinion in these flattering
lines:

  Ne’er be it mine, in ill estate or good,
  To dwell together with the race of women.

Euripides strikes the bitterest note of all, and sums up his verdict
with crushing force:

  Dire is the violence of ocean waves,
  And dire the blast of rivers and hot fires,
  And dire is want and dire are countless things,
  But nothing is so dire and dread as woman.
  No painting could express her dreadfulness,
  No words describe it. If a god made woman
  And fashioned her, he was for men the artist
  Of woes unnumbered, and their deadly foe.

And this in spite of such characters as Alcestis and Iphigenia, who,
from a man’s point of view, certainly deserved an apotheosis! It is
said that Euripides was unfortunate in his wives, which may account,
in part, for his cynical temper. One might suspect that the author of
such a diatribe gave ample cause for disaffection, and that he had
no more than his deserts. But he seems to have avenged himself, as
smaller men have done, by railing at the whole sex. It is easy enough
to understand the portrayal of a Phædra or a Medea in dark colors, and
one can forgive the mad ravings of despair. But so many needless words
of general contempt signify more than a dramatic purpose. To-day they
would not be possible in a civilized country. The drama reflects the
dominant sentiments of the time, if not always those of the author,
and the frequency of such ungracious, not to say virulent, attacks
proves the complaisance of a Greek audience and the absence of all
consideration for women. Even Aristophanes takes Euripides to task for
being a woman-hater, and turns upon him the sharpest points of his
satire; but he has himself added the last touch of abuse, which only
misses its aim for modern ears by its incredible coarseness. He gives
to women all of the lowest vices, without a redeeming virtue. Their
presence at the comedy was quite out of the question.

One is tempted to multiply these quotations, as they put in so vivid
a light the injustice suffered by women when the expression of such
sentiments was habitual. The saddest feature of it is that men
abused them for the ignorance and frivolity which they had themselves
practically compelled. The dramatists lived and wrote in an age when
men had reached a higher plane of knowledge from which orthodox women
were rigidly excluded. The natural consequence of this exclusion was a
total lack of companionship, which sent the Attic woman into a species
of slavery, while her husband found his society in a class that was
better educated and more interesting, but less respectable. This
state of things was reflected in Athenian literature, especially in
the comedies, and it doubtless led to the general disdain of women so
freely expressed in the tragedies. To reconcile such an attitude with
the strong character of many of the women portrayed is not easy, unless
we take them as object-lessons to their sex in the honor and glory of
self-sacrifice.

In the glamour the poets have cast about their great creations, and
the marvelous power with which they have made these women live for us,
we are apt to lose sight of the fact that the moral force of the best
of them is centered in the superhuman immolation of themselves for the
benefit of men, to whom it never occurs that any consideration whatever
is due to these innocent sufferers. They are subject to men, and ready
to lay down their lives, if need be to make the world comfortable and
pleasant for them; yet they have only sorrow for themselves.

  More than a thousand women is one man
  Worthy to see the light of life,

says the young Iphigenia, as she folds her saffron veil about her, and
goes to her doom with words of love and forgiveness, praying for the
cruel masters she dies to save. The essence of her training, as of
her religion, lies in this meekly uttered sentiment, though the fated
child pleads for pity, since “the sorriest life is better than the
noblest death.” Strong men, among whom are her father and Achilles,
the heroes of the ancient world, stand calmly by and let her die. The
powerful lover, who will give his life later to avenge the death of
his friend, is sorry to lose so sweet a flower for his wife, but he
makes no real effort to save her. When she is told that the gods have
decreed her sacrifice for the good of her country, the cry of nature is
silenced, the touching appeal is stilled. She rises to a divine height
of courage, and is the consoler rather than the consoled.

Not less pathetic is the fate of Alcestis, though it is a voluntary
one. She robes herself for the tomb as tranquilly as if she were going
out on a message of mercy. With sad dignity she crowns with myrtle the
altar at which she prays, but not until she takes leave of the familiar
room so consecrated by love and happiness do the tears begin to fall.
This tender wife, who freely gives her life to save her husband, does
not falter as she passionately embraces her weeping children, and bids
a kind farewell to her pitying servants. The only thing she asks for
herself is to see the sun once more, and she tries to inspire this
selfish, posing, half-hearted husband with her own fortitude, as her
spirit “glides on light wing down the silent paths of sleep.” One
cannot help wondering if she never had a misgiving that the man who
could ask his wife to comfort him for his unspeakable misery in letting
her die for him was not worth dying for. But the Greek women had been
long trained in the school of passive suffering, and it never seemed
to occur to them that it was not quite in the nature of things for the
weaker half of the human family to have a monopoly of the sacrifices.
It was a part of their destiny; the gods so willed it. Men looked upon
it as a comfortable arrangement for themselves, that had good moral
results for women. To-day we are inclined to ask why a discipline that
is good for women, and tends toward their moral perfection, is not also
good for men, who have a like need of being perfected.

But, in spite of rational theories, the world’s heart still thrills
to a generous emotion so overpowering as to drown all consideration
of self, whether or not it is faulty in its mundane wisdom or its
arithmetic. And this it is which casts so lasting a glamour over the
women who loom out of the twilight of that far-off time, in noble
proportions that dwarf the selfish, arrogant men with whom they are
mated. They rise to the dignity of goddesses in their divine pity and
courage, while the great Achilles, the masculine ideal of the Greeks,
weeps like a child, and sends a generation of men to sleep on the
plains of Troy, because he cannot have what he wishes.

Yet it is in the minds of men that these women were conceived, and
it is impossible to suppose that they had not at least some faint
counterpart in real life, though possibly men, and women as well, are
apt to make ideals of what they think ought to be rather than of what
is. But why did the Greek poets cast such ridicule and dishonor upon
the sex which they have shown capable of such supreme devotion and such
exalted virtues?

There is a touch of justice in the bitter scorn with which the blind
Œdipus speaks of his sons who

  Keep house at home like maidens in their prime,

while his daughters wear themselves to death for him and for his
sorrows.

  No women they, but men in will to toil.

Perhaps Antigone is a trifle too coldly perfect, too faultlessly
wise--a tacit reflection upon every-day human nature, that likes its
ease, and counts the cost of its renunciations. We look for a trace
of weakness, a warm burst of living tenderness. But duty is shy like
love, and chary of expression. “I do not love a friend who loves in
words,” is the cry of her steadfast soul. There she stands, in the
still majesty of a sorrow that lies too deep for tears, supreme among
the classic types of the world as a model of filial devotion. Cordelia,
true and loyal as she is, and tender at heart, does not approach her
in strength and dignity. But the duty of the Greek heroine does not
end with her father’s death. She lays down her life at last that the
false-hearted brother, who has given her no gentle consideration in
her days of helplessness and despair, may not lie unburied on the
plains of Thebes, and so wander without rest in Hades. She laments
the lost pleasures of living. No husband or children are to be hers.
Yet no enthusiasm of passion or romance tempers this “cold statue’s
fine-wrought grace.” The man she was to marry is secondary. Love, in
our sense, does not enter as a motive power into her life, but her
human need of sympathy is shown in a few pathetic words:

  And yet, of all my friends,
  Not one bewails my fate;
  No kindly tear is shed.

There are a few women of colossal wickedness who serve as foils,
or shadows in the picture. Their very sins are a part of the
overmastering strength that defies its hard limitations. “Of all
things, as many as have life and intellect, we women are the most
wretched race; we must first purchase a husband with excess of money,
then receive him as our lord,” is the bitter protest of the wronged
Medea, and the key-note to her tragical destiny. Clytemnestra says
that she has always been trained to obey, but she towers far above her
warrior husband in force as in crime. She resents his unfaithfulness;
she does not forgive him for the inhuman sacrifice of their innocent
daughter; she meets him on his own ground. It is appalling, the stern
and pitiless passion with which her untamed spirit, spurred on by the
white-hot hate which is often a great love reversed, tramples upon
every human impulse, and sweeps a whole race with her to destruction.
The clash of elemental forces is there, even though the responsibility
is shifted upon the gods, who use these frail mortals as blind
instruments in their inscrutable plans.

But these monsters of crime are few, and seem to throw into stronger
relief the self-forgetful women who exalt their inferior position,
and bend their heads to the yoke with such stately dignity that they
seem to command even in obeying. For, in spite of the important part
assigned them in the world of affairs as well as at the fireside,
they are constantly reminded of their little worth. “Let not women
counsel,” is the advice of men to the wisest of them.

                        Woman, know
  That silence is a woman’s noblest part,

says the ill-tempered Ajax to his amiable wife. This gentle Tecmessa
wishes to die with him, for “Why should I wish to live if you are
dead?” He only tells her to mind her own affairs and be silent.
Telemachus orders his faithful mother not to meddle with men’s
business, but it was precisely because she did meddle with it, and
tried, by various simple arts, to bring order into the chaos men had
raised, that his royal father had any home to return to, or any kingdom
to leave to his ungracious son.


IV

So far as we can gather from Homer, women of the better sort had a
degree of consideration in the heroic age which they lost at a later
period. When men fought or tilled the soil, it was in the natural
order of things that they should stay at home to look after their
children and households. The division of duties was fair enough. In a
reign of brute force they needed protection, and though it was pretty
well settled that men were born to rule and women to be ruled, there
was evidently a great deal of pleasant companionship in family life.
Compared with the seclusion of the Oriental harem, the position of
these women was one of freedom, and it lasted to historic times. Their
supreme distinction was a moral one. Books they had not. Of literature
nothing was known beyond the verses and tales of wandering minstrels.
Art was little more than a handicraft. If men worked in marble or in
metal, women designed patterns for weaving and embroidery. Men had
not begun to put their thoughts or speculations into enduring form,
and women were not excluded from a large part of their lives. But
so perfectly did many of them realize the world’s ideal of feminine
virtues that we ask no more. They stand upon pedestals, like the
masterpieces of Greek sculpture, noble in their simplicity and lovely
in the repose of their surpassing strength.

But the dramatists reflected in a thousand ways the altered spirit of
an age in which good women had no visible part. Their immortal heroines
are equally strong and instinct with vitality, though less simple and
of severer mold, but they are revered from afar as the goddesses were,
while real women are a target for abuse and ridicule. It is to no rare
and perishable beauty, no fleeting grace, no intellectual brilliancy,
that they owe their eternal charm, but to their moral greatness, their
strength of sacrifice. These exalted ideals, so bravely tender, so
patiently enduring, were the victims of adverse destiny or of their
own devotion. But the world held for them no reward in the masculine
heart. There were many women in classic story who died for men, but
only one for whom men were willing to die, and this was Helen, whose
divine beauty appealed to the senses and the imagination. She was made
to be loved, to command; all others were made to serve. The Greeks
adored beauty; they lived in it, they created it. Here lay their
pride; here more than once they found their Nemesis. But virtue they
gave a place apart, as they did the wise Athena, who towered in golden
isolation over the Attic divinities. It had no share in the joy of
existence.

Beneath the glad pæans of heroes we hear at intervals, across the ages,
the clear voices of women chanting a miserere in an undertone of sorrow
or despair. Doubtless the poets saw and felt the tragical side of their
lives, but tradition had the inevitability of fate, as it has had in
other times. They have given us great and lonely ideals of womanhood,
but a somber picture of the place held by living women in the Athenian
world.




SAPPHO AND THE FIRST WOMAN’S CLUB

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Golden Age of Lyric Poetry ·
  · The Mythical and the Real Sappho ·
  · Her Poems ·
  · Contrast with Hebrew Singers ·
  · Poet of Nature and Passion ·
  · The First Woman’s Club ·
  · Æolian and Doric Poetesses ·
  · Honors to the Genius of Hellenic Women ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

A woman and a poet; adored by men and loved by her own sex; artist,
singer, teacher, leader; an exile and an immortal--all this was the
Sappho who stood upon the heights twenty-five centuries ago and sang
the verses that thrilled the heart of the world. She lived in the
brilliant period when lyric poetry reached its zenith and was its
finest representative. Before her no woman had appeared in a distinctly
literary rôle, so far as we know. To-day she still stands supreme in
her own field.

This “violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho,” who sang so
divinely, and vanished so theatrically from Leucadia’s “rock of woe,”
was long veiled in the mists of romance. The tragical muse pictured in
flowing draperies, with a crown of laurel on her head and a lyre in her
hand, chanting her swan-song before cooling her heart of flame in the
blue sea at her feet, was as intangible to us as one of Fra Angelico’s
angels. She looked out of a land of mystery and shadows, with nothing
human about her save that she loved, and suffered, and died. “Do thou,
gentle Love, place wings beneath me as I fall, that I may not be the
reproach of the Leucadian waves,” is her pathetic prayer, and here she
fades from our sight.

But it has been fairly settled that this romantic story was a dream;
that Phaon was only a mythical Adonis; that Sappho did not follow him
across the sea, did not die of love, and never took the fatal leap at
all. The sentimental tourist who sighs over her melancholy fate to-day,
as he passes the bare white cliffs of Santa Maura, so long consecrated
to tragedies of love and sorrow, pays his sympathetic tribute to a
phantom. She went to Sicily, it seems, but not for love. It is supposed
that she was exiled. There were political conspiracies for which men
were banished, and she may have written revolutionary songs. Possibly
she held too radical opinions on the privileges of her sex. But all
this is the purest surmise. In any case, her offense could not have
been a grave one, as she returned in a few years to Mytilene, where she
was adored by a fickle public as the glory of her native city, and
honored with altars and temples after her death. Her face was stamped
upon coins--“though she was a woman,” said Aristotle. The outlines are
clear and strong, with the virile quality so marked in most statues of
Greek women. She was also represented, with Alcæus, on a vase of the
next century, as not only beautiful, but tall and stately.

A thousand years afterward a statue of her is said to have been one
of the ornaments of the gymnasium at Byzantium. But coin and bust and
statue give us many faces. Which was the real one? We are more familiar
with the ideal Sappho in the modern portrait in which Alma-Tadema has
so subtly caught the prophetic light of her soul, her eager intellect,
her unconscious grace, and the slumbering passion in her eloquent eyes.

But recent critics tell us that even her beauty was a fiction of the
imagination. Does she not say of herself, in the burning lines of
Ovid, that she was brown and of low stature, though her name filled
all lands? Or was it the sweet humility of love that made her own
attractions seem to her slender and insufficient? She had been dead six
hundred years or so when Ovid wrote, and his knowledge could not have
been infallible.

Men of her own time called her the “beautiful Sappho,” the “flower
of the graces,” and Greek standards of beauty included height and
stateliness. Perhaps they were under the magic spell of her genius, and
indulged in glowing figures of speech. At all events, modern scholars
are more literal, and they have mostly decided that she was a small,
dark woman, of noble birth, who was early left a widow with one fair
daughter, “Cleïs, the beloved, with a form like a golden flower.” This
was also the name of her own mother. One of her brothers held the
honorable office of cup-bearer; the other went to Egypt, and, much to
the displeasure of his gifted sister, married a woman of more charms
than discretion, for whom he had paid a large ransom. This famous
beauty of Naucratis became very rich, and, possibly by way of atonement
for her sins, made a generous offering at the temple of Delphi. It
was even said that she immortalized herself by building the third
pyramid; but these tales, whether true or not, have been relegated to
the region of myths. We learn from Sappho herself that she quarreled
with her brother on account of this _mésalliance_. These are scant
materials on which to base a life, but they include about all the facts
we have of

  That mighty songstress, whose unrivaled powers
  Weave for the Muse a crown of deathless flowers.

We do not even know when or where or how she died, though epitaphs in
the strain of these flattering and prosaic lines are numerous.

If her personality is veiled to us, still less do we know what manner
of woman she was. The Attic comedians said unpleasant things about
her a century after she died, and no one lived who could dispute
them. Unfortunately, no infallible certificate of character can be
found to protect a name that has been only a historic memory two or
three thousand years. It is certain, however, that Æolian women had
an honored place in society and literature. They formed a center of
intellectual light in which the brilliant Sappho reigned supreme, and
it was no unusual thing to see them at banquets and festivals with
men. A well-born Athenian woman would have lost the rather illusory
privileges of her position by such freedom. She was decorously ignorant
and stayed at home. It was a foregone conclusion in Athens that a woman
who was educated and a poet could not be respectable, and if the facts
were against this conclusion, so much the worse for the facts.

Hence it was quite natural that Sappho, who did not go into seclusion
or hide her light, should be decried by the satirists who had never
seen her. A hundred years had sufficed to dim the incidents of her
life, and left them free to invent any romance they chose. Her supposed
love-affairs were a fruitful theme. That men died before she was born,
or were born after she died, were impertinent details which were not
held to interfere in the least with their tender relations toward her.
It is true that she wrote with a pen dipped in fire, but poems and
tales of passion are not held even to-day as evidence against the fair
fame of the author, whatever might be thought of her good taste. The
Greek standards of morality were, at best, far from ours, and the frank
naturalism of that age would be likely to shock our sense of decorum.
But there is no indication that Sappho fell below these standards, and
there is much to show that she rose above them. “I love delicacy,” she
writes, “and for me love has the sun’s splendor and beauty.” Alcæus,
her fellow-poet and rival, addresses her as “pure, sweetly smiling
Sappho.” When he grows too ardent in his love, she rebukes him with
gentle dignity: “Hadst thou felt desire for things good or noble, and
had not thy tongue framed some evil speech, shame had not filled thine
eyes, but thou hadst spoken honestly about it.” And why did she feel
her brother’s disgrace so keenly if her own life was open to reproach?

We gather from herself that she was simple, amiable, and sunny,
with a Greek love of life and all that pertains to it. “I am not of
revengeful temper,” she says, “but have a childlike mind.” To this
naïve confession she adds a choice bit of wisdom: “When anger spreads
through the breast, guard thy tongue from barking idly.” She tells her
daughter not to mourn for her, as “a poet’s home is not a fit place
for lamentation.” In the spirit of her age and race, she insists that
“death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they
would die.”

Whatever her character and personal history may have been, we know that
she wrote perfect lyrics with the spark of immortality in them, and
gathered about her in the sunny island of Lesbos a circle of educated
women who devoted themselves to the study of music, poetry, and the
arts of refined living. Her genius has been recognized by poets,
philosophers, and critics, as well as by simpler people who felt in her
verse the “touch of nature” that “makes the whole world kin.” She was
the “divine Muse” of Plato, and shared the lyric throne with Pindar.
Aristotle quoted her, and the austere Solon was so charmed with one
of her odes that he said he could not die until he had learned it.
Strabo writes that “at no period on record has any woman been known who
compared with her in the least degree as a poet.” Horace and Catullus
imitated her, Ovid paraphrased her, but no one has caught the essence
of her fiery spirit. Plutarch likens her to the “heart of a volcano.”
Longinus called her celebrated ode, “not a passion, but a congress of
passions.” Modern men have tried to put her golden-winged, fire-tipped
words into another tongue, and turned with despair from the task. It is
like trying to seize the light that blazes in the heart of the diamond,
or the fiery tints that hide in the opal. Perhaps Swinburne has best
caught the spirit and the music of

  Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
  Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity.

But even this exquisite artist in words says: “Where Catullus failed I
could not hope to succeed.”

There were nine volumes of her works in the days of Horace. To-day
scarcely more than two hundred lines survive. Besides the two immortal
odes, we have only fragments, gems scattered here and there through the
writers of antiquity. To the everlasting discredit of an ignorant and
fanatical age, the fathers denounced her, and the Byzantine emperors
or the ascetic monks of a later time burned these so-called relics of
paganism, to supply their place with books of devotion and lives of the
saints. When the Hellenic spirit woke again, after a sleep of more than
a thousand years, it was too late. These poems had perished with many
monumental works of the intellect, and scholars thought their lives
well spent if they found a line or two from the lost treasures.

But what was the life from which Sappho sprang, that she could reach
the topmost bough of fame at a single flight? The lucid note, the
tropical passion, the musical flow--these nature might give; but where
did she learn the fine sense of proportion, the perfection of metrical
form, the mastery of the secrets of language, which placed her at the
head of the lyric poets of Greece? The voices which might have told us
are silent. Sparta was making heroic men and women, not literature.
Athens was struggling through her stormy youth, and pluming her wings
for the highest flight of all. The great Hebrew poetry was contemporary
with Sappho, but she shows no trace of its influence. If she ever saw
or heard it, her spirit was utterly alien to it. Still less had she
in common with the inspired woman who led the armies of Israel to
victory, six or seven centuries before, and chanted in stately measure
the immortal song of their triumphs. It may be noted here that it
was a woman who fired the hearts of these wandering people to brave
deeds, when men drew back, timid and disheartened; it was a woman who
went before them into battle; and it was a woman who broke into that
impassioned poem which has come down to us across the ages as one of
the great martial hymns of the world. But Deborah, the soldier, poet,
prophetess, judge, and minstrel, never walked in the flowery paths of
beauty and love. Her virile soul rose on the wings of a sublime faith,
far above the things of sense. Behind that chorus of joy and exultation
lay the long-baffled hopes, aspirations, and energies of an oppressed
people, but it celebrated the apotheosis of force. It was a barbaric
song, wild and revengeful even in its splendid imagery and patriotic
fervor. Miriam took her timbrel, and sang in the same strain of power
and majesty, inspired by the same soaring imagination. But we find
no touch of a woman’s pity or tenderness in these pæans of victory.
Their note is strong and exultant, alive with the lofty enthusiasm of
a religious race in which the passion for art and beauty was not yet
born. Sappho had caught nothing from these singers of an earlier time.
She does not live in the bracing air of great ideals, nor does she
dwell upon any vexed moral problems, after the manner of later poets.
She is simply human, and strikes a personal note, the charm of which is
unfailing, and will be fresh as long as flowers bloom, or men and women
live and love.

This sweet-voiced singer seems to have risen full-fledged with the
dawn, and her notes were liquid and clear as the song of the lark that
soars out of the morning mists, and makes the sky vocal with melody.
The freshness of the woods and the wild freedom of the air are in
them. She loves the flowers, the running streams, the silver moon,
the “golden-sandaled dawn,” the “dear, glad angel of the spring, the
nightingale.” Hesperus, fairest of stars, “brings all that bright
morning scattered,” and smiles on “dark-eyed sleep, child of night.”
Again she says, “The stars about the fair moon hide their bright faces
when she lights up all the earth with silver.” Was it the music of
her voice that the doves heard “when their hearts turned cold and they
dropped their wings”? She sings the praise of the purple hyacinth, the
blushing apple-blossom, and the pale Lesbian rose, which she loves
best of all. Dica is bidden to twine wreaths, “for even the blessed
Graces look kindlier on a flowery sacrifice, and turn their faces
from those who lack garlands.” In the garden of the nymphs, “the cool
water gurgles through apple-boughs, and slumber streams from quivering
leaves.” To this passionate love of nature, so vividly told in rare and
exquisite figures and in phrases “shot with a thousand hues,” she adds
a sensibility that responds to every breath that passes. “I flutter
like a child after her mother,” is her cry. She likens a bird to a
flower that grows in a garden and has nothing to fear from the storms.
A woman alone is like a wild flower which no one takes care of. She
touches every phase of love from the divine tenderness of girlhood to
the wild passion that shakes the soul, “a wind on the mountains falling
on oaks.” Her words flash and burn with the heart-consuming fire of
her race. The lines in which she entreats the “star-throned Aphrodite”
to have pity on her anguish, glow with a white heat. The swift-winged
doves had brought the fickle goddess once before to soothe her pain
with sweet promises and an immortal smile. Will she not come again and
lift the ache from her tortured soul, and give her what she asks?

The intensity of passion reaches its climax in the ode to Anactoria.
Simple as it is, the vocabulary of “bitter-sweet” emotion is exhausted.
In her most impassioned verses, our own Mrs. Browning does not quite
forget to reflect about her love. She sets it forth in subtly woven
thoughts, and lets it filter through her mind until it takes the
color of it. Sappho sings of passion pure and artless. She does not
think about it, she does not analyze it. It possesses her heart
and imagination, and she tells it so simply, so sincerely, and so
truly, that the familiar story never loses its charm. She sang in the
childhood of the world, when people felt more than they thought, when
love was a sensation, a joy, a passion, a pain, not a sentiment. If she
did not spiritualize her theme, she purified it of the coarseness which
made the love-songs of men, before and afterward, unfit for a delicate
ear. This first touch of a woman in literature was to refine it, though
it was many centuries before she had the power to lead men to take love
from the exclusive domain of the senses and give it a soul.


II

But it is not alone as a singer that Sappho has come down to us. She
was the leader of an intellectual movement among women that was
without a parallel in classic times. We may greet her as not only the
first of woman poets, but as the founder of the first “woman’s club”
known to us. It is not certain that it had either a constitution or
by-laws, and it discussed poetry and esthetics instead of science and
social economics. But the measure of the intellect is not so much what
we discuss as the quality of thought we bring into the discussion. It
is easy enough to talk platitudes about literature or philosophy, and
not so easy as one might imagine to talk wisely and well about poetry,
or manners, or the art of living; and it is easier to do any of these
things than it is to write what is worth talking about. The women who
came to Sappho from the isles of the Ægean and the far hills of Greece
seem to have been more intent upon writing poems than talking about
them. There is no trace of brilliant conversation, or critical papers,
or gathered sheaves of the knowledge that comes so freely under our own
hand. Unfortunately, there was no secretary in this primitive club to
take notes for posterity, or, if there was, the records have been lost.
We know little of its sayings, though there are scattered traces of its
doings. A few faint echoes have come to us across the centuries,--a
verse, a line, a trait, a word, a heart-cry,--and that is all. Even
these give us glimpses of its personal rather than of its intellectual
side. Of the quality of its work we cannot judge, as there is little
of it left. That it was thought worthy of praise in its day, with
Sappho as a standard, proves at least a high degree of merit. She was
musician as well as poet, and trained many of the maidens for singing
in sacred festivals, as well as in the arts of poetry and manners.
When they married, she wrote their bridal odes. These she sang with
the lyre, and one of her minor claims to fame was her invention of the
plectrum, which brought out the full resources of this instrument.
For Timas, who died unmarried, she wrote a touching elegy, which was
sung at her tomb by the maidens, who cut off their curls as a token of
sorrow.

The most gifted of Sappho’s friends was Erinna, who died at nineteen,
leaving among other things a poem of three hundred verses, which was
said to deserve a place beside the epics of Homer. She sang of the
sorrows of a maiden whose mother compelled her to spin when she wished
to serve the Muses. There is also a tradition that she wrote an epitaph
for a companion of “birth and lineage high,” who died on her wedding
day, and “changed bridal songs to sound of sob and tear.” She was
thought to surpass her teacher in hexameters. Sappho reproved her for
being so scornful, and this is all the trait we have of this precocious
child of genius, who preferred poetry to spinning. Her own epitaph
speaks for itself:

  These are Erinna’s songs; how sweet, though slight!
  For she was but a girl of nineteen years.
  Yet stronger far than what most men can write:
  Had death delayed, whose fame had equaled hers?

The only thing about Andromeda of which we are sure is that she dressed
badly. “What woman ever charmed thy mind who wore a graceless dress, or
did not know how to draw her garments about her ankles?” says Sappho
to this formidable rival who stole away from her the fickle heart of
Atthis. Of the brilliant Gorgo she grew tired. It is supposed that
these two were at the head of other clubs or schools. Damophyla wrote a
hymn to Artemis, the patron goddess of pure-souled maidens, which was
modeled after Sappho and had great praise in its day, but no fragment
of it is left.

“The fair-haired Lesbian,” so famed as the poet of nature and passion,
was not without a wise philosophy of life, and she assumes the rôle
of mentor with pitiless candor. “He who is fair to look upon is
good, and he who is good will soon be fair,” is her motto; but she
tells Mnasidica that her “gloomy temper spoils her, though she has a
more beautiful form than the tender Gyrinna.” Her house is devoted
to the service of the Muses and must be cheerful, but she shuts out
of an honorable immortality those who prefer worldly fortune to the
pleasures of the intellect. To a rich woman without education she
says: “Where thou diest there wilt thou lie, and no one will remember
thy name in times to come, because thou hast no share in the roses of
Pieria. Inglorious wilt thou wander about in Hades and flit among its
dark shades.” She does not forget the finer graces of character, and
evidently realizes the insidious fascination of material things. A
moralist of to-day might be expected to tell us that “wealth without
virtue is a dangerous guest,” but we are not apt to credit the gifted
singers of the ancient world with so much ethical insight, least of all
the women of a sensuous and passionate race, which loved before all
things beauty and the pleasures of life.

These few touches of wisdom, satire, and criticism, relieved by the
love of Sappho for the friends and pupils to whom she is a model, an
adviser, and an inspiration, throw a passing side-light on a group
of clever women who flit like phantoms across the pages of history,
most of them names and nothing more. They are of interest in showing
us that the women of ages ago had the same aspirations that we have
to-day, together with the same faults, the same virtues, and the same
griefs, though they had not learned to moralize their sensations or
intellectualize their passions. They show us, too, another phase of
the elusive being who dazzled the world in its youth, leaving a few
records traced in flame, and charged with an ever-baffling secret for
all coming generations.

“Men, I think, will remember us hereafter,” she says with subtle
foresight, a line that Swinburne has so gracefully expanded in words
taken in part from her own lips:

  I, Sappho, shall be one with all these things,
  With all high things forever; and my face
  Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place,
  Cleave to men’s lives, and waste the days thereof
  With gladness and much sadness and long love.


III

The little coterie that wrote and talked and worked in the direction
of finer ideals of life and manners, under the influence of the first
woman poet of the world, has made the island of Lesbos, with its
varying charm of sea and sky, and beautiful gardens, and singing birds,
and sparkling fountains, and white cliffs outlined like sculpture in
the crystalline air, luminous for all time. Of its four more or less
famous poets, three were women, but Sappho has overshadowed all the
rest. The very atmosphere woke the imagination, and made their hearts
sing aloud with love and joy, varied by an occasional note of sorrow
and pain. They came from all lands, these gifted maidens, to sit at the
feet of Sappho, and to carry back to their distant homes the spirit of
poesy and song which inspired so many Hellenic women to brave deeds
as well as to tender and heroic words. But the passion of southern
seas became a religious enthusiasm in the sheltered and somber plains
of Bœotia, where the lives of women had been so bare and hard, and
Hesiod with his fellow-poets had given them such cold consolation. The
songs of love were turned to processional hymns chanted by white-robed
virgins as they brought offerings to the shrines of their gods.

It may have been the fame of Sappho that fired the genius of Myrtis
and Corinna. Possibly some dark-eyed maiden had come back from Lesbos
to spread the cult of knowledge and beauty, to found other esthetic
clubs which should give a new impulse to women’s lives. But when we try
to give a living form to these famous poets, we grasp at shadows. We
simply know that they lived and sang and had their little day of glory,
with grand tombs at the end, and statues in various parts of Greece.
They were teachers of Pindar, and Corinna is said to have defeated him
five times in poetic contests at Thebes. Several centuries later there
was still at Tanagra a picture representing her in the act of binding a
fillet about her beautiful head, probably in token of these victories.
Five crowns on her tomb also told the story. She was the friend and
critic of the great lyric poet, but he said some unkind things of his
successful rival, and insisted that the prize was due to her beauty
rather than her genius. In spite of this, he went to her for counsel.
She had advised him to use the Greek myths in his poems, and he did
it so lavishly that she wittily told him to “sow with the hand and not
pour out of a sack.” She was not quite generous, however, to her other
friend, who also won a prize in the same manner. She says, “I blame
the clear-toned Myrtis that she, a woman born, should enter the lists
with Pindar.” Why it was not proper for a sister poet who had taught
both of them to do what she did herself, is not clear. She was called
the first of the nine lyrical muses, who were the earthly counterparts
of the “celestial nine.” Myrtis was another. As the immortal Maids
who dwelt on the slopes of Helicon were apt to visit their rivals
with summary vengeance of much more serious character, perhaps their
mortal representatives ought to be forgiven for a shade of jealousy so
delicately implied.

Corinna left five books of poems, but small trace of them remains. Many
of her verses were sung by maidens at religious festivals. Her modest
niche in the temple of fame she owes mainly to her victories over
Pindar, though she was second only to Sappho. Why her work, which was
crowned with so many laurels, has not lived beside his, is one of the
mysteries of buried ages. Perhaps it was because she made use of purely
local legends and the local dialect, to which many thought she owed her
success in her own day.

This wave of feminine genius that passed over the hills and valleys of
Greece spent itself in little more than a century on Doric soil. The
last of the lyrical muses were Praxilla and Telesilla. We have a faint
glimpse of the first at Sicyon, where she lived, and ancient critics
gave her a place by the side of Anacreon. She drew her inspiration
largely from mythology, and sang successfully on that favorite theme
of poetic maidens, the death of Adonis. In the most critical age of
Greece she was honored with a statue by Lysippus, which may be taken as
sufficient proof that she was much more than a writer of sentimental
verses.

More noted was Telesilla, the poet and heroine of Argos, an antique
Joan of Arc, whose exaltation took a poetic form instead of a religious
one. A curious little story, mythical or otherwise, is related of
her. She was very ill and consulted the oracle, which told her to
devote herself to the Muses. This species of mind-cure proved more
effective than medicine, and she recovered under the magic of music
and poetry. But she had the spirit of an Amazon as well as the genius
of a poet. At a crisis in the war with Sparta, she armed the women,
and manned the walls with slaves too young or too old to fight. The
Spartans thought it discreditable to kill the women, and disgraceful
to be beaten by them, so they retreated. The event was commemorated
by an annual festival at which men appeared in feminine attire. Many
centuries afterward a statue of Telesilla was still standing on a
pillar in front of the temple of Aphrodite at Argos. She held in her
hand a helmet which she was about to put on her head, and several
volumes of poetry were lying at her feet. Among her themes were the
fated daughters of the weeping Niobe; she also wrote famous hymns to
Artemis and Apollo. In spite of her allegiance to the Muses, she was
more conspicuous for her service to Ares, who was henceforth worshiped
at Argos as the patron deity of women.

The poetry of the Æolians was largely inspired by love, or a religion
of beauty. But the Doric genius was not a lyrical one, and the
passionate personal note which made the charm of Sappho and her
contemporaries was lost in stirring martial strains. Women ceased to
write or to be known at all in literature until a later time, when they
dipped into philosophy a little, especially in the Dorian colonies,
where they were educated and held in great consideration. Pythagoras
had many feminine followers, and his school at Crotona was continued
after his death by his wife Theano and a daughter who had assisted him.
But most of them live, if at all, only as names, or in the reflected
light of famous men whose disciples they were.


IV

At no other time in the history of the world has the poetry of women
reached the height or the honor it attained in this first flowering of
their intellect and imagination. One may doubtless take with a shade of
reservation the “female Homers,” like Anyta, of whom we have only a few
epigrams, but there is a dim and rather vague tradition of seventy-six
women poets in a scattered and by no means large population. In the
revival of poetry during the Renaissance, there were about sixty,
and none of them had the same quality of perfection which we find
in Sappho. No one claims that we have equaled her to-day on her own
ground, however superior our achievements may be in other directions.

That the Æolian women did so much with so little, and in spite of their
limited advantages, is the best proof of their inborn gifts. Mediocre
talents do not thrive in so adverse a soil, though this outburst of
mental vigor belongs to a time when women had a degree of freedom and
honor which for some reason they lost in the golden age of Athens.
But the books they wrote were not printed, the manuscript copies were
limited, most of them were lost with other classic works, and the few
that escaped the pitiless fingers of time were destroyed by fanatics
and iconoclasts. Yet one woman shines across twenty-five centuries as a
star of the first magnitude, and we have fading glimpses of others who
received honors due only to genius, or to talent of the first order.
They were not judged apart as women, for they have come down to us as
peers of great men. The divine gift of genius was rare then, as now
and always, but even in women it did not lack recognition. To prove
the gift and exact the homage, perhaps in any age, we have simply to
show the fruit, except in a decadence, when the finest fruit loses its
savor for corrupted tastes. If the number who wrote for immortality was
small, it must be remembered that probably there were not enough people
in all Greece to make a good-sized modern city.

The statues that were reared to these women have long since vanished
from the classic hills they graced, and their voices are heard only
in the faintest of musical echoes. Most of them have fallen into
eternal silence. That there were many others devoted to things of
the intellect, but unknown to fame, it is fair to presume, as we see
only those who look back upon us from the shining peaks of that far
past, while the dark waters of oblivion have settled over the possible
treasures of its sunny slopes and fragrant valleys. How many of our
own women, with their myriads of books, lectures, and clubs, their
university courses, their versatile intellects, and their unlimited
freedom, are likely to be quoted two or three thousand years hence, and
set in the firmament to live forever?

To be sure, we stand upon a higher moral and social level, we have
more knowledge, our field of action is broader, our ideals of virtue
are higher, and we have privileges and pleasures of which they never
dreamed. It is quite impossible to put ourselves on the simple plane of
these women. The world has grown old and sophisticated; we have learned
to classify ourselves, to choose our fields of knowledge, to consecrate
our talents to what we call larger uses. Perhaps we never again can
reach the lyrical heights of these children of passion, imagination,
and song. Our triumphs are of another sort. But whatever intellectual
distinctions we may attain, it is to this youth of the world that we
must look for the apotheosis of love and beauty.

It is needless to ask why we can point to no second Sappho. There is
but one Parthenon. Broken and crumbling, it stands in its white majesty
forever alone. The Hellenic spirit is as dead as the gods of Olympus.




GLIMPSES OF THE SPARTAN WOMAN

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Homeric and Spartan Types Compared ·
  · Training of the Spartan Woman ·
  · Her Education Superior to that of Men ·
  · Her Executive Talent ·
  · Her Heroism ·
  · Agesistrata Cratesiclea Chelonis ·
  · The Puritans of the Classic World ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


The strength and vigor of the Homeric types reappear in the Spartan
woman, but without their sweetness and charm. Was this charm the subtle
touch of the poet’s imagination, or was it due in part to the setting
that brought into relief their most lovable qualities? Their central
point of character was a domestic one, and round this clustered all the
gentler virtues. The central trait of the Spartan woman was patriotism,
and to this even the tenderest affections were subordinate. The colder
light of history shows them in outlines that are hard and stern. The
fine symmetry of an ideal womanhood was lost in the excess of a single
virtue that overshadowed all the others. Some one tells a mother who is
waiting for tidings of a battle that her five sons have perished. “You
contemptible slave,” she replies, “that is not what I wish to know.
How fares my country?” On learning that it was victorious, she says,
“Willingly then do I hear of the death of my sons.” “A glorious fate!”
exclaims another, to a friend who offered her sympathy for the loss of
her boy in war. “Did I not bear him that he might die for Sparta?” Here
lay the first and last duty of these women. Natural affection, private
interest, inclination, everything we deem sacred, even to life, was
at the bidding of the State, which strangled itself and its citizens
with petty tyrannies in the name of liberty. They were dedicated to the
State, ordered to rear men for the State, sacrificed to the State. This
destiny they accepted without a murmur, finding in it their glory and
their pride.

Even as children the Spartan women caught the spirit of civic devotion,
which was to be the dominant one in their lives. An anecdote in point
is told of the little Gorgo, who was afterward the wife of the brave
Leonidas. When a child of eight years, she happened to be in the room
one day while a messenger was trying to bribe her father to aid the
Persians. He offered ten talents at first, and gradually raised the
sum until the child, suspecting danger, said: “Go away, father; this
stranger will corrupt you.” It is pleasant to record that her advice
was laughingly taken. When she was grown to womanhood, she rendered
great service to her country, and proved her own sagacity, by finding
a message of vital concern so concealed in a wax tablet that no one had
suspected it. “You Lacedæmonians are the only women in the world to
rule men,” said a foreigner to her. “We are the only women who bring
forth men,” was the ready reply. When her distinguished husband went
away to his last battle, with forebodings of his fate, he could find
no better parting words than these: “Marry nobly and bear brave sons.”
We might regard the consolation as questionable, but it shows the
inexorable tyranny of a single idea.

It was from Sparta that the beautiful Helen sailed away on that fateful
day which changed the face of the primitive world, and the tradition
of her loveliness was not lost. The Spartan women were still noted for
beauty of a healthy, vigorous, luxuriant sort, but it seems to have
lacked the distinctly feminine and magical quality that raised Helen to
the ranks of the goddesses. They were of firmer mold and less sensuous
type. Aphrodite fared badly among the sturdy people in the valley of
the Eurotas. She had but one temple, and even there she sat armed with
a sword and veiled, with ignominious fetters on her feet. Artemis,
active, fleet of foot, and strong, held the place of honor. Delicacy
and tenderness were marks of inferiority which Spartan training tended
to efface. These brave, decided, clear-headed, and efficient women had
abundant heroism, but little of the warm, sympathetic temperament which
we call womanly and they called weak. This goes far to prove that,
within certain limits, the accepted standard of what is womanly, and
what is not, depends largely upon custom, or fashion, or expediency,
and suggests some unpleasant possibilities if the race of women should
be fully educated to the hard uses and material ideals of a purely
industrial or commercial life, as outlined in the brains of many
modern social reformers. Such uses may be a present necessity rather
than a choice, but whether the gain in strength and independence will
compensate for the inevitable loss of many gentler qualities is one of
the problems for the future to solve. In any case, the old theory of a
divine law that has fixed the nature as well as the status of women in
the economy of creation, is likely to be seriously disturbed, as it was
in the Sparta of old. In the martial chorus that called itself the song
of liberty, the musical, love-inspired voices of women were lost. It
celebrated the apotheosis of force, which has always been fatal to the
finer and more spiritual gifts of the less militant sex. But for once
it served them indirectly a good turn, in spite of certain hardening
effects upon the character and manners. This is quite evident when we
compare the Doric woman with the secluded Athenian of softer ways but
with no outlet for her intelligence, and apparently no influence.

Fortunately the supreme aim of the founders of Sparta was one which
they were wise enough to know could not be attained without a larger
freedom and development for women. It was a one-sided training that
was given them, and the freedom was not altogether satisfactory from
our point of view, if indeed we should call it freedom at all. But as
an important factor in the State they were duly honored. It was an
accepted theory that brave and vigorous men must spring from brave and
vigorous women, so the aim of all their discipline was to make strong
and healthy mothers. No delicate girl was allowed to marry, for the
same reason that no sickly child was allowed to live. To insure the
vitality of the race and the consequent glory of the State, girls were
trained with boys in athletic exercises. They ran, wrestled, and boxed
with them in public,--sometimes with no veil but their modesty,--danced
with them at festivals, and marched freely with them in religious
processions. All this naturally gave them masculine manners, and
inevitably led to a spirit of independence and a virile character. The
more refined Athenians criticized them and looked upon them much as the
conventional Parisian of to-day, who will not send a daughter across
the street without a chaperon, looks upon the irrepressible American
girl of the frontier. Contrary also to the usual fashion, it was the
maidens who had the privilege of living in the public view. They did
not even veil their faces, as the married women did.

With all their mannish tendencies, the Spartan women are said to have
been noted for purity of character. It is safe perhaps to take with
a degree of reservation the assertion that immorality according to
their standards was practically unknown. We might at least justly find
fault with the standards, and object to the material view taken of
relations which we are in the habit of investing with a delicate halo
of romance. It was an affair of the State, however, rather than of the
individual, and it is a nice point to decide as to the morality of
women who accepted from necessity certain prescribed modes of living
in which they had no choice. So peculiar were the general notions of
decorum that it was considered disgraceful for a bridegroom to be
seen in the company of his wife; yet he could exchange her at will
or at the command of the rulers, and jealousy was laughed at as a
“vain and womanish passion.” But it was the pride of the Spartans
that no invasion of the sanctity of the home was ever heard of! They
excused themselves for what we should call moral delinquencies of the
worst sort--if indeed they thought any excuse needed, which is not
probable--by the convenient maxim that the end justifies the means. The
interests of the State were above any moral law whatever. No doubt the
arbitrary manner in which women were often disposed of for the public
good, or at the caprice of their lords, seemed to them a better sort of
fate than living in seclusion, as their Attic sisters did, under the
roof of a man who gave them no liberty, and no society, not even his
own. They certainly were not troubled with an excess of sentiment; but
marriages were, on the whole, happy, and love was often a factor in
them, which was rarely the case among their more civilized neighbors.
It was not in the nature of these practical people to look at things
from an esthetic point of view. Their notions were confessedly
utilitarian. To-day we should call many of them scientific. Happily,
modern science has not yet meddled quite so far with the rights of the
individual, though clearly headed in that direction.

If the Spartan woman did not relish such cavalier treatment, she had
the small comfort of knowing that men were not free themselves, and
that really, on the whole, she had the best of it. “The door of his
court is the boundary of every man’s freedom,” was a Lacedæmonian
maxim. Outside of it, all of his movements were controlled by the
State. In this paradise of socialism, he was punished for not marrying,
for waiting too long, and for marrying the wrong woman, that is, one
who was too old, or too young, or too rich, or too far above or below
him in station. Archidamus, one of their rulers, was fined for marrying
a little woman, because she would “bring them a race of pygmies
instead of kings.” There were special penalties for those who sought
money instead of merit and suitability. The fortune-hunter fared badly
in Sparta. We have grown civilized and changed all that. A man suffered
his penalty for remaining single, even if he were a coward whom no one
was permitted to marry, which seems doubly hard. The poor bachelors
who would not or could not take a wife, were stripped and marched in a
procession about the market-place on a cold day once a year, as a fit
target for ridicule and contempt, not to say more tangible missiles.
If any woman had a private grudge, she might vent it with impunity,
even to blows, while the unfortunate victim was forced to chant his
own miserere. Maiden ladies of mature age were rare among the hills of
Lacedæmon.

Notwithstanding the low ideals which would seem to have reduced the
women of Sparta to the position of useful animals, valued solely for
their physical vigor and fitness to be mothers of a hardy race, they
evidently constituted a leisure class which had a monopoly of whatever
learning and refinement were to be found there. They lived in such
comfort as they could command, while their husbands slept on cold beds
of reeds, dined on black bread and coarse rations at the public table,
and practised every form of asceticism to fit themselves for war.
Their sons were taken from them at seven, to be put under the training
of men and subjected to the same stern discipline. The spinning,
weaving, and other work of the family was given to slaves, so that
the privileges of luxury and idleness fell to the women alone. They
came and went as they chose, and were even thought to have intellects
worth cultivating. Men looked upon literary and artistic pursuits as
effeminate. A Spartan king replied to some one who brought to his
notice the greatest musician of his time, by pointing to his cook
as the best maker of black broth. This social Utopia in which the
individual was lost in the mass, and no one could safely be superior to
his neighbor, was the blessed haven of mediocrity and what we should
call indolence. War was the only honorable business; even trade and
the mechanic arts were left to slaves. A Spartan visiting Athens was
much disturbed on hearing that a man had been fined for idleness, and
naïvely asked to see one who was punished for keeping up his dignity.
Life was materialized, and all fine ideals were destroyed save the
single one of national glory, for which they willingly stifled personal
feeling and personal talent. Things of the intellect and spirit were
quite ignored.

But the Doric women had to some extent the tastes of the Æolians,
and were as a rule far better educated than their husbands. We hear
of clubs or associations of women for the cultivation of the mind,
and for teaching girls after the fashion of the time. In music
they excelled. Aristophanes introduces in “Lysistrata” choruses of
Spartan and Athenian maidens who sing in friendly rivalry. Many of
the _parthenia_, or processional hymns, were written by foreign
poets for these young girls, whose spiritual aspirations found vent in
that way. They did not give voice to personal emotions, but to great
religious or patriotic enthusiasms.

Whatever education may have been given to women, it is not likely that
their intellectual standards were very broad or very high; at least,
we have no visible evidence of it, as we find no living trace of their
talents for some centuries after the brief poetic flowering that
followed Sappho, and even then not in Sparta. It was among the Dorians
of a later time, and mainly in the colonies, that the feminine taste
for literature revived, but it took a didactic or philosophical form,
and they wrote in prose.

The talent of the Spartan women was largely executive, and they were
noted for judgment, as well as for heroism. As nurses they were in
great demand in other parts of Greece. A strong proof of their gifts
of administration is found in the fact that they had equal rights of
inheritance with men, and came in time to own two fifths of the land
and a large share of the personal property. This gave them a dignity
and influence not accorded to their sex elsewhere. Aristotle did not
like their freedom and power. He claimed that they ruled their husbands
too imperiously; also, that they were liable to be troublesome in times
of war, as it was impossible to bring them under military discipline.
If they ruled the rulers, he thought that the results would be the
same as if they ruled in their own right. Plutarch tells us that “the
Spartans listened to their wives, and women were permitted to meddle
more with public business than men with the domestic.” Again he says
that “women considered themselves absolute mistresses in their houses;
indeed, they wanted a share in affairs of State, and delivered their
opinions with great freedom concerning the most weighty matters.” But
freedom is relative, and a little of it goes a great way where there
has been, as a rule, none at all. It does not seem that any fears on
this subject were realized, as their influence, so far as we know, was
conservative, and they were subordinate in theory if not always in
fact. “When I was a girl I was taught to obey my father, and I obeyed
him,” said a woman, when asked to do something of doubtful propriety;
“and when I became a wife I obeyed my husband; if you have anything
just to urge, make it known to him first.” A clever if not very
chivalrous writer of the time says: “It becomes a man to talk much, and
a woman to rejoice in all she hears”--a comfortable arrangement for
dull husbands, who would be sure at least of an appreciative audience
at home.

But we find instances of heroic devotion among these hardy women,
for which we look in vain among the ignorant and secluded wives of
Athens. It is a pity that Plutarch did not give some of them a distinct
place in his gallery of celebrities. He had a superior wife himself,
a well-bred woman of dignity, tenderness, great mental vigor, simple
taste, and distinguished virtues, who was above the vanities of her
time, and bore sorrow like a philosopher. He loved her devotedly,
praised her fortitude, and admired her strength. This perhaps accounts
for the fact that he was kindly disposed toward women in general, and
thought that their fame should be known, since love of glory was not
confined to one sex. But if he did not set them on a pinnacle of their
own, he has shown us by various anecdotes that they could counsel
like seers and die like heroes. In the decline of Sparta, when Agis
planned to restore the old simplicity it had lost with the coming of
luxury and foreign ways, he asked the aid of his mother, the brave
Agesistrata, a woman of great wealth and influence. She thought the
division of property he proposed neither wise nor practicable, and
advised him against it. But when she found his heart set upon it as a
means of winning glory, as well as bringing back the people to virtue
and simpler manners, she consented not only to give up her own great
fortune, but to induce others to join her. As the wealth of Sparta was
largely in the hands of women who were less disinterested and did not
care to lose either their luxuries or their power, this socialistic
movement failed, and its self-sacrificing leaders were put to death.
When Agesistrata was led into the prison to see her son, he lay
strangled before her. She tenderly placed her own dead mother by his
side, and baring her neck with calm dignity, said: “May this prove for
the good of Sparta.”

In the second attempt to restore the prestige of the falling State,
Cratesiclea rivals the great heroines of the dramatists in her noble
self-surrender. Ptolemy demanded, as the price of his alliance, that
Cleomenes should send his mother and son to Egypt as hostages. When she
heard of it she smilingly said: “Was this the thing you have so long
hesitated to tell me? Send this body of mine at once where it will be
of the most use to Sparta, before age renders it good for nothing.”
She went without tears, saying that no one must see them weep. Finding
afterward that the king was hampered by the fear that some ill might
befall them, she sent him word to do what was best, and never mind what
became of an old woman and a little child. This enterprise, too, was a
futile one, but the women who had inspired men with their own courage
and devotion died as bravely as they had lived. It is a touching scene
where the young and beautiful wife of Panteus pays the last offices to
her dead friends, then, folding her robe modestly about her, tranquilly
tells the executioner to do his work.

“In women too there lives the strength of battle,” says Sophocles, and
nowhere could he have found such heroic examples as among the rugged
hills of Sparta. Out of such material, Antigones and Iphigenias are
created.

Beneath a discipline of the affections so severe that it seems as
if they must have been crushed altogether, we sometimes fall upon
unsuspected depths of tenderness. Chelonis left her husband in his
day of power, to care for her father, who had been deposed and was
in disgrace and need. When the political tables were turned, and her
father was again on the throne, she pleaded with eloquence and tears
for her husband’s life. Her wise and tactful words saved him, but he
was exiled. She was urged by her family to stay and enjoy the fruits of
their victory, but, turning sorrowfully away, she took her children,
kissed the altar where they had found a sanctuary, and went out with
her disgraced husband to poverty and obscurity.

We cannot measure these Spartan women by the standards of to-day. They
did not belong to the age of university courses, society functions,
and Christian ideals. Love as we understand it played a small part in
their lives, and of romance there is little trace, though examples of
conjugal affection are not rare. Of what we call learning they probably
had very little, and of esthetic taste still less, but of clear
judgment, solid character, and fearless courage, they had a great deal.
They were trained as companions and helpers of men, not as their toys,
though they were always subject to them. It was a simple life they
led--a life with few graces and few of our complexities. They were the
Puritans of the classic world, without the Puritan conscience or moral
sense, but with more than Puritan courage and fortitude.




THE ATHENIAN WOMAN, ASPASIA, AND THE FIRST SALON

  · Vassalage of the Athenian Woman ·
  · Her Ignorance and Seclusion ·
  · Religious Festivals · The Hetæræ ·
  · Aspasia · Her Position · Her Gifts ·
  · Tribute of Socrates ·
  · Devotion of Pericles ·
  · The First Salon · Opinions of the Philosophers ·
  · Woman’s Inferior Position a Cause of Athenian Decline ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

The Athenians agreed with the opinion ascribed to Pericles that “the
best wife is the one of whom the least is said either of good or
evil.” But this wise statesman does not seem to have found his theory
agreeable in practice, as he sent away his own wife, who was quite
innocent even of local fame, to put in her place the cleverest and most
talked of woman of her time. She accepted the inevitable with becoming
philosophy, if not gratefully, and it must be said to his credit that
he was kind enough to help her to another husband. But what became of
his theory? One is tempted to think that Thucydides, who put these
words into his mouth, was speaking largely for himself, as it is clear
that he thought women too unimportant, if not too precious, to be
talked about; else why did the great historian so utterly ignore them?

It is a significant fact which upsets many pleasant little theories
about the superior justice of a democracy, that women who shared the
power and glory of their husbands in the heroic age,--even if they
had little of their own,--and preserved a measure of influence under
the rule of kings in historic times, lost their honored position in
republican Athens. In a rule of the people they had no longer the
prestige of an aristocracy, and they did not count politically. As they
held no recognized place of honor, and it was not respectable to shine
by their talents, they had no apparent claim to consideration. They
might stand on a pedestal to add to the glory of men, they might grace
a hereditary throne for the honor of a family, but it never occurred to
the classic world that woman sprang, as the witty Frenchman said, “from
the side of Adam, and not from his feet.”

To all intents and purposes, the Attic women were slaves, with no
rights and few privileges. We do not know much about them directly, as
they left no record of themselves, and very little was written of them
except by the satirists, who are always ready to distort the truth in
order to “point a moral or adorn a tale.” Historians were strangely
silent regarding them; unless of royal lineage, women were too
insignificant. It is difficult, in the face of the few facts we know,
to credit the brilliant Athenians with any chivalry. We must either
suppose that the poets were a sour and disappointed race, or that they
reflected the spirit of their time. Apart from the few great ideals
that lived in the imaginations of men, everything that has come down to
us shows the light estimate in which women were held. They were a lower
order of beings, and anything done by their advice was invalid. “Women
are an evil,” says the comedian, “and yet, my countrymen, one cannot
set up a house without evil; for to be married or not to be married is
alike bad.” This arrogant and contemptuous tone runs through the Attic
literature, as I have shown more fully elsewhere.

From the vague and shadowy outlines of a life that was practically
shut out from the light of day twenty-five centuries ago, we cannot
gather with certainty even the moral and domestic value of women who
were treated with lofty disdain by poets, satirists, and historians
alike. But we do know that intellectually they counted for nothing,
within the pale of orthodox society. At a period when the central idea
was culture, when art was at its zenith, and there were giants in
literature, the wives and daughters of men noted before all things for
brilliancy and _esprit_ had fallen into hopeless ignorance and
vassalage. They lacked even the companionship and the small diversions
of the Oriental harem, where the inmates, though they had only a
small fraction of a husband, could break the monotony by gossiping
or quarreling with the other wives. The women of the better class at
Athens had special apartments, usually in the upper story, so that they
could not go out without being seen. Men went to market themselves
or sent their slaves. We learn from Aristophanes that they often put
their wives under lock and key, with a seal when they went away, also
that they kept Molossian hounds to frighten away possible lovers. A
woman addressed her husband as “master,” was always a minor, and could
transact no business on her own account, which even Plato thought
unjust. If he died she was not his heir, but the ward of her son or
of some male relative. In her marriage she was not consulted, and she
was never supposed to know any man but the one chosen for her. Solon,
who wished to prevent mercenary marriages, decreed that no dowries
should be given, and that the bride could have only three suits of
clothes; later, unions were arranged by the families, on a basis of
equal fortunes. Infidelity on the part of the husband was no ground
of complaint. As wives were so closely guarded there does not seem to
have been much danger of indiscretions, but they were sent away on the
slightest suspicion, and their punishments were carried to the utmost
refinement of cruelty. In spite of this surveillance, possibly because
of it, sins against morality were more frequent than in Sparta.

After the age of sixty, women were permitted to go to funerals outside
of their families, if they would not mourn too violently. These
occasions must have been rather welcome than otherwise, as Greek
funerals were not hopelessly solemn affairs, except to the immediate
family. Brides had the special privilege of sitting at table at their
own wedding banquets, to which only relatives or very near friends
were asked. The amusements of women seem to have consisted largely in
looking out of the window and making their toilets. If they went to the
theater at all, they were limited to tragedy and had to take back seats.

We have an account of one model husband who is not content that his
young wife should simply know how to spin, weave, and direct her maids,
so he tries to educate her. She is only fifteen, and he says that she
has lived under the strictest restraint so that she might “see as
little, hear as little, and ask as few questions as possible.” When
he has her properly domesticated so that she dares to speak in his
presence, he explains their mutual responsibilities in terms that must
have mystified this child of nature a little, tells her to do well
what the gods have suited to her and men approve, to use no cosmetics
or aids to beauty, and to knead bread or fold linen for exercise,
since she must not walk out. The main thing he dwells upon is the
necessity of looking closely after their common fortunes; but she has
also to take care of the children, and nurse the slaves when they
are ill. He kindly admits that if she is superior to him she will be
mistress,--taking good care, however, that such an unfortunate state
of affairs shall not exist so far as education is concerned,--and
assures her that the better she serves the interests of his family
and household, the more she will be honored. This is all very well
so far as it goes, and we may readily admit that it is of more vital
importance to administer the affairs of one’s family with judgment and
dignity than to talk about art or read Homer. But the docile wife had
a housekeeper as well as plenty of slaves, and, naturally, abundant
leisure. It certainly implied a degree of what Socrates called “manly
understanding” on her part, to follow her husband’s abstruse reasoning
on the duties of women, and his minute instructions for carrying them
out; yet this wise representative of the most civilized race the world
has known never so much as hints that she has an intellect.

Socrates listens with great interest to this advanced theory of
wife-training as it is unfolded to him, and sagely remarks that the
husband is responsible for her errors if he does not properly teach
her. It seems that he did not try the system on Xanthippe, or if he
did it was a dismal failure, as the much-abused woman is never quoted
as a model or a saint, and we do not hear that he taxed himself with
her shortcomings. He said that he married her for the excitement of
conquest--the same motive that leads a man to try his power over a
high-spirited horse; also as a discipline, because he was sure that he
could endure every one else if he could endure her. It would be curious
to know what she thought about it, but one cannot help suspecting that
she had the lion’s share of the discipline, and that Socrates was a
greater success as a philosopher and talker than as a husband.

There was one exception, however, to this rigid seclusion, a small
recognition of the fact that women probably have souls. They were
allowed a part in religious festivals, and these were events in their
lives. They meant a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of the outer
world. Perhaps they meant also a little spiritual consolation, which
must often have been greatly needed; but of this we are not sure. The
Hellenic divinities were not eminently consoling, and the wise Athena
was particularly unsympathetic, though the Athenian virgins had at
least the pleasure of making her richly ornamented robes, and putting
them on her once a year. The woman in the comedy says that at seven she
could carry the peplum in the procession, at ten she ground cakes for
the patron goddess, and when she grew to be a beautiful maiden, she
had charge of the sacred basket.

One can imagine the flutter of pleasure with which the young girls
of the golden age of Athens donned their white draperies and
gold-embroidered mantles to march in the Panathenaic procession to the
Acropolis. Their snowy veils floated airily in the breeze, as they went
up the marble steps of the propylæa chanting choral hymns and carrying
in their hands the branches of silvery olive to lay at the feet of
the stately goddess. How bright the sky! how blue the sparkling sea!
How beautiful the white temples and colonnades, alive with sculptured
heroes! Before them rose Hymettus in its robe of violet haze, and
the cone of Lycabettus, sharply outlined in the clear air. Sheltered
behind the low hills on the other side of the vast olive-groves, the
magnificent temple of Eleusis, with its heart of mystery, towered in
its peerless majesty, and the restless waves of Salamis lapped the
shore at its side. This world of beauty was young then and fresh,
with no age-old tragedies to sadden the brilliant crowd that wound in
dazzling array through the forest of columns and statues. The flower of
Athens was there--brave, handsome, and clever men, poets, artists, and
philosophers, warriors on prancing horses, beautiful women and laughing
children. If the uncaged maidens were tempted to flirt a little with
their soft, dark eyes, who can blame them? They were young and human,
companionship was sweet, and they too had tender hearts, though small
account was made of them.

But the day ends. The sacred Athena is resplendent in her new robe. The
gay crowd moves back past the exquisite little Ionic temple of Victory
and down the massive steps into the agora, where life goes on as
before. Men throng the porticos and talk of the new play of Sophocles,
or the last statue of Phidias, or the prospects of war, or any of
the thousand and one things that come uppermost in the affairs of a
great city. When the shadows fall and the stars come out bright and
shining in that crystal air, they gather at banquets or symposia, where
flute-players and dancing-girls are brought in to amuse them, or some
Lais or Phryne of the hour enthralls them by her beauty and dazzles
them with her wit. But the wives and daughters of these men, who do not
see fit to educate them for companions, go back to their lonely homes
and to an isolation from all social and intellectual interests as deep
as if they were asleep in the sculptured tombs of the Via Sacra.

The women of Athens fulfilled their duties with becoming modesty, so
far as we know. They were respectably ignorant, and did not encroach
upon the time-honored privileges of men. It is true that Elpinice, the
sister of Cimon, was a trifle strong-minded, and, taking the Spartan
women as models, went about alone; but we do not hear that she had
any following. Unpleasant things were said about her, which we are
safe in doubting, as unpleasant things have always been said of women
who presumed to have opinions of their own, or to walk outside of the
straight line of tradition. At all events, a rich Athenian fell in love
with her, and was glad to take her without a dowry and pay the fine of
her distinguished father. But it is certain that no appreciable number
of Attic ladies were disposed to incur the odium of public opinion so
distinctly expressed in these words:

  Good women must abide within the house;
  Those whom we meet abroad are nothing worth.

Why in the face of such reverent submission were they so contemptuously
spoken of? We are often told to-day that women cannot expect any
privileges when they want rights. It may be pertinent to ask, in the
name of consistency, why they had no privileges when they sat humbly at
the feet of their husbands and demanded no rights?

But it was among these women that the great dramatists lived and
created the masterpieces of the world. It may be that they saw and felt
the cheerless side of so fettered a life, and that is why they painted
their heroines in such somber colors, too often innocent victims of
men’s misdeeds, and doomed to suffering with the sad inevitability
of fate. But the noble character and fine intelligence given to so
many of them must have had some counterpart in reality. Did the city
that produced Antigone, Iphigenia, and Alcestis, have no great women,
or did their creators look elsewhere for the moral dignity that made
them possible? And where were the models found? Not, surely, among the
hetæræ whose power, whatever it may have been, was not a moral one. Not
even among the goddesses, who were notoriously vain, selfish, crafty,
and cruel. We know that a thousand untold tales of virtue and heroism
are hidden behind closed doors, and we may well believe they were not
without precedent among these apparently colorless and pent-up lives.

Then it is easy perhaps to err in assuming that there were no women who
rose above hard conditions into a degree of companionship with their
husbands. It is true they had no education and were excluded from the
society of men who had it, but it is impossible to suppose that the
women of so brilliant a race were utterly without the clear perception
and flexible intelligence which made its men so famous. Nor can we
infer invariable misery. There have been good men in all ages who
loved their families, and women whose light could not be extinguished.
The great Cimon is said to have had an ardent affection for his wife,
and he was inconsolable after her death, though he did not curb his
wandering fancies while she lived. Socrates mentions Niceratus as “one
who was in love with his wife and loved by her.” There is a familiar
anecdote of Themistocles that puts him in a pleasant light. He said in
a laughing way that his little son was greater than any man in Greece,
“for the Athenians command the Greeks, I command the Athenians, his
mother commands me, and he commands his mother.” If reports be true,
however, the influence of his wife was largely theoretical, as it did
not suffice to keep him from doing some very disreputable things. But
he wished a worthy man for his daughter, rather than a rich one, saying
he “would prefer a man without money to money without a man.” Aristotle
is not quoted among the champions of women, but he tenderly loved his
own wife, whom he married in spite of the reverses which had ruined her
family. Her life was brief, but he left orders that when he died her
remains should be transferred to the tomb which held his own, according
to her last request. This was done long years after her death, though
he had another wife whose virtues he commends, asking his friends to
give her kind attention and provide her with a suitable husband if she
wishes to marry again. These instances among well-known men are worthy
of note, and others might be cited. But the exceptions prove the rule,
and the very fact that it was a matter of comment when a man was in
love with his wife shows that it was rare.


II

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the great Athenians
were without the sympathy and influence of educated women; indeed,
it may be safely said that no great things in art or literature have
ever been done without this inspiration. The ignorance of the Attic
woman had its natural protest, though it did not come from an orthodox
source. Respectability was on the side of servitude. It had a dull
time, but it was decorous, and consoled itself, as it has often done
since, with the reflection that dullness was its natural lot. No doubt
it took pride in its nothingness, and looked with haughty disdain upon
the clever foreign women who were free to do as they chose. Fashion is
imperious, not to say cruel, and even the Chinese lady hobbles along on
her distorted feet with a happy consciousness of distinction that amply
repays her for all her suffering.

But social conventions had small weight with the foreign hetæræ or
companions, who had no legal rights, and no caste to lose. The real
power of women was in their hands. They were intelligent, often
gifted, and the better class had refined and graceful manners, which
the Athenian wives evidently had not. It was said of them that they
were delicate at table, and not like the native women, who “stuffed
their cheeks, and tore off the meat.” They were also noted for wit and
_esprit_, a quality of volatilized intellect that has always had
great social charm. These advanced women of the day, who cast into the
shade their illiterate sisters, monopolized both attention and honors.
Men praised the good women who stayed at home and looked after their
families, but sought the society of clever ones who did neither of
these fine things. With curious inconsistency, they found the culture
which was reprehensible and out of the proper order of nature in their
wives and daughters so charming in other women as to merit the highest
distinction. Poets sang of them, artists immortalized them, statesmen
and philosophers paid court to them.

  ’T is not for nothing that where’er we go
  We find a temple of hetæræ there,
  But nowhere one to any wedded wife,

says the poet.

Unfortunately, talent and the virtues did not always go together, and
it is impossible, at this distance, to determine with any certainty
who were good and who were not. In the conservative circles of Athens,
intelligence itself was a vice in women, and put them under a ban.
They might pray to Athena, and offer incense to her, and embroider her
robes, but it would not do to take this personification of wisdom and
knowledge for a model; indeed, it is not quite clear why so dangerous
a representative of the sex that was thought to have no intellect worth
considering should have been chosen to preside over all the Attic
divinities. There was a time, according to Varro, when it had been
customary for women to take part with men in public councils. In the
early ages they voted to name Athens after Athena, outvoting the men by
one. Poseidon was angry, and the sea overflowed. To appease the god,
the citizens imposed a punishment on their wives. They were to lose
their votes, the children were to receive no more their mother’s name,
and they were no longer called Athenians. Perhaps this is why they were
relegated forever after to ignorance and obscurity. Athena, however,
retained her power, and men still worshiped the gray-eyed goddess in
the abstract, as their fathers had done, doubtless quite content that
the superfluous wisdom of woman should be given a pedestal so high
and remote that it was not likely to cause serious inconvenience in
family relations. But their personal devotion was largely reserved for
Aphrodite, who was more beautiful and facile, if not so wise, and still
less fit to be held up as a worthy example for her sex. The race had
not greatly changed since its men went to their death for the “divine
Helen,” and thought the world well lost for a sight of her radiant
beauty.

The witty Phryne, whose exquisite face and form was made immortal by
Apelles and Praxiteles, was given a statue of gold between two kings
at Delphi. In the cypress-grove at Corinth there was a monument to the
beautiful Lais, who had enriched the city with fine architecture. Lamia
built a splendid portico for the people of Sicyon, and a temple at
Athens was consecrated to her under the name of Aphrodite. One of the
most striking and costly monuments in Greece was also erected there to
Pythionice. The wit and fascination of Glycera brought her the honors
due to a queen. Some of her letters to Menander were preserved, and
they were said to show not only a tender and delicate sentiment, but a
fine intellectual sympathy with her poet lover. No doubt the tributes
offered to the notoriously dissolute women were largely the expression
of a beauty-loving people who cherished “art for art’s sake.”

But there were other women with serious gifts of a high order, who
were far less likely to be honored with temples and statues. Leontium,
the disciple and favorite of Epicurus, wrote a treatise against
Theophrastus that was quoted by Cicero as a model of style. She
had a thoughtful face, and was painted in a meditative attitude by
Theodorus. It matters little whether Diotima was Arcadian priestess
or philosopher; she was the friend of Socrates, the counselor of the
wisest and subtlest of men. It was her high and spiritual conception
of love that he quoted at the famous symposium of Plato, raising the
conversation from a curious blending of unholy passion and metaphysical
subtlety to a region of light. Famous among the disciples of Pythagoras
was Perictione, who attracted the attention of Aristotle by writing
on such grave subjects as “Wisdom” and “The Harmony of Woman.” She
was duly conservative, and accepted the passive position of her
sex, dwelling on their need of a forbearing spirit. Possibly this
amiable attitude accounts in part for the kind consideration of the
philosopher. More advanced and less popular was Hipparchia, the wife
of Crates, an eminent Cynic, who called the statue of Phryne “a votive
offering of the profligacy of Greece.” She recognized virtue as the
supreme end of life, but contended that “virtue is the same in a man
as in a woman.” To Theodorus she said: “What Theodorus is not wrong
in doing, the same thing Hipparchia ought not to be wrong in doing.”
That she was severely attacked goes without saying. Such sentiments
were subversive of the inalienable rights of man, in the code of the
classic world. It was easier and more agreeable to discredit the woman
than to raise their own standards. Themista, the wife of Leon, was a
philosopher, corresponded with Epicurus, and was called by Cicero “a
sort of female Solon.” Lastheneia was a pupil of Plato, and went so far
as to disguise herself in a man’s robes in order to hear him discourse
at the Academy.

Perhaps it is unfair to group these women together. They were of
different shades, and not all contemporary. Some of them were
Athenians. Of most of them we have no knowledge except such as may
be gathered from a few passing words in connection with famous men,
and even this is involved in doubt and contradiction. What were the
attractions of Archaianassa, to whom Plato wrote sonnets, or did she
ever exist outside of the realm of dreams?

  For dear to me Theoris is,

says Sophocles. Did he find in her the talent that inspired his own?
And what was the secret of Archippa’s influence, that he should have
left her his fortune? Or is she, too, a myth? Nor can we divine the
gifts that drew the eloquent Isocrates to Metaneira.

How far the honor accorded to so many of the hetæræ was due to their
talents and how far to their personal fascination, it is difficult to
say. In many cases, beauty was their chief distinction. Some are known
to have been fair and frail; others were apparently of good character
as well as brilliant intellect. A poet of the time speaks of one as

  Pure and on virtue’s strictest model formed.

It would not be quite safe, however, to measure them by our standards.
We may go to the Greeks for art and literature, but not for morals.
Things that we consider criminal, they looked upon as quite natural and
innocent. No doubt, too, many things which we consider so harmless as
to pass unnoted would have been censured by them as violations of all
laws of decorum.


III

There was one woman, however, whose individuality was too strong
to be altogether merged into that of the man with whom her name is
associated. Aspasia stands supreme, after Sappho, as the most brilliant
and lettered woman of classic times. The center of a circle so luminous
that the ages have not greatly dimmed its radiance, she is likely to
live as long as the world cherishes the memory of its greatest men.
She was the prototype of the charming and intellectual women who made
the literary courts of the Renaissance so famous two thousand years
afterward; also of the more familiar ones who shone as leaders of the
powerful salons of France a century or two later. Even to-day the
aspiring woman who dreams of reviving the social triumphs of her sex
recalls the golden days of Athens and wonders what magic drew so many
of the great poets, statesmen, and philosophers of the world from the
groves of the Academy, the colonnades of the Lyceum, the porticos, and
the gymnasia, to pour their treasures of wit and thought at the feet
of the fair Ionian. She may remember, too, that this fascinating woman
was not only the high priestess who presided at the birth of society
as we know it, but was also the first to assert the right of the wife
to be educated, that she might live as the peer and companion of her
husband, not as his slave.

Little is known of the facts of her life. She was the first woman who
came from Miletus, the pleasure-loving city of roses, and song, and
beautiful maidens. Why or how she left her home we are not told, but
there is a vague tradition that her parents were dead and that she went
away with the famous Thargelia, whose vigorous intellect, together with
her wit and beauty, made her a political power in Thessaly and the wife
of one of its kings during the Persian wars, though her personality is
the faintest of shadows to-day. It is supposed that Aspasia was young,
scarcely more than twenty, when she came to Athens, possibly to live
with a relative; but this is only a surmise. As a foreigner, whatever
her rank, she was outside the pale of good society. The high-born
Athenian women looked askance at her, were jealous of her, and said
wicked things about her. To be sure, the all-powerful Pericles took her
to his home and called her his wife, but she was not a citizen like
themselves, and could not lawfully bear his name.

The relation, however, left-handed though it may have been, was
a recognized and permanent one, not less regular perhaps than the
morganatic marriages of royal princes to-day, which make a woman a pure
and legal wife but never a queen. So rare was the devotion of the grave
statesman that it was thought worthy of record, and it was a matter
of gossip that he kissed Aspasia when he went out and when he came
in--clearly a startling innovation among Athenian husbands. Still more
astonishing was the fact that he listened to her counsel and talked
with her on State affairs, which, according to their traditions, no
reputable woman ought to know anything about. Plutarch tells us that
some went so far as to say that he paid court to her on account of her
wisdom and political sagacity. Socrates confesses his own indebtedness
to her in the use of language, and says that she made many great
orators. He thinks it no wonder that Pericles can speak, as he has so
excellent a mistress in the art of rhetoric, one who could even write
his speeches. He was himself so pleased with a funeral oration she had
spoken in his presence, partly from previous thought and partly from
the inspiration of the moment, that he learned it by heart. A friend
to whom he repeated it was amazed that a woman could compose such a
speech, and Socrates added that he might recall many more if he would
not tell. This special address was such a masterpiece of wisdom and
eloquence that Pericles was asked to give it every year. As he was
quite able to write his own, there was no room for jealousy, even if
Aspasia sometimes found in the same field a happy outlet for her fine
talent and living enthusiasm.

All this points to a strong probability that the gifted Milesian came
to Athens to teach rhetoric and other arts of which she was mistress,
as a Frenchwoman might seek her fortune in our own country to-day. But
she had not the same immunity from criticism, as the very fact of her
talents, and her ability to utilize them, sufficed to put her under
a cloud. This, too, might account for the wicked things Aristophanes
said of her, but we cannot imagine that Socrates would have advised
his friends to send their sons to her for training had they been true.
He knew her well, had profited by her instructions, and no one will
charge him with gallantry or the disposition to give undue praise. He
was essentially a truth-seeker. It is a matter of note, too, that the
philosophers had only pleasant words for Aspasia. Her detractors were
the satirists and comic poets; but who ever went to either for justice
or truth? She was clear-sighted, penetrating, and versed not only in
letters but in civil affairs, so it was easy enough to say that she was
the power behind the throne in the Samian and Peloponnesian wars. It is
certain, however, that Pericles was too wise a statesman to be led into
a war by any one against his judgment. It is quite likely that she had
young girls in her house who came to be instructed in the refinements
and amenities of life, as poetic maidens had flocked to Sappho from all
the isles of the sea a century or so before. This again was a fruitful
source of calumny and satire. But it is impossible to read the Attic
comedians without a conviction that they measured every one by their
own moral standards, which were of the lowest and coarsest. A woman
who could discuss philosophy with Socrates and Anaxagoras, art with
Phidias, poetry with Sophocles and Euripides, politics and history with
Thucydides, if occasion offered, and affairs of the gay world with the
young Alcibiades, was not likely to escape the tongue of scandal among
people who numbered the silent subjection of women among their most
sacred traditions.

Of the beauty of Aspasia we are not sure. We hear of her
“honey-colored” or golden hair, of her “small, high-arched foot,” of
her “silvery voice”; but no one of her time has told us that she was
beautiful. There is a bust on which her name is inscribed, but it gives
us no clue to the living charm that held great men captive. Did this
charm lie in the depth and brilliancy of the veiled eyes, in the tender
curve of the half-voluptuous mouth, or in the subtle and variable light
of the soul that forever eludes the chilling marble? Another bust,
supposed to represent her, has a gentler quality, a finer distinction,
with a faint shadow on the thoughtful face. But the secret of her power
did not lie in any rare perfection of form or feature. Perhaps this
secret is always difficult to define. Of her fascinating personality we
are left in no doubt. With the qualities of _esprit_ that belonged
to her race, and all the winning graces of her Ionian culture, she
combined an intellect of firm and substantial fiber. She was noted for
the divining spirit which instinctively recognized the special gifts
of her friends; she had, too, the tact and finesse to make the most of
them. This is _par excellence_ the talent of the social leader.

The salon of Aspasia was the first of which we have any record.
The stars of the Attic world gathered there, men who were in the
advance-guard of Hellenic thought. Reclining on the many-colored
cushions beneath the white pillars, with pictured walls and rare
tapestries and exquisite statues of Greek divinities about them, they
talked of the new temples; of the last word in art; of the triumph
of Sophocles, who had just won the prize of tragedy in the theater
of Dionysus; perhaps of Æschylus, who had gone away broken-hearted;
of happiness, morals, love, and immortality. The thoughtful woman
who sat there radiant in her saffron draperies was not silent. Men
marveled at her eager intellect, her grasp of Athenian possibilities;
they were charmed with her graceful ways and musical speech. We hear
of symposia in other houses, where a Theodota dances, the free wit
of Lais flashes, and conversation glides on a low and vulgar level,
but no wife or daughter ever appears. There is nothing to indicate
that the coterie of Aspasia was otherwise than decorous. Music there
was, as the accomplished Ionian played the cithara with skill and
taste. Wit there must have been, as no company of Athenians was ever
without it. But more was said of its serious side. One of the sons of
Pericles, angry because his father would not give him all the money he
wished, ridiculed this circle of philosophers and the hours they spent
in discussing theories or splitting metaphysical hairs. Their learned
disquisitions were not at all to the taste of the pleasure-loving youth.

A few men had the courage to bring their wives, and Aspasia talked to
them of their duties and the need of cultivating their minds. Nor did
she forget the value of manners and the graces. It is said that she
wrote a book on cosmetics; but all her teaching, so far as we know it,
went to show that personal charm lay not so much in physical beauty as
in the culture of the intellect. The few direct words we have from her
lips prove that, with a clear sense of values, she was the true child
of an age and race that was singularly devoid of sentiment. If she
taught Socrates in some things, she was evidently his pupil in others.
This is curiously illustrated in an anecdote related by Æschines.

“Tell me,” says Aspasia, one day, to the wife of Xenophon, “if your
neighbor had finer gold than you have, whether you would prefer her
gold or your own.”

“I should prefer hers,” was the reply.

“Suppose that she had dresses and ornaments of more value than yours;
would you prefer your own or hers?”

“Hers, to be sure.”

“If she had a better husband than you have, which would you choose?”

The lady blushed and was silent.

The hostess then turned to the husband with like questions.

“I ask you, O Xenophon, whether, if your neighbor had a better horse
than yours, you would prefer your own or his.”

“Certainly his,” was the prompt answer.

“If he had a better farm than yours, which would you wish to own?”

“Beyond doubt, that which is best.”

“Suppose that he had a better wife than you have, would you prefer his
wife?”

The conversation became embarrassing, and Xenophon was discreetly
silent.

The conclusion was obvious. This too logical questioner advised those
present to order their lives so that there should be no more admirable
woman or more excellent man; then each would always prefer the other
to any one else--a piece of wise counsel that might be profitably
considered, in spite of its veiled sophistry. Evidently she did not
regard love as a flame that burns without fuel, though in her notions
of human perfectibility she makes small account of the quality of the
material.

This parlor-talk is a trifle didactic, and lacks the modern elements
of popularity, but it is not in the least the talk of such a woman
as the enemies of Aspasia pictured her. It was clearly a party of
innovation that she led, but it was not a party of corrupt tastes. It
was for her opinions that she suffered. Just what connection moral
turpitude has with a question of the infallibility of any special
form of belief is not apparent, but a charge of impiety cast a darker
shadow upon her reputation. In this case it meant little more than a
doubt as to the divinity of their quarrelsome and immoral gods, which
we should consider highly creditable. She was too rational for a good
orthodox pagan. Or it may have meant simply that her house was a
rendezvous for the free-thinking philosophers. Here, too, was a woman
who took the unheard-of liberty of presiding over her husband’s house,
making it agreeable for his friends and attractive for himself. She
had put dangerous notions into the heads of Athenian wives. Who was
this impertinent foreigner, that she should presume to tell them how
to please their husbands? How, indeed, could they please them better
than to keep a decorous silence in their apartments, and let their
noble lords bring dancing- and talking-women to their banquets, and do
otherwise as they liked? Of course she did not respect the gods, and
deserved death.

And so she was taken before the judges. The dignified and austere
Pericles wept as he pleaded her cause, and his tears won it. She was
released, but Anaxagoras, who was under the same charge of impiety
because he gave natural causes to apparently supernatural things, as
Galileo did centuries later, thought it safe to go away until the
fickle Athenians, the French of the classic world, found something else
to occupy them.

Without the poetic genius or the passionate intensity of Sappho,
Aspasia seems to have had greater breadth and largeness of mind, with
the calm judgment and clear reason that belong to a more sophisticated
age. She was evidently solid as well as brilliant. That she was
eminently tactful and had a great deal of the Greek subtlety counted
for much in her success. She had also the perfect comprehension of
genius, which is an inspiration, and nearly allied to genius itself.
In the vast plans for the glory of Athens, she could hardly have been
ignored by the man who adored her and consulted her on the gravest
matters. It is not as the Omphale to this Hercules, the Hera to this
Zeus, that she has come down to us, save in the jeer of the satirist,
but as the watchful Egeria, who whispered prophetic words of wisdom in
the ears of the great Athenian. Who knows how far the world owes to her
fine insight and critical taste the superb flowering of art which left
an immortal heritage to all the ages?

With the death of Pericles and the dispersion of the distinguished
group that surrounded him, Aspasia disappears. There was no place at
that time for talents like hers, apart from a great man’s protection.
It was rumored that she afterward married a rich but obscure citizen,
whom she raised by her abilities to a high position in the State,
though he did not live long enough to reap much glory from it. The
affair savors of the mythical, and perhaps we are safe in giving it
little credence. We should like to believe that the woman who had been
blessed with the love of a Pericles could never console herself with a
lesser man.

Of versatile gifts and endless shades of temperament, teacher, thinker,
artist in words and life, critic, musician, friend of women and
inspirer of men, but before all things a harmony uniting the grace
and sensibility of her sex with a masculine strength of intellect,
this gracious Ionian stands with Sappho on the pinnacle of Hellenic
culture, each in her own field the highest feminine representative of
an esthetic race. Her mission was not an ethical one, and she cannot
be so judged; but against the censure of the enemies and rivals of
Pericles, as well as of her own, we have abundant evidence that, in her
virtues, as in her talents, she surpassed the standards of her class
and time. It was not of a light-minded woman that Pericles said when
dying: “Athens intrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me.”


IV

It is not unlikely that Aspasia had much to do with modifying the low
views held regarding her sex, and with promoting the discussions of
the philosophers who came after her. Socrates had her example before
him when he said that the talent of women was not at all inferior
to that of men, though they lacked bodily vigor and strength. Plato
accorded them the same talents as men, though less in degree; indeed,
he went so far as to advise a common training, as in Sparta, on the
ground that gifts are diffused equally between the sexes. Aristotle is
less generous to women. He accords them weaker reasoning powers, and
insists upon their silent and passive obedience; but he preaches to
men justice, appreciation, and the sanctity of marriage. On the whole,
from our point of view, he paints a more agreeable society than Plato,
in spite of the greater equality taught by the latter. The satirists
were not slow to take up the matter, and Aristophanes drew a doleful
picture of women donning male attire and going to the agora to reform
the State, while their husbands were left to look after things at home.
They start out with the idea of making everybody happy. There are to be
no rich, no poor, no thefts, no slanders, no miseries. Praxagora pleads
her cause with all the force and energy of the modern woman who seeks
political rights, but she is less poised and goes further. The State is
to be intrusted to women. They are successful managers at home and have
shown their superior gifts of administration. In any case, they could
not do worse than men have done. They end, however, by voting unlimited
communism and outdoing the demagogues. This “woman’s congress” was not
an unqualified success; indeed, it was a disgraceful failure, as it was
intended to be: but it cast into like ridicule the philosophers and
the “strong-minded” women, among whom Aspasia was doubtless included,
as she had convictions, though the conversations in her salon probably
marked the limit of their public expression. Who the others were we do
not know, but it is clear that there was an undercurrent of “divine
discontent” among the women of two thousand years ago. History repeats
itself, and the “woman question” is not a new one, though we have made
immense strides in the rational consideration of it.

It is sufficiently clear that the harmonious development of the
Hellenic women was in proportion to their liberty of action, and the
most fault was found with them where they had the least freedom. If
the spirited women of Sparta had been born in conservative Athens
the world might never have known that they were capable of so much
strength and heroism. The sparks hidden in their cramped souls would
have gone out for lack of air. If the secluded Athenian woman had been
born in Sparta, who can say that she might not have been as clever as
Gorgo, as brave as Cratesiclea, and as independent as Lampito? It is
possible that the genius of Sappho would have been smothered in the
social atmosphere of either place. There is ample evidence that the
intellects of Greek women expanded fast enough when the conventional
pressure was even partly removed. Nor is it true that they retrograded
in morals as they advanced in intelligence. Never did the Attic poets
point their shafts of satire so sharply as against the follies of the
ignorant women who were limited mainly to their apartments, far from
the possible corruption of knowledge or the visible temptation to sin.
The tone of morality was purer even among the free Spartan women, who
had more education but less surveillance.

There is nothing more vitally significant in the lives of Athenian
wives than the extent to which they saw themselves set aside and
neglected for foreigners of more brilliant accomplishments, because
they could not or would not break the bonds of fashionable tradition,
which decreed for them silence and seclusion. In primitive conditions
where no one is educated, the virtues may suffice for companionship;
but at a certain stage of civilization, when men read and think, the
woman who does not is sure to be practically excluded from his society,
though she may still be his housekeeper or the toy of an idle hour.
Athens in the height of her glory presented the strange anomaly of a
respectable illiterate class from which the mothers of future citizens
must be taken, and an educated class without civil rights who could
not marry Athenians. If the latter had any domestic ties at all, they
were forced into morganatic relations. This did not of necessity imply
laxity of character; indeed, it was not always condemned by Athenian
moralists. But no class could long maintain any high standard of virtue
under such conditions. They opened the way for endless license. The gay
and dissolute women from the East flocked to the Hellenic cities, and
in the reckless corruption that followed, wise men trace a potent cause
of Athenian decline.




REVOLT OF THE ROMAN WOMEN

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · The Woman Question an Old One ·
  · Character and Virtues of Early Roman Women ·
  · Instances of Heroism ·
  · Their Disabilities ·
  · Primitive Roman Morals ·
  · Servitude of Wives · Husband Poisoning ·
  · The Oppian Law · The Revolt ·
  · Crabbed Cato · Change in Laws ·
  · Second Revolt · Hortensia ·
  · The Marriage Question ·
  · Intellectual Movement · Cornelia ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

Not long ago an able and eloquent man, well known in political life,
made the astonishing statement that from the time Eve left paradise to
the advent of the modern champion of her sex, “woman was apparently
content with her subordination.” It is not proposed here to enter at
all into the present phases of a subject that has been sufficiently
discussed, or to define the precise point where those who belong to
what our noble friend is pleased to call the “inferior and defective
half of the race” may with reason protest; but as a matter of fact
there has never been so prolonged and serious a commotion on the
much-talked-of “woman question” as in the Rome of two thousand years
ago; and perhaps no recorded moment in the history of women has been
of such far-reaching importance as those struggles for justice and
recognition. With possibly one exception, the points at issue were not
quite the same as in the middle of the nineteenth century, but they
involved many of the same privileges. The contention concerned not only
a woman’s right to a voice in the control of her own property, but to
some consideration in marriage, and a measure of personal liberty. The
laws that grew out of it, in the slow process of years, have served
as a basis for the codes that have more or less governed civilized
countries ever since, and though these have often deviated far from the
liberal standard of the statutes of Justinian, they have never fallen
permanently to the old level. A certain marked resemblance in the
character and growth of the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon woman gives us a
special interest in these controversies and their practical outcome.

That the Roman woman had ample cause for protest could hardly be
questioned to-day, even by the most determined advocate of the old
order of things. The contrast between the character and ability so
conspicuously shown by what she did at various times for her country,
and the humiliation of her position, was too great. In the qualities
of temperament and imagination which, if given free scope, make poets
and artists, the Grecian women surpassed her. But the very traits of
sensibility that constituted their fascination rendered them an easy
prey to the rule of a master. Their chief legacy to posterity was an
esthetic one. The talent of the Roman woman was of another sort. She
was of a masterful type, striking in physique, strong in purpose,
clear in judgment, with the pride and dignity of a race born to rule
the world. It was through her practical wisdom in directing affairs,
together with her courage, foresight, and indomitable will, that she
gained in the end a degree of independence which perhaps we should
hardly call by that name to-day, but which was relative freedom and
left a permanent trace on after-ages.

Of the heroism, political sagacity, and moral value of the Roman women
we have abundant evidence, but it is difficult to catch the outline
of faces seen in half-lights, or of characters revealed only on one
side. They did not write of themselves, or of each other, as women
of later and, to some extent, even of earlier ages have done. There
was no Sappho to sing of their joys and sorrows, or give us a clue to
what they thought and felt. Men who wrote freely of affairs reserved
small space for them, so we know little of their personal life, except
through passing glimpses in a few private letters, and the cynical if
not malicious pictures of satirists. The Romans were not a creative
or imaginative race, and have left us none of the great ideals of
womanhood that grace the pages of the Greek poets. No Helen with her
divine beauty and charm, no Antigone with her strength of sacrifice,
no Andromache with her tender and winning personality, shows us the
manner of woman that lived in the minds and hearts of men. But if the
delicacy of shading which reveals fine complexities of character is
wanting, we have a few records of brave deeds and individual virtues
that are likely to stand as long as the world to show us the quality
that made them possible. Alcestis going serenely to her death for her
weak and selfish lord is not more heroic than Lucretia, who saved the
falling liberties of Rome by plunging the dagger into her heart and
calling upon her husband to avenge her outraged honor. Iphigenia is not
a more touching figure than the innocent Virginia, sacrificed, not to
the gods, but to the brutality of wicked men.

From Tanaquil, whose ambition and prophetic insight led the first
Tarquin to leave his simple Etruscan home for a Roman throne, to the
wise Livia, who shared the power and glory of Augustus for more than
half a century, women came to the front in many a public crisis. Men
gave them no real liberty, but they did give them monuments. These
are mostly gone now, but the records of them are left. Standing by
the Capitol to-day and looking across the crumbling temples, columns,
statues, and arches which have preserved for us the memories of Old
Rome, one is forcibly reminded of the important part played by women in
laying the foundations of the long faded glory that still lends these
ruins so melancholy and picturesque a charm. The strength and courage
of the Roman woman were immortalized in the equestrian statue of the
daring Clœlia, in the Via Sacra, that stretches before us. Not far off
was the temple of Juno, where the festivals of the Matronalia were held
for centuries, in honor of the women who settled the contest between
the Romans and the Sabines. Beyond the walls on the way to the Alban
hills was the temple of Fortuna Muliebris, which bore lasting testimony
to the wisdom and patriotism of Valeria, its first priestess; also to
the gentle but powerful influence of Volumnia and Virgilia, who, led by
her counsels, saved the city from a too ambitious son and brother. It
was the spirit of the divine Egeria that whispered prophetic words of
warning to Numa in the secluded grotto beyond the Aventine. The Sibyls
held the secrets of divination, and in the vaults at our feet they
deposited the books that foretold the destinies of Rome.

There still stands the little temple where the white-robed Vestals
watched over the holy Palladium and took care that the sacred fire
should never go out for eleven hundred years. Men on the heights of
power bowed to the authority of these consecrated women, who occupied
everywhere the place of honor, settled disputes, testified without
oath, and brought pardon even to a criminal who met them by accident.
All this, whether fact or legend, was a tacit recognition of the
judgment, purity, and insight of woman. It might not be desirable to
give her any rights civil or social, but, as a sort of compensation,
men quieted their consciences and gave themselves a comfortable feeling
of being just, if indeed they ever had any doubt on that point, by
offering her more or less theoretical honor, and a shadowy place near
the gods, where they could avail themselves of her wisdom without any
personal inconvenience. In addition to this, they built her a little
temple dedicated to the goddess Viriplaca, Appeaser of Husbands, where
she could solace her bruised heart by confiding her wrongs and sorrows
to this conciliatory divinity, who seems to have been useful mainly as
a repository of tears, though her office was to compose differences. It
has long since vanished, but it speaks volumes for the helplessness of
women that it ever existed at all. It told the tragedy of many a Roman
matron’s life.


II

We have seen a little of what these women were and what they did. What
they suffered can be better gathered from a glance at their position
and the share they had in the liberties they had done so much to
foster and save. Of freedom the Roman woman of earlier times had none
at all, though she was not secluded like her Athenian sisters, and
her place in the family was a better one. Her character was formed,
like that of our Puritan mothers, in times of toil and danger, when
she worked side by side with men for a common end, and, in both, their
strength of purpose and spirit of heroic sacrifice lasted long after
the hard conditions of primitive life had passed. Besides, the natural
talent for administration which shone through all her limitations was
to a certain degree recognized by her husband, and she was often his
counselor, as well as the instructor of his children, even beyond the
seven years prescribed. But all this did not suffice to give her any
liberty of thought or action, and she was to all intents and purposes
a slave, subject to the caprices of a master who might choose to be
kind, though, in case he did not, she had no protection either in law
or custom; and we all know how soon the consciousness of absolute power
warps the sensibilities of even the gentlest. “Created to please and
obey,” says Gibbon, “she was never supposed to have reached the age of
reason and experience.” She was under guardianship all her life, first
of her father, then of her husband, and, at his death, of her nearest
male relative. For centuries she had no right to her own property, no
control of her own person, no choice in marriage, no recourse against
cruelty and oppression. “The husband has absolute power over the wife,”
said the stern old Cato; “it is for him to condemn and punish her for
any shameful act, such as taking wine or violating the moral law.” To
show what was possible in the way of surveillance, we are told that he
was in the habit of kissing her, when he came home, to satisfy himself
that she had not been drinking. One man who found his wife sipping wine
beat her to death; another dismissed his weaker half because she was
seen on the street without a veil; and a daring woman was sent away
because she went to the circus without leave. Any man could spend his
wife’s money, beat her, sell her, give her to some one else when he was
tired of her, even put her to death, “acting as accuser, judge, jury,
and executioner.” In the last case it was better to call her friends
into council, perhaps even necessary, if they were powerful enough to
ask for an explanation; but “a man can do as he likes with his own”
was sufficient to cover any injustice or any crime. Even in the last
days of the Republic, when the laws were greatly modified, the younger
Cato, a man noted for his stoical virtues, gave his wife to his friend
Hortensius, and after his death took her back--with a dowry added. What
she thought of the matter signified little. It does not appear that she
was even consulted. The family was the unit, and the man was the family.

It is fair to say that it was not women alone who suffered from this
peculiar phase of Roman society, as men had little more freedom so long
as their fathers lived; but it fell much more severely on those who
were, in the nature of things, more helpless. The best they could hope
for was a change of masters, which might be for the worse; and who was
to protect them from their irresponsible protectors, even with all the
safeguards supposed to be provided by law? For this evidently put them
where Terence did the philosophers, along with horses and hunting-dogs,
that were owned but not necessarily considered.

It is said, in praise of the morals of Rome during its first centuries,
that there was not a divorce for five hundred years. The exact nature
of this merit is seen more clearly when we find that a woman could
not apply for a divorce, or expect a redress of any wrong, whatever
might befall her; while a man simply sent away his wife, if she did
not please him, without any formalities, and with slight, if any,
penalties. This did not release her from perpetual servitude, though
he was free to follow his inclinations, amenable to no law and no
obligation. It is true, however, that Roman matrons prided themselves
on their dignity. A certain respect was exacted for them, and
familiarity in their presence was a punishable offense. They took every
occasion also to show appreciation of their defenders. They mourned a
year for Brutus, who died in avenging Lucretia’s honor, and did the
same later for his upright colleague.

Many years afterward there was a temple of patrician chastity in which
women assembled for sacred rites, but they found as many causes for
contention as some of our societies do to-day. One noble matron lost
caste by marrying a plebeian, and was excluded. She protested in vain.
Her birth, her spotless fame, her devotion to her husband, counted for
nothing so long as that husband did not belong to the elect. There
was no lack of spirited words, but the matter did not end here. This
slighted Virginia started another association on her own ground, set
apart a chapel in her house, and erected an altar to plebeian chastity.
The standards were to be much higher. She called together the plebeian
ladies, and proposed that they emulate one another in virtue, as men
did in valor. No woman of doubtful honor or twice married was admitted.
Unfortunately, this organization in time opened its doors too wide, and
shared the fate of many others.

On another occasion Quinta Claudia, one of the leading matrons of Rome,
played so conspicuous a part that she won immortality and a statue
of brass. She was at the head of a delegation appointed to meet the
Idæan Mother, who was expected at Terracina, and whose coming was of
great importance, as various strange happenings showed conclusively
that Juno was angry and needed propitiation. It was decided that the
most virtuous man in the State should accompany the matrons, but it
was only after much tribulation that the Senate found one fit to be
intrusted with the office, and this was a young Scipio. Unfortunately,
the vessel containing the image went aground, and the augurs declared
that only a woman of spotless character could dislodge it. Quinta
Claudia was equal to the occasion. She seized the oar, with a prayer to
Cybele; the boat moved from its place as if by magic, and was safely
carried to its destination. The lady’s fair fame, which had been a
little clouded, was forever established by a direct interposition of
the gods. The matrons acquitted themselves with honor and, it is to be
hoped, to the satisfaction of the goddess, who was duly installed in
her temple.

All this goes to prove that the women of twenty centuries ago often
combined in the interest of religion and morals, and were quite capable
of managing public as well as private affairs; also that great value
was attached to the austere virtues. The wise Cato is said to have
erased the name of a Roman from the list of senators because he kissed
his wife in the presence of his daughters--a worse penalty than the
old Blue Laws imposed on the man who kissed his wife on Sunday. It is
a pity that this crabbed censor, of many theoretical virtues and a few
practical ones set in thorns, failed to appreciate the dignity and
decorum of the Roman matron. It was this same rigid Cato who, in spite
of the fact that he “preferred a good husband to a great senator,”
was so inconsistently shocked that a Roman lady should presume to be a
companion to her noble lord. He looked upon a wife as a necessary evil,
and declared that “the lives of men would be less godless if they were
quit of women.”

There was no question of love or inclination in arranging a Roman
marriage. It was simply a contract between citizens, a State affair
intended solely to perpetuate the race in its purity, and to preserve
family and religious traditions. In its best form it was for centuries
restricted to patricians, who alone were privileged to take the mystic
bread together. This constituted a religious marriage, and only this
could give their children pure descent or admission to the highest
functions of the State. There were two lower grades of civil marriage,
but each gave a man supreme control of his wife, without the dignity
of consecration. Whatever cruelty and suffering might result from this
one-sided relation,--and the possibilities were enormous,--a woman was
expected to love the husband chosen by her friends, for himself alone,
and a bridegroom’s presents were limited by custom, so that she might
not be tempted to love him for what he could give her. She must go
out to meet him, submit patiently to any indignities he might offer,
and mourn him in due form when he died. _Her_ death he was not
required to mourn at all. His infidelities she must never see, as any
complaint was likely to meet with a dismissal, and she knew that even
her father would say it served her right for interfering in any way
with a man’s privilege of doing as he liked.

That a woman ever did love her husband under such conditions proves
that her heart was as tender as her capacity for self-sacrifice was
great; also that men were by no means as wicked or tyrannical as they
had the power to be. We know that liberty is not always insured by an
edict, nor does cruelty or injustice invariably follow the lack of a
decree against it. There are many notable instances of the devotion of
Roman women and the affection of Roman men; indeed, it is quite certain
that there was a great deal of happy domestic life. Men naturally
accepted the traditions of a society into which they had been born, and
women did not question them unless their burdens became intolerable,
and even these they considered a part of their destiny, as good women
had done before them--and have done since. But power is a dangerous
gift for the best of us, and without some strong safeguard, moral or
legal, brute force inevitably asserts itself over helplessness. In
modern times a sentiment grown into a tradition has done much toward
tempering the condition of women even under arbitrary rule, though
their own increased intelligence has done more. Sentiment, however, was
not a quality of the average Roman character. Men were masterful and
passionate, eager of power and impatient of contradiction. To offset
this, they often had a strong family feeling and a certain sense of
justice, besides a natural love of peace in the home; but this did not
suffice to curb the violence and cruelty of the wicked, nor to render
the position of the high-spirited wife a possible one. The stuff out
of which Lucretias and Cornelias are made is not the stuff to bear
habitual oppression silently, beyond a certain point.

It was doubtless this oppression that was responsible for a startling
epidemic of husband-poisoning in the fourth century before Christ. The
women who prepared the drugs were betrayed by a maid, and one hundred
and seventy matrons--some of them patricians--were found guilty. The
leaders were forced to take their own poisons, and died with the
calmness of Stoics. Two hundred years afterward there was another
epidemic of the same sort, and many eminent men paid the penalty of
their cruelties with their lives. This mode of redressing wrongs became
too common to be passed to the account of individual crime. It was the
protest of helpless ignorance that had found no other weapon.

About this time, however, the Roman matrons took a more civilized and
rational method of asserting their rights. It was an innovation to
claim any, but they were too proud to accept the hopeless vassalage of
the Athenian woman. Indignant at the inferiority of their condition,
without recourse or refuge against cruelty and injustice, hampered by
needless and petty restrictions, they rebelled at last.


III

One sees little clearly through the mists of two thousand years, and
we know few details of what seems to have been the first concerted
revolt on the part of women. The visible cause was a trivial one, but
it was the proverbial last drop, and served at least to bring dismay
into the councils of men, and afterward, possibly, reflection. The
Roman woman was patriotic and quite ready, at need, to give all and
ask nothing. When money was required to carry on the Punic wars, she
poured out her jewels and personal treasures with lavish generosity;
nor did she murmur when the Oppian law decreed that she must no longer
wear purple or many-colored robes, that her gold ornaments must weigh
no more than half an ounce, and that she must walk if she went out, as
the use of a carriage in the city was a forbidden luxury. These were
small privileges, but they were about all she had, and when the crisis
was past, she asked a repeal of the decree. She met the usual rebuff of
those who seek to regain a lost point. Men saw in such a request only
an “irruption of female emancipators,” dangerous alike to religion and
the State. Cato, the austere, refused a petition which he regarded as
a subversion of order and a rebellion against lawful masters. He said
that the claim of women to any rights or any voice in public affairs
was a proof that men had lost their majesty as well as their authority;
such a thing could not have happened if each one had kept his own wife
in proper subjection. “Our privileges,” he continues, “overpowered at
home by female contumacy, are, even here in the forum, spurned and
trodden under foot”; indeed, he begins to fear that “the whole race
of males may be utterly destroyed by a conspiracy of women.” He rails
at the matrons, who throng the forum, for “running into public and
addressing other women’s husbands.” It “does not concern them what laws
are passed or repealed.” He bewails the “good old days” when women were
forced to obey their fathers, brothers, or husbands. “Now they are so
lost to a sense of decency as to ask favors of other men.” “Women,” he
says, “bear law with impatience.” They long for liberty, which is not
good for them. With all the old restrictions, it is difficult to keep
them within bounds. “The moment they have arrived at equality they will
be our superiors”--a dangerous admission surely. He calls the affair a
sedition, an insurrection, a secession of women.

But the matrons had some able defenders. Lucius Valerius, who had
asked the repeal of this obnoxious law, spoke for them. He objects
to calling a natural request by such hard names, and quotes from
antiquity to prove that it is not a new thing for Roman matrons to come
out in public, as they have often done so in the interest of the State,
and “always to its advantage.” He recalls the various times when they
saved Rome, and refers to the generosity with which they invariably
responded to a call for help. No one objected when they appeared for
the general good; why should they be censured when they asked a favor
for themselves? In reply to the accusation of extravagance, he says:
“When you wear purple on your own robe, why will you not permit your
wife a purple mantle?”... “Will you spend more on your horse than on
your wife?” Then he asks why women who have always been noted for
modesty should lose it now through the repeal of a law that has not
been in existence more than twenty years. One is tempted to quote
at length from these speeches, because they show us how the Romans
discussed certain questions that are familiar to-day. To be sure, it
was only a woman’s privilege of dressing as she chose that they were
considering, but it really involved her right to ask anything which her
lord and master did not freely accord. We hear practically the same
arguments, the same fears, the same special pleadings on both sides, at
each new step in the social advancement of women.

The Roman matrons, however, were not discouraged by criticism. They
flocked to the forum in greater numbers than ever. Women came in from
the towns and villages to aid them. The senators were so astounded
at their audacity that they solemnly implored the gods to reveal the
nature of the omen. They stigmatized the leaders as “androgynes” or
“he-women,” a term of contempt so freely applied in this country,
less than fifty years ago, to those who bravely presented the claims
of their sex to larger consideration, and who, silver-haired and
venerable, are so widely honored to-day. We do not hear that there were
any congresses or conventions, but these Roman ladies held meetings,
went into the streets for votes, and appealed to nobles, officials,
and strangers alike. They sought the tribunes in their houses, and
used all their arts of persuasion. There were fair-minded men then as
now, and the spirited rebels won their cause, though Cato revenged
himself for his defeat by imposing a heavy tax on the dress, ornaments,
and carriages of women. It is said that they put on their gay robes
and jewels at once, and celebrated their victory by dancing in the
legislative halls.

Not far from this time, possibly a little before, a dowry was set
apart for women. But there was a growing jealousy of their increasing
independence, and, a few years later, it was proposed to take away
from them the right of inheritance. It was feared that too much
property might fall into their hands, as had been the case in Sparta;
also, that their taste for elegant living might lead to degeneracy of
manners and morals. The irrepressible Cato again came to the front
and declaimed against the arrogance and tyranny of rich women. After
bringing their husbands a large dowry, he said, they even had the
presumption to retain some of their own money for themselves and ask
payment if they lent it to their masters! Men could not be expected to
tolerate such insufferable insolence on the part of their “reserved
slaves.” And so the decree was passed. But it was more honored in
the breach than in the observance, and became a dead letter, as men
themselves thought it unjust.

How far the gradual change in the laws was due to the efforts of
women and how far to the justice of men, it is not easy to determine;
but the astonished attitude of the latter when they felt that their
time-honored supremacy was in peril shows better than anything else the
real significance of the movement which was precipitated by so slight a
cause. It is quite safe to say that without an emphatic protest there
would have been no thought of justice. Traditions are only broken from
the inside where they press heavily. In this case it was a daring and
unheard-of thing to run against the current of centuries of passive
submission; but “it is the first step that costs.” When the right of
being heard had been once asserted, grave statesmen and jurists took
up the matter and solved it as best they could, with an evident desire
to be just and kind, as they understood it. It could hardly be expected
that half of the human family would voluntarily relinquish the absolute
ownership of the other half, or even believe it to be good for the
other half that they should do so. Men are not so constituted. The
institutions and customs that had come to them from their fathers they
felt bound to pass on, as far as possible, intact. Besides, all vital
changes must be slow, unless they are to be chaotic. But the leaven of
a new intelligence worked surely, if not swiftly.

The masses of the Roman women never passed out of a condition which we
should call subjection, though they did secure at last the use of their
own fortunes, relative freedom in the marriage contract, and a certain
protection against money-hunting and spendthrift husbands. In the
reign of Augustus the wife was given a guaranty for her own property,
and the husband was forbidden to alienate the dowry. The mother was
in a measure freed from oppressive guardianship, which later ceased
altogether. Under Hadrian she was permitted to make a will without
consulting any one, also to inherit from her sons. In many regards the
Romans after the Antonines were more just to women than are most of
the civilized nations of to-day. But these changes were the work of
centuries, and it is possible here to touch only upon a few essential
points.

There was a second revolt more than a hundred years after the first,
when the triumvirs levied on the rich women of Rome a tax which
compelled many of them to sacrifice their jewels. They appealed to
Octavia to use her influence, also to the able mother of Antony, both
of whom favored them; but his wife, the Fulvia of unpleasant fame,
treated them with intolerable rudeness. Again they thronged the forum;
but they had made vast strides in intelligence, and this time the
eloquent daughter of a famous orator was chosen to plead for them. It
was no longer a simple matter of personal injustice, but also a moral
question upon which thoughtful women had distinct opinions and the
ability to express them. Hortensia spoke for peace. “Do not ask us,”
she says, “to contribute to the fratricidal war that is rending the
Republic.” Her appeal for justice recalls a plea so often heard to-day,
in a form that is but slightly altered. “Why should we pay taxes,”
she says, “when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the
statecraft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful
results?... When have taxes ever been imposed on women?” Quintilian
refers to this address of a brilliant matron as worthy to be read for
its excellence, and “not merely as an honor to her sex.”

These spirited and high-born women were sent home, as the others had
been, but the people again came to their aid, and it was found best to
limit the tax to a few who could bear the burden easily.


IV

But the most serious conflict was on the marriage question. The
attitude of the Roman man has been already touched upon--an attitude as
old as the world. In theory, a woman might be as chaste as Lucretia,
as wise as Minerva, as near to divinity as the Vestals; in fact, she
was only the servant of men’s interests or passions, and when she
ceased to be a willing or at least a passive one, the trouble began.
So long as marriage gave a man added dignity and somebody to rule
over, with no special obligations that were likely to be inconvenient,
or that could not be shaken off at will, things went smoothly enough
on his side. But when he had to deal with a being who demanded some
consideration, perhaps some sacrifice, it was another affair. His
privileges were seriously curtailed. If he married wealth, it was quite
possible for the owner to become imperious and exacting, as it was not
so easy to put away a wife when one must return her fortune. “I have
sold my authority for the dowry I have accepted,” says Plautus. As to
marrying from inclination, a man had little more freedom of action
than a maiden, while his father lived. If he was a patrician he must
marry within a limited class, much as he might like to go outside
of it; and so long as this law continued to exist, the penalty for
violating it was too severe to be braved. Besides, there were cares
and restrictions in the marriage relation for pleasure-loving men.
Wives without fortunes might be less exacting, but they were more
expensive, which was worse, since men preferred to spend their money on
themselves--a state of affairs toward which a certain class is rapidly
drifting to-day, if it is not there already. Statesmen began to be
alarmed. “If it were possible to do without wives, great cares would
be spared us,” said Metellus in an address to the Senate; “but since
nature has decreed that we cannot live without a wife, nor comfortably
with one, let us bear the burden manfully, and look to the perpetuity
of the State rather than to our own satisfaction.” It never seems to
have occurred to these consistent descendants of Adam to consider
the burdens of the woman at all. On her side, a rich woman hesitated
to take a master, if she was independent enough to have any choice,
which was rare, and without a dowry she was quite sure of finding a
capricious one, who would not scruple to neglect her. Some guaranties
she must have, and these men did not like to give. So men and women
alike combined against the existing order of things, men for the right
to do precisely as they pleased, women for the right of choice in
husbands and of breaking chains when they became intolerable.

It has often been stated, by moralists over-anxious to make out a
case, that this aversion to marriage, on the part of men, was due to
the laxity of women. Of this I do not find any evidence. It was due
in part to the restrictions already mentioned, and in part to the
increasing luxury which, added to the long habit of absolute power,
led to impatience of any domestic obligations, and a riot of the
senses, as it has always done, before and since. Besides, there were
the brilliant Oriental women who began to flock to Rome, bringing with
them Hellenic tastes, with subtle fascinations that stole away the
hearts of men and threatened a state of affairs similar to that which
existed in Athens. This the spirited Roman women could not tolerate. To
be thrust by strangers into a secondary place was not to be thought of
by these proud patricians, who refused to put themselves in a position
where such neglect was possible. They began to realize that the old
virtues did not suffice to hold men’s wandering fancies. It was very
well to carve on a woman’s tombstone, as a last word of praise, an
epitaph like this: “Gentle in words, graceful in manner; she loved her
husband devotedly; she kept her house, she spun wool.” But what availed
it when this husband left her to the companionship of her duties and
her virtues, while he gave what he called his affections to those who
had fewer virtues and more accomplishments? It was not laxity of
morals, but lack of intelligence and culture, that stood in the way
of the Roman woman in the days when Greek literature, Greek art, and
Greek refinement first came into fashion. That she protested against
traditions which made it superfluous, if not dangerous, to cultivate
her intellect, may fairly be assumed. But she had a powerful ally. On
this point the Romans showed far more wisdom than the Greeks. When they
saw their own daughters set aside for these fascinating rivals, they
began to educate them.

Just when the movement toward things of the intellect began among Roman
women, it is difficult to determine with any exactness. It was after
the Eastern wars and probably about the time of the first revolt. It
had not been long since men began to catch the spirit of Greek culture.
For five hundred years after the foundation of Rome there was not a
book written, nor even a poem or a song. As soon as men began to study
and think, women were disposed to do the same thing. If they could not
well fight, they had the ability to learn. The pretensions of sex were
not emphasized, but individual attainment was not without recognition.
We begin to find women who were noted not only for strength, wisdom,
and administrative ability, but for literary taste and culture. The
austere virtues of Cornelia, who lived in the second century before
our era, are among the familiar facts of history. She has been often
quoted as the supreme exemplar of the crowning grace of womanhood, and
we know that she was honored at her death with a statue dedicated to
the “Mother of the Gracchi.” Of her refinement, knowledge, and love of
letters, less has been said, but it was largely because of these that
she was able to train great sons. Cicero, who pronounced her letters
among the purest specimens of style extant in his time, dwells upon the
fact that these sons were educated in the purity and elegance of their
mother’s language. Quintilian says that the “mother, whose learned
letters have come down to posterity, contributed greatly to their
eloquence.” Her passion for Hellenic poetry and philosophy was well
known. It was a part of her heritage from her father, the illustrious
Scipio, a great general with the tastes and abilities of a great
scholar. Cato found fault with him and said he must be brought down
to republican equality. This fiery radical and economist, who hated
luxury, reviled women who had opinions, preached morals which he did
not possess, whipped his slaves if anything was lost or spoiled, sold
them at auction when they were sick or old, and put them to death if
they did not please him,--this censor who was so generally disagreeable
that when he died a wit said, “Pluto dreaded to receive him because
he was always ready to bite,”--could not tolerate a man of refinement
who shaved every day and patronized Greek learning, whatever glory
he might reflect on his country. We do not know what he said about
Cornelia, but it may be imagined, as he was the determined adversary of
feminine culture.

The woman who brought up the Gracchi, and was so proud to show these
“jewels” to her finery-loving friends, was no pedant, but in her last
desolate years, when she was left alone with all her tragical memories,
her hospitable home at Misenum was a center for learned Greeks and
men of intellectual distinction. She was a woman of great force of
character, and the composure with which she bore her misfortune, and
talked of the deeds and sufferings of her sons, was sometimes thought
to show a lack of sensibility. Plutarch, with his usual insight and
cordial appreciation of women, said it indicated rather a lack of
understanding on the part of the critics that they did not know the
value of “a noble mind and liberal education” in supporting their
possessor under sorrow and calamity. This heroic mother of heroic
sons, who “refused Ptolemy and a crown,” was the first Roman matron of
distinguished intellectual attainments of whom we have any definite
knowledge, and the finest feminine representative of her age. Within
the next century there were many others more or less prominent in
social life.

With the advance in education many of the obstacles to marriage were
removed, and the dangers that had lurked in the ignorance of Athenian
women were averted. But the problem never ceased to be a troublesome
one. With the increase of wealth men grew more self-indulgent, and less
inclined to incur obligations of any sort. The despair of Augustus had
its humorous side. He exhausted his wit in devising means to induce men
to marry. In vain he gave honor and freedom to the married, exacted
fresh penalties from bachelors, who were forbidden to receive bequests,
and made laws against immorality. Fathers had precedence everywhere--in
affairs, at the theater, in public offices. “For less rewards than
these thousands would lose their lives,” he said. “Can they not tempt a
Roman citizen to marry a wife?” Some who wished the privileges without
the troubles compromised the matter by entering into formal contracts
with children four or five years of age. Others took a wife for a year
to comply with the law, and then dismissed her.

It is not the purpose here to pursue in detail this phase of Roman
life, nor to trace the slow and obscure changes in the laws that
followed the revolt of women from ages of oppression. This brief
outline suffices to show that the women of two thousand years ago were
far from accepting abject subservience without a protest; that they had
the spirit and intelligence to combine in their own defense; that they
won the privilege of virtually the same education which was given to
men, and so much consideration that the Romans of the third and fourth
centuries were more just to a woman’s rights of property than were the
Americans in the first half of the nineteenth. Happily better counsels
prevail here to-day; but it is a commentary on the instability of human
affairs that, even on the higher plane of morals and intelligence from
which we started, the battle had to be fought over again.




THE “NEW WOMAN” OF OLD ROME

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Wickedness of Imperial Days ·
  · The Reverse of the Picture ·
  · Parallel between the Romans and Ourselves ·
  · Their “New Woman” ·
  · Her Political Wisdom · Her Relative Independence ·
  · Literature in the Golden Age ·
  · Horace · Ovid ·
  · Tributes to Cultivated Women in Letters of Cicero ·
  · Literary Circles · Opinions of Satirists ·
  · Reaction on Manners ·
  · Tributes in Letters of Pliny and Seneca ·
  · Glimpses of Family Life in Correspondence of Marcus Aurelius
   and Fronto ·
  · Public Honors to Women ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

A great deal has been said of the Roman women of imperial days. Much
of it is not to their credit, but the bad are apt to be more striking
figures than the good, and to overshadow them in a long perspective.
The world likes to put its saints in a special category, and worship
them from afar. It seems fitting that they should sing hymns and pray
for suffering humanity in a cloistral seclusion, but they are rarely
quoted as representative of their age. On the other hand, it holds
up its brilliant or high-placed sinners as examples to be shunned;
but it talks about them and lifts them on a pedestal to show us how
wicked they are, until in the course of centuries they come to be
looked upon as representing the women of their time, when in fact they
represent only its worst type. Two thousand years hence, no doubt a
few conspicuous women noted to-day for brilliancy, beauty, or special
gifts, rather than for flawless character, will stand out in more
luminous colors than the great mass of refined and cultivated ones
who have dazzled their generation less and graced it more. Possibly
they may even furnish a text on which some strenuous moralist of
the fortieth century will expatiate, with illustrations from our
big-lettered journals, to show the corruption of our manners and the
dangers that lie in the cultivation of feminine intellect! And yet we
know that the moral standards of the world were never so high as in
these days when the influence of women in the mass is greater than ever
before.

Of the colossal wickedness of imperial Rome there is no question, and
sinners were not rare among women. But the Julias and Messalinas did
not represent the average tone of Roman society, any more than the too
numerous examples of vice in high places reflect the average morality
of the great cities of to-day. A careful study of those times reveals,
beneath the surface of the life most conspicuous for its brilliancy
and its vices, a type of womanhood as strong and heroic as we find in
primitive days, with the added wisdom, culture, and helpfulness which
had grown out of the freer development of the intellect.

The Romans of the last century of the Republic had, like ourselves,
their corrupt politicians, their struggles for office, their
demagogues, and their wars for liberty--meaning their own. They had
also their plutocrats, their parvenus, their love of glittering
splendor, their rage for culture, their patrons of art, who brought the
masterpieces over the seas, and, not least, their “new woman.” I use
the phrase in its best, not in its extreme, sense; the exaggeration
of a good type is always a bad one. This last product of a growing
civilization did not claim political rights or industrial privileges,
as we understand them; she did not write books of any note, or seek
university honors in cap and gown; nor did she combine in world-wide
organizations to better herself and other people: but she did a great
many things in similar directions, that were quite as new and vital
to the world in which she lived. If she did not say much about the
higher education, she was beginning to have a good deal of the best
that was known. The example of the learned as well as virtuous and
womanly Cornelia had not been lost. It was no longer sufficient to
say, in the language of an old epitaph, that a woman was “good and
beautiful, an indefatigable spinner, pious, reserved, chaste, and a
good housekeeper.” The conservative matron still prided herself on
these qualities which had so long constituted the glory of her sex, but
it was decreed that she must have something more. In the new order of
things, she shared in the cultivation of the intellect, and ignorance
had lost its place among the virtues. Girls were educated with boys,
read the same books, and studied the same subjects. To keep pace with
the age, a woman must be familiar with Greek as well as Roman letters.
She must also know how to sing and dance. “This helps them to find
husbands,” says Statius, who had little money to give his daughter, but
felt sure she could marry well because she was a “cultivated woman.”
The line of co-education, however, was drawn at singing and dancing,
where it began with us. In earlier times these accomplishments and
the knowledge of various languages were among the attractions of the
courtezan.

The new Roman woman did not live her life apart from men, any more
than did the women of the old régime. Probably it never occurred to
her that it would be either pleasant or desirable to do so. She simply
wished to be considered as a peer and companion. Nor does she seem to
have been aggressive in public affairs. If she busied herself with
them, it was in counsels with men, and her influence was mainly an
indirect one. She had freed herself from some of the worst features of
an irresponsible masculine rule, but she was still in leading-strings,
though the strings were longer and gave her a little more freedom of
movement. There were many women of the newer generation who added to
the simple virtues of the home the larger interests of the citizen,
and conspicuous political wisdom as well as great intelligence. We
first hear of them in councils of State through the letters of Cicero,
who gossiped so agreeably, and at times so critically, of passing
events. He speaks of the companions and advisers he found with Brutus
at Antium, among whom were the heroic Portia, wife of the misguided
leader, his sister Tertulla, and his mother Servilia, a woman of high
attainments and masterful character, who had been the lifelong friend
of Cæsar. The influence of this able and accomplished matron over the
great statesman did not wane with her beauty, as it lasted to the
end, though she could not save him from the fatal blow dealt by her
son. The tongue of scandal did not spare her, but at this time she
was old and past the suspicion of seeking to gain her purposes by the
arts of coquetry. Cicero feared her power, as her force of intellect
and masculine judgment had great weight in the discussions of these
self-styled patriots. She even went so far as to engage to have
certain important changes made in a decree of the Senate, which, for
a woman, was going very far indeed. One is often struck with the fact
that so many great Romans chose their women friends for qualities of
intellect and character rather than for youth or beauty. When ambition
is uppermost it has a keen eye for those who can minister to it, and a
woman’s talents, so lightly considered before, begin to have their due
appreciation. To a friend who said to Cæsar that certain things were
not very easy for a woman to do, he simply replied: “Semiramis ruled
Assyria, and the Amazons conquered Asia.” It is known that he paid
great deference to his mother, the wise and stately Aurelia, to whose
careful training he owed so much. Later, women publicly recommended
candidates for important offices. Seneca acknowledged that he owed the
questorship to his aunt, who was one of the most modest and reserved as
well as intelligent of matrons. “They govern our houses, the tribunals,
the armies,” said a censor to the Senate. If their counsels were not
always for the best,--and even men are not infallible,--they were
usually in the interest of good morals and good government.

Nor was it uncommon for the Roman woman to plead her own cause in the
forum. There was a senator’s wife who appeared often in the courts,
and her name, Afrania, was applied to those who followed her example.
The only speech that has come down to us was the celebrated plea of
Hortensia for her own sex. This was much praised, not only by great
men of that day but in after times. It showed breadth of intellect
and a firm grasp of affairs. The privilege of speaking in the forum
was withdrawn on account of the violence of a certain Calphurnia--an
incident that might suggest a little wholesome moderation to some
of our own councils and too zealous reformers. There were also
sacerdotal honors open to aspiring women. The Flaminica Augustalis
offered sacrifices for the people on city altars, and the services of
various divinities were always in the charge of women. There was no
systematized philanthropy such as we have to-day, but we hear of much
private beneficence. Women founded schools for girls and institutions
for orphans. They built porticos and temples, erected monuments and
established libraries; indeed, their gifts were often recognized by
statues in their honor. We hear of societies of women who discuss
city affairs and consider rewards to be conferred on magistrates of
conspicuous merit. The names of others appear in inscriptions on tombs;
but their mission is not clear. There were also women who practised
medicine; this, however, may not have implied great knowledge in an age
when science, as we understand it, was unknown.


II

But a clearer idea of the representative Roman woman on her
intellectual side, and of the estimation in which she was held, is
gathered through her relation to the world of letters, and in the
glimpses of a sympathetic family life which we find in the private
correspondence of some great men.

In the golden age of Augustus politics had ceased to be profitable or
even safe, and the educated classes turned to literature for occupation
and amusement, when they did not turn to something worse. It was the
fashion to patronize letters, and every idler prided himself on writing
elegant verses. In the words of Horace:

  Now the light people bend to other aims;
  A lust of scribbling every breast inflames;
  Our youth, our senators, with bays are crowned,
  And rhymes eternal as our feasts go round.

Even Augustus wrote bad epigrams and a worse tragedy. Public libraries
were numerous,--there were twenty-nine,--and busts of great masters
were placed beside their works. Authors were petted and flattered, and
they flattered their patrons in turn. These were the days when Horace
lived at his ease on his Sabine farm, gently satirizing the follies
and vices that were preparing the decay of this pleasure-loving world,
posing a little perhaps, and taking a lofty tone toward the courtly
Mæcenas and his powerful master, who honored the brilliant poet and
were glad to let him do as he liked. “Do you know that I am angry with
you for not addressing to me one of your epistles?” wrote Augustus.
“Are you afraid that posterity will reproach you for being my friend?
If you are so proud as to scorn my friendship, that is no reason why
I should lightly esteem yours in return.” The epistle came, but the
little gray-haired man, who saw so clearly and wrote so wisely, went
on his way serenely among his own hills, stretching himself lazily
on the grass by some ruined temple or running stream, and sending
pleasant though sometimes caustic words to the friends he would not
take the trouble to go and see unless peremptorily summoned. Such was
the relation between the ruler of the world and those who conferred
distinction on his reign. Ovid discoursed upon love, and became a lion,
until he forgot to confine himself to theory, and went a step too far
in practice. Then he was sent away from his honored place among the
gilded youth who basked in the smiles of an emperor’s granddaughter,
to meditate on the vanity of life and the uncertainty of fame, by the
desolate shores of the Euxine.

In this blending of literature and fashion women had a prominent
place, though not as writers. No woman of the educated class could
write for money, and talent of that sort, even if she had it, would
have brought her little consideration. Whatever she may have done in
that direction was like foam on the crest of a wave. It vanished with
the moment. At a later period there were a few who wrote poetry of
which a trace is left. Balbilla, who was taken to Egypt in the train
of Hadrian and the good Empress Sabina, went out to hear the song with
which Memnon greeted his mother Aurora at dawn, and scratched some
verses on the statue in honor of her visit. Possibly they were only
the flattering trifles of a clever courtier, but they were graven on
stone and outlasted many better things. Of wider fame was Sulpicia,
the wife of a noted man in the reign of Domitian, who wrote a poem on
“Conjugal Love,” also a satire on an edict banishing the philosophers,
fragments of which still exist. She had the old Roman spirit, but was
less conciliatory than the eloquent Hortensia of an earlier day, who
was tired of the brutalities of war. She mourned the degeneracy of the
age, calling for “reverses that will awaken patriotism, yes, reverses
to make Rome strong again, to rouse her from the soft and enervating
languor of a fatal peace.” The able but wicked Agrippina, of tragical
memory, wrote the story of her life which gave to Tacitus many facts
and points for his “Annals.” Doubtless there were other things that
went the way of the passing epigrams and verses of Augustus and his
elegant courtiers. Twenty centuries hence who will ever hear of the
thousands, yes, millions of more or less clever essays and poems
written by men and women to-day and multiplied indefinitely by a facile
press? What will the future antiquarian who searches the pages of a
nineteenth-century anthology know of us, save that every man and woman
wrote, but nothing lived, except perhaps a volume or two from the work
of a few poets, essayists, and historians, who can be counted on one’s
fingers? Oh, yes; there are the novelists whose value is measured by
figures and dollars, who multiply as the locusts do. Fine as we may
think them to-day, how many of their books will survive the sifting of
time? They may be piled in old libraries, but who will take the trouble
to dive into a mass that literally has no bottom? Will the world forget
that women did anything worth preserving? Yet our women are educated;
some of them are scholars, most of them are intelligent; many write
well, and a few surpassingly well.

But if women did not write, they used their influence to find a hearing
for those who did. Of the learning of the time they had their share,
though it may not have been very profound. Ovid tells us that “there
are learned fair, a very limited number; another set are not learned,
but they wish to be so.” He writes of a gay world which is not too
decorous or too serious, but in the category of a woman’s attractions
he mentions as necessary a knowledge of the great poets, both Greek
and Latin, among whom he modestly counts himself. Women of fashion had
poets or philosophers to read or talk to them, even at their toilets,
while the maids brushed their hair. They discussed Plato and Aristotle
as we do Browning and economics. They dabbled in the mysteries of
Isis and Osiris as we do in theosophy and Buddhism; speculated on
Christianity as we do on lesser faiths, and began to doubt their
falling gods. Philosophy was “the religion of polite society,” but
women have always been drawn toward a faith that appeals to the
emotions. Then there were the recitations and public readings, in which
they were actors as well as listeners.

We have glimpses of the more seriously intellectual side of the Roman
woman in the private letters of Cicero, which show us also the pleasant
family life that gives us the best test of its value and sincerity.
The brilliant orator seems to have had a special liking for able and
accomplished matrons. In his youth he sought their society in order to
polish and perfect his style. He speaks in special praise of Lælia,
the wife of Scævola with whom he studied law, also of her daughter
and granddaughters--all of whom excelled in conversation of a high
order; he refers often to Cærellia, a woman of learning and talent,
with whom he corresponded for many years; and he says that Caius Curio
owes his great fame as an orator to the conversations in his mother’s
house. Many other women he mentions whose attainments in literature,
philosophy, and eloquence did honor to their sex and placed them
on a level with the great men of their time. This was in the late
days of the Republic, when genuine talent was not yet swamped in the
pretensions of mediocrity.

The praise of his daughter Tullia is always on his lips. She was
versed in polite letters, “the best and most learned of women,” and
he valued her companionship beyond anything in life. It seems that she
was unfortunate in husbands, and they gave him a good deal of trouble;
but when she died the light went out of his world. His letters are full
of tears, and he plans the most magnificent of monuments. He would
deify her, and draw from all writers, Greek and Latin, to transmit to
posterity her perfections and his own boundless love. But precious
time was lost in dreams of the impossible, and swift fate overtook
him before any of them crystallized. Instead of the splendid temple
that was to last forever, only a few crumbling stones of his villa on
the lonely heights of Tusculum are left to-day to recall the young,
beautiful, and gifted woman in whose “sweet conversation” the great
statesman could “drop all his cares and troubles.” Here she looked for
the last time across the Campagna upon the shining array of marbles,
columns, and palaces that were the pride of Rome in its glory, and
went away from it all, leaving behind her a fast vanishing name, the
fragrance of a fresh young life, and a desolate heart.

But if these charming pictures reveal a sympathetic side of the
intimate life of the new age, they give us also the shadows that were
creeping over it. The great man, who said so many fine things and did
so many weak ones, has always a tender message for the little Attica,
the daughter of his friend, but he fears the fortune-hunters, and
objects to a husband proposed for her, because he has paid court to a
rich woman who is old and has been several times married. For his own
wife, Terentia, he has less consideration. She is not facile enough,
and finds too much fault with his way of doing things. Perhaps she
presses her influence too far, and fails to pay proper deference to
his authority. To be sure, he calls her “my light, my darling,” says
she is in his thoughts night and day, praises her ability, and trusts
her judgment until his affairs begin to go wrong. All this, however,
does not prevent his sending her away after thirty years of devotion,
and marrying his lovely young ward, who is rich enough to pay his
debts. The latter is divorced in turn because she does not sufficiently
mourn the loss of his idolized daughter, and his closing years are
burdened with the care of restoring her dowry, which draws from him
many a bitter complaint. There is a strange note of irony in the tone
of the much-married, much-sinning, and perfidious Antony, who publicly
censures the “Father of his Country” for repudiating a wife with whom
he has grown old. But the high-spirited Terentia solaced herself with
his friend Sallust, and married one or two others after his death.
Evidently no hearts were broken, as she lived some years beyond a
century.

In the literary circles of a later generation we hear of noble ladies
of serious tastes meeting to converse about the poets. Juvenal
and Martial ridiculed them as Molière did the Précieuses centuries
afterward. “I hate a woman who never violates the rules of grammar,
and quotes verses I never knew,” says Juvenal. “A husband should have
the privilege of committing a solecism.” He objects to being bored at
supper with impertinent questions about Homer and Vergil, or misplaced
sympathy with the unhappy Dido, who, no doubt, ought to have taken her
desertion philosophically instead of making it so unpleasant for her
hero lover. He even suggests that women blessed with literary tastes
should put on the tunics of the bolder sex and do various mannish
things which are sometimes recommended by the satirists of to-day. It
is with a sigh of regret that he recalls the “good old days of poverty
and morals,” when it was written on a woman’s tombstone that she “spun
wool and looked after her house.” “A good wife is rarer than a white
crow,” is his amiable conclusion.

All this goes to prove that in the first century women passed through
the same ordeal of criticism as they have in the nineteenth. The
satirists of to-day are no kinder to the Dante and Browning clubs, and
mourn equally over the “good old days” when they were in no danger of
a rival or a critic at the breakfast-table. Doubtless that age had
its little pretensions and affectations, as every other great age has
had--not excepting our own. There were women who talked platitudes
about things of which they knew nothing, and men who did the same thing
or worse on other lines laughed at them just as men do now at similar
follies, though often without the talent of a Juvenal or a Martial,
and, it is fair to say, without their incredible coarseness. The coming
of women into literature has made the latter practically impossible.

But even Martial had his better moments. He speaks of a young girl
who has the eloquence of Plato, the austerity of the philosophers,
and writes verses worthy of a chaste Sappho. One might imagine that
his enthusiasm had run away with his prejudices, if Martial could be
supposed to have had enthusiasms, as he warmly congratulates the friend
who is to marry this prodigy. Possibly he preferred her as the wife of
some one else, as he stipulates for himself, on another occasion, a
wife who is “not too learned.”

There was a great deal to censure in this dilettante world. The
fashionable life of Rome had drifted into hopeless corruption, in spite
of the efforts of good men and women to stem the tide. Long before, the
Senate had ordered a temple to Venus Verticordia, the Venus that turns
hearts to virtue; but the new goddess was not eminently successful
among the votaries of pleasure, who preferred to offer incense to
the more beautiful and less respectable one. The old patricians had
their faults and sins, but the new moneyed aristocracy was a great
deal worse, as the _noblesse oblige_ had ceased to exist, and
there were no moral ideals to take the place of it. “First let us seek
for fortune,” says the satirist; “virtue is of no importance. Hail
to wealth!” “His Majesty Gold” was as powerful as he is to-day, and
his worship was coarser. “He says silly things, but money serves for
intellect,” remarks a wit of the time. Literature declined with morals.
“These are only stores and shops, these schools in which wisdom is sold
and supplied like goods,” said one who mourned over the degeneracy of
the times. That women should suffer with the rest was inevitable. They
are not faultless; indeed, they are very simply human. If they are
usually found in the front ranks of great moral movements, they are not
always able to stand individually against the resistless tide which we
call the spirit of the age.


III

The changes which a century or so had wrought in the position and
education of women reacted on manners. The pagan virtues were
essentially masculine ones, and even women had always been more noted
for courage and stoical heroism than for the softer Christian qualities
which are called feminine. In the old days they had been subservient
because they were virtually slaves. For the same reason they were
expected to be blindly obedient. Their servile attitude toward men was
a duty; tradition gave it the force of a sentiment. Nor did the fact
that many Roman women had risen above their conditions, and shown great
dignity and strength, alter this general relation. It was not in their
nature, however, to be timid, or tender, or clinging. Sensibility was
a weakness and a trait of inferior classes. Love was a passion, or a
duty, or a habit, but not a sentiment. The new woman of the golden
age of Augustus was strong, dignified, self-poised, and commanding.
The fashionable set accented this tone and became haughty, arrogant,
and masculine in manner. It looked upon the conservative matron who
was disposed to preserve old traditions as antiquated. The change, in
its various gradations, was quite similar to that which passed over
Anglo-Saxon women in the century that has just closed. We also have our
golden mean of poise and dignity, as represented by the conservative
who are yet of the new age in culture, breadth, and intelligence;
we, too, have a few of the emancipated who like to demonstrate their
new-found independence by a defiance of social conventions; then we
have our ultra-fashionable parvenus who fancy arrogance a badge of
position, and pronounced manners a sign of modish distinction. Of
these classes, the first and the last were the most defined in Roman
society, but it is mainly in the last that we find the degeneracy of
morals which made a large section of it infamous.

Of the women of the conservative ruling classes we have pleasant
glimpses in the letters of Pliny, which picture an intelligent and
sympathetic family life that constantly recalls our own. His wife,
Calphurnia, sets his verses to music and sings them, greatly to his
surprise and delight. She has a taste for books and commits his
compositions to memory. He says she has an excellent understanding,
consummate prudence, and an affection for her husband that attests the
purity of her heart. It is not his person but his character that she
loves, so he is assured of lasting harmony. When absent, he entreats
her to write every day, even twice a day. If he has only his wife and
a few friends at his summer villa, he has some author to read to them,
and afterward music or an interlude. Then he walks with his family
and talks of literature. The charming little domestic traits, so
unconsciously revealed in these letters, are as creditable to himself
as to the wife who adores him. There is a touch of sentiment that we
rarely find in pagan life.

These letters throw many side-lights on other households. Pliny has
a word of profound sympathy for the sorrow of a friend who lived
thirty-nine cloudless years with a wife whose virtues would have
made her “an ornament even in former times,” and was left desolate
by her loss. We find a touching allusion to the fortitude of Fannia,
who has the qualities of a “heroine of ancient story.” She was
banished for supplying materials for her husband’s “Life.” “Pleasing
in conversation, polite in address, venerable in demeanor,” she is
quoted as a model for wives. She was a worthy granddaughter of the
famous Arria, who refused to survive her husband when he was condemned
to death, and gave him courage by first plunging the dagger into her
own breast, saying, “Pætus, it does not hurt,” as she drew it out and
passed it to him. Another of his friends lost a daughter of fourteen,
who, he says, combined the wisdom of age and the discretion of a matron
with the sprightliness of youth and the sweetness of virgin modesty.
She was devoted to reading and study, caring little for amusements.
Pompeius Saturninus read him some letters from his wife which were so
fine that he thought he was listening to Plautus and Terence in prose;
indeed, he suspects the husband of writing them himself, in spite of
his denial, though he considers him deserving of equal praise, whether
he wrote them or trained her genius to such a degree of perfection. It
is worthy of note that, while these letters show us the intelligent
companionship between husbands and wives which had taken the place
of the old relations of superior and inferior, as well as the fine
attainments of many women and the honor in which they were held, they
also pay the highest tribute to virtues that still shone brightly in an
age when it had become a fashion to speak of them as things of the past.

“Morals are gone,” said Seneca. “Evil triumphs. All virtue, all
justice, is disappearing. That is what was exclaimed in our fathers’
days, what they are repeating to-day, and what will be the cry of our
children.” If we may credit the history of that age, there was reason
enough for the cry, but there was another side to the dark picture.
This critical philosopher did not spare the vices and follies of
the great ladies of his time, and any tribute of his to the talents
and virtues of women is of value, as it is not likely to incline to
the side of flattery. In his letters of consolation to his mother,
Helvia, he mentions the fact that she is “learned in the principles
of all the sciences,” in spite of the old-fashioned notions of his
father, who “feared letters as a means of corruption for women.” More
liberal himself, he exhorts her to return to them as “a source of
safety, consolation, and joy.” To Marcia he writes in a tone that is
appreciative, though a trifle patronizing: “Who dares say that nature
in creating woman has gifted her less generously, or restricted for her
the sphere of the virtues? Her moral strength, do not doubt it, equals
ours.... Habit will render her, like us, capable of great efforts,
as of great griefs.” An incident of his own family life is worth
repeating, as it shows a pleasant and not uncommon side of domestic
relations at a period when Roman morals were at the worst. His wife was
solicitous for his health. “As my life depends upon hers,” he says, “I
shall follow her advice, because in doing so I am caring for her. Can
anything be more agreeable than to feel that in loving your wife you
are loving yourself?” The devotion on her side was more heroic, if less
reasonable. When he was politely advised to take himself to some other
world where he would be less in the way of his civil superiors, she
insisted upon dying with him. He tried in vain to dissuade her, but,
finding her persistent, he gave his consent, saying: “Let the fortitude
of so courageous an end be alike in both of us, but let there be more
in your death to win fame.” Her veins were opened with his; but Nero
did not need to get rid of her just then, so the attendants quickly
bound her wounds and saved her. This devoted Paulina had only the
satisfaction of sacrificing her color, as she was noted for her extreme
pallor to the end of her life.

We have other letters from a thinker and seer of the next century,
which give us as sympathetic an insight into the private life of
the Antonines as Cicero and Pliny give us into that of their own
contemporaries in the two preceding ones. Nowhere does Marcus Aurelius
appear in so human a light as in this correspondence with Fronto, the
distinguished master and philosopher, which came to us at a late day
out of the silence of ages. It reveals one of the rare friendships
of the world, and incidentally throws a pleasant light on the family
relations of the wisest and simplest of emperors.

History has cast a cloud over the wives of the Antonines--whether
justly or not we can never know. In an age of great vices, even virtue
is not safe, and the scandal-lover has always delighted to tear fair
names. But the testimony of a husband surely ought to count for more
than the flippant gossip of the idle voluptuary or the witty sneer of
the satirist. Referring to the elder Faustina, Antoninus Pius says: “I
would rather spend my life with her in Gyaros than live without her in
a palace.” As this desolate abode of the exile was supposed to be very
uncomfortable, the compliment was not a light one. It is not in such
terms that men write of faithless wives, nor is it in the nature of
such women to wear the white veil of innocence for a series of years
in the presence of those nearest to them. There was a temple built in
her honor which still keeps guard as a church over the Roman forum, a
permanent monument to the devotion of this tender husband. A charitable
institution for girls, that bore her name, has long since gone the way
of all perishable things.

In the letters of Aurelius, which cover a wide range of thought and
experience, there are constant references to his family. It is
difficult to believe the younger Faustina as wicked as men have painted
her. One of the most beautiful women of her time, as brilliant and
sweet as she was beautiful, the idol of her household, the object of
affectionate care on the part of her husband, this gracious woman has
been a mystery to successive generations. What if the lightly spoken
word of a malicious rival, or a dark insinuation from some impertinent
admirer whose vanity she may have wounded, kindled a fire which the
ages cannot put out? Such things have been, and may be again. “I thank
the gods for giving me a wife so kind, so tender to her children, so
simple,” said the philosopher, who kept his soul at a serene altitude
above things of sense; but he broke down when his children suffered or
died, and mourned this much-loved wife as a saint, giving her divine
honors. He also put a gold statue of her in the seat she had been in
the habit of occupying at the theater, and had her represented in a
bas-relief as borne to heaven, while he gazed after her with longing
eyes.

Fronto writes that the mother of Marcus Aurelius laughingly
declares herself jealous of him. He asks tenderly after the ailing
_domnula_, who is the idol of her father’s heart. Of his own
daughter Gratia he has much to tell, playing gracefully with her name.
He chats pleasantly of sleep, of health, of dreams, of the art of
speech, in which he was himself a master. But this is varied with
words of affection, with tender references to the children, their
pretty voices and their winning ways. He had given the little prince
a silver trumpet on his birthday, and draws a charming picture of the
group about their mother, the beautiful Faustina. But he loses his own
admirable and much-loved wife; then his grandson dies; and his heart is
torn with grief, as with sympathy for the sorrow of the gentle Gratia.
Joy falls away from the spent life of the white-haired philosopher. He
finds nothing to bind him longer to a sad world. His silvery periods
have lost their charm. He lays down his pen, and his last words are
full of pathos. He writes to an emperor who, like himself, has lived on
the heights of a calm reason. The blows of fate have struck them both,
and they weep, like others.

I have quoted more or less from the letters of four thoughtful and
clear-sighted men, because their personal details and general tone go
farther than any assertion to prove the pure and intelligent character
of a large section of Roman womanhood and its refining influence in the
family. They are a flattering tribute, not only to the women of the
new age, but to the fine qualities of a corresponding circle of men.
The life revealed by these distinguished observers who have talked so
familiarly of its every-day side is certainly remote from that which
has been dwelt upon by satirists and historians, but we cannot doubt
that it represents the domestic relations of an important class. It is
fair to presume that the women of culture and virtue who came within
their horizon were not exceptions.


IV

Of the increasing influence of Roman matrons, a strong proof may be
found in the public honors they began to receive. Many of these were
of a conveniently perfunctory sort, and meant little more than a
tribute to the vanity of a family which demanded respect for its name;
but they had their significance. It became a fashion to give women a
semblance of power that was not always genuine, and to compensate them
for any sorrow or neglect they might have had in this world with a fine
position and a grand title, which cost little, in the next. Julius
Cæsar was far from a model husband, but he celebrated the virtues
of his young wife Cornelia, whom he loved devotedly, in an eloquent
oration over her remains. He also pronounced a public eulogy for his
aunt Julia, wife of Marius who came in for a large share of the glory.
Augustus, a boy of twelve, gave a funeral oration over his grandmother.
He also honored his sister, the amiable Octavia, with a eulogy and a
national funeral, the first one ever given to a woman who was not a
sovereign. If there have been others I do not recall them. He decreed
divine honors to Livia, but he died before her, and her ungrateful
son forbade them, though the more appreciative Senate proclaimed her
“Mother of her Country,” and voted a funeral arch in her memory. Later,
this Roman Juno was placed in the ranks of the gods by her grand-nephew
Claudius, who was not wholly disinterested, as he did not wish to owe
his descent to a simple mortal. The emptiness of some of these numerous
honors was aptly illustrated by Nero, who killed his young but not
immaculate wife, Poppæa, with a kick, then, like a dutiful husband,
pronounced her eulogy and made her a diva! Many of them, however, were
paid to worth and to great services for the State.

“I feel that I am becoming a god,” said Vespasian, when dying, with a
skeptical smile at his approaching apotheosis. Women are more trustful.
Perhaps they took their divine honors more seriously, and found in them
a sort of consolation, as when, in later ages, they looked wistfully
from the sorrows of life toward a saint’s crown.

We have seen the Roman women of primitive times reach great heights of
courage and patriotism; we have seen them rise from virtual bondage to
a measure of freedom and consideration. In the days of Scipio and the
Gracchi they had won the privileges of education, and a certain respect
for their intellectual abilities, as well as for their virtues. We find
them later not only noted for fine domestic qualities, but patrons
of literature, and helpful companions of great husbands and sons. The
last days of the Republic saw many strong and capable women, and we
begin to trace their influence in large affairs. The instances were not
numerous, perhaps, but individual talent asserted itself. With the new
intelligence they moved rapidly, as our women have done, and apparently
without aggression. But it was not until the privileges of rank offset
in a degree the disabilities of sex that the Roman woman reached the
height of her power and her honors. No doubt she sometimes schemed
for a throne in the interest of a husband or a son, but she often
proved herself eminently qualified for her own part in its duties and
responsibilities. If her talents and energies sometimes went wrong in
the lurid and immoral world in which she found herself, they were more
frequently exerted for the general good.




SOME FAMOUS WOMEN OF IMPERIAL ROME

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Three Types of Roman Womanhood ·
  · Livia · Octavia · Julia ·
  · Corruption of the Age not Due to Women ·
  · Persecution of Virtue · Multiplication of Divorces ·
  · Good Women in Public Life ·
  · Plotina · Julia Domna · Julia Mæsa ·
  · Soæmias · Mamæa ·
  · The Old Type Gives Place to the New ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

If one wishes to gain a clear notion of the dominant traits of the
Roman woman of twenty centuries ago, there is no better way than to
walk observantly through the old galleries where so many of them still
live in marble, side by side with the men who made or marred their
fortunes. There, graven in stone, one sees at a glance the strength,
the passion, the pride, the ambition, that left its stamp upon an age.
There too is the weakness, the sensuality, the arrogance, the cruelty,
that ruined a life and brought misery upon a generation. Most of these
women belonged to a class that held a conspicuous place in the public
view by virtue of its position. Some were wicked, a few were great, and
many were good though they rarely get the credit of it. To make them
live again is not easy, perhaps not possible, but we gather from many a
record curious and interesting facts regarding them. Their surroundings
are measurably familiar to us. We know how they looked, how they
dressed their hair, how they wore their robes, how they carried
themselves. With here and there a trait, an act, a passing word, an
anecdote, in their relations to men and society, we may compose a
picture which, if not exact, will give a fair idea of the manner of
women they were.

There were three matrons in the family of the first emperor who may be
taken as representatives of three dominant types of Roman womanhood.
In Livia, we have the woman of affairs; in Octavia, the woman of the
family; in Julia, the woman of the gay world. The first had before all
things the genius of administration which was the special gift of her
race; the second united the sweetest family affections with loyalty and
moral strength; the last was of the numerous and dangerous class that
made of society an occupation, and of pleasure an end.

Of the long line of capable women who had so strong and so lasting
an influence in Roman affair--sometimes for good and sometimes for
ill--the first and the best known was Livia. Standing as she did in the
blazing light that shines upon a throne, we see her on many sides--if
not always clearly, at least in bold outlines. That she had beauty,
tact, fascination, and a gracious address, doubtless counted for
much in her youth; but it was through her wise judgment, far-seeing
intellect, well-poised character, and keen practical sense of values
that this remarkable woman shared the fortunes and held the affection
of Augustus for more than half a century, and had a voice in the
destinies of Rome for seventy years. She has been given the purity
of Diana, the benevolence of Ceres, the wisdom and craft of Minerva.
There are many busts and statues of her, but they vary, and it is not
possible to know which best represents the real woman. We see her in
marble as Ceres--a commanding figure, with strength in every line. The
passion that lies in the delicate, half-sensuous curve of the lips is
overshadowed by the will that shows itself in the firm poise of the
head, and the intellect that sits in the ample forehead and looks out
of the serene eyes. “In features Venus, in manner Juno,” says Ovid,
who had ample reason to know the power of this discreet matron. She
frowned upon the license of the gay set to which he belonged, and it is
not unlikely that she had something to do with the hopeless exile that
pressed so heavily on his last years. But he declares that “she has
raised her head above all vices,” dwelling upon her strength and the
fact that “with the power to injure, she has injured no one.”

Whatever the faults of Livia may have been, no shadow rested on her
womanly honor. Probably she had no choice when, at eighteen, the
emperor took her from her husband--who found it best to submit amiably
where the caprices of his sovereign were concerned--and made her his
wife, this complaisant but elderly soldier of culture and influence
acting as her father or guardian in the ceremony, and dying soon after.
If he bore any ill will it does not appear, as he left his two children
to the care of his successor. At the same time, Augustus sent away his
own wife, the too jealous and exacting mother of Julia, on the day of
his daughter’s birth. The only failing of Scribonia seems to have been
that she was imperious and did not bear her wrongs with sufficient
equanimity.

This new union lasted fifty-two years, and the last recorded words of
the husband were, “Livia, farewell, and do not forget our love.” To
some one who asked her how she retained her influence so long, she
replied: “That comes from my moderation and my honesty. I have done
with joy all that he wished, without trying to meddle with his affairs
or showing the least jealousy as to his infidelities, which I never
seemed to see.” As a recipe for the management of husbands the last
might be open to grave objection, from a woman’s point of view, but it
was the undisputed privilege of Roman men, indeed of all men in early
times,--to say nothing of later ones,--to be made comfortable under any
circumstances; and they made no pretense to morality. As to meddling,
Livia evidently did it as though she did it not, as it was well known
that she tempered the harshness of her husband and modified many of his
stern decrees.

Perhaps a better explanation of his devotion might have been found in
the rare union of beauty and intelligence with the domestic virtues
which he took so much pleasure in extolling. In the waning of her
personal charms, she took care not to lose the attractions of a
versatile intellect and agreeable manners, also to sheathe in velvet
the delicate, closely welded chains of daily habit. She knew how to
submit and she knew how to rule. Since life is always a series of
compromises, perhaps its finest art lies just here. Maintaining the
traditions of her sex, she wove and made her husband’s clothes. As
she had six hundred or more attendants to fold her own garments and
minister to her comfort, it is not likely that these domestic duties
weighed very heavily. Doubtless a little supervision sufficed for a
great deal of credit. A well-managed household does not imply doing
things one’s self so much as the knowledge and ability to put the
machinery in running order; and Livia was before all things executive,
which has much more to do with brains than with virtues.

Like her husband, or because of him, she hated luxury and ostentation
in her daily life. Her house was small and simple, but decorated with
taste. The pleasures of sense had little weight with her; indeed,
there was a trace of asceticism in her character and in her way
of living. She had various theories which we call fads. These are
specially noticeable in an epicurean age, when a fortune was spent on a
dinner. She limited herself to a diet of fruits and vegetables, drank
a certain wine that suited the health better than the palate, and had
great faith in the virtues of cold water. Augustus was cured of a grave
malady by cold baths, but rumor said that the young Marcellus died of
them. Just why Livia was blamed is not clear, as the treatment was
prescribed by Musa, the great physician; but it was new, and she had
made it a fashion.

That she had many lovable traits is shown not only by the lifelong
devotion of her husband, but in the adoring affection of those who
served her. In recent years a large columbarium has been found which
she consecrated to the ashes of her numerous household, each of whom
had his little urn with a fitting inscription. She used her large
fortune generously, helped the persecuted, established a school for
poor but well-born children, and did a great many charitable things.
It may be true that she was cruel to her enemies, but she was loyal to
her friends and untiring in their interests. Wisely holding the threads
of a large and diverse patronage, she kept herself in touch with the
intelligence of the new age, and was inspired by a broad and catholic
public spirit. She is said to have built and endowed the Temple of
Concord, also a portico rich in ancient paintings, which bore her
name. If she was at home at the wheel or loom and looking after the
personal comfort of her husband, she was equally so in the coteries
of the learned and in the councils of State. She was called cold, but
there were slumbering depths of feeling in that strong soul which few
had fathomed. When her son Drusus died, it is said that only the tender
interference of her husband prevented her from starving herself to
death in the violence of her grief. But she quickly regained her poise,
and went about her duties public and private with no outward sign of
the sorrow that had come to her like a bolt out of a clear sky. She had
much of the fortitude of the Stoics in the days when philosophy was the
fashionable religion. But she went to the wise and learned Arius for
help and consolation, as women of later ages have gone to a spiritual
adviser. Seneca holds her up as a model of strength and well-regulated
sensibility. He dwells upon her heroic qualities and contrasts her
favorably with the more emotional Octavia, who mourned her life away
over the death of her son and other domestic misfortunes.

There was another and less sympathetic side to her character. Without
imagination, and little touched with sentiment, her life seems to
have been guided by a calm reason which was always at the service of
a towering ambition--a trait which, sooner or later, is sure to make
the gentlest man or woman hard and cruel toward any one who stands in
its way. This ambition was her master passion, and in its direction
lay her faults. To her judgment and discrimination was added the
craft of a diplomatist. Her grandson Caligula called her a “Ulysses
in petticoats.” That she had any hand in the singular falling away,
one after another, of her husband’s direct heirs, or that she ever
passed the point where intrigue becomes crime, is the purest surmise.
She had too many enemies in his family, who feared and envied her, to
escape calumny; but though many dark rumors were in the air, nothing
was ever proved. One youth was ill and died in Gaul, another in the
far East. It is too much to suppose that she could safely have helped
them out of the world at that distance, even had she wished to do so.
That she schemed long and successfully to raise her son Tiberius to the
throne is certain. That he repaid her with a great deal of ingratitude
is equally so. Perhaps he could not forget that it was her ambition
which compelled him to send away his much-loved wife, Vipsania,--whom
he could never meet afterward without tears,--to marry the already
notorious Julia, for whom he had a distinct aversion. But no one then
stopped to consider sensibilities. If Livia was sometimes hard and
cruel, she lived in an age when people who did many kind and generous
things had no hesitation in walking over a rival, crushing an enemy, or
even courteously suggesting to a friend who became inconvenient that
it would be wise for him to take himself out of the world. The man of
to-day is content with crushing rivals and ruining enemies in the name
of high-sounding virtues, but he has grown humane, and lets them live.
The time when fierce ambitions drove innocent victims out of life is
gone by. But we can judge people only by the standards of their own
day, and there is much evidence that Livia surpassed those of her time
in justice and compassion.

Fortune certainly favored the aspiring empress. Her gentle
sister-in-law, Octavia, died in good time for her ends. The brilliant
Julia, who won hearts and stood in her way, plunged recklessly to
her own ruin, taking with her into a hopeless exile the wronged but
troublesome Scribonia. Of this step-daughter’s sons, two were dead
in a far country, and the remaining one was chained for his vices to
a desolate rock in the sea. Of her daughters, one followed in the
footsteps and the fate of her unfortunate mother; the other was the
first Agrippina, a proud, imperious woman with her mother’s beauty
and her father’s inflexible will and courage. This granddaughter of
Augustus, so noted for her virtues, her talents, and her sorrows, had
followed her husband’s fortunes with wifely devotion, commanded the
adoring soldiers in his absence, and returned heartbroken, with his
ashes, to stir up Rome against his supposed murderer, whose wife,
one of Livia’s friends, was implicated. Sure of the justice of her
cause and the sympathy of the people, she defied the cruel Tiberius
and the cool Livia,--who was bent upon saving her possibly innocent
favorites,--to be finally sent to starve on the rocky islet where
her erring mother had expiated her follies and her vices. She was a
tragical figure, this spirited and haughty Agrippina with the face
and air of a Minerva and the fiery spirit of Mars, who paid so heavy
a penalty for her virtue and her loyalty. It is said that Livia
interceded for her, though without avail; also that she supported the
second hapless Julia until her death. Whether this was a stroke of
diplomacy, or the impulse of a pitying heart, we cannot know.

The center of a hostile group, it is clear that Livia’s rôle was
a difficult one, and the skill with which she disentangled these
conflicting interests is the best proof of her insight and worldly
tact. She had the instinct of leadership which divines men, women, and
possibilities, and is swift to bend circumstances to its own ends. If
she had her full share of troubles and chagrins, she hid them within
her heart, kept her own counsel in perilous crises, and pursued her way
with the calmness of a strong soul. By a singular fatality, every human
barrier was swept from her path, some by fate and their own misdoings,
some by more kindly nature, and some by intrigues, the mysteries of
which we cannot fathom. In the end she dominated friends and enemies
alike.

But, in spite of her success, the last of her eighty-eight years were
burdened with griefs. Her heart was wounded in the tenderest point by
the son for whom she had toiled and schemed; her pride was humiliated,
and her hopes were dashed. That she played the sovereign and became
capricious and exacting, was perhaps in the nature of things. No
one was ever more flattered and honored by an admiring people. The
Senate paid court to her, her receptions were officially announced,
her signature was attached to decrees, she was attended by lictors
when she went out, and had an altar on which her name was adored. She
had a conspicuous place among the white-robed vestals and was made
a priestess of Augustus. When she was ill the world mourned; when
she recovered there were fêtes and votive offerings. “A woman in all
things more comparable to the gods than to men, who knew how to use her
power so as to turn away peril and advance the most deserving,” said
one of her contemporaries. She remained to the end a stately figure
among women who have held the reality of power without its titles, not
through the arts of the coquette, but through tact, wisdom, foresight,
and intellectual force. With less temperament and esthetic quality, she
recalls Aspasia in her vigor, her mental grasp, and her power to hold
the affection of a great man in an age when such love seems to have
been rare. Perhaps we find a closer resemblance in Mme. de Maintenon,
who combined her strength, her cold reason, and her political sagacity
with a finer modern culture. It may be that the latter used her power
less wisely, but she was a sadder woman. She reached the goal of her
ambition only after the loss of her illusions, if she ever had them,
and the task of catering to the caprices of a spoiled monarch was too
much for her. The records of her life reveal too surely the tragedy
of a soul; she lacked the stoical endurance to suffer and make no
sign. Livia apparently never ceased to love the husband of her youth,
and they worked in sympathy. With this firm foundation of happiness,
all things were possible. One can point to no mistakes that were made
through her counsels, and their weight is shown in the letters of
Augustus himself. Of her wisdom and moderation, no better evidence
is needed than the unparalleled cruelties of her son as soon as her
restraining influence was gone.

We have able and gifted women to-day who are companions or mothers of
great rulers, but I can recall no one not a reigning queen who has a
like influence or has received equal honors. Have women of masterful
character lost the subtle art of fascination to make it available, or
are modern rulers smaller men, who fear a rival? With us, women of
this type find their place as presidents of charitable associations
or powerful clubs, or leaders of a conservative society. Sometimes
they are better known as wives and helpers of men with political
aspirations. But we rarely hear of them in the latter rôle, as they are
usually lost in a glory which they often make but do not visibly share.


II

In striking contrast to the many-sided Livia is the less dominating
but more sympathetic Octavia, who lives through her virtues and her
sufferings rather than her talents. This much-loved sister of Augustus
represents the conservative element of the new age, with its amiable
weaknesses and time-honored graces. The idol of her brother, who,
nevertheless, did not hesitate to sacrifice her to his own interests
and ambitions, she was the victim of lifelong misfortune. She was said
to be more beautiful than her rival, Cleopatra. If her likeness in
marble can be trusted, she had not the air of command that one sees in
so many statues of Roman women. There is more of sensibility in the
poise of the delicately shaped head, with its broad, low forehead. In
the drooping corners of the full, tender mouth lies the sorrow of years
fallen into a settled melancholy. But there is no lack of strength
in the face, which shows also a quality of clear sense and practical
judgment. She was noted for dignity, reserve that verged upon coldness,
and great simplicity of manner. Her reputation was without a cloud.
It was the wish of her brother to take her from her first husband and
marry her to Pompey, in order to cement an alliance, but this proposal
she absolutely refused.

After the death of Marcellus she was given, for reasons of State, to
the cowardly and perfidious Antony, the Senate even setting aside a
law that required a woman to wait ten months before remarriage. It
was thought that her beauty, with her graces of mind and character,
might win him from his follies--sad illusion, and source of many
tragedies. She composed grave differences and used her influence for
peace. When she returned from Athens, where she spent the first years
of her marriage and was greatly loved for her gentle qualities and her
fortitude in sorrow, she entreated her brother to forego his warlike
purposes. “The eyes of the world are necessarily turned on one who is
the wife of Antony and the sister of Cæsar,” she said; “and should
these chiefs of the empire, misled by hasty counsels, involve the whole
in war, whatever the event, it will be unhappy for me.” She gained
concessions from each, and averted the immediate trouble.

But this conciliating spirit did not prevent the fickle Antony from
breaking her heart, as he had that of the fiery and ambitious Fulvia.
The strongest proof of her sweetness of temper and greatness of soul
may be found in the fact that she brought up the children of Fulvia
with her own, also the children of Cleopatra, after the latter’s death.

The worst fault ascribed to Octavia was aiding in the divorce of her
own innocent daughter from Agrippa, the stern old soldier who was
chosen by Augustus as a desirable husband for his only child, the young
and widowed Julia. Whatever ambitions she may have had were crushed
by the death of her youthful son. Naturally she did not love the
intriguing sister-in-law, who ruled all about her in a way that was
none the less sure because it was quiet. It is even possible that she
was not unwilling to do what came in her path to circumvent the schemes
of Livia for her own family. “She detested all mothers,” says Seneca,
“and, above all, Livia,” who had domestic joys which she had not. But
Seneca may not have been quite just, as he preferred women of a strong,
heroic type, and this mother of sensibilities so acute that she fainted
when Vergil read his eulogy of Marcellus in her presence, was not
much to his liking. It is more probable, however, that resistance was
useless. Where the emperor decreed, she had only to obey. Once, indeed,
she had shown her loyalty and her strength by refusing a like proposal
in her own case, but the marriage of Julia was vital as a matter of
State, and it is not likely that Augustus would have sacrificed a
thing upon which he had set his heart, to the happiness of any woman
whatever. Perhaps, too, she shared the common belief that private
inclination must never stand in the way of public benefit. It was the
_noblesse oblige_ of good rulers.

Octavia no doubt had her little foibles, though it is not at all
certain that this step was due to one of them; but she did not forget
the duties of her position. She had wide fame as a loyal, charitable,
self-sacrificing, and virtuous woman. In the spirit of the new age,
she patronized talent, and gave a public library to the portico which
Augustus had built in her honor, filling it with valuable paintings of
classical subjects. In the failure of her hopes and the loss of her
illusions, she still devoted herself to the children of Antony as well
as her own, and interested herself in arranging suitable marriages
for them. But these things failed to bring consolation to a bruised
heart, or serenity in the troubles that had fallen upon her. She shut
herself from the world after her last humiliations, and died of her
griefs at fifty-four, revered and idolized by the Roman people, who
resented her wrongs as much as they pitied her sufferings. But the son
she never ceased to mourn had been in his tomb many a year, and the
fickle husband who deserted her had ended his career in disgrace long
before. She did not live to see the downfall of Julia, the death of
her august brother, or the final triumph of Livia. She was spared, too,
the misfortunes that befell some of the children of her love and care.

The details of Octavia’s life are few and meager. Fate gave her a
prominent part to play on the world’s stage, and she played it well,
but with an evident longing to fall back upon her affections. She was
never a woman of initiative, but she was clearly one of moral force,
framed to temper the friction of more powerful individualities, but to
be herself crushed in their collisions. She stands for the purest and
most gracious type of Roman womanhood. Many were stronger, many were
more brilliant, but few left a memory so fragrant or so sweet.


III

There was another woman in the household of Augustus, who represented
the new age on its worst and most dangerous side. In Julia we have the
woman who lived to amuse herself, and left a name which has become
a synonym for the appalling corruption of Roman society. No one was
placed so high, no one fell so low; and no one has been so often quoted
to “point a moral or adorn a tale.” But it has often been the wrong
moral and the wrong tale. Bred austerely for a throne, versed in all
the culture of her time, this brilliant, haughty, impetuous daughter
of the emperor led the fast set at Rome for a few years, dazzled the
world with her wit and her toilets, shocked it with her escapades, only
to sink at last from her lofty pedestal to untold depths of infamy and
a living tomb.

Given, a woman with the sensual, dominating inheritance of the Cæsars
and the pride of a new race that knows no law but its own will,
without the pride of character which serves always as a balance-wheel
to the passions; imagine her a widow at seventeen, and married again,
with no choice, to a plain but distinguished soldier, nearly thrice
her age, whose lack of patrician birth humiliated her, and whose
_bourgeois_ habits were not to her liking; surround her with
idle and conscienceless men who make love a pursuit and the arts of
flattery a study--and we have already the elements of a tragedy. This
hard-headed husband wearied her; his ways were foreign to her; his
world of interest was not hers. Even the public spirit which led him
to give so many fine temples and works of art to the city that honored
him annoyed her. She had the tastes of a dilettante, but she believed
firmly in the divine right of emperors and emperors’ daughters to
command all things for themselves.

Nor did this petted child like any better the provincial notions of
her old-fashioned father. It did not suit her to sew and spin with her
stepmother, whose staid decorum irritated her. She belonged to the
pleasure-loving set of an age in which luxury was uppermost and vice
was a fine art. Fatal hour in any age when fashion laughs at morals and
glories in the _cachet_ of would-be elegant sin! “If my father
forgets that he is Cæsar, I who am his daughter have the right to
remember it,” said Julia, by way of comment on his democratic ways.
One day at the theater he noticed the contrast between the dignified
Livia, simply attired, but surrounded by grave statesmen and men of
distinction, and the gaily dressed Julia with her train of gilded,
dissolute youth. After his usual fashion of writing little notes when
he had anything to say, he sent the latter a line of reproof. “Do not
blame my young friends,” was her ready answer; “they will grow old
with me.” On another occasion, after he had found fault with her showy
appearance, she presented herself the next day in a plain and modest
costume. To his compliment on the becoming change, she replied: “To-day
I am dressed for my father; yesterday it was for my husband.” The
subtle satire in this remark was only apparent to those who knew that
she dressed for all the world rather than for either.

She was gifted, witty, and cultured, we are told; but to be lettered
in the age of the Cæsars did not necessarily mean learning or serious
tastes. One must dabble a little in philosophy, read the Hellenic
poets, patronize famous Roman writers, and be able to talk of the
Greek artists who were designing temples and flooding the imperial
city with sculpture of various grades. It was even possible to have a
long-haired philosopher to dress the intellect, as the maid dressed
the person--the one a slave like the other. But all this might end
in little more than the trifling of the dilettante, and was quite
consistent with very bad morals--as it has always been and is to-day.
To discourse of Ovid’s “Art of Love” was agreeable enough, and not
mentally exacting. To be sure, the poet did not bring his admirers
into very respectable society; indeed, we should think it not only
altogether vulgar, but altogether base. But it appealed to the tastes
of these spoiled darlings of fortune who had nothing else to do but
amuse themselves--it did not matter how, so long as due regard was
paid to the so-called elegancies. From love, as the Romans understood
it, to unlimited license was but a step. They did not live in the
“beyond” of refined sentiment. They mixed very little intellect or
imagination with their passions, though they put a certain art into
the stimulants of their sensations. When Catullus wished to add a last
touch of seriousness to what he called his emotions, he said that he
loved Lesbia “not merely as men commonly loved a mistress, but as a
father loves his sons and his sons-in-law.” There was little romance
in this epicurean life, in spite of a great deal of simple family
affection outside of it, which these perfumed sybarites looked upon
as _bourgeois_. Splendor and not too decorous pleasure were
all-sufficient. Anything else they would have laughed at as moonshine.
“When Queen Money gave a dowry,” said Horace, with his inimitable
satire, “she gave beauty, nobility, friends, and fidelity.” With the
exception of Horace and Vergil, who had already grown too moral for the
highest fashion, Roman poetry was incredibly coarse and demoralizing;
but this was the literary food of the reckless and dashing group that
gravitated from the palace on the Palatine to Baiæ, the Newport of the
Roman world, rushing from one novelty to another, from one excess to a
deeper and more highly spiced one, until its rapid course was run.

Of this society Julia was the center, the life, and the inspiration.
The days were past when the stern father put a man of high lineage
peremptorily in his place for presuming to address her in the beautiful
city by the sea. The complaisant husband, absorbed in affairs, no
doubt thought it best to let her go her own way, but he died possibly
unsuspecting. Again the still youthful widow was married in the
interest of the State and of Livia--to Livia’s son. The brooding,
gloomy student was equally far from filling the heart of the graceful
woman who was overflowing with the joy of life, and intoxicated with a
sense of power that knows no law. Livia may have been faulty enough,
but she was above the degradation of the senses. In Julia the virtues
of the Roman matron seem to have been lost. When her conduct came to
the knowledge of her inflexible father, he was as bitter as he had
been tender. Her maid hung herself, and Augustus only said: “I would
rather be the father of Phœbe than of Julia.” Of the youth entangled
with her, some were exiled and some took themselves out of a world
that was no longer possible for them. Among the latter was the clever,
fascinating, but dissolute son of Antony, who had been carefully reared
by Octavia and befriended by the emperor, only to repay their kindness
by striking both in the tenderest point. But Julia, the beautiful,
brilliant, flattered queen of society, was sent away from all her
pleasures, her luxuries, her gay companions, her matchless position, to
languish for fifteen years in a desolate exile, with no friend but the
mother who shared with her the bare necessaries of a squalid existence.
No wine, no luxury, no fine clothes, no men-servants without special
restrictions and surveillance. A rock for a home, the sea and the sky
for companions, and not even hope for consolation. And she was little
past thirty-five! Once she was removed to a stronghold of Calabria,
with a larger guard and no added comforts, but a little less severity.
Many times the Roman people, who had loved her buoyant spirit and
winning personality, begged her inexorable father to forgive her. “I
wish you all had such daughters and such wives,” was his only reply.
She died shortly after her father, to lie, unsung and forgotten, far
from her kindred in an unknown grave. Not a word is left to tell us the
details of that long tragedy. Her daughter Julia inherited her vices
and suffered a like fate.


IV

It is needless to recall here the notorious women who followed in the
footsteps of Julia, and added to all her sins a cruelty which she had
not. The world is familiar enough with the crimes of Messalina, the
second Agrippina, Poppæa, and others whose names have become a by-word
and a reproach to womanhood. Men, and sometimes women, gravely tell
us that these moral monsters are a measure of Roman standards, and
a logical result of the culture of the feminine intellect. That two
things exist at the same time does not prove that one is the result of
the other. The facts in this case, indeed, prove quite the contrary.
It would be idle to say that the weaker half of the human family hold
a monopoly of the virtues, or that it is in the nature of things for
them to pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal of a corrupt age whose
supreme end lies in pleasures of sense. But even in Rome at its worst
there was a great deal of pure family life, and its conservation rested
with women. I have quoted elsewhere from the private letters of
distinguished Romans who have given us pleasant glimpses of refined,
accomplished, and learned women, as free from the taint of moral laxity
as our own; and this when men made no claims to morality themselves. To
the great body of Roman women a spotless virtue was among their most
cherished traditions. So far from finding their increased intelligence
a cause of the decline in morals, it is a fact that those of the
highest character and ability constantly suffered indignity and wrong,
because their presence was a restraint upon their unscrupulous masters.
Long domination had fostered the egotism of men to such an extent that
they could not brook opposition of any sort, and it was the ignorant
and flexible who bent the most easily to their will, even when it led
them to the last extreme of moral subservience. Only a fearless courage
and a strong conviction could venture to take high ground against the
fashionable sins of men in power. It is always more or less true that
when a dominant class lowers its moral standards, it likes to ostracize
those who even tacitly reflect upon it.

Examples of this in Roman life are so numerous that two thousand
years have not sufficed to hide them all. Of women in high places who
suffered death or banishment for their virtues, the list is a long
one. Caligula decreed the same honors to his grandmother, the pure and
high-minded Antonia, which had been given to Livia. But when this
dignified matron, worthy daughter of the gentle Octavia, presumed to
reprove him for his vices, he starved her to death. Vitellius banished
his mother, Sextilia, a woman of admirable character, because she wept
at his elevation to the throne. This was a reproach which he could not
brook, and, failing to break her heart by his cruelties, he took her
life, or made it so intolerable that she was forced to end it herself.
It was impossible for a good woman to stay in the palace, and the
Empress Galeria begged permission to retire to a modest dwelling on the
Aventine. Domitian ordered a vestal, charged with scandalous acts which
were denied and not proved, to be buried alive; but he consistently
marked virtue for persecution, hesitated at no crime, and declared
a woman to be “a natural slave, with man for her divinely appointed
master.” Carrying this to its logical conclusion, he made the Palatine
unsafe for any woman. That the great heart of Roman womanhood was on
the side of loyalty and virtue, and looked upon conjugal infidelity
as a sin to be frowned upon even in men, is shown by their attitude
toward Nero when he sent away his young, lovely, and innocent wife,
Octavia, to marry the most dissolute woman of the time. Many men
remonstrated, and women rose in a body to demand her return. For the
moment he thought it best to yield to the popular clamor, but he soon
invented a pretext to send her to the long silence from which there
is no return. Yet she was beautiful, of cloudless fame, and had lived
hardly twenty years! Roman history is full of instances of moral
heroism on the part of women, that had no counterpart among men, and
of feminine virtue held at the expense of life. Servilia, the youthful
daughter of Soranus, took upon herself a fault for which it was sought
to compass her father’s death, and not being able to save him, died
with him. Women in great numbers retired in sad dignity from a society
whose current of vice they were powerless to change. A stately and
pathetic figure is Pomponia Græcina, who wore mourning for forty years,
and never smiled after her friend Julia, the daughter of Drusus, was
murdered by Messalina. It was a pitiless world in which neither virtue
nor life was safe, but it had its heroines, and they were not few.

Nor can the number of divorces be placed to the account of women. When
a Julius Cæsar takes his tenderly loved daughter from her husband and
marries her to another man in the interest of his own ambitions; when
an Augustus makes laws against immorality, yet divorces an innocent
wife who objects to his own infidelities, and puts in her place a
beautiful woman of unsullied fame, whom he has taken from a worthy
man; when both of these rulers of the world compel good citizens to
divorce the consorts they possibly love, in order to dispose of one
or the other for personal ends or the good of the State--it is hardly
worth while to hold helpless women responsible for conditions made and
enforced by men in power, who are called wise and think themselves
passably good. The most that can be said is that women of knowledge and
character are less likely to bear wrong and abuse silently, but they
are more likely to uphold the dignity of the family and to ignore the
petty vanities and jealousies which are among the most prolific causes
of divorce. A cultivated intellect does not necessarily imply good
morals, but, other things being equal, an educated woman is less easily
led into wrong, as she has more resources and is better fitted to stand
on her own feet; unfortunately, this is precisely what her critics in
the past have not wished her to do.

With so many conspicuous examples in high places, it is hardly strange
that divorces became deplorably common. “Does anybody blush at a
divorce,” says one, “since illustrious and noble women compute their
years, not by the number of consuls, but by the number of husbands they
have had?” We hear of a woman who was the twenty-first wife of her
twenty-third husband. The pretexts were often slight. It was said of
Mæcenas that he had been divorced a thousand times, though he had but
one wife, as he loved her and always married her over again. The woman
who had been but once married was honored as a _univira_. She
was too often, however, like a goddess worshiped from afar by men who
found both interest and pleasure in the number of their wives. Much of
the trouble was due to the fortune-hunters, who did not scruple to use
any means to get rid of a wife and retain her dowry, at the expense of
her fair name. Even good women were so wholly at the mercy of false
charges that Antoninus made a law that no man could bring suit against
his wife for immorality unless he could prove his own fidelity. We know
that wise and virtuous women were often forced to seclude themselves
from the aggressions of wicked men against whose machinations they were
unable to find protection.

There was one law, however, which might be considered to advantage by
some of our own legislators. It had been decreed that no one should
marry sooner than six months after a divorce. Augustus extended the
time to eighteen months. We talk much and with a fine consciousness
of superior virtue about the chaotic state of Roman marriages. What
will our fortieth-century moralist who reads present history, as
photographed from day to day in the blazing journals, say of the
decadence of a civilization in which people may marry two hours after
divorce, or find themselves some fine morning released from their
marriage bonds without knowing it? And we are an eminently moral people.

On the influence of the Roman women let the Romans speak for
themselves. It was proposed in the Senate that men should not be
permitted to take their wives into the provinces, as they had too much
power with the soldiers, interfered in settling business affairs, and
made another center of government--indeed, they sometimes “presided
at the drill of cohorts and the evolutions of the legions,” besides
dividing the homage. The majority of the senators objected to this
bill, and pronounced its author “no fit censor.” An able and eloquent
man, in reply to it, said that “much of the sternness of antiquity had
been changed into a better and more genial system.” A few concessions
had been made to the wants of women, but “in other respects man and
wife share alike.” There might be some scheming women, but were the
magistrates free from various unworthy passions, and was this a
reason why none should be sent to the provinces? If husbands were
sometimes corrupted by their wives, were single men any better? “It
is idle to shelter our own weakness under other names; for it is
the husband’s fault if the wife transgresses propriety.” This wise
orator was sustained by eminent men who gave their own fortunate
experiences, and the bill was lost. Such a tribute to the helpfulness
and strong character of the Roman woman may be commended to a few of
our enlightened thinkers who, curiously enough, use the low standards
of men who never pretended to be moral, and the frailties of dependent
women who were not permitted to be so, or of a class that has always
appealed to the weaknesses of men since the beginning of the world,
to prove the degeneracy of society under the influence of feminine
intelligence! It was never the woman of strong intellectual fiber and
serious interests that Rome had to fear. It was another class, that did
not, in any sense, represent her either in intelligence or character.


V

The wicked side of the Roman woman--and this was sometimes very wicked
indeed--has been sufficiently emphasized. It is more agreeable and
perhaps more profitable to consider her better side. Her talent was
essentially administrative, and we find many illustrations of it among
those who were conspicuous in public life. There were strong and wise
women who had great power; as a rule, it was held wisely. Many of
them, indeed most of them, brought moral questions to bear upon State
problems, with a keen discriminating insight into conditions that
troubled the hearts of wise men. Their number was small, as no woman
below the rank of an empress was eligible to the smallest position
of influence, aside from the religious offices, which were largely
perfunctory; but it was sufficient to show a quality of womanhood that
was not only strong, but intrinsically fine and noble.

Of these, as we have seen, the most striking representative was Livia.
Among those who followed more or less in her footsteps was Plotina,
the able and accomplished wife of Trajan. Trained in the philosophy of
the Stoics, her head was turned neither by prosperity nor misfortune.
She entered the palace, on her husband’s elevation to the throne, with
serene dignity, and said that she could leave it with equal calmness.
With less ambition than the first empress, she had a finer moral sense,
also the gravity and firmness of a matron of the old school. She loved
truth and justice better than the pageantry of courts, and ignored
the claims of an artificial society. A woman of brilliant intellect,
noble character, and exalted aims, she led a simple life in the midst
of luxury, and used her power not only to raise the tone of morals and
to foster a taste for letters, but to expose political corruptions,
suppress abuses, diminish unjust taxes, and promote financial reforms.
It was through her influence that Hadrian was adopted, a favor which he
recognized by extending her authority in his reign, and writing hymns
in her praise. The trace of asceticism in her character and manners did
not please the idlers who liked to bask in the sunshine of a gay and
luxurious court. She was censured and talked about, with little enough
reason as it seems, as no records have left a shadow on her reputation.
Her fault, in the eyes of bad men, lay in her moral force. To frown
upon vice, to oppose corruption in high places, was an unwarranted
interference with their natural rights. But good men sustained her. At
her death she was placed in the ranks of the gods and honored with a
temple dedicated to the “Mother of the People.”

A more conspicuous example of the ability of the women who figured
in the public life of Rome is found in Julia Domna, the Syrian wife
of Septimius Severus, who is said to have owed his success to her
wise counsels. She was not simply an ambitious woman who schemed for
place and power. To a genius for diplomacy she added the fascinations
of beauty, wit, and imagination. She had a knowledge of history,
philosophy, geometry, and the sciences of her time, was a patron of
art, and made her court a center of all that was left of literature
and culture in an age of decadence. Her husband evidently did not
object to a learned woman, as he had a special admiration for Arria
“because she read Plato.” Then this clever wife--who was called
“Julia the philosopher,” surrounded herself with savants, and loved
to discuss great subjects--put her versatile intellect to his service
and advancement. Her youth was not free from rumors of follies, but
no woman of note escaped these, even if she were pure as Diana. Her
father was a “priest of the Sun,” and she was always a student, with
a tendency toward Oriental mysticism. She ruled wisely and made the
fortune of her family. In her last years she sought refuge from many
sorrows in the resources of her intellect, but these failed to bring
her happiness. The wicked Caracalla, who did not profit by his mother’s
wisdom, killed his brother in her arms, and finally broke her heart.

Her sister, Julia Mæsa, shared her abilities, and, with the aid of
her daughters, secured the throne for her grandson. She was no doubt
ambitious, but was known as wise, just, and moderate. This family,
which ruled Rome for many years, was a remarkable one, but its credit
was sustained mainly by its women. One of the daughters of Julia Mæsa
was Soæmias, who was the first woman to take her place in the Senate
and attach her name to legislative decrees. She also presided over
the Little Senate, a sort of “woman’s club,” which regulated morals,
dress, etiquette, and other matters pertaining to her sex. It was
accused of gossip and scandal; but as this accusation has been made
against every association of women, from the coterie of Sappho to the
modern sewing-society and the last luncheon club, it cannot be taken
too seriously. Let the man who lounges about the clubs of to-day,--as
his Greek and Roman predecessors did about the porticos, gymnasia, or
baths,--and has never heard or repeated any gossip of his fellow-men
and -women, throw the first stone.

But Soæmias had a bad son, the Heliogabulus of infamous note, whom
she could not save or reform, and she was wise enough to pave the
way for the succession of her sister’s more reputable one, after his
death. This sister, Mamæa, was virtually regent during the minority
of Alexander Severus, whose purity of character and conduct she
guarded with the greatest care. She tried to apply the moral ideals
of womanhood to the men of the period, and found the task a difficult
and thankless one. Without assuming the trappings of power, she
administered the affairs of the empire with wisdom and judgment. An
able, humane, and thoughtful woman of conservative tendencies and
limited ambition for herself, she declined to sit in the Senate, but
chose a body of just and learned counselors to decide upon public
questions, while she discussed Christianity with her friend Origen,
founded a school for the free education of orphans, gave her son a
serious training for his future responsibilities, and worked for the
moral betterment of a world that did not wish to be bettered in that
way. Her standards were too high, and she reformed too much for people
who found license and corruption more to their interest and liking.
The Senate was jealous of her wise and just counselors, who could not
be used as tools for unscrupulous ends. Impatient, at last, of their
interference, and incensed at a woman who wished a moral government,
it passed a law excluding women from its ranks and “devoting to the
infernal gods the head of the wretch by whom this decree should be
violated.” With singular consistency, however, it voted her an
apotheosis after ridding itself of the restraining influence of her
virtues by practically sending her to a violent death.


VI

These few instances, gathered from many that are more or less familiar
to the student of history, may serve to show in some degree the
influence of strong and able women in the affairs of Old Rome. They
show, also, the intellectual as well as moral force of the best type
of pagan womanhood, which was formed after classic ideals of an heroic
pattern.

There were still women of learning and distinction when the old
standards had fallen and society was sunk in the grossest materialism.
The last and greatest of these was an alien. It was at Tivoli, in the
shadow of the Sabine Hills, that Zenobia, a captive, and alone with
her children among the ruins of her past grandeur, solaced herself
with letters and philosophy. Her teacher, minister, counselor, and
friend, Longinus, had paid the penalty of his devotion with his life,
and the world was poorer by the loss of one of its immortal thinkers.
But he left an apt pupil in a woman who had treasured his wisdom
and profited by his marvelous knowledge. An Amazon in war, empress,
linguist, Platonist, with the grasp of a statesman and the insight of
a seer, this gifted, eloquent, and versatile woman of flashing dark
eyes, winning manners, and Oriental beauty, who graced a triumph like
a goddess and met misfortune like a philosopher, is a shining example
of the dignity and greatness of a type that was passing. “Who has ever
shown more prudence in council, more firmness in her undertakings, more
authority over her soldiers, more discernment in her conduct?” said her
arch-enemy Aurelian, who bowed to her talents, felt her fascinations,
but made a spectacle of her sorrow and humiliation to add a jewel to
his crown.

It is idle to depreciate the qualities of the pagan women. Under all
their disabilities, which were many, those whose position gave them
a certain freedom of movement often attained great heights through
their gifts of character and intellect. There were great wives, great
mothers, great administrators, great rulers, great writers among the
more sensitive races, and great women, which means a symmetry of mind,
heart, and intellect in large proportions. But the ages in which they
lived were masculine ones--masculine in their cruelties and their
vices, as well as in their force and their theories of virtue. Women
did not escape the contagion, and when they plunged into abysses of
corruption, it was with the abandon of a passionate temperament. Still,
it was the voices of those who were too strong and too intelligent to
be blindly led that were first raised in a moral protest, the echo of
which has not yet died away.




MARCELLA, PAULA, AND THE FIRST CONVENT

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Woman’s Need of a Faith ·
  · Rome in its Decadence ·
  · The Reaction of Roman Women ·
  · Marcella · The Church of the Household ·
  · Asella · Fabiola · Paula ·
  · Eustochium · Blæsilla · St. Jerome · Melania ·
  · The Convent at Bethlehem ·
  · Translation of the Latin Vulgate ·
  · Hebrew Studies · Death of Paula ·
  · Tragical Fate of Marcella ·
  · Revolution in Roman Society ·
  · Spread of Convents · Christian Ideals ·
  · Value of Able Women in the Early Church ·
  · St. Chrysostom · Olympias ·
  · Intellectual Decline of Women in the Dark Ages ·
  · Influence of the Renaissance ·
  · Condition Tempered by Chivalry ·
  · Elevated by the Renaissance ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

“The majority of men, and especially of women, whose imagination is
double, cannot live without a faith,” said the Abbé Galiani, “and those
who can, sustain the effort only in the greatest force and youth of
the soul.” How far this may be true it is needless to discuss here,
but it is certain enough that women have been the strongest agents
in the religious movements of the world. A tender heart may go with
a skeptical mind, but the fine type of womanhood, in which reason is
tempered with love and imagination, inevitably turns to some faith
for support in seasons of moral decadence as in moments of sorrow and
despair. This has never had a more striking illustration than in the
reaction of a large class of Roman women from the vices, follies,
and debasing pleasures of a civilization falling into ruin, toward an
extreme asceticism. At this moment in its history the golden age of
Rome was long past, and the world was to wait more than a thousand
years for another brilliant flowering of the human intellect on the
same soil. But glory of a different sort set its seal upon the women
of the darkening ages. To the enthusiasms of patriotism and passion,
culture and ambition, succeeded the enthusiasms of religion.

In the fourth century the images of the pagan gods, white and silent on
their stone pedestals, still kept guard over the city. Their temples
were comparatively fresh, but the gods themselves were dead. The
seventy thousand statues that made Rome a forest of marbles in the days
of its glory had not lost their majesty, their beauty, or their grace;
but the spirit which had made them alive had gone with their virgin
purity. Pan held his flute as of old, but it was mute. Bacchus still
wore his vine-leaves and his air of rollicking mirth, but the bands
of roistering men who had once paid him homage no longer cared for a
god to preside over their plain worship of the senses. Venus had taken
off her divine halo and gone back to the foam of the sea whence she
came, leaving only the smiling face of a beautiful woman. The Muses
had ceased to dance to the lyre of Apollo, and the god of light was
asleep like the rest. Men and women had thrown aside the thin veil
of idealism with which they had once invested their sins, and Rome
was become a sink of iniquity without even the leaven of the Hellenic
imagination. Between a life of the senses and a life of the intellect,
it gravitated from a wild orgy to a passionless philosophy that held
its own pulse and counted its own heart-beats as it drifted curiously
and mockingly into the unknown.

But women do not carry easily the burden of a cold skepticism, and
philosophy failed to satisfy them. When the age became hopelessly
corrupt, and men scoffed at morals, sending one another to death for
inconvenient virtues, they had been swept along with the current,
and many plunged into a life of the senses with the recklessness of
an ardent, virile temperament. But there was still a large number of
intelligent matrons who preserved the waning traditions of an educated
womanhood, and these revolted at the hopeless vacuum of a life devoted
to intrigue and the tiresome mysteries of the toilet. The jewels,
silks, and embroidered gauzes of fabulous cost had no more charm for
them. Nor did they care to please the curled and perfumed sybarites
who gambled or discussed the last bit of scandal in their pillared
halls, fanned by slaves, and crying out at the crumple of a rose-leaf.
The Roman women had been distinguished for the stronger qualities of
character. Their bounding energies had been shown in deeds of heroism.
They had to a large degree the ardors of the imagination. These traits,
together with the moral sense that lies at the base of the feminine
nature, though often submerged for a time, vindicated themselves in the
passionate devotion with which so many turned from a beautiful but bad
world toward things of the spirit.

They had already been captivated in numbers by the mystic cults of the
Orient. Out of the East, whence came the pagan gods as well as the
luxury and sensualism which had sapped the moral life of Rome, came
also the “still small voice” of a new faith, with unfamiliar messages
of hope and consolation. It had been singing its hymns for nearly three
hundred years in that great under-world, of which little note had been
taken, except in periodical outbursts of persecution. In the vast
network of dark passages and lighted cells which lay far from the light
of the sun; beneath the shining temples and statues of the gods they
were undermining; beneath the groves, and gardens, and fountains, and
palaces in which vice reigned and idle voluptuaries were inventing new
refinements of sin to spur their jaded senses--the disciples of a lowly
faith which trampled upon all that these Epicureans loved, making a sin
of pleasure and a joy of suffering, had met to offer incense at strange
altars. It was women, with their natural tendency toward a personal
devotion and a self-sacrifice strengthened perhaps by the forced
self-effacement of centuries, who embraced with the most passionate
fervor a religion that deified all that was best and most distinctive
in their own natures. This religion, with its spirit of love, its trust
in some other existence that would compensate a thousandfold for the
sorrows of this, appealed to them irresistibly. Already it had brought
peace and a martyr’s crown to multitudes of the poor and ignorant who
had little to lose but their lives. It had gained, too, a firm foothold
among the cultivated classes, who did not always forsake the things of
the world in their acceptance of things of the spirit. But the fact
that it had become a State religion had not made it a fashionable one,
though its later votaries often outdid their pagan neighbors in luxury
and worldliness.

One day in the later years of the fourth century, a rich, noble,
educated, and able woman withdrew in weariness and disgust from the
vanities and unblushing vices of Roman society, fitted up an oratory in
her stately palace on the Aventine, and asked her friends to join her
in the worship, duties, and sacrifices of the Christian faith. This was
the germ of the Church of the Household, the _Ecclesia Domestica_,
on which St. Jerome has thrown so bright a light--the small beginning
of the vast combinations of women, in which one of the greatest
religious movements of the world found its strongest instrument and
support. Nothing shows more clearly the strength and moral purity of
the large body of Roman womanhood than the numbers who flocked to a
standard that offered no worldly attractions, and imposed, as the first
of duties, self-renunciation and the denial of all pleasures of sense.


II

It is not likely that Marcella had any thought of the vital
significance of a step that opened a new field to women, which absorbed
their talents and energies for ten centuries, sometimes for good,
sometimes for ill, and still holds a powerful attraction for certain
temperaments. She belonged to one of the noblest families of Rome, and
had led the life of the more serious of the rich patricians of her
time. Her mother was the Albina who had entertained Athanasius many
years before, and shown great interest in his ascetic teachings. He
held up solitude and meditation as an ideal, and no doubt his words,
which she must have heard discussed afterward, made a strong impression
on the imagination of the thoughtful child. They came back with a new
force later, when she lost her husband a few months after marriage. In
spite of much criticism, she retired from a world which no longer had
any attractions for her, gave away her jewels and personal adornments,
put on a simple brown robe, and gave herself to religious and
charitable work. At first she sought seclusion in her country villa,
but she was of too active and wholesome a temperament for a life of
solitary brooding and introspection. It was after the early days of her
grief were passed that she opened her palace on the Aventine, and made
it a center for the devotional women of Rome.

There was nothing in the life she planned to tempt her ambition. Nor
did she abdicate the world and its pleasures on account of the waning
of her charms. She was still in the fullness of life, young, beautiful,
rich, and much sought in marriage by men of the highest rank and
position. In her persistent refusal of their brilliant offers she met
with great opposition from her family, who evidently preferred the
ascetic life for some one outside of their own circle. But she was a
woman of strong, vigorous intellect and firm character, as well as
fine moral aims and religious fervor. Born to lead and not to follow,
she was never the reflex of other minds. We find in all the known acts
of her life the stamp of a distinct and well-poised individuality. If
she started on a new path, it was through the reaction of a pure and
conscientious nature from a society in which the virtues seemed dying,
the need of an outlet for emotions suddenly turned upon themselves, and
the going out toward humanity of the unsatisfied longing of motherhood.

To this quiet but palatial retreat on the Aventine--which tradition
places not far from the present site of Sta. Sabina--many women fled
from the gay world of splendor and fashion. They were mostly rich
and high-born; some were widows, who consecrated a broken life to
the service of God and their fellow-men; a few were devoted maidens.
The oldest of the little group was Asella, a sister of Marcella, who
had been drawn from childhood to an ascetic life. She dressed like a
pilgrim, lived on bread and water with a little salt, slept on the bare
ground, went out only to visit the graves of the martyrs, and held it a
jewel in her crown that she never spoke to a man, though she evidently
did not object to receiving letters from the good St. Jerome. He speaks
of her as “an illustrious lady, a model of perfection,” and says that
no one knew better how to combine “austerity of manner with grace of
language and serious charm. No one gave more gravity to joy, more
sweetness to melancholy. She rarely opened her mouth; her face spoke;
her silence was eloquent. A cell was her paradise, fasting her delight.
She did not see those to whom she was most tenderly attached, and was
full of holy ardor.” But hardships and low diet seem to have agreed
with this saintly woman, as she was well, in spite of them, through a
long life, in which she won praises from good and bad alike. Lea is a
dim figure at this distance, but she was spoken of as “the head of
a monastery and mother of virgins,” who died early and was greatly
honored for her goodness, her humility, her robe of sackcloth not too
well cared for, her days of fasting, and her nights of prayer.

More noted was Fabiola, a member of the great Fabian family, who had
been divorced from a vicious husband and made a second marriage which
seems to have lain heavily on her tender conscience when she became a
widow shortly afterward. Indeed, she went so far in her remorse as to
stand in the crowd of penitents at the door of the Lateran on Easter
Eve, clad in coarse sackcloth, unveiled, and weeping, with ashes on her
head and hair trailing, as she prostrated herself and waited for public
absolution. It is said that bishop, priests, and people were alike
touched to tears at the humiliation of the young, gay, and beautiful
woman, the idol of a patrician society. But her religious enthusiasm
was more than a sudden outburst of feeling. This pale devotee gave
her large fortune to charity, built the first Christian hospital,
gathered from the streets the sick, the maimed, and the suffering, even
ministering with her own hands to outcast lepers. Her charities were
boundless, and extended to remote islands of the sea. St. Jerome calls
her a heroine of Christianity, the admiration of unbelievers. But her
intellect was clear and brilliant, and her close questionings spurred
him to write of many things which would otherwise have been left
in darkness. In her later days she surprised him one evening in the
convent at Bethlehem, where she was visiting her friends, by reciting
from memory a celebrated letter in praise of a solitary and ascetic
life which he had written to Heliodorus many years earlier. It was the
letter which had brought so much censure on the austere monk, as it
sent great numbers of noble women and many men into the ranks of the
hermits and cenobites.

This woman of talent and fashion, who left the gay world to become
saint, philanthropist, nurse, and pilgrim, died shortly before the
terrible days came to Rome, and its temples resounded with psalms in
her honor. Young and old sang her praises. The galleries, housetops,
and public places could not contain the people who flocked to her
funeral. So wicked Rome, in the last days of its fading glory, paid
homage to women of great virtues, great deeds, and unselfish lives.

But the most distinguished of the matrons who frequented the chapel
on the Aventine was Paula, a descendant of Scipio and the Gracchi on
one side, and, it was claimed, of Agamemnon on the other. The Romans
did not stop at myths or probabilities in their genealogies, and her
husband traced his ancestry to Æneas. But it is certain that Paula
belonged to the oldest and noblest family in Rome. She had an immense
fortune, and had passed her life in the fashionable circles of her
time. A widow at thirty-three, with five children, and inconsolable,
she suddenly laid aside the personal insignia of her rank, exchanged
cloth of gold for a nun’s robe, silken couches for the bare ground,
gaiety for prayers, and the costly pleasures of the sybarite for days
and nights of weeping over the most trivial faults, imaginary or real.
Even the stern St. Jerome begged her to limit her austerities; but
she said that she must disfigure a face she had been so wicked as to
paint, afflict a body which had tasted so much delight, and expiate her
laughter with her tears. She dressed and lived as poorly as the lowest
of her servants, and expressed a wish to be buried as a beggar. Full of
a sweet and tender humanity, however, she was no less pitiful to others
than severe to herself.

Of her four daughters, Eustochium, a serious girl of sixteen,
sympathized most with her ascetic views and was closely associated
with her life-work. She was the first patrician maiden to take the
vow of perpetual virginity. But the flower of the family was her
sister Blæsilla, “older in nature, but inferior in vocation,” said St.
Jerome. Beautiful, gay, clever, young, and a widow after seven months
of marriage, she loved things of the world and had small taste for the
austerities of her mother. She found time for study, however, as she
spoke Greek fluently and learned Hebrew so rapidly that she bade fair
to equal Paula, who liked to sing the psalms of David in the rugged
and majestic language in which they were written. But a violent fever
turned her thoughts from mundane vanities to a life of asceticism.
No more long days before the mirror, no more decking of her pretty
little person. She put on the brown gown like the others, and devoted
her brilliant youth to the same service. But so excessive were her
penances, so rigorous her fastings, and so severe her austerities, that
she died of them at twenty, asking God to pardon her because she could
not carry out her plans of devotion and self-sacrifice. Her funeral
was hardly in keeping with these plans. All the world did honor to the
beautiful, accomplished woman who had forsaken a life of elegant ease
for the hardships of a self-imposed poverty. They covered her coffin
with cloth of gold, and the most distinguished men in Rome marched at
the head of the cortège. Her untimely death brought an outburst of
indignation against the mother who had encouraged a self-denial so hard
and unnatural. But this mother had fainted as she followed her idolized
daughter to the tomb. St. Jerome dwells upon the piety, innocence,
chastity, and virtues, as well as the more brilliant qualities, of
the _dévote_ who had gone so early, but while the tears flowed
down his own cheeks, he reproved Paula for permitting the mother to
overshadow the religieuse. He adds a curious bit of consolation,
however, for a spiritual adviser who has renounced all worldly motives
and interests, when he tells her that Blæsilla will live forever in his
writings, as every page will be marked with her name. This immortality
he modestly thinks will compensate her for the short time she spent on
earth.


III

These brief outlines indicate the character and position of a few of
the best-known women who gathered about Marcella. Some of them lived
with her; others came from time to time, or were constant attendants
at the Bible readings and prayers. Saintly women, and worldly ones
who were doubtless eager to flock to the little chapel in a palace
that represented to them a great name, if not a living faith, had
been going in and out for some years before St. Jerome came from the
East at the summons of Pope Damasus, and was invited by Marcella to
stay at her house, after the manner of famous divines of all ages. It
is to this most interesting and learned of the early fathers that we
are indebted for the blaze of light that was thrown upon the Church
of the Household. It was also to this group of consecrated women that
St. Jerome owed the inspiration and the intelligent criticism that led
him to give the world some of the works on which his greatest fame
rests. The circle that listened to his persuasive eloquence, born of
a keen intellect, an ardent imagination, a passionate temperament, and
an exalted faith, was not an ignorant one. Most of these ladies spoke
Greek and were familiar with Greek letters. Some had learned Hebrew,
which was not included among the fashionable accomplishments of the
day. A few were women of brilliant ability and distinct individuality,
who could not live in the world without leaving some trace of
themselves. The discriminating mind of Marcella exercised itself on
every new problem. “During the whole of my residence at Rome she never
saw me without asking some question about history or dogma,” said St.
Jerome. “She was not satisfied with any answer I might give; she never
yielded to my authority only, but discussed the matter so thoroughly
that often I ceased to be the master and became the humble pupil.” It
would have been better for him if he had given more heed to her gentle
voice when she tried to temper his bitterness and restrain his unruly
tongue. We have another proof of the solid fiber of her intellect
in the fact that she was consulted on Biblical matters by Roman
ecclesiastics, even by the Pope himself; indeed, it was her counsel
that led Pope Anastasius to condemn the heresies of Origen in the synod.

It may easily be imagined that the pale, slender, ascetic monk
of thirty-four, with the light of genius in his eye, the fire of
sublimated passion in his soul, and the vein of poetry running
through his nature, had a strange power over these women who lived on
moral heights quite above the heavy worldly atmosphere about them.
This spiritual exaltation has swayed women of ardent imagination ever
since the days of the apostles, and doubtless swayed them before. It
was the secret of Savonarola’s influence. Under the inspiration of
the persuasive Nicole, the earnest Arnauld, and the austere Pascal,
the great ladies of France put off their silks and jewels with their
mundane vanities, and knelt in the bare cells at Port-Royal, with the
haircloth and the iron girdle pressing the delicate flesh as they
prayed. Fénelon found his most ardent disciple in the mystic Mme.
Guyon. The pure soul of Mme. Swetchine responded to the earnest words
of Lacordaire as the Æolian harp vibrates to the lightest breath of
wind. “I cannot attach to your name the glory of the Roman women whom
St. Jerome has immortalized,” he says, “and yet you were of their
race.... The light of your soul illumined the land that received you,
and for forty years you were for us the sweetest echo of the gospel
and the surest road to honor.” It is needless to recall the power of
many spiritual men of our own race and day in leading the serious and
gay alike into paths of a rational self-renunciation. Perhaps the
little coterie in which St. Jerome found himself was more permanently
severe in its self-discipline than most of the later ones have been.
Doubtless there was a little blending of the church and the world, of
literature and prayers, of gilded trappings with the nun’s robe and the
monk’s cowl. But when these Roman women came into the devoted household
on the Aventine, they usually renounced the world very literally,
though it is not unlikely that they had a following of those who
mingled a pale and decorous piety with their worldly pleasures, as did
many of the priests whom St. Jerome attacks with such biting sarcasm.

Then this monk of many dreams and visions, with his halo of saintship,
was fresh from the hermits and cenobites of the Thebaid. The even-song
that went up from countless caves and cabins under the clear Egyptian
sky still lingered in his ear as he expatiated on the paradise of
solitude. Forgetting in his zeal the violent moral struggles he had
passed through himself, he appealed to them in impassioned words to
immolate every natural affection on the altar of a faith that invited
them to a life of prayer and meditation far from the tempting delights
of a sinful world. It was under this teaching that the ascetic spirit
grew so strong as to call out the indignation of the pagan society of
Rome. People of the fourth century were as fond of gossip as are the
men and women of to-day, and no more charitable. Malicious tongues were
whispering evil things of the gifted and famous monk who exercised so
pernicious an influence over the wives and daughters of illustrious
Roman citizens, inciting them to fling away their fortunes for a dream
and seclude themselves from the world to which they belonged. He had
spent three years in an atmosphere that must have been grateful to
his restless and stormy spirit. But now he found that he was bringing
reproach upon those he most revered and loved, so in the summer of 385,
when Pope Damasus died, and his occupation was gone, he bade farewell
to his friends, and went back to the East, leaving a letter to Asella
in which he bitterly denounces those who had dared to malign him. Of
Paula he says that “her songs were psalms, her conversations were of
the gospel, her delight was in purity, her life a long fast.” Yet his
enemies had presumed to attack his attitude toward the saintly woman
whose “mourning and penance had touched his heart with sympathy and
veneration.”

But his pleadings for a life of penitence and sacrifice had not been in
vain. A few months later Paula carried out a plan which had been for
some time maturing, and followed him, with her daughter Eustochium and
a train of consecrated virgins and attendants. The power of religious
enthusiasm was never shown more clearly than in this able and learned
matron, who had all the strength of the Roman character together with
the mystical exaltation of a Christian sibyl. That she was a woman of
ardent emotions is evident from the violence of her grief at the death
of her daughter and her husband. But in spite of her family affections
she was firm in her purpose to leave home and friends for a life of
hardship in the far East. The tears of her youngest daughter, Rufina,
who begged her to stay for her wedding day,--which, alas! she never
lived to see,--were of no avail. Her little son entreated her in vain.
The words of St. Jerome were ringing in her ears. “Though thy father
should lie on the threshold, trample over his body with dry eyes, and
fly to the standard of the cross,” he had said. “In this matter, to be
cruel is the only true filial affection.”

Several years before, Melania, a widow of twenty-three, had sailed away
to the Thebaid, on a similar mission. She too had passed through great
sorrows. With strange calmness and without a tear, she had buried her
husband and two sons in quick succession, thanking God that she had no
longer any ties to stand between her and her pious duties. And for this
hardness St. Jerome had applauded her, holding her up as an example to
her sex! She too had turned away dry-eyed and inflexible from the tears
of the little son she left to the tender mercies of the pretor. Did
Mme. de Chantal recall these women, centuries after, when she walked
serenely over the prostrate body of her son, who had thrown himself
across the threshold to bar her departure from her home to a life of
spiritual consecration and conventual discipline under the direction of
St. François de Sales?

We cannot follow the wanderings of these fourth-century pilgrims among
the hermits of the desert and the holy places of Syria. They were among
the first of a long line of women who have given up the luxuries and
refinements of life for a hut or a cave in the wilderness, and a bare,
hard existence, illuminated only by the “light that never was on sea
or land.” Melania established a convent on the Mount of Olives, with
Rufinus as the spiritual director, and here it is probable that Paula
visited her before settling finally near the Cave of the Nativity at
Bethlehem, where she built three convents, a hospital, and a monastery,
which was superintended by St. Jerome. It was here that the rich
descendant of the Scipios, who had gone from a palace to a cell, gave
herself to prayer and menial duties, while she scattered her fortune
among the poor.


IV

The most immediate and important outcome of the Church of the Household
was this convent at Bethlehem, which had its origin in the brain of
Paula and was managed by her until her death. The little community,
with its austerities, its studies, its lowly duties, its charities,
and its peaceful life, was clearly visible while St. Jerome lived
to electrify the world periodically with some fresh outburst of rage
at its follies, or its presumption in differing in opinion from
himself. It was here that he did his greatest work, and it is of
special interest to us that he depended largely upon the intelligent
aid of Paula and Eustochium in his revision of the Septuagint and the
invaluable translation of the Bible known as the Latin Vulgate. His
instructions to them were minute, and his confidence in their ability
is shown in the preface to one of his works, where he says: “You, who
are so familiar with Hebrew literature and so skilled in judging the
merits of a translation, go over this one carefully, word by word, so
as to discover where I have added or omitted anything which is not in
the original.” They also revised with him and largely settled the text
of the Psalter which is in use to-day in the Latin churches. He said
that they acquired with ease, and spoke perfectly, the Hebrew language,
which had cost him so much labor. He was censured for dedicating
so many of his works to the women who had given him such efficient
help. His reply is of value, as it expressed the opinion of the most
scholarly and brilliant of the early fathers on the intellectual
ability of the sex which they seem, as a rule, to have taken the
greatest pleasure in denouncing.

“As if these women were not more capable of forming a judgment upon
them than most men,” he says. “The good people who would have me
prefer them to you, O Paula and Eustochium, know as little of their
Bible as of Greek and Roman history. They do not know that Huldah
prophesied when men were silent, that Deborah overcame the enemies of
Israel when Barak trembled, that Judith and Esther saved the people of
God. So much for the Hebrews. As for the Greeks, who does not know that
Plato listened to the discourse of Aspasia, that Sappho held the lyre
beside Alcæus and Pindar, that Themistia was one of the philosophers
of Greece? And, among ourselves, Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi,
Portia the daughter of Cato and wife of Brutus, before whom the virtue
of the father and the austerity of the husband paled, do we not count
them among the glories of Rome?”

Through the correspondence of these women with their friends, we have
various glimpses of their life, as well as of the changes that came to
the group on the Aventine. The heart of Paula was first saddened by the
death of her daughter Paulina, who had married a brother of Marcella,
and lived a life of great devotion in the world. Perhaps she found a
grain of consolation in the fact that Paulina’s large fortune was left
to her husband to be distributed among the poor. We have a glowing
account of the great funeral at St. Peter’s, where this sorrowing
husband scattered the gifts with his own hand to the starving
multitude, after turning his wife’s jewels and fine, gold-embroidered
robes into plain garments for the naked and needy. Then he went to his
desolate home, took the vows of poverty, and put on a monk’s cowl,
though he still held his seat in the Senate, where he doubtless felt
that he could render the best service.

This grief was tempered for Paula by the glad tidings that the little
son she had left weeping on the shore had married Læta, a Christian,
who, with his approval, consecrated their daughter, a second Paula, to
the service of religion. It was the wife who wrote to her for direction
as to her child’s education; and we have an interesting letter from
St. Jerome giving careful instruction on all points that concern the
training of a young maiden. This Paula helped to cheer the last days of
her grandmother, and became the third abbess of the convent.

Fabiola came once to visit them, and spent two years, entering into
all their duties, and brightening the little community with her quick
and eager intellect. But she died soon after her return to Rome. They
urged Marcella to join them, and sent vivid descriptions of their
idyllic life among the hills consecrated by so many sacred memories.
“In summer we seek the shade of our trees,” they write; “in autumn the
mild weather and pure air invite us to rest on a bed of fallen leaves;
in spring, when the fields are painted with flowers, we sing our
songs among the birds.” To be sure, they had the hospital work, the
menial duties, the prayers, and the penances, but they had, too, long
and pleasant hours to study the holy books. Then they were free from
the “need of seeing and being seen, of greeting and being greeted, of
praising and detracting, hearing and talking, of seeing the crowds of
the world.” The monastery and the convent were quite separate, but it
is likely that St. Jerome passed many moments in the converse of his
friends and helpers, though his instructions were largely given by
letter. These pastoral pictures, however, with their dark shadings, did
not tempt the Roman lady from her chosen work. With her clear and sane
intellect she saw her duty to those among whom she was born.

After seventeen years of unselfish labor for the poor and suffering,
varied by the study of which we have the fruit, Paula died and was
laid away in the grotto at Bethlehem. In her last moments she replied
in Greek to a question of St. Jerome, that she felt no pain, and that
everything before her was calm and tranquil. All Palestine flocked to
her funeral, which was conducted by the Bishop of Jerusalem, and people
of every rank and grade looked with tears on her grave and majestic
features. “Illustrious by birth,” says St. Jerome, “more illustrious by
her piety, first in Rome by the wealth of her house, then more honored
by Christian poverty, she scorned pomp and glory, exchanged gilded
walls for a cabin, and won the esteem of the entire world.”

Her mantle fell upon Eustochium, an earnest, sincere woman of serious
education but less strength and individuality than her mother, who
filled her place with dignity and ability for sixteen years. In the
first days of his grief St. Jerome was unable to take up his work, but
this sympathetic helper turned his thoughts by carrying to him the Book
of Ruth to be translated. At her death she was succeeded by her niece,
another Paula, who had been long associated with her. The younger
Melania, who had followed in the footsteps of her own grandmother, the
first woman to leave Rome for an ascetic retreat in the East, was there
also, and it was these women who, not long afterward, closed the eyes
of St. Jerome, already dimmed with age.

But the close of Marcella’s life came some time before this last
light went out in the Syrian monastery, and it was tragical enough.
For thirty years she had devoted herself and her large wealth to the
unfortunate, and to the interests of the church she loved. During the
siege of Alaric and the terrible days that saw the ruin of Rome, she
was beaten and tortured to compel her to tell where she had hidden her
treasures; but these had all gone for the relief of the suffering, and
there was nothing to tell. A soldier with a kinder heart than the rest
helped her to reach the old Church of St. Paul without the walls,
together with Principia, the only companion left to her, whom she had
saved with great difficulty from the fury of her brutal captors. A few
days later she died of these tortures, and the maiden was left alone to
tell the tale. The Ecclesia Domestica appears no more in history. The
little group of devoted women was already scattered. Many were dead.
Some had found refuge in the convent at Bethlehem, some in the cells
of the Thebaid, and some had gone to carry the seeds of their faith to
remote places where we cannot trace them. Strictly speaking, this was
never a convent, as there were no vows and women went in and out at
pleasure. But it has been called the “Mother of Convents.”


V

The revolution effected in Roman society through these intelligent
patrician matrons, whose names had great prestige, and whose wealth
seems to have been inexhaustible, was a vital and important one.
The women also show us, even in their often intemperate zeal, the
magnificent possibilities of the Roman character. But their value to
us lies largely in the results of the work they began, which expanded
into the vast system of convents that soon overspread the known world.
That these have been an unmixed good no one will contend to-day, but
that they fulfilled a mission which was, on the whole, a blessing in
its time, few, I think, will deny. For centuries they furnished an
outlet for the administrative talents as well as the surplus energies
and emotions of women. They were also a refuge for multitudes who had
no secure place in the world, and for those who did not wish to subject
themselves to the slavery of a forced and loveless marriage. If they
were not the best things possible, they were the best things available.
So far as these women led lives of active charity, and forgot their own
comfort in gentle ministrations to the poor and suffering, the results
were good for themselves and the world. When they lost their poise in
ecstatic visions, spent long hours in useless austerities and morbid
introspection, crushing every natural impulse in the effort to attain
an impossible holiness that was as airy and unsubstantial as the fabric
of a dream, they became abnormal, and the results were distinctly
bad; it was in the last analysis the apotheosis of emotionalism. The
old extremes of sensuality were followed by equal extremes in another
direction. To glorify pain, to neglect the person, to substitute states
of exaltation for family ties, was a mark of piety. The movement
started with an ideal of virgin purity that depreciated any life but
that of a celibate. The immoralities that early began to creep in with
the theories of spiritual marriage, even among the cenobites of the
desert, to the dismay of the fathers themselves, were doubtless due in
part to the repression of tender human affections, and in part to the
vow of obedience which placed pure and saintly women at the mercy of
the wolves in sheep’s clothing that speedily overran the church and the
world.

The Christian ideals are essentially feminine ones. They exalt love,
not force, and glorify the finest and most distinctive traits of
womanhood. “Heavens, what wives these Christians have!” said a pagan
ruler, struck with their spirit of supreme self-sacrifice. “Kill me,”
said Eve to Adam, as they were being driven from the Garden of Eden;
“then perhaps God will put you back into paradise.” So wrote a man
centuries later who was trying to illustrate the unselfishness of woman
at the crucial point of her history. But the obedience which was so
beautiful to the husband was quite another matter when demanded by a
spiritual director, and family life began to suffer. Perhaps this state
of affairs is partly responsible for the bitter denunciations of women
in the writings of the fathers, though by no means confined to them.
“You are the devil’s gateway,” says Tertullian, “the unsealer of the
forbidden tree, the deserter from the divine law. You persuaded him
whom the devil was not brave enough to attack. You destroyed God’s
image, man.” “Eve was the principle of death,” wrote St. Jerome; but
remembering, perhaps, how far the work of his life had been aided by
women, he adds that “Mary is the source of life.” His attacks elsewhere
are frequent and merciless. “Woman has the poison of an asp and the
malice of a dragon,” is the kindly tribute of Gregory the Great. “Of
all wild beasts the most dangerous is woman,” says St. Chrysostom, who
owed so much to his own mother and loved her so devotedly. “It brings
great shame to reflect of what nature woman is,” writes Clement of
Alexandria. One might fill a book with similar quotations. “A woman
is an evil.” “A woman is a whited sepulcher.” This is the burden of
priestly complaint from St. Augustine to the Protestant Calvin and
John Knox, who sang variations on the same theme in a different key.
Not even the classic Greeks were more abusive. All this is specially
surprising, since we find no such spirit in the words of Christ, who
was invariably gentle toward women and tender even to their faults. St.
Paul was disposed to keep them in a very humble place, but, after all,
he was never incurably bitter.

In spite of these persistent attacks, however, the church has availed
itself, throughout its history, of the talents of great women, from
the first St. Catherine to her namesake of Siena, from Marcella to
the gifted St. Theresa and Mère Angélique, the thoughtful saint of
Port-Royal. Women were associated with all the humane movements of
the primitive church. They held honorable and prominent positions as
deaconesses, were intrusted with grave responsibilities, and venerated
to an extent unheard of before. Salvina officially protected the
Eastern churches, and supplications for favors were addressed to her on
account of her ability and her influence at the court of the emperor.
St. Chrysostom always spoke of Olympias, the ablest of his deaconesses,
as his “dear and trusted friend.” A rich woman, noble, and a widow,
she had given up her life to the service of religion, and managed the
affairs of the great archbishop, who depended upon her as St. Ambrose
depended upon his sister Marcellina. When he was driven into exile, and
the flames were bursting from St. Sophia, it was to her, not to the
bishops, that he gave instructions for the government of his church in
his absence, which was destined to be final.

It is worth while, perhaps, to quote a few lines from a letter written
by this celebrated man to a Roman lady whose influence he asked in
the interest of a general council. After a few generalities about the
sphere of her sex, he continues: “But in the work which has the service
of God for its object, in the church militant, these distinctions are
effaced, and it often happens that the woman excels the man in the
courage with which she supports her opinions and in her holy zeal....
Do not consider as unbecoming to your sex that earnest work which in
any way promotes the welfare of the faithful.... I beg you to undertake
this with the utmost diligence; the more frightful the tempest, the
more precious the recompense for your share in calming it.”

There were a great many other able women, and some wicked ones,
connected with the earlier movements of Christianity, especially in the
Eastern Church, but they do not fall within the scope of this paper. I
mention these few simply to show that it was by no means the emotional
enthusiasm of women which gave them so much influence in a field for
which they were peculiarly fitted, though this may account for much of
their subsequent power over the masses, and many of their errors. Most
of the leaders had great force of intellect and a special talent for
organization.

The ultimate effect of conventual life on the minds of women is open
to serious question. The founders of the movement were matrons of
pagan education. The little circle on the Aventine, as we have seen,
was versed in the knowledge of the time. But learning was already
in its decline. About the time that Marcella was a victim to the
barbarians who destroyed the glory of Rome, the last great feminine
representative of the genius and culture of the classic world, the
beautiful and gifted Hypatia, was dead in Alexandria, a sacrifice to
the mad passions of a fanatical mob that marched under the banner of
One who came into the world with a message of peace and good will to
men. Even the semi-mythical St. Catherine, the patron saint of science,
philosophy, education, and eloquence, who lived not long before,--if
at all,--was brought up on Plato and taught by pagan masters. So clear
was the intellect of this prodigy of wisdom and knowledge that she was
called upon to dispute with fifty of the most learned pagans, and, if
the legends are to be trusted, vanquished them all on their own ground.
The philosopher and the saint were trained in the same schools, and
they were alike martyrs to their own learning and talents, though one
was a partizan of the old order of things, the other of the new.

But those who followed them do not seem to have equaled the early
women who were the product of pagan schools. Polite letters were
discouraged, if not forbidden. St. Jerome himself mourns over the lost
hours spent over Cicero and the poets, though, fortunately for his
fame, he never wholly broke away from their influence. “What has Horace
to do with the Psalter, or Vergil with the gospels, or Cicero with the
apostles?” he said to Eustochium. No pursuit of secular knowledge was
ever countenanced in the large bodies of women swayed by a spiritual
director who would have burned Sappho and Euripides if he could,
and dominated by a visionary emotionalism turned out of its natural
channels and centered on a single idea. Great ability asserted itself,
not in learning, but in organization, leadership, and an ever-narrowing
discipline.

The representative pagan woman had her shortcomings and her
disabilities. She had also her virtues. If she had less of the spirit
of religion, she had equally the spirit of patriotism, of culture, of
honor, and of duty. There was a finer sensibility among the Christian
women, and a stronger instinct of self-sacrifice. None of us will
depreciate the beauty of those traits, but without the firmness of
fiber that is fostered by trained intelligence, they have their
dangers. When they mark the permanent attitude of one class toward
another which in no wise recognizes any corresponding duty, they
inevitably result in the servility of the one and the tyranny of the
other. Such was the relative position of men and women in the dark
ages. Even chivalry which paid a tribute to weakness was largely a
theory, or a fashion that offered a new path to glory, and does not
bear too close a scrutiny, though it tempered the condition of women
and modified the character of men, upon whom it reflected great honor.
Its ideals were fine, but the gulf between the ideal and its attainment
in daily life was often a very wide one. There were conspicuous
examples of feminine courage and heroism as well as talent, but the
lives of women in these ages were not, as a rule, pleasant ones, in
spite of a certain halo of romance that was thrown about them. No doubt
it was their suffering and helplessness that sent so many of them into
convents where they frequently found a state of morals little better
than the one from which they fled. It was not until the Renaissance
brought back the old spirit of learning and a vigorous intellectual
life among women that they combined the sweetness of Christian virtues
with the dignity and strength born of knowledge and a measure of
freedom, took the rightful position that belongs to the mothers of the
race, and once more played a distinctly civilizing and beneficent rôle
on the world’s stage.




THE LEARNED WOMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Glorification of Women in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries ·
  · Their New Cult of Knowledge ·
  · Bitisia Gozzadina ·
  · Ideals of the Early Poets ·
  · Dante · Petrarch · Boccaccio · Medieval Saints ·
  · Catherine of Siena · Women in Universities ·
  · Precocious Girls · Olympia Morata ·
  · Women Poets · Veronica Gambara ·
  · Vittoria Colonna ·
  · High Moral Tone of Literary Women ·
  · An Exception · Tullia d’Aragona ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

There was a curious book written early in the sixteenth century by a
savant of Cologne, on “The Superiority of Women over Men.” It was one
out of many that were devoted to the glorification of the long-secluded
sex, but its title serves to indicate the nature of the epidemic of
eulogies that raged more or less for nearly two hundred years after
Boccaccio set the fashion. This he did by singing the praises of the
great heroines he brought out from the shadows of the past to adorn the
pages of his “Illustrious Women.” It seemed as if men had been struck
with a sudden remorse for the unkind things they had been saying about
women since the dawn of the world, and were trying to make amends by
putting them, theoretically at least, on a pinnacle of glory. Some
celebrated their beauty, others their virtues, and still others their
talents, while a few did not stop short of awarding them all the graces
and perfections. Paul de Ribera published “The Immortal Triumphs and
Heroic Enterprises of Eight Hundred and Forty-five Women,” which was
comprehensive if not convincing. Hilarion of Coste devoted two large
volumes to eulogies of women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
finding nearly two hundred to put into his Temple of Fame. What their
special claims to glory may have been I do not know beyond the fact
that they were pious and devout Catholics. One man who had contended
for the equality of the sexes tried afterward to refute himself;
but his recantation was half-hearted, as he confessed his private
conviction that logic was against him.

Cardinal Pompeo Colonna takes it upon himself to demolish the old
creed that a woman is an inferior creature, convenient in the house,
but unfit for any large responsibility. He proves her capacity for
public life by many examples, treats lightly the plea of the moral
dangers that would beset her, and shows what men become when left
to their own devices. After giving exalted praise to the masterful,
accomplished women of his time, he cites his beautiful cousin, the
“divine Vittoria,” as a living model of talent and strength, as well as
of virtue, magnanimity, and devotion. More pointed and concise, though
less definite, was Monti, a famous Roman prelate, who said: “If men
complain of seeing themselves equaled or surpassed by women, so much
the worse for them. It is because they are not worthy of their wives.”
The climax of praise was reached in a work written to prove that women
are “nobler, braver, more tactful, more learned, more virtuous, and
more economical than men.” Such a pitch of adulation could hardly be
maintained without a protest, and there were a few men ungallant enough
to say that the best proof of their own sovereignty was the effort
needed to combat it.

It is pleasant to record that the most ardent champions of feminine
ability were men of more than ordinary caliber. As men rarely
exaggerate the talents of women, though they sometimes make goddesses
of them, we may safely conclude that their pictures were not overdrawn
on that side. Truth, however, compels me to say that some of the
eulogists were accomplished courtiers with special appreciation of
queens and princesses who might make or mar their fortunes; also that
this complaisance was by no means universal. Whether the satirists,
novelists, and minor poets found the wicked more effective, from a
dramatic point of view, than the good, as many of their successors
do to-day, or the sensual age was more interested in pretty sinners
than in saints, it is certain that these writers paid scant honor to
women, and delighted to put them in the worst light, though satire
was in the main directed against the ignorant and the frivolous, not
against the intelligent or the strong. Even Montaigne refused to
look upon a woman otherwise than as a useful but inferior animal,
though he inconsistently chose one of these “inferior animals” as his
confidante and literary executor, because she was the “only person
he knew in whose literary judgment he could confide.” The scholarly
Erasmus said she was “a foolish, silly creature, no doubt, but amusing
and agreeable.” He was happy in the belief that “the great end of
her existence is to please men”; but he pays his own sex a poorer
compliment than we should like to when he adds that “she could not do
this without folly.”

So much for the man’s point of view. But the women were not silent, and
a few glorified themselves as naïvely as some of their modern sisters
have done. If we ever had any doubts as to our own modesty they ought
to convince us of it. Lucrezia Marinelli, a clever Venetian and a
poet, defined herself quite clearly in a work entitled “The Nobleness
and Excellence of Women and the Faults and Imperfections of Men.”
As a comparison this seems rather unfair, but considering the fact
that men had for ages given themselves all the noble qualities and
women all the weak ones, they could not take serious exception to it.
Indeed, they evidently found it refreshing. It furnished them with a
new sensation, and was quite harmless on the practical side, as they
still held the reins of power. Marguerite of France, the brilliant and
lettered wife of Henry IV, tried to prove that women are very superior
to men, but, unfortunately, in her category of superiorities morals had
no place. Mlle. de Gournay was more generous, as well as more just, and
declared herself content with simple equality, though one cannot help
wondering how she settled that matter with her friend Montaigne. But
Mlle. Schurmann of Cologne thought that even this was going too far. It
seems as if she might fairly have claimed to be the peer of the average
man, since she spoke nine languages and was more or less noted as
painter, musician, sculptor, engraver, philosopher, mathematician, and
theologian. Just how much solid learning was implied in this formidable
list of accomplishments we cannot judge, but it is clear that there has
been a time before to-day when women aimed to know everything, though
there was a safeguard against shattered nerves in the fact that there
were not so many books to read nor so many brain-splitting problems
to solve. It is fair, however, to suppose that this learned lady did
not waste much time on clothes or five-o’clock teas. Louise Labé, the
poet and savante of Lyons, takes a more modern tone. In claiming
intellectual equality for women, she begs them not to permit themselves
to be despoiled of the “honest liberty so painfully won--the liberty of
knowing, thinking, working, shining.” In spite of her courageous words,
however, this paragon of so many talents and virtues, the glory of her
sex and the pride of her city, asserts herself in a half-deprecating
way, as if she were asking pardon for presuming to publish her little
verses, and shelters herself behind the admiring friends who are
willing to “take half the shame.” But she was a Frenchwoman, and her
day was not yet. Women had so long hidden their light, if they had any,
that it blinked perceptibly when exposed to the winds of heaven or the
more chilly breezes of masculine criticism.

It is needless to extend the list of writers on this subject, but it
is a long and remarkable one. The books would make rather interesting
reading to-day, whatever we might think of their quality, as problems
familiar to us were pretty thoroughly if not always ably discussed,
and apparently with great good nature. A distinguished Frenchman, well
known in the salons of the eighteenth century, unearthed a great many
curious facts and opinions hidden away in these books, which are now
mostly buried too deep in the dust of old libraries for resurrection,
and his own wise and quite modern conclusions entitled him to more
consideration than he received from the women of his time. But this
rapid glimpse will suffice, perhaps, to show the spirit in which
latter-day questions were treated four or five centuries ago; also
to throw a strong light on the position of women during the period,
without very precise limits, known as the Renaissance--a period of
special interest to us, as it marks the dawn of a new era of feminine
intelligence.


II

We do not know how it happened that Bitisia Gozzadina stepped out
of the traditional seclusion of her sex as early as the benighted
thirteenth century, to be made doctor of civil and canon law in the
University of Bologna at the age of twenty-seven. She had already
pronounced a funeral oration in Latin and otherwise distinguished
herself several years before. It is no longer the fashion to give Latin
orations outside of the universities, but we know how women fared a few
decades ago, when they tried to speak publicly in their own language.
It was perfectly understood that women of such oratorical proclivities
forfeited all right to social consideration. They were practically
ostracized. Happily, now they are treated about as well as they were
six hundred years ago, when people crowded the university halls and
even the public squares to listen to this remarkable woman. We do not
hear that she was called any disagreeable names, not even a bas-bleu,
though there is a vague tradition that she had peculiar notions about
dress. It is said that she had rare beauty, but her charm and esprit
made people forget it.

There is nothing in the medieval ideals of womanhood to suggest such
a phenomenon, still less its cordial acceptance. Not even in the
early poets is there a trace of the type of woman which played so
distinguished a part in the golden age of the Renaissance. Beatrice
was little more than a beautiful abstraction, the spiritual ideal of
a man who dwelt mainly upon other-worldly matters. Petrarch found it
interesting to kneel before Madonna Laura in the clouds, and sing hymns
in her praise; but she was only an elusive figure on which to drape
poetic fancies. In these days, when it is quite the fashion to pull
the halos from the saints and put them on the sinners,--when even the
wicked Lucrezia Borgia has become a respectable wife and a particularly
good mother, who expiated the sins of her youth, if she had any, by her
pious devotion, her kindness to the poor, and her patronage of art and
literature,--it is not surprising to hear that Laura was a common-place
matron, “fair, fat, and forty,” who would have found it difficult to
live up to the ideals of her adorer,--even if she had known what they
were,--and prudently kept out of so rarefied an air. This blending of
chivalry and mysticism made fine poetry but not very substantial women.

Boccaccio paid a generous tribute to the heroic qualities of the women
of the past, but he evidently preferred them at a distance or in books.
Personally he seems to have had no more taste for savantes than for
saints. He belonged to the new age, which glorified the joys of life
and liked to sing love-songs--not of the choicest--to frail beauties.
Fiammetta was, no doubt, a clever woman and a beautiful one, but she
was no divine Egeria to inspire him with high thoughts. If he did
brilliant things at her bidding, the trail of the serpent was over them
all. Perhaps he aimed to suit the taste of the day, which was neither
delicate nor moral; or he may have lived in bad company from which
he took his models. We should be sorry to take as representative the
heroines of the Decameron, who must have brought blushes, which the
twilight could not hide, to the faces of the little coterie of friends
that sat on the grass telling or listening to these tales during the
long summer evenings at Florence, when men and women were dying all
about them. But they give us one phase of the life of the time, and
reflect the taste of an audience composed mainly of men who laughed at
morals and deified art, regardless of its aim or its subject. The age
was not strait-laced, but Italian ladies were not permitted to read
Boccaccio. One story, however, they might read. When the poet wished to
portray a good woman, for a change, he made a fine little picture of
Griselda, the patient, who was duly thankful for every indignity her
amiable lord chose to offer, mainly because she thought her sufferings
made him happy. When these incredible cruelties culminated in sending
her away loaded with unmerited disgrace, she still thanked him like
a good wife who was grateful for being trampled upon, even when her
innocent heart was breaking. It was a fine object-lesson for the proper
education of girls, and this marvel of self-sacrifice was held up from
one end of Europe to the other as a model of womanhood. Poets painted
her over and over again, with race variations; moralists praised her;
and men quoted her to their wives. Some instinct of justice prompted
Boccaccio to reward her in the end for all this useless misery, which
was simply a test of her servile quality, by putting her again, after
a series of years, into the good graces of her inhuman husband; but
it is needless to say that such rewards of virtue, if they could be
considered rewards, are not in the way of a world in which these
lessons are read.

All this shows how far the heroines of the early poets, whether
good or bad, differed from the strong, able, and accomplished women
who were recognized as the glories of the Renaissance. It suggests
also the lurid or colorless background against which the latter were
outlined. The cynical bachelor in Molière’s comedy summed up the whole
duty of woman according to the gospel of the middle ages--and, it
might be added, of many other ages--when he said that his wife must
know only how to “pray to God, love, sew, and spin.” The last three
qualifications were necessary for his own comfort, and he had the
penetration to divine that she might have ample need of the first on
her own account. Then it gave him an agreeable sense of security to
have a certain proprietorship in some one mildly affiliated with the
next world. “In thy orisons be all my sins remembered,” says Hamlet
to the fair Ophelia. A man might be the worst of sinners himself,
but he liked a seasoning of piety in his wife, provided it was not
too aggressive and left him free to be wicked if he chose. It was
like having an altar in the home, and gave it a desirable flavor of
saintliness.

Beyond the fireside and the docile domestic slave, however, there was
another medieval ideal of womanhood, a _religieuse_ who prayed
and sang hymns in the cloister. Aside from this, it was her special
mission to help the poor, care for the sick, console the sorrowful, and
advance the interests of the church. But these women of the cloister,
who had the altar without the home, found a possible outlet for their
imprisoned intellects, if they had sufficient natural force. The Roman
Church, which had always frowned upon any exercise of a woman’s mental
gifts in a worldly sphere, was glad to avail itself of them in its own
interest, and there were a few women more or less distinguished both as
leaders of religious organizations and counselors of ecclesiastics, who
kept alive the prestige of their sex through centuries of darkness. It
was one of the strange paradoxes of that age, as of many others, that
a woman is an irrational being, too fragile to bear distinction of any
sort, except when her talents make for the glory of men or the church.
Activity in public affairs, so long as they were religious ones, was
not considered unwomanly, notwithstanding the conservative opinions
of St. Paul. No one took it amiss when Catherine of Siena used her
wisdom and eloquence in persuading the Pope to return from Avignon to
Rome after men’s counsels had failed. No one found fault because her
emotional exaltation was tempered by a vigorous intellect. She was a
thinker and seer, and wrote ably on political as well as ecclesiastical
questions. Her style was simple and classic; indeed, she was altogether
phenomenal, and had strange influence over the popes and kings to whom
she did not hesitate to tell unpleasant truths. It was quite fitting
that she should devote these gifts to the interests of her church and
incidentally of her country. Men honored her for it, and canonized her.

This was a hundred and fifty years or so before the beautiful
Isabella of Cordova, who was more learned and less mystical, gave
up mundane pleasures for the classics and a degree in theology;
and Isabella Rosera devoted herself to the conversion of the Jews,
dazzled multitudes with her eloquence in the cathedral at Barcelona,
and expounded the subtleties of Duns Scotus before prelates and
cardinals at Rome. But in that interval women had made great strides
in intelligence, and the talents that shone so conspicuously in great
moral and religious movements had become a powerful factor in other
directions. Bitisia Gozzadina had multitudes of successors to her
honors.


III

That women emerged so suddenly from a state of ignorance, superstition,
and mystic dreams to a position of intellectual distinction and
virtual though not legal equality with men, is one of the marvels of
the Renaissance. The change was as rapid and complete as that which
came over the women of the nineteenth century. It is scarcely less
remarkable, in the light of our own experience, that their new-born
passion for learning met with so little opposition. They did not find
it necessary to fight their own battles. There was no question of
asserting their right to the higher education, as we have been forced
to do. This was taken as a matter of course and without controversy.
They were educated on equal lines with men, and by the same masters;
nor were the most distinguished teachers of the age afraid of being
enervated by this contact with the feminine mind, as certain modern
professors claim to be. Doubtless they would have smiled at such a
reflection on their own mental vigor.

One is constantly surprised by the extraordinary precocity of the
young girls. Cecilia, the daughter of an early Marquis of Mantua, was
trained with her brothers by the most famous master in Italy, and
wrote Greek with singular purity at ten. She refused a brilliant but
distasteful marriage, and devoted her life to literature. The little
Battista, whose talents descended to her illustrious granddaughter,
Vittoria Colonna, was chosen, at an age when girls are usually playing
with dolls or learning their letters, to greet Pius II in a Latin
address. Anna d’Este, who became the wife of the Duke of Guise, and
in later life was so prominent a patroness of letters in France,
translated Italian into Latin with ease at ten, and was otherwise a
prodigy. One might imagine these children to have been insufferable
little prigs, but such does not seem to have been the case. So far as
we can learn, they did not lose their simplicity, and grew up to be
capable, many-sided, and charming women, quite free from pedantry or
affectation of any sort. Without attaching too much importance to these
childish efforts, which were by no means uncommon, they are of value
mainly in showing the care given to the serious education of girls.

It is certain that the place held by educated women was a new and
exceptional one. They filled chairs of philosophy and law, discoursed
in Latin before bishops and cardinals, spoke half a dozen or more
languages, understood the mysteries of statecraft better than any of
us do to-day, and were consulted on public affairs by the greatest
sovereigns of their age. Nor do we hear that they were unsexed or
out of their sphere. On the contrary, men recognized their talents
and gave them cordial appreciation. While the shafts of satire fell
thick and fast upon the follies peculiar to ignorance and weakness,
they were rarely aimed at those who, even to-day, would be more or
less stigmatized as strong-minded. Possibly a clue to this may be
found in the fact that in training the intellect they did not lose
their distinctive virtues and graces; they simply added the cult
of knowledge, which heightened all other charms. We find constant
reference to their attractions of person and character, as well as
of mind. Novella d’Andrea took her father’s place in his absence and
lectured on jurisprudence at the University of Bologna; but, either
from modesty or from the fear of distracting the too susceptible
students, she hid her lovely face behind a curtain. At a later time
Elena Cornaro--who was not only versed in mathematics, astronomy,
philosophy, theology, and six languages, but sang her own verses, gave
Latin eulogies, and lectured on various sciences--was crowned doctor of
philosophy at Padua. She took her honors modestly, and is said to have
been as pious as she was learned.

In these days of specialties one looks with distrust on so formidable
an array of accomplishments. We are apt to think of such women as
either hopelessly superficial, or pedants without any fine human
quality. A few salient points from the life of one of the most
distinguished may serve to correct this impression.


IV

Olympia Morata deserves, for her own sake, more than a passing mention.
She was by no means a simple receptacle of heterogeneous knowledge,
but a woman as noted for feminine virtues and strength of character as
for the brilliancy of her intellect. Her father was a distinguished
professor in the University of Ferrara, and his gifted daughter was fed
from infancy on the classics. At six she was taught by a learned canon
who advised her parents to put a pen in her hand instead of a needle.
At twelve she was well versed in Greek, Latin, and the sciences of
the day, petted and flattered by scholars old and young, compared to
the Muses and to all the feminine stars of antiquity, and in the way
of being altogether spoiled. In the midst of this chorus of praise she
donned the habit of a professor at sixteen, wrote dialogues in the
language of Vergil and Plato, a Greek essay on the Stoics, and many
poems. She also lectured without notes at the academy, before the court
and the university dons, on such themes as the paradoxes of Cicero,
speaking in Latin, and improvising at pleasure with perfect ease. The
great Roman orator was her model of style, and in a preface to one of
her lectures she says: “I come to my task as an unskilled artist who
can make nothing of a coarse-grained marble. But if you offer a block
of Parian to his chisel, he will no longer deem his work useless. The
beauty of the material will give value to his production. Perhaps it
will be so with mine. There are some tunes so full of melody that they
retain their sweetness even when played upon a poor instrument. Such
are the words of my author. In passing through my lips they will lose
nothing of their grace and majesty.”

This brilliant and classical maiden passed eight or ten years of her
youth at the court of Ferrara in intimate companionship with Anna
d’Este and her mother, the “wise, witty, and virtuous” Duchess Renée.
These were the days when the latter had Bernardo Tasso, a fashionable
poet who was eclipsed by his greater son, for her private secretary,
and delighted to fill her apartments with men of learning. The little
Anna, too, a child of ten, had been brought up on the classics, and the
two girls, who studied Greek together, liked to talk of Plato, Apollo,
and the Muses much better than to gossip about dress and society, or
the gallants of the court. Even their diversions had a pagan flavor.
When Paul III came on a visit, the royal children played a comedy of
Terence to entertain his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, with all
the magnates and great ladies that usually grace such festivities. It
is quite probable that the clever Olympia had much to do in directing
it.

The literary academy of the duchess had a singular fascination for
the gifted young girl, who was one of its brightest ornaments. “Her
enthusiasm over antiquity became an idolatry, and badly prepared her
intellect for the doctrines of grace,” wrote one of her friends. “She
loved better the wisdom of Homer and Plato than the foolishness of St.
Paul.” She says of herself that she was full of the vanities of her
sex, though it is difficult to conceive of this worshiper of poets
and philosophers as very frivolous. That she had many attractions is
certain, as she won all hearts. “Thy face is not only beautiful and thy
grace charming,” said one of the great scholars of the time, “but thou
hast been elevated to the court by thy virtues.... Happy the princess
who has such a companion! Happy the parents of such a child, who
pronounce thy beautiful name within their doors! Blessed the husband
who shall win thy hand!”

But this sunny life could not go on forever. The “Tenth Muse” was
called home to care for her father in his last illness, and proved as
capable in the qualities of a nurse as in those of a muse. At his death
the little family was left to her care. To make the prospect darker,
her friend Anna d’Este had just married and gone off to her brilliant
but not altogether smooth career in France, and the duchess gave her
a chilling reception that boded no good; indeed, night had overtaken
her, and she found herself cruelly dismissed in her hour of sorrow and
trouble.

Other subjects had been discussed in this literary circle besides Greek
poetry and Ariosto and the courtly Bembo and the rising stars of the
day. Calvin had been there in disguise, and they had talked of free
will, predestination, and like heresies, much to the discomfiture of
the orthodox duke, whose interests did not lie in that direction. The
young savante had listened to these things, and her eager mind had
pondered on them. Perhaps, too, she was one of the group that discussed
high and grave themes when Vittoria Colonna was there. At all events,
the duchess had fallen into disgrace for her Protestant leanings, and
could do no more for her favorite, who was branded with a suspicion of
the same heresy. Indeed, she was herself confined for a time to one
wing of the palace and forbidden to see her children lest she should
contaminate them with her own liberal views. The only powerful friend
left to the desolate girl in her adversity was Lavinia della Rovere
of the ducal family of Urbino, who had shared her tastes, sympathized
with her views in happier times, and now proved her loyalty in various
ways that sustained her drooping heart. But there was another, equally
helpful if not so powerful, a young German of good family, who had
been a medical student in the university, and fallen in love with
this paragon of learning and accomplishments. He was true when others
fell away, and she gave him the devotion of her life. Both were under
the same ban, and soon after their marriage fled to Germany, with the
blessing of Lavinia and some valuable letters to her friends.

It was a strange series of misfortunes that pursued this brave
couple. After drifting about in the vain search for a foothold in an
unsympathetic world, where they could think their own thoughts and
satisfy their modest wants, they found at last a home in which they set
up their household goods and gathered their few treasures with their
much-loved books. But when kings fall out other people suffer. No
sooner were they settled than the small city was besieged, and for many
months they went through all the horrors of war, famine, pestilence,
and, in the end, fire, which destroyed their small possessions, and
compelled them to flee for their lives through a hostile country,
scantily clothed, unprotected, and penniless.

It is needless to follow their dark wanderings. Suffice it to say that
they found refuge at last in Heidelberg, where the husband was given
a professorship, and the wife, too, was offered the chair of Greek,
which she was never able to take. Her health had succumbed to her many
sufferings and hardships, and she died before she was twenty-nine. But
her strong soul rose above them all. “I am happy--entirely happy,” she
said at the close. “I have never known a spirit so bright and fair, or
a disposition so amiable and upright,” wrote her husband, who could not
survive her loss and followed her within a few months.

There is more than the many-colored tissue of a life as sad as it
was brilliant in these records. They carry within them all the
possibilities of a strong and symmetrical womanhood. The rare quality
of her scholarship was never questioned. She was the admitted peer of
the most learned men of her time, one of whom expects her to “produce
something worthy of Sophocles.” But she was clever, winning, and
fascinating, as well as serious. Living for years among the gaieties
of a court, she went out into a world of storms and gloom without a
murmur or a regret, buoyed up by her love and unquestioning faith. She
refers more to the joys than to the sorrows of this tempestuous time.
Lavinia and the Duchess of Guise, the friends of her youth, were true
to the end. In her letters to them and to the learned men who never
lost sight of her, we have curious glimpses of the home of a woman
who was a disciple of the Muses and a savante of intrinsic quality.
While her husband prepares his lectures, she puts the house in order,
buys furniture, and manages servants who were about as troublesome as
they are to-day. One asks a florin a month, and reserves a part of
the time for her own profit. Others insist upon staying out late and
running in the streets. Most of them are grossly incompetent. Poor as
she is, she is always ready to help those who are in greater need, and
is constantly imposed upon. She even borrows money to send to an old
servant in distress.

Then there are the evenings when grave professors come in, and they
talk in Latin of the affairs of the day, the religious persecutions, or
some disputed dogma. Sometimes they sing one of her Greek psalms which
her husband has set to music. She has her heart full with the care of
her young brother and the little daughter of a friend, who has been
sent to her for instruction. But her life is bound up in that of her
husband, whom she “cannot live without.” A pure and generous spirit,
happy in her sacrifices, and true to every relation, she is a living
refutation of the fallacy, too often heard even now, that learning and
the gentler qualities of womanhood do not go together.

There were many other women of great distinction in the universities,
whose names still live in enduring characters after four or five
centuries--professors, and wives of professors who worked side by side
with their husbands, and received their due meed of consideration. We
have women of fine scholarly attainments to-day, though in the great
universities they are mostly relegated to the anterooms and honored
with second-class degrees; but fancy the consternation of the students
of Harvard or Oxford if asked to listen to the lecture of a woman on
law or philosophy, or, indeed, on any subject whatever! Yet there were
great men and great scholars in Italy, possibly too great to fear
competition. Society was in no sense upset, and, so far as women were
concerned, the harmony of creation was not interfered with. Indeed, the
best mothers and the most devoted, helpful wives in Italy of whom we
have any knowledge were among the women who spoke Latin, read Greek,
and worshiped at the shrine of the Muses--all of which may be commended
to the college girls of to-day as well as to their critics.


V

In other fields there were equally accomplished women. Cassandra
Fidelis was the pride and glory of Venice in the days when Titian
walked along the shores of the Adriatic, absorbing the luminous tints
of sea and sky, and picturing to himself the faces that look out upon
us to-day from the buried centuries, instinct with color and the
fullness of life. Poet and philosopher, she wrote in many languages,
even spoke publicly at Padua. She caught, too, the spirit of beauty
and song, and was as noted for her music and her graceful manners as
for her learning. Men of letters paid court to her, Leo X wrote to
her, and Ferdinand tried to draw her to Naples; but the Doge refused
to part with this model of so many gifts and virtues. She lived a
century divided between literature and piety, but drifted at last, in
her widowhood, to the refuge of so many tired souls, and ended her
brilliant career in a convent.

This remarkable flowering of the feminine intellect was not confined
to Italy. Besides the noted Spanish women already mentioned, there
were celebrated professors of rhetoric in the universities of Alcala
and Salamanca. Even more distinguished was Aloysia Sigea, a poet
and savante of Toledo, who surprised Paul III with a letter in five
languages, which he was able to answer in only three. Just why she
found it necessary to put what she had to say in five languages,
instead of one, does not appear, but she proved her right to be
considered a prodigy. Her fame was great, and she died young.

Frenchwomen were less serious and made a stronger point of the arts of
pleasing. They approached literature with the air of a dilettante, who
finds in it an amusement or accomplishment rather than a passion or
an aim. At a later period they brought to its height a society based
upon talent and the less tangible quality of esprit. But we have the
virile intellect and versatile knowledge of the Renaissance in Mlle. de
Gournay, who aspired to the highest things, including the perfection of
friendship, which she said her sex had never been able to reach; and
the famous Marguerite, the witty, learned, independent, and original
sister of Francis I, who aimed at all knowledge, and tried her hand
at everything from writing verses and tales, patronizing letters, and
gathering a society of philosophers and poets, to reforming religion
and ruling a state.

In England we find Lady Jane Grey at sixteen a mistress of many
languages and preferring Plato to a hunting-party; the Seymour sisters,
who were familiar with the sciences and wrote Latin verses; the
daughters of Sir Thomas More, whose talents and accomplishments were
only surpassed by their virtues; and many others, by no means least
Queen Elizabeth herself, whose attainments were overshadowed by her
genius of administration. The taste for knowledge was widely spread,
and it would take us far beyond the limits of this essay to recall the
women of many countries who were noted for learning and gifts that
must always be relatively rare in any age, though pretenders may be as
numerous as parrots in a tropical forest.

But it is mainly the women of Italy, where this movement had its birth,
that we are considering here, and their talents were not confined to
the acquisition of knowledge. There were many poets among them. To be
sure, we find no Dante, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Tasso. Of creative
genius there was very little; of taste and skill and poetic feeling
there was a great deal. Domenichi made a collection of fifty women
poets who compared well with the average men of their time and far
surpassed them in refinement and moral purity. In their new enthusiasm
for things of the intellect, they never lost their simplicity of faith,
and were infected little, if at all, with the cynical skepticism of the
age. Some of these numerous poets were connected with the universities,
others belonged to the great world, and still others were women of
moderate station, who were honored at the various courts for their
gifts of mind.

No doubt much of this poetry was mediocre. Indeed, men, aside from
the greatest, wrote very little that one now cares to read. It is a
truism that “poets are born, not made,” and they are not born very
often. But the work of women which was not even of the best received
high consideration. Tarquinia Molza, a maid of honor at Ferrara,--who
held public discussions with Tasso, wrote sonnets and epigrams,
and translated the dialogues of Plato,--was so celebrated for her
learning and poetic gifts that the Senate of Rome conferred upon her
the title of Roman Citizen. Laura Battiferri, one of the ornaments
of the court of Urbino, was spoken of as a rival of Sappho in genius
and her superior in modesty and decorum. She was an honored member of
the Academy of the Intronati at Siena. There were no women’s clubs
in those days. They were not needed when women were admitted to many
of the academies on equal terms with men. The number may have been
small, but evidently the way was clear. They were barred, if at all, by
incapacity, not by sex.

One of the most celebrated of these numerous poets was Veronica
Gambara, Countess of Correggio, a woman of fine gifts, many virtues,
and great personal charm, who was left a widow after nine happy years
of marriage. Like her friend Vittoria Colonna, she spent the rest of
her life in mourning her husband, draping herself, her apartments,
and everything she had in black, and refusing all offers of a second
marriage. But this sable grief did not prevent her from managing her
affairs, her little state, and her two sons, both of whom reached high
positions, with great judgment and ability. Her husband had trusted
her implicitly, and left her in full control at his death. It was
largely to his memory that she devoted her poetic gifts. She did not
write a great deal, but her verses were simple and showed masculine
vigor. Many of them were tender, though by no means sentimental. She
wrote on the vanity of earthly things, a subject on which women have
always been specially eloquent, as they have so often written out of
their own sad experience. Her home at Bologna was a sort of academy,
where the most distinguished men of the age met, and it was noted as
a center of brilliant conversation. One of its chief attractions was
Cardinal Bembo, a lifelong friend, to whom she addressed a sonnet at
ten. Philosopher, high priest of Platonism, critic, poet, and man
of the world, this famous cardinal paid the highest tributes to the
distinguished women of his time. Intellectually he lived in an air
that was somewhat tenuous, but he sought the society of those who
loved things of the spirit--especially princesses. It was a convenient
fashion among these diplomats and churchmen to have two lives--one
poetic, Platonic, with ecstatic glimpses of the celestial, the other
running through various grades of the terrestrial. The versatile Bembo
was no exception. Veronica Gambara, who combined grace and delicacy
with a distinctly mundane vigor, sat metaphorically at his feet, and
was an ardent disciple of the new Platonic philosophy. She had natural
eloquence, and gave a charm to the serious discussions at her house.
Among her noted visitors was Charles V, who was fascinated by her
talents and gracious manners. She reproached him and Francis I with the
quarrels that had flooded Europe with tears, and wrote him a poem fired
with patriotic ardor, in which she asks peace for Italy and protection
against the infidel. In her poetry and her letters she followed
Petrarch. Without commanding genius, and less mystical than Vittoria
Colonna, but with possibly more strength in a limited range, she was
greatly considered for her learning, her poetry, her social graces, her
practical ability, and her spotless character.

These are a few out of a multitude of poets and savantes who are of
little interest to-day, except as showing the notable attainments of
women in a new field and the drift of public sentiment regarding them.


VI

There is one, however, who calls for more attention, not only because
of her enduring fame, but because she stood in a light so strong as
to make her, even at this distance, a living personality to us;
also because she represents the best phases of the Renaissance, its
learning, its intelligence, its enthusiasm, its subtle Platonism,
combined with a profound religious faith and a trace of the mysticism
of a simpler age. We are apt to recall Vittoria Colonna as half
poet, half saint. Her spiritual face looks out of a century of vice
and license, crowned with the delicate halo of a Madonna brooding
tenderly over the sins of the world in which she lives with an air of
apartness, as if she were in it but not of it. Whether we see her under
the soft skies of Ischia, happy and a bride, or seeking solace among
its orange-scented groves for the lost joys of her youth; at Naples,
holding a lettered court with the beautiful and accomplished Giulia
Gonzaga; at Rome, talking on high themes with a group of serious and
thoughtful men in the cool shadows of the Colonna gardens; at Ferrara,
discussing the new thought, receiving the homage of a distinguished
circle, and generously using her great name to shield the persecuted
and unhappy; or kneeling at prayers and chanting Misereres in the
cloisters where, at intervals, she hid a sorrowful heart--there is
always the same flavor of purity and saintliness in her character and
personality as in her genius.

The romance of her life is well known. She was born in 1490,--just
before Lorenzo de’ Medici died and Savonarola expiated the crime of
being too good for his time,--in a gloomy old Colonna castle that
towers picturesquely above the rambling, medieval town of Marino among
the Alban hills. But she did not stay there long, as she was betrothed
at four to the Marquis of Pescara, and, for some inexplicable reason,
sent away to the sunny island of Ischia to be educated with him by his
sister Costanza d’Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla, a woman so noted for
wisdom, ability, and virtue that she was made governor, or châtelaine,
of the island at her husband’s death. For once, this commercial
arrangement proved a fortunate one, as the brilliant duchess was as
famous for her culture and the lettered society gathered about her as
for her practical talent in ruling. The gifted child grew up among
poets and men of learning, with her future lord as her playmate and a
woman of intellect as her guide. Add to this the changing splendors of
sea and sky, the haunting memories of the beautiful shore that curves
away from the headlands of Misenum to the Isles of the Sirens, the
repose broken only by the cool dripping of fountains, the plashing
of the indolent waves on the beach, and the plaintive songs of the
boatmen floating at evening across the tranquil water to find a sweet
refrain in the music of the vesper bell--and we have the _milieu_
of the poet. There were royal festivities when the king came to break
the monotony of the days, occasional glimpses of the magnificent court
pageants at Naples, and rare visits to the somber ancestral home on
the Alban Lake. But the mind of the thoughtful maiden was more in
harmony with the quiet scenes among which most of her days were passed,
and had taken its permanent tone when the youthful lovers were married
at about eighteen, or possibly nineteen.

Two or three years of unclouded happiness, and this idyllic life came
to an end. The marquis was called to the army, and the devoted wife saw
him only at long intervals during his brilliant career, which he closed
some fifteen years later with a tarnished name. The blow that shattered
the hopes of Vittoria came near costing her life. In the first agony of
her grief she fled to a convent, and wished to take the veil of a nun;
but she was too valuable in her own sphere to be lost to the world, and
Clement VII forbade it. Her only resource was to consecrate herself
to the memory of one she never ceased to call _mio bel sole_, to
religion, and to matters of the intellect.

How she reconciled her undying love with the faithless and treacherous
character of her Spanish husband, who was willing to sell his loyalty
for a kingdom, we do not know. That she was ignorant of his disgrace is
not probable. She had given him high counsel, putting honor and virtue
above titles and worldly grandeur, and saying that she had no wish to
be the wife of a king, since she is already the wife of a captain who
has vanquished kings, not only by his bravery, but by his magnanimity.
But she had, to a marked degree, the fine idealism that gives vitality
to a sentiment. It is shown in the poise of the shapely head, in the
broad, high, speculative forehead that hid a wealth of imagination and
exalted feeling, in the large, soft, penetrating dark eyes, lighted
with sensibility, which relieved the delicately chiseled features and
firm but beautiful mouth from a tinge of asceticism. She was tall,
stately, and graceful, with a fair, variable face of pure outlines, and
hair of Titian gold. Her picture is one of a rare woman, capable of
high thought, great generosity, great sacrifice, and great devotion.
This love of her youth was interwoven with every fiber of her being.
The child with whom she had wandered hand in hand by the sea; the youth
who had responded to her every taste and thought, poetic like herself,
proud, accomplished, handsome, and knightly; the man who had whiled
away the hours of his captivity in writing for her a rather stilted
Dialogue of Love, were alike transfigured in her memory. If she heard
that he was a traitor, probably she did not believe it, and the very
fact of unmerited disgrace would have been an added claim upon her
affection. She was young, and naturally slow to think that an act which
Pope and cardinals had assured him was quite consistent with the finest
honor could be treasonable at all, though she had a keen moral sense
that led her straight to the heart of things. Then the harshness and
cruelty for which he was noted belonged to the exigencies of war, which
is never merciful. It was easy to malign him there. At all events, it
is certain that the faults of this brilliant cavalier of very flexible
honor were swept away in a flood of happy memories and imperishable
love. Many were the suitors who presented themselves to the gifted,
rich, and beautiful princess, who was scarcely past thirty-five; but
she had gathered the wealth of her affections in a vase that was
broken, and for her there was no second gathering. The spirit that held
captive her own still shone in the heavens as a sun that lighted the
inner temple of her soul and made its hidden treasures luminous.

When she rallied a little from the first stunning blow, she began to
write. This had been one of the diversions of her youth, and she had
often sent tender verses to her husband. Now it offered an outlet to
her sorrows, and, at the same time, a tribute to his memory. Never
was such a monument dedicated to a man as this series of more than a
hundred sonnets. Her love colored all her thoughts, and gave to her
clear, strong intellect a living touch that comes only from the heart.
If one misses in these verses the fire of Sappho, one is conscious of
coming in contact with a pure and lofty soul in which earthly passion
has been transformed into a glow of divine tenderness. But the note of
longing and loneliness is always there. Laura was no more idealized by
her poet lover than was this unworthy man by his desolate wife. For
seven years her poems were a series of variations on the same theme.
The sun shone no longer for her; there was no more beauty in tree, or
flower, or sparkling waves; the birds were mute, and nature was draped
in gloom. In death only there was hope; but even here was the dreadful
possibility that she might not be perfect enough to meet this paragon
of all noble qualities in heaven. So Mrs. Browning might have written.
She had the same tendency to transfigure her idols in the light of the
imagination, the same meditative quality, the same fine idealism. But
she lived and died a happy wife, while her sister poet spent lonely
years in the companionship of a memory.

Time, however, which tempers all things, if it does not change them,
brought a new element into her thoughts, and her elegiac songs rose to
cathedral hymns. In her religious sonnets she reveals the intrinsic
quality of her mind and its firm grasp of spiritual things. Some of
them touch on forbidden questions, and wander among the dangerous
heresies of the new age. Theology and poetry are not quite in accord,
and these are of value mainly as showing the liberal drift of her
opinions. Others are the spontaneous outpouring of a full and ardent
soul. Rich in thought, alive with feeling, and lighted with hope, they
soar on the wings of an exalted faith far above the heavy and sin-laden
air of her time.

  And, as the light streams gently from above,
    Sin’s gloomy mantle bursts its bonds in twain,
    And robed in white, I seem to feel again
  The first sweet sense of innocence and love.

This gentle-hearted poet was a purist in style, and chiseled carefully
the vase in which she put her thoughts, not for the sake of the vase,
but reverently, to make it worthy of the thought. These hymns fall upon
the ear like some thrilling strain from Palestrina, who translated
into song the dreams, the aspirations, the baffled hopes, the sorrows
of a race in its decline, and sent it along the centuries with its
everlasting message of love and consolation. There was something akin
in the two spirits that lived at the same time, though Palestrina was
young when the poet neared the evening. It was he who first gave to
music a living soul. Vittoria gave the world its first collection of
religious poems, and poured her own heart into them. Both vibrated to
the deepest note of their age. Only the arts differed, and the quality
of thought, and the outer vestments of life.

But we are far from the days when this beautiful woman in her
magnificent robes of crimson velvet and gold, attended by six ladies
in azure damask and as many grooms in blue and yellow satin, was one
of the central figures in some royal wedding festivities at Naples.
Mundane pleasures had long ago lost their charm, and the still lovely
poet in her sable costume finds her consolation in ministering
to the poor and suffering, and in an active interest in all the
intellectual movements of her time. She was the friend of great men
and distinguished women. Cardinal Bembo, the famous “dictator of
letters,” lauds her virtues and her genius while he craves her favor.
She writes of the gifts of her “divine Bembo,” addresses sonnets to
him, and receives his “celestial, holy, and very Platonic” affection
with gracious dignity. Castiglione sends her his manuscript of “Il
Cortegiano” for criticism, and complains that she held it too long
and copied it for other eyes. She gives discriminating praise of the
“subject as well as the tact, elegance, and animation of the style,”
but she suggests the wisdom of dwelling less persistently on the beauty
and virtue of living women. The unscrupulous but keen-witted Aretino
pays her compliments and begs her aid. “One must count with the tastes
of one’s contemporaries,” he writes, in half-apology for his own base
standards; “only amusement or scandal are lucrative; they burn with
unholy passions, as you do with an inextinguishable angelic flame.
Sermons and vespers for you, music and comedy for others.... Why write
serious books? After all, I write to live.” This was the note of the
new age in an ever-descending scale--the death-knell of all that is
fine and noble in any age. It is needless to ask what this high-souled
woman thought of sordid motives that were by no means confined to the
Italian decadence; but she managed the vain and vindictive man, who
held reputations in the hollow of his hand, with graceful dignity and
infinite tact. Living at a time when the great poets were passing, and
literature was fast becoming the trade of artisans who appealed to the
lowest passions of a sense-intoxicated people, or the tool of cynics
and courtiers, she held her own way serenely, superior to worldly
motives and worldly entanglements. There are numerous glimpses of her
in the poems and letters of her time, but the chorus of praise was
universal. “She has more eloquence and breathes more sweetness than all
other women,” says Ariosto, “and gives such force to her lofty words
that she adorns the heavens in our day with another sun.” And again:
“She has not only made herself immortal by her beautiful style, than
which I have heard none better, but she can raise from the tomb those
of whom she speaks or writes, and make them live forever.”

It was her sympathy with all high things that made her so warm a
friend to the apostles of the new religious thought. Though an ardent
Catholic, she was no bigot to be held within the iron-bound limits of
a creed which had lost its moral force, no beauty-loving disciple of
an estheticism that veiled crime and corruption with the splendors
of a ceremonial, sang Te Deums over the triumphs of the wicked and
Misereres while plotting assassination. She felt the need of a purer
morality and a deeper spirituality, though, like Savonarola, she wished
reform within the church, not outside of it. We find her always in the
ranks of the thinkers. She was the devoted friend of Contarini, the
broad-minded cardinal, who grieved so sincerely over the universal
corruption, and died, possibly of that grief and his own helplessness,
before the hour came when it was a crime to speak one’s best thoughts.
He should have been Pope, she said in her sonnet on his death, to make
the age happy. It was a striking tribute to the vigorous quality of
her intellect that he dedicated to her his work “On Free Will.” Fra
Bernardino she defended when he fled to Switzerland and joined the
Lutherans, but she was powerless to help him in his hours of darkness.
Even this brought her under the suspicion of heresy. Carnesecchi,
another of her friends, was burned, and one of the chief accusations
against a Florentine who was condemned to a like fate years afterward
was that he belonged to her circle. “It is an inexpressible pleasure
to me that my counsels are approved by a woman of so much virtue and
wisdom,” wrote Sadolet to Cardinal Pole. She sustained these powerful
prelates by the prestige of her name and the fullness of her sympathy.
The liberal circle of her friend Renée attracted her to Ferrara,
but the air was full of suspicion. They talked much and pleasantly
of literature, poetry, and the arts; when they touched upon the new
thought which was revolutionizing the world, it was behind closed
doors, and with the vivid consciousness that the walls had ears which
stretched to Rome.

But to-day Vittoria Colonna is known best as the friend of
Michelangelo, to whom she was a polar star, an inspiration, an
everlasting joy. “Without wings, I fly with your wings; by your genius
I am raised toward the skies,” he writes. “In your soul my thought is
born; my words are in your mind.” It was the perfect sympathy of finely
attuned spirits, the divine friendship that exists only between men
and women who live at an altitude far above the things of sense. The
age was full of talk about Platonic love. A few reached it, and they
were of the spiritual elect; but they did not talk much about it. To
this solitary artist, who dwelt on lonely heights, the divining and
sympathetic spirit of a thoughtful woman was a revelation. He wrote
sonnets to her, sometimes calm and philosophical, sometimes fiery and
passionate. He also sent her poems and sketches for criticism. The
tact with which she drew out the best in this colossal man is shown
by a conversation in the softly lighted Chapel of San Silvestro, as
recorded by an artist who was present. She had been listening to a
private exposition of St. Paul, but when Michelangelo came in, she
delicately turned the conversation upon the subject nearest his heart,
on which it was not easy to lead him to talk. Both were apart from the
spirit of an age that was fast tearing down the few ethical standards
it had, and virtually taking for its motto the most dangerous of
fallacies, “Art for art’s sake.” “True painting is only an image of
the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a
melody, a striving after harmony,” said the master. And the lady, in
her turn, spoke, until the tears fell, of the divine message of art
that “leads to piety, to glory, to greatness.” They discussed, too, her
project of building a convent on the spot where Nero had watched the
burning of Rome, that “virtuous women might efface the memory of so
wicked a man.”

No shadow ever rested on this friendship. Michelangelo was past sixty
and Vittoria was not far from forty-seven when they met. There is no
trace of tender sentiment in their brief correspondence, though a deep
and abiding friendship is apparent. Once she playfully writes him to
curtail his letters lest they interfere with his duties at St. Peter’s
and keep her from the Chapel of St. Catherine, “so that one would fail
in duty to the sisters of Christ and the other to his Vicar.” She said
that those who knew only his works were ignorant of the best part of
the man. When she lay dead before him he kissed her hand reverently,
and went out in inconsolable grief to regret the rest of his life that
he had not dared to leave a kiss on the pure forehead.

In early life, Vittoria, having no children of her own, had undertaken
the care of her husband’s cousin, the Marchese del Vasto, a boy of
singular beauty, fine gifts, but wild and passionate temper, which no
one had been able to control. Under her gentle and wise influence he
had grown to be a brilliant and accomplished man, who never ceased to
regard her with the greatest affection. She said that she could not be
considered childless after molding the moral character of this son of
her adoption. It was one of her great griefs that he died in the flower
of his manhood, when the shadows were darkening about her and she
needed more than ever his sympathy and support.

At this time fate laid upon her a heavy hand. When Rome became
unsafe, she joined the devoted group that surrounded Cardinal Pole at
Viterbo; but the last years before her final illness were spent in the
Benedictine convent of St. Anne, where she prayed and wrote devotional
poems. When she grew ill a celebrated physician said that the fairest
light in this world would go out unless some physician for the mind
could be found. Her friends were scattered or dead; the misfortunes
of her family weighed heavily on her spirit; the cruelties of the
new régime had crushed the lives of many whom she loved; she had been
forced to stifle her purest convictions and to turn away from the
falling fortunes which she had no power to save. It was only a joy to
lay down the burden of her fifty-seven years, surrounded by the few who
were left to her. She ordered a simple burial, such as was given to the
sisters in the convent. There was no memorial, and, strange to say, no
one knows where she lies.

No woman better refutes the theory that knowledge makes pedants, that
the gentler qualities fade before the cold light of the intellect. To
a vigorous, versatile mind, and the calm courage of her convictions,
Vittoria Colonna united a tender heart, fine sensibilities, and broad
sympathies. Her clear judgment was tempered by a winning sweetness.
The age of specialties was still in the distance, and the woman was
superior to any of her achievements. In a period that was notably lax
in morals, she carried herself among crowds of adorers with such gentle
dignity that no cloud ever shadowed her fair fame. With this rare
harmony of intellect, heart, and character, she held the essentials of
life above all its decorations; but she retained to the end the simple
graces, the flexible tact, and the stately manners of the _grande
dame_.

This literary woman, great lady, and _dévote_ of centuries ago
belongs to a type that is out of fashion to-day; it was not common even
then. She was the perfected fruit of the finest spirit of her time. She
did not write for money or fame; she sought neither honors nor society
nor worldly pleasures, though she was a social queen by right of
inheritance. She loved high things for their own sake and because she
was akin to them. She loved her friends, too, for what they were, not
for what they brought her, and gave them of her best, even to her own
hurt. If she tried to reconcile her beliefs and her environment, it was
a fault of sanity and loyalty; to break with her church traditions was
to lose her influence and gain nothing. Possibly this is not the spirit
of a reformer, but it is the spirit of those who trust to the saving
quality of light rather than of heat. No doubt the conflict helped to
wear out her waning forces. In this restless age the world praises such
women from afar. They appeal to it as do the pictures of Raphael and
Fra Angelico, which we are quite ready to adore as they hang in gallery
or drawing-room, for some subtle quality of beauty consecrated by the
homage of centuries, though their underlying significance we may have
long outgrown. If they are seen at rare intervals in real life, we
give them a certain tribute of admiration, no doubt, but we are apt to
speak of them personally as visionary, antiquated, or other-worldly.
The lofty sentiment, the stateliness, the repose, the indefinable
distinction, are not in the line of modern ideals.


VII

It is worthy of note that in an age which was essentially devoted to
beauty and a glorification of the senses, women almost invariably wrote
on sacred or ethical themes. Even love they transfigured into something
divine. The first-fruits of their intelligence were offered on the
shrine of a purer morality. As a rule, too, they were women of serious
tastes and conspicuous virtues.

There was one poet, however, of some note who may be mentioned as an
exception to the consistently high character of the literary women of
a notably wicked period; but even her poems were largely religious in
tone. Tullia d’Aragona, who discussed affairs in Latin and wrote Greek
when a child, was a wit, a genius, and a brilliant woman. She had a
bad father, though he was a cardinal, and a mother who was beautiful
but is not plainly visible at this distance. The clever Tullia, who
had a questionable salon at Rome, with plenty of cardinals and princes
in her train, carried with her to other courts a certain prestige
which they did not scrutinize too closely, and she fascinated many men
who were not quite equal to the moral and intellectual altitude of a
Vittoria Colonna or an Olympia Morata. “Vittoria is a moon, Tullia a
sun,” said an enthusiastic admirer and fellow-poet. But in the waning
of her charms she turned seriously to literature, and wrote a poem of
thirty thousand lines, besides a curious dialogue on “The Infinity
of Love,” and many sonnets. At this time in her life, which verged
toward the twilight, she had put off frivolous things and was disposed
to moralize. In the preface to her poem she says that reading is a
resource for women when everything else fails; but she mourns over
the fact that Boccaccio, who claimed to write for them, said so many
things not fit to be read; that even Ariosto was not above reproach;
and closes by declaring that she has not put down a word that might
not be read by “maiden, nun, or widow at any hour”--all of which goes
to show the final tendency of women toward moral ideals, in spite of
the entanglements of very mundane surroundings. They take refuge in
charity and religion from a world that has ceased to charm, as men do
in cynicism and stimulants.

This versatile poet of more esprit than decorum had a great deal of
incense offered her, and in the end won even the patronage of the
grave, virtuous, and sorrowful Eleanor of Toledo, but she died in
penitence and misery. As she lived and shone in the most dissolute
society of her day, and was trained from childhood with special
reference to pleasing men of brilliant position and gifts but low
morals, she by no means fitly represents the learned women of Italy,
whether of court or university. She belonged to a class apart. We lift
our eyes at the laxity of a society which could receive and smile upon
her, but we have not far to go to find the same complaisance even in
a period that prides itself on its superior morals. Our censor of
the twenty-fifth century may find here a text for a sermon on the
wickedness of the scientific age, which he will otherwise prove by
copious quotations from the glaring headlines of our daily journals.

So far as appears, in an age when no man’s life was secure and no
woman’s honor was quite safe, when men in power did not scruple to
send those who were in their way out of the world, atoning for it, if
it needed atonement, at least celebrating it, by a grand Te Deum, or a
De Profundis,--which seems more suitable though less cheerful,--it was
the women of the highest intelligence who held the balance of humanity
and morals. There were wicked ones, no doubt, in abundance, as the
more facile and helpless sex was not free from the subtle influence of
the spirit of the age against which good men with all their vaunted
strength struggled in vain. But it can hardly be disputed that the
virtues and graces of character blossomed in the most significant
profusion among women of distinctly scholarly tastes, who found in the
pleasures of the intellect an unfailing resource against the vices as
well as the sorrows and disappointments of a bad and pitiless world.




THE LITERARY COURTS AND PLATONIC LOVE

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · Social Spirit of Women ·
  · Accomplished Princesses · Their Executive Ability ·
  · Caterina Sforza · Patrons of Letters ·
  · Court of Urbino ·
  · Duchess Elisabetta · Count Castiglione ·
  · Record of Conversations · Qualities of a Lady ·
  · A Medici Champion of Women ·
  · Platonic Love · Court of Ferrara ·
  · Boiardo · Ariosto · Duchess Leonora ·
  · Lucrezia Borgia · Renée · Tasso’s Leonora ·
  · Court of Mantua · Isabella d’Este ·
  · Court of Milan · Beatrice d’Este ·
  · Moral and Intellectual Value of Women of the Renaissance ·
  · From Court to Literary Salon ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

We have heard of a man who, after writing two hundred volumes or so
on various learned subjects, added a “Eulogy of Silence.” Among other
curious things, he said that he was “never more with those he loved
than when alone.” Men have sometimes been known to prefer society in
this form, but women rarely; they like things in the concrete, and they
like to talk about them. They may turn to a life of the spirit, but
even this they do not care to live in solitude. There are few anchorets
among them. In their exaltation, as in their pursuit of knowledge, they
seek companionship.

Just how much women had to do with awakening the world from its long
sleep we do not know, but they were very active in keeping it awake
after it began to open its eyes. They mastered old languages, studied
old manuscripts, held public discussions on classic themes, wrote
verses, and entered with enthusiasm into the search for records that
had been lying in the dust for a thousand years. But they did more than
this: they revived the art of conversation and created society anew.
Possibly this was the most distinct heritage they left to the coming
ages.

If conversation did not reach its maturity in Italy, it had its
brilliant youth there. Later it was taken up in France, spiced with
Gallic wit, and raised to the dignity of a fine art; but it lost a
little of its first seriousness. The accomplished princesses of the
Renaissance, who raved over a new-found line of Plato or Socrates,
and expatiated on the merits of a long-buried statue they had helped
to unearth, recalled the famous circle of Aspasia and made social
centers of their own. But they added a fresh and original flavor. One
does not copy accurately after fifteen or twenty centuries, nor even
after two or three; but we are safe in thinking that these groups
of poets, statesmen, prelates, artists, wits, and litterateurs, who
discussed the new life and thought, were not far behind their model
in brilliancy. If the men were not so great, the world was older, the
field of knowledge was wider, and there was more to talk about. Then,
there was but one Aspasia. If there were lesser stars of her own
sex, we do not know who they were. It was a brave woman, whatever her
abilities may have been, if she had a reputation to lose, that would
show her face in the society of those grand old Greeks who claimed the
universe for themselves and made of her an insignificant vassal. But
there was a multitude of women, both clever and learned, who added life
and piquancy to the coteries of the Renaissance. Men were proud of the
versatile wives and daughters who made their courts centers of light
and learning; if they were without lettered tastes themselves, they
were glad of the reflected glory. So, naturally, it was the ambition
of every well-born girl to fit herself to shine in these brilliant
circles, and every father who had a daughter of talent was conscious of
possessing a treasure of great value upon which too much care could not
be lavished.

It must not be thought, however, that the women who made their courts
so famous were simply devotees of fashion, or the pretty toys of men’s
caprices, any more than they were colorless saints of the household or
cloister. They were not without high domestic and womanly virtues, but
they had also intelligence, a grasp of affairs, masterly character, and
the tact to make all these qualities available for the good of their
families and society. They were versed not only in classic lore, but in
the art of living. It was not weakness that constituted their charm;
it was their symmetry and the fullness of their strength.

As we have already seen, it was an age of educated women. A lady was
expected to understand Latin, at least, besides her own language, and
Greek was a common acquirement. The earliest Greek grammar was written
by the celebrated Lascaris for Ippolita Sforza, the wife of Alfonso
and a ruling spirit at the lettered court of Naples. In her precocious
childhood this brilliant princess made a collection of Latin apothegms,
and a translation of Cicero’s “De Senectute,” which is said to be still
preserved in a convent at Rome. Plato, Seneca, and other philosophers
supplied the great ladies of four centuries ago with moral nutriment,
and Cicero was studied as a model of style. With the exception of
Vergil and parts of Horace, the Latin poets were too coarse, and
Boccaccio was forbidden; but Dante was a favorite companion of leisure
hours, and Petrarch, the high priest of Platonism, an idol. The “Lives
of the Fathers” and the chronicles of the saints were antidotes to the
worldliness of poets and historians. It was understood, however, that
literary tastes must not interfere with prayers and an intelligent
oversight of the household.

Of their talent for administration these versatile princesses gave
ample evidence. They were constantly called upon to hold the reins
of government when their husbands were absent, and ruled with great
wisdom and skill. We do not hear that they talked much of their ability
to do various things not usually included among a woman’s duties, but
they did them at need as a matter of course. In affairs of delicate
diplomacy they were of special value, also in questions pertaining to
morals. It is interesting to know that this quarrelsome period had its
peace societies, as well as our own, and that the Pacieri, which was
organized to prevent litigation, was made up of men and women. Veronica
Gambara used her influence and her pen in the interest of peace, also
Vittoria Colonna, and many others.

Some of the women who ruled so ably, however, were of virile temper,
and threw themselves with passionate energy into the storm and stress
of affairs, though it was rarely, if ever, from choice. In an emergency
they could ride fearlessly to the field of battle, or address a foreign
council. It was to save her children’s heritage that Caterina Sforza
defended the rocky fortress of Forli after the violent death of her
husband. She was a picturesque figure, this imposing lady of fair face,
golden hair, indomitable spirit, and fiery temper, as accomplished as
she was beautiful and brave, who rode at the head of her troops, and
graciously smiled upon the people, who loved her and were ready to die
for her. As a lovely bride of fifteen she had made a triumphal entry
into Rome, where she lived like a queen, and literally controlled the
fate of every one who sought aid, promotion, or a place of her uncle,
the formidable Sixtus IV, but she was destined to come to the front
in many a stormy crisis. She was only twenty-two when the Pope died
suddenly, but she took prompt possession of the castle of St. Angelo in
the name of her absent husband, who was Commander of the Forces, and
found there an asylum for her children until she could make terms that
saved the family fortunes. No wonder the husband took her with him when
he went to Venice, that he might avail himself of her swift and clear
judgment in his delicate negotiations.

The history of this fifteenth-century heroine reads like the most
improbable romance. With the daring of a man, she had the flexibility
of a woman. If she could hold her own against an army and crush an
enemy with inexorable decision, she could care for the wounded like
a nurse. She danced as vigorously as she ruled, and did not disdain
the arts of a coquette or a diplomatist. One and the most obscure of
her three husbands she loved, but the others she served well. Of fear
she was incapable. “I am used to grief; I am not afraid of it,” she
wrote to her son from the solitary cell at Rome, where she was caged
for a time by the terrible Borgia Pope in the fortress over which she
had once ruled. But the careful, devoted mother, who was so full of
energy, so generous to her friends, so courageous in war, so subtle
in diplomacy, so dignified in misfortune, turned in her last years to
spiritual things with the same ardor she had given to mundane ones. She
had lived her life, and retired from its storms at thirty-nine. Then
she gave herself to the austerities of a convent at Florence, still
directing the education of her young children. If we do not approve of
all the methods of this irrepressible woman of clear head and strong
heart, we have to judge her by the standards of an age in which the
directors of the world’s conscience scoffed at morality and gave the
prizes of life to libertines and assassins. I quote her as one out of
many, to show the firm quality and abounding vitality as well as the
solid attainments of the women of this remarkable period.

But the special mission of these princesses, so valiant on occasion,
was to patronize learning and the arts, to aid men of letters, to
diffuse a taste for the beautiful, to put a curb on license, so
far as this was possible, and to foster discussions of things high
and serious. They vied with one another in making their courts
intellectually luminous. The more we study them, the more we are
convinced of the beneficent influence of thoroughly trained,
broad-minded women in molding the destinies of nations as well as of
individuals. We are fascinated by their variable charm, their mastery
of life in its larger as well as its smaller phases. The woman who
led all hearts captive with her beauty, her gaiety, her kindness, the
faithful wife, the tender mother, the sympathetic friend, was also the
woman of lucid intellect and strong soul, who sustained her husband in
his darkest hours and added laurels to his glory while winning some for
herself.


II

Of the Italian courts, it was only those led by able women that left
a permanent fame. If they are associated with the names of great men
who gave them the halo of their own glory, it was women who made a
society for these men, inspired them, and centralized their influence.
Urbino was called the Athens of Italy. During the reign of the Duchess
Elisabetta it is safe to say that there was hardly a man of distinction
in the country, whether poet, artist, prelate, or statesman, who did
not find his way there sooner or later. It may be pleasant to dwell
a little on this brilliant court, which was the best and purest of
its time and furnished the model upon which the Hôtel de Rambouillet
was founded more than a century afterward. It was more fortunate than
others in having a chronicler. Count Castiglione left a graphic picture
of its personnel and amusements, as well as a record of some of its
conversations, so that we know not only the quality of the people who
met there, but what they thought, what they talked about, and what they
did. He gives us the best glimpse we have of the society and manners of
the golden age of the Renaissance.

But this atmosphere of culture and refinement was not made in a day.
It was largely due to the more or less gifted princesses who had
lived or ruled there for more than a hundred years. Far back toward
the beginning of the fifteenth century there was a Battista who was
distinguished for her piety, her talents, and her noble character. A
worthless husband drove her to seek refuge with her brother at Urbino,
where she solaced the wounds of her heart in writing sonnets and moral
essays on faith and human frailty, also in corresponding with scholars
and sending Latin letters to her father-in-law, a Malatesta, who had
fostered her literary tastes and evidently remained her friend. Her
daughter inherited her sorrows with her talents, and both closed
their lives, after the fashion of women to whom the world has not
been kind or has lost its charm, in the austerities of a convent. Her
granddaughter was Costanza Varana, a valued friend of philosophers
and men of learning; but she died early, leaving another Battista,
who was sent to Milan at four to be educated with her precocious
cousin Ippolita Sforza. The extraordinary gifts of this child have
already been mentioned, but she more than fulfilled her promise. At
fifteen, or earlier, she was married to Federigo, the great Duke of
Urbino, who shared the enthusiasm of the Medici in the revival of the
classics. This small duchess of vigorous intellect, much learning, and
strong character, was in full sympathy with her husband’s tastes, and
he speaks of her as “the ornament of his house, the delight of his
public and private hours.” If she could read Demosthenes and Plato,
and talk with the wisdom of Cicero, as one of her contemporaries tells
us, she was not spoiled for the practical duties of her position.
At an age when our school-girls are playing golf or conning their
lessons, she was prudently managing affairs of the State of which she
was regent in her husband’s absence. She was simple in manners, cared
little for dress, and put on her magnificent robes only for courtly
ceremonies to maintain the outward dignity of her place. At Rome she
was greatly honored by the Pope, whom she addressed in Latin, much to
his delight. But this beautiful, gifted, efficient, and adored woman
died at twenty-six, leaving seven children, a broken-hearted husband,
and a sorrowing people. The glories of her short, full life were sung
by poets, statesmen, and churchmen alike. She left the imperishable
stamp of intellect and taste on all her surroundings, and is of special
interest to us as the grandmother of Vittoria Colonna, in whom the
talent of generations found its consummate flower.

But the luminous period of Urbino was during the reign of her son, who
added to the martial qualities and manly accomplishments of his age,
remarkable talent, great learning, and a singularly gentle character.
This was the Duke Guidobaldo, who consoled his friends in his last
moments with lines from Vergil. His health was always delicate, and the
brilliancy of his court was due to his wife, the celebrated Elisabetta
Gonzaga, who had been reared in the scholarly air of Mantua, where
the daughters were educated with the sons. She found in her new home
standards of culture that had been set, as we have seen, by a long line
of princesses devoted to things of the intellect.

In its palmy days, the young Giuliano de’ Medici, son of the great
Lorenzo and brother of Leo X,--the one who was immortalized by
Michelangelo in the statue so familiar to the traveler in the Medicean
Chapel at Florence,--was living at Urbino during the exile of his
family. It was also the home of the “divine Bembo,” critic, Platonist,
arbiter of letters, finally cardinal, and one of the most famous men
of his time, though his claim to be called “divine” is not apparent.
The witty Mæcenas of this group was Bibbiena, poet, diplomat, man of
the world, a dilettante in taste and an Epicurean in philosophy, also
a cardinal and an aspirant for the papal throne. There were, too,
the Fregosos, men of strong intellect, many personal attractions, and
manly character, one of whom became the Doge of Genoa, and the other
a cardinal--with many others of fame and learning whose names signify
little to us to-day. By no means the least important member of the
household was Castiglione, the courtier and diplomat of classical
tastes and varied accomplishments, who has given us so pleasant a
glimpse of its sayings and doings. To this intellectual Mecca came,
from time to time, literary pilgrims from all parts of the world.

It was the special mission of the Duchess Elisabetta to fuse these
elements into a society that should be a model for other courts
and coming generations. Here lies her originality and her claim to
distinction. This clever princess, who loved her husband devotedly,
cared for the poor and sorrowing among her people, and had moral
convictions of her own as well as ideas, was well fitted for her
position. Without any pretension to genius, she had a clear,
discriminating mind, rare intelligence, great beauty, and gracious
manners. Her character had a fine symmetry, and she was equally
successful in directing her household, conversing with great men,
and holding the reins of government when her husband--a condottiere
by profession, like most of the smaller princes--was in the field
elsewhere. Surrounded by adorers in an age when indiscretions, even
sins, were easily forgiven, no breath of censure ever touched her
fair name. Her dignity and a reserve that verged upon coldness gave
a pure tone to her court. She permitted neither malicious gossip nor
heated talk, and required unsullied honor and exemplary conduct of her
friends. We might question the standards a little, as men at least were
privileged beings not to be too closely scrutinized.

In her social duties she had the efficient aid of Emilia Pia, the
duke’s sister-in-law, a woman of brilliant intellect and high
character, who had lost her husband in youth, and lived at Urbino. Of a
gayer turn, her ready wit and happy temperament, added to her knowledge
and personal fascination, made her the life of the house. Other and
younger ladies of well-known names and kindred tastes figure in its
diversions.

The magnificent old palace that overlooked the city from its
picturesque site among the hills was one of the finest in Italy. Its
stately rooms were filled with rare treasures of painting, sculpture,
mosaic, and costly furniture. There were exquisite decorations in
marble and tarsia, and the walls were draped with rich tapestries.
Raphael was a youth then, and no doubt his first dreams had been
of these beautiful things, among which he must have rambled. It is
likely, too, that he met here the friends who were of so much service
to him afterward at Rome, among them Bibbiena, to whose grandniece
he was betrothed. His father had painted some of the frescos, and was
a welcome visitor. Other artists were invited there, and added to the
glories of the famous pile. Among these surroundings of art and beauty,
with the traditions of culture that lay behind them, clever, thoughtful
women and brilliant men met evening after evening to talk of the
world and its affairs, of things light and serious, of love, manners,
literature, statecraft, and philosophy. When they tired of grave
themes, they amused themselves with allegories, playful badinage, witty
repartees, and devices of all sorts to stimulate the intellect. After
supper there was music and dancing, if the conversation did not last
until the morning hours. Sometimes they had their own plays acted in
the pretty little theater. It was here that Bibbiena’s famous comedy,
“Calandra,” with its gorgeous pagan setting and its curious blending of
love and mythology, of nymphs, Cupids, and goddesses, was first given
to an admiring world.

But we are most interested to-day in the conversations. Many evenings
were devoted to defining the character and duties of a courtier,
which differed little from those of a modern gentleman, except
in the exaggerated deference claimed to be due to a superior and
verging upon servility. It is more to the purpose here to touch
upon the discussions relating to women, as they furnish a key to
fifteenth-century manners which were the basis of all modern codes,
though to-day many of the best of their formulas are more conspicuous
in the breach than in the observance.

It was agreed that a lady must be gracious, affable, discreet, of
character above reproach, free from pride or envy, and neither vain,
contentious, nor arrogant. To speak of the failings of others, or
listen to reflections upon them, was taken as an indication that one’s
own follies needed a vindication or a veil. This model lady must dress
with taste, but not think too much about it, and she was forbidden to
dye her hair, or use cosmetics and other artificial aids to beauty. Her
personal distinction lay in an elegant simplicity, without luxury or
pretension. She must know how to manage her children and her fortune,
as well as her household; but she was expected to be versed in letters,
music, and the arts, also to be able to converse on any topic of
the day without childish affectation of knowledge which she did not
possess. Modesty, tact, decorum, and purity of thought were cardinal
virtues, and religion was a matter of course. Noisy manners, egotism,
and familiarity were unpardonable. Dignity, self-possession, and a
gentle urbanity were marks of good breeding. No license in language
was permitted, but we cannot help wondering what they called license.
Men, it must be added, could be about as wicked as they liked, and, if
history is to be trusted, many in high places were very wicked indeed.
The latitude of the best of them in speech would be rather embarrassing
to the sensitive woman of our time; but the days of the précieuses
had not dawned, and no one hesitated to call a spade a spade, even
if it were a very black one. Women might blush and be silent, but
further protest was set down as disagreeable prudery. Perhaps the frank
naturalism of the Latin races must be taken into account, as it often
quite unconsciously shocks our own more delicate tastes even to-day.
But it was conceded that no man was so bad as not to esteem a woman of
pure character and refined sensibilities.

These men and women who lived on the confines of two great centuries
and tried to introduce a finer code of manners and morals, touched also
on the equality of the sexes, a question which agitated that world as
it does our own. Some one asks, one evening, why women should not be
permitted to govern cities, make laws, and command armies.

Giuliano de’ Medici, who was an ardent champion of the dependent sex,
replies that it might not be amiss. Many of them he declares to be as
capable of doing these things as men, and he cites history to show that
they have led armies and governed with equal prudence. To a friend who
mildly suggests that women are inferior, he says that “the difference
is accidental, not essential,” adding that the qualities of strength,
activity, and endurance are not always most esteemed, even in men.
As to mind, “whatever men can know and understand, women can also;
where one intellect penetrates, so does the other.... Many have been
learned in philosophy, written poetry, practised law, and spoken with
eloquence.”

A gentleman of the party ungallantly remarks that women desire to be
men so as to be more perfect.

Giuliano wisely answers that it is not for perfection, but for liberty
to shake off the power that men assume over them. He says they are more
firm and constant in affection, as men are apt to be wandering and
unsettled. When asked to name women who are equal to men, he replies
that he is confounded by numbers, but mentions, among others, “Portia,
Cornelia, and Nicostrata, mother of Evander, who taught the Latins
the use of letters.” “Rome,” he adds, “owes its greatness as much to
women as to men.... They were never in any age inferior, nor are they
now.” He goes on to cite Countess Matilda, Anne of France, wife of two
kings in succession, and inferior to neither, Marguerite, daughter
of Maximilian, famed for prudence and justice, Isabella of Mantua,
singularly great and virtuous, with many other noted women of his
time. “If there are Cleopatras, there are multitudes of Sardanapali who
are much worse.”

The limits of this paper permit only the suggestion of a few points
in a long conversation which touched the subject on every side. It
was interspersed with thoughtful questions from the duchess, who did
not fail to interfere if it took too free a turn, also with brilliant
sallies of wit from Emilia Pia, and spicy comments from the less
serious members of the party. They were not all in accord with the
opinions quoted here, but, on the whole, Giuliano de’ Medici and his
supporters, who paid a fine tribute to the abilities of women without
wishing to impose upon them heavier duties, had the best of the
argument.

From men, women, and manners, the transition to love was an easy one,
and this fifteenth-century coterie discussed it in all its variations,
as we discuss the last play, or the last novel, or the last word in
sociology, or the misty era of universal peace. It was not a new thing
to discourse upon the most interesting of human passions. Men had
talked of it centuries before on the banks of the Ilissus; but when
they passed from its lowest phases they lost themselves in metaphysical
subtleties. It became an intellectual aspiration, a “passion of the
reason,” without warmth or life. Diotima, a woman quoted by Socrates,
called it “a mystic dream of the beautiful and good”; but if she was
not a myth herself, she could not join the symposia of philosophers.
Outside of the circle of Aspasia, no respectable woman was admitted to
the conversations of men; indeed, these finely drawn dissertations on
love had small reference to her. In the classic world women had no part
in the marriage of souls. Love, when not purely a thing of the senses,
was a worship of beauty, and the Greek ideal of beauty was a masculine
one. They might die for a Helen, but it was not for love. These wise
talkers sent the flute-players to amuse their wives and daughters in
the inner court, while they considered high things, as well as many
not suitable for delicate ears. The coarser Romans treated love as
altogether a thing of the senses, with Ovid as a text.

But in the golden age of the Renaissance, women no longer stayed in
the inner court, to gossip and listen to flute-players, while their
husbands talked on themes high or low. The worship of the Madonna, if
it had done little else, had idealized the pure affection of an exalted
womanhood. Chivalry following in its train had made the cult of woman
a fashion by giving her more or less of the homage already paid to her
divine representative, though this sentiment was less active in Italy
than in Provence or among the more romantic races. It was a tribute of
strength to helplessness, and had its roots in the finest traits of
men; but it exalted moral qualities rather than intellectual ones, and
was largely theoretical outside of a limited class. Now that men had
begun to dip into classic lore, however, they found a valuable ally in
women, and the old cult became a companionship. To be educated and a
princess was to be doubly a power, to have opinions which it was worth
while to consider.

The princesses of Urbino had doubtless read Plato. In an age, too,
that occupied itself with Boccaccio, who had glorified the senses
and written books that no pure and refined woman could read, they
had turned to Dante and the spiritual love which was an inspiration
and a benediction. In the white soul of Beatrice they found the
exquisite flower of womanhood. They caught also the subtle fragrance
of the ideal love which Petrarch gave, first to a woman, then to an
unfading memory. It was of such a love they dreamed and liked to
talk. Then one of the chief apostles of Platonism was the brilliant
Bembo, who was the star of this company. “Through love,” he says, “the
supreme virtues rule the inferior.” He puts on record and dedicates
to Lucrezia Borgia the conversations of three days on its joys and
sorrows; but the subject was evidently exhausted, as, at the end,
a hermit gives a homily on the vanity of the world. He closes an
eloquent apostrophe, however, with these words: “Chase away ignorance
and make us see celestial beauty in its perfection. Love, it is the
communion with divine beauty, the banquet of angels, the heavenly
ambrosia.” On this theme his listeners rang the changes, but not
always on so ethereal a plane. The relative constancy of the sexes,
the divine right of man, the passive nature of woman, who was called
a pale moon to the masculine sun, and various other points, had their
fair share of discussion. Between terrestrial and celestial love
there are many gradations, and the character and temperament of the
men were clearly revealed in their opinions. Some were disposed to
be autocrats, others took issue with masculine egotism, and still
others dwelt on the sentimental side of the question. One of the
Fregosos rather ungraciously assumed the traditional attitude of his
sex and contended that women are “imperfect animals,” not at all to be
compared with men. But he was in an unpopular minority. The Duchess
Elisabetta was a well-poised, discreet woman, who was devoted to her
invalid husband, kept her admirers at a prudent distance, and was in
no wise a victim to superfluous sensibility. The effusive Bembo, who
was given to friendships touched with the fire of the imagination, was
untiring in his devotion to this Minerva, but he confessedly adored
her as a goddess from afar. The witty and brilliant Emilia Pia had a
temperament the reverse of sentimental, and was ready to demolish any
castle of moonlight with a shaft of merciless satire. Both brought a
solid equipment of common sense into an analysis that often reached a
very fine point. But this friendship that was not love, this love that
was a sublimated friendship, appealed to them as it did to many others
besides poets in a grossly material age. To separate the soul from the
senses and intellectualize the emotions, was the natural protest of
intelligent women against the old traditions that considered them only
as servants or toys of men’s fancies. It took them out of the realm of
the passions and “gave them wings for a sublime flight.” The mysticism
of love is closely related to the mysticism of religion, and the faith
that sees God in ecstatic visions is not far from the love that feeds
itself from spiritual sources. These rambling talks, to which the young
ladies listened curiously and with interest, though usually in discreet
silence, proved so absorbing that on the last of a series of evenings
devoted to the subject, the party forgot its usual gaieties, and did
not disperse until the birds began to sing in the trees and the rosy
dawn shone over the rugged heights of Monte Catri.


III

It was these conversations that set in motion the wave of Platonism
which swept over the surface of society for two or three centuries,
until it lost itself in the pale inanities and vapid phrases of the
précieuses. We find it difficult now to conceive of a company of grave
dignitaries old and young, statesmen, wits, men of letters, and clever
women, chasing theories of love through an infinity of shades and
gradations, as seriously as we talk of trusts, strikes, education, and
the best means of making everybody happy. The subject had a perennial
interest for them. They considered it mathematically as to quantity,
spiritually as to quality. They quoted Plato on love and divine beauty,
but no one would have been more surprised at the application than the
philosopher himself. They proposed to do away with all the chagrins and
disenchantments of love, by making it altogether a dream, beautiful, no
doubt, but shadowy. As a last refuge, they put terrestrial love into
celestial robes and drowned themselves in illusions. Bembo wished to
serve Isabella d’Este “as if she were Pope,” but he sends her quite
tenderly the kiss of his soul, which she, no doubt, took gracefully
and at its value. She was not a sentimental woman; a clear, vigorous
intellect is a very good antidote against false sensibility. But
these other vigorous intellects were so busy weaving the tissue of
their dreams that they did not trouble themselves much about possible
applications.

This Platonic mania, which ran through Italian society, and, if it did
nothing else, tempered its grossness and spiritualized its ideals, did
not originate at Urbino, though it probably blossomed into a fashion
there. Petrarch found the germ in Plato, but he developed it into fruit
of quite another color, and furnished the poets after him with a new
background for their fantasy-flowers. The magnificent Lorenzo, poet,
ruler, patron of letters, Platonist, and buffoon, went into poetic
raptures at the sight of the beautiful face of “la belle Simonetta”
as she lay white and cold on the bier that passed him in the street.
He dreamed of it, apostrophized it, grew melancholy over it, until he
found a living face almost as lovely about which to drape the pearls of
his poetic fancy. He wrote sonnets à la Petrarch, without the genuine
ring of Petrarch. It was all moonlight, the pale copy of a paler
emotion. But he did not in the least lose control of what he called his
heart, as he dutifully married the woman his clear-headed mother chose
for him; she was not at all a figure of romance and, it is to be hoped,
had small knowledge of the vagaries of her theoretically Platonic
husband. In any case, it was the destiny of her sex to submit to the
inevitable.

But the dreams of the poets naturally found an echo in the hearts of
lonely women and artless maidens. When marriage was a matter of bargain
and sale, a union of fortune and interest in which love played no part,
sensibility was a subtle factor difficult to reckon with. A man had
legally, as well as morally, supreme control over his wife. He might
happen to love her and be kind to her, but if he chose to neglect her
or beat her, there was no one to find fault with him. This “divine
right” of man was the foundation-stone of society, and it was no more
possible to question it than it was to question the divine right of
popes and kings. Princesses were privileged beings who were both useful
and ornamental, but this did not save them from being ill-treated to
the last degree. No one thought of interfering when one of the later
Medici, angry at his sister, sent for her husband and, after telling
him that her frivolous conduct reflected on the decorum of his very
disreputable court, bade him remember that he was a Christian and a
gentleman, placed a villa at his disposal, and the hapless but too gay
Isabella, who went there with suspicious reluctance, suddenly died of a
convenient apoplexy, and appeared no more on this earthly scene to be
a thorn in the side of her brother’s favorite, the very beautiful but
too aspiring Bianca Capello. His sister-in-law, a much-wronged Spanish
princess, was invited to a gloomy old castle among the hills at the
same time, and disposed of in a similar way, by her amiable husband,
who asked forty thousand ducats for the deed, and expiated it at once
by a prayer to the Virgin, and a vow which he forgot.

With all these tragic possibilities, it was out of the question to
secure a divorce for any incompatibility of temper, small or great,
unless his Holiness saw that it would serve some interest or caprice of
his own, and incidentally add to the glory of the church. But pent-up
emotions are apt to be troublesome, and it is hardly strange that these
women, with an abyss on one side and a vacuum on the other, sought a
way of reconciling matters that infringed visibly on no man’s rights.
They adopted the fashion of supplementing a terrestrial love that was
not very comfortable with a celestial one which, if rather attenuated,
seemed quite innocent and harmless, and gave them something pleasant
to think about. These airy and Platonic sentiments had a much more
substantial character among men and women who lived at a high mental
altitude. It is to live confessedly on a very low plane to deny that
there is a tie of the intellect which tends only to fine issues, and
is a source of light and inspiration. But this implies first of all
an intellect of distinct range, and a clear moral sense, that are not
always forthcoming. The friendship between Michelangelo and Vittoria
Colonna was a sympathy between two exalted souls who dwelt habitually
on the heights, far above the mists of sense and the banalities of
lesser minds. “Friendship is not a sentiment without fire,” wrote the
cold and skeptical Buffon to Mme. Necker, nearly four centuries later;
“it is rather a warming of the soul, an emotion, a movement sweeter
than that of any other passion, and also quite as strong.” But this
passion of friendship can exist in its perfection only between those in
whom sensibility lights the intellect without submerging it; on a lower
plane it has its dangers.

In the days of the précieuses, the apostles of Platonic love cut the
cord that bound them to reality, and floated away on a cloud of pure
emotionalism. Merged in affectations, it finally evaporated in phrases
on the lips of sighing youths and romantic maidens. In the Anglo-Saxon
world it never had a very strong foothold. The race is not sufficiently
imaginative.

There is no doubt that there has been a great deal of senseless talk
about Platonic love, and that it drew after it much that was far from
Platonic. We all know that one of the most conspicuous daughters of
devotion is hypocrisy, but who can hold religion responsible because
its garb is put on to disguise sin? The trouble is that the finest
spirits are apt to be measured by the standards of the lowest. It is
not easy to convince people of material ideals that all things are not
to be brought to their level. But this curious agitation had its place
and did its work. We may smile at the finely drawn sophistries of a
Bembo, who pointed to an ideal he sometimes failed to reach. It is easy
enough for cynics to say that Beatrice, the apotheosis of spiritual
love, died early, and was worshiped, not as a woman, but as a star
shining from inaccessible heights; that Laura, the ideal of the high
priest of Platonism, was simply a dream, intangible as the moonlight
and cold as the everlasting snows; that it is not good for every-day
men and women to see such visions, even if it were possible, nor to
dream such dreams, nor to live at such an altitude--all of which no
doubt has its side of truth. But the fact remains that it was largely
through the inspired vision, which looked past the entanglements
of sense into the pure heart and transparent soul of an idealized
womanhood, that the long-enduring sex came into its intellectual
kingdom. To the old ties of interest, passion, and habit, were added
those of the intellect and spirit. In this new contact of intelligences
society had its birth, women took their rightful places, and the world
found a new regenerating force.


IV

The life at Urbino, with its literary flavor, its refined manners,
its serious conversations, and its Platonic dreams, took another tone
at Ferrara. This court was gayer, but hardly less noted as a center
of culture. No one chronicled its conversations, but the fame of its
poets illuminated it. Boiardo lived and wrote and administered affairs
in the magnificent old castle whose four towers frown to-day in lonely
grandeur over the silent and grass-grown streets of the once lively
city; Ariosto immortalized the women “as fair as good, and as learned
as they were fair,” who gathered artists, men of letters, statesmen,
cardinals, and philosophers within its tapestried walls; and the
genius of Tasso still sheds over it a melancholy splendor strangely
contrasting with the tragedy that left so dark a cloud on the last days
of its glory.

The Duke Hercules I did a wise thing for the brilliancy of his reign
when he chose for his wife the learned and accomplished Leonora of
Aragon, who had grown up in the intellectual atmosphere of her royal
father’s court at Naples. She was a versatile princess, a lover of art,
a patron of letters, and an able, efficient woman, who gave equal care
to the fostering of talent and the practical interests of her people.
The art of gold and silver metal work, on which she was an authority,
reached great perfection under her patronage, and she gave her personal
supervision to the skilled embroiderers whom she brought from elsewhere
to stimulate the native artists. When her husband was absent he left
the government in her charge. Nothing shows more clearly the masterful
ability of these Italian princesses than the wisdom and facility with
which they managed public affairs, and the confidence reposed in them.
In this model republic of the twentieth century, who would think of
intrusting matters of State to the wife of president or governor in
any emergency whatever? Let us admit that women are not trained here
for such responsibilities, even if they cared to assume them; but why
treat us to a homily on their natural incapacity for affairs of State,
in the face of innumerable examples in the past that prove the contrary?

And these women lost neither their charm nor their essentially feminine
qualities. Certainly there was no wiser mother than this same Duchess
Leonora. Her daughters had the best of masters, and were versed in all
the knowledge of the day, as well as in the lighter accomplishments.
They were schooled also in the duties of their high position, and were
never permitted to neglect their serious studies for amusement. While
they were busy with their tapestries some man of letters recited or
read to them. Perhaps it was Boiardo, perhaps another of the literary
stars of the court. The untiring mother had her reward in the fame and
virtuous character of these children. One of them, the beautiful and
gifted Isabella d’Este, had a brilliant career as the Marchioness of
Mantua, and her scarcely less fascinating sister Beatrice carried the
tastes of her own youth to the more splendid but corrupt court of the
Sforzas at Milan.

The enlightened duchess, who seems to have been as kind as she was
capable, did not escape calumny, as few did in that age of license; but
she has a blessed immortality in the glowing lines of Ariosto, who
paid an eloquent tribute to her talents and virtues at her death. The
court of Ferrara never lost the lettered tone which she gave it, though
its fashions of living and thinking changed from time to time.

One cannot quote her son’s wife, the fair-haired Lucrezia Borgia, as a
model princess, though in later years she partly redeemed the faults of
her past by her kindness to the poor, her intelligent patronage of art
and letters, and her devotion as wife and mother. It is not likely that
she was as black as she has been painted, or, as has been suggested by
later historians, Ariosto, with all his courtier love for paying pretty
compliments to women, especially princesses, would hardly have dared to
put her on a level with the Roman Lucretia in “charms and chastity,”
in a country where satire was merciless and scandal many-tongued. In
her tragical youth she was possibly more sinned against than sinning.
With a father who was the embodiment of all the vices, and brothers as
powerful as they were infamous, one can readily imagine that she had
little choice in her manner of life. It was quite in the interest of
this terrible trio that her three husbands were disposed of in one way
or another, and it was equally in their interest that the widowed Duke
Alfonso was virtually forced to marry her, though evidently against
his inclination. The wishes of a Holy Father with unlimited power
were compelling. And so it happened that this beautiful, clever, and
much-talked-of woman went to Ferrara with a flourish of trumpets, as
became a pope’s daughter. She was only twenty-five, though she had seen
tragedies enough to color a lifetime. On her way she visited Urbino
with her two thousand attendants,--princesses were costly guests in
those days,--and the good Duchess Elisabetta, by command of this wicked
and grasping Holy Father, who had designs on her own domains that might
be furthered by her absence, went with the much heralded bride to take
part in the magnificent wedding festivities. There was little in the
entry of this brilliant but very much clouded Lucrezia on her white
jennet, resplendent in satin and gold and flashing jewels, to suggest
the beauty and desirableness of “plain living and high thinking.”
To be sure, she had university dons to support her canopy, and all
the learning of Ferrara in her train; but it was a fashion of these
princesses to honor scholars. Then there were comedies of Plautus to
give the occasion a classic flavor, besides music, dancing, medieval
combats, Moorish interludes, and more barbaric amusements for the
multitude. The splendors of dress, the wealth of velvets, brocades,
gold, and gems, were all duly chronicled by the society reporter of the
time, and the descriptions of modern court balls seem modest and tame
in comparison. The good Duchess Leonora had been sleeping in her tomb
with the other princesses many a year, duly labeled by Ariosto. But
the pure-souled Isabella d’Este was there with a new and regal costume
for every scene, and no doubt various misgivings about her imposing
sister-in-law which she thought best to say nothing about.

This dangerous Lucrezia, however, had her serious moments. After the
pageants were over, she took out of her traveling-case the Dante and
Petrarch she had brought for her daily reading, also some histories,
with her manual of devotion. She had, too, her literary circle of
poets, savants, men of letters, prelates, cardinals, and clever women
who spoke in Latin and wrote Greek quite naturally and as a matter of
course. They talked of manners, art, and philosophy, as at Urbino, but
perhaps not quite so seriously; they talked also of love, spiritual and
otherwise. The inevitable Bembo was there for a time, and afterward
wrote Platonic letters about literature to the friend of his soul,
which she answered with insight and discrimination as well as matronly
discretion. These letters were preserved, with a lock of her golden
hair.

There is little trace of the early Lucrezia in her later years. No more
worldly vanities. She prayed a great deal, and spent her evenings in
working beautiful designs in embroidery with the ladies of her court.
“Her husband and his subjects all loved her for her gracious manners
and her piety,” we are told. She was not old when she died,--two or
three years past forty,--leaving an inconsolable husband and several
children. In a letter of condolence the Doge of Venice gives great
praise to her devotion and her fine qualities of character. The most
distinguished prelates of the day pay a tribute to her many virtues.
The experiences of her life, which were dark enough at its beginning
and too surely not blameless, are wrapped in a mystery so deep that we
cannot fairly judge them to-day.

If the court of Ferrara was gay, literary, artistic, with more or less
of a dilettante tone under Lucrezia, it took quite another color in
the reign of her daughter-in-law, the serious and thoughtful Renée.
This princess had more solid qualities of intellect, but less beauty
and less charm. “She was good and clever, with a mind the best and
most acute possible,” says Brantôme. Her father was Louis XII, and
her mother Anne of Bretagne, whose talent and independent spirit she
inherited. She had Protestant tendencies, and brought strange guests
to these stately halls and haunts of poets. Calvin was among them. He
was young then, and came under the name of Charles d’Espeville--which
was much safer for an arch-heretic. With him came Clément Marot, a
poet and a heretic of milder type, who shone brilliantly at the court
of the clever Marguerite of Navarre. The stern moralist and ascetic
reformer was no friend to women, except as convenient appendages, and
these were apt to be troublesome unless kept in their lowly place. He
looked upon their government as “a deviation from the original and
proper order of nature, to be ranked no less than slavery among the
punishments consequent upon the fall of man.” In this case he evidently
found the punishment rather pleasant, as he stayed many months in
a court where the power of women was very much _en évidence_,
though it fell under an eclipse because of him. Perhaps he modified
his opinions for the moment in so stimulating an atmosphere. While he
never fails to denounce the “inferior sex” in plain terms, he is kind
enough to make discreet exceptions as to women in high places, who were
not made of common clay. It was certainly inconvenient for the duke to
have a wife with convictions, who persisted in compromising him with
the higher powers; but what would have become of the superior Calvin,
with the door closed upon him and the Inquisition on his track, if
this incapable being had been superintending the cook and the maids
or working patterns in embroidery, as she plainly ought to have been,
instead of courageously and with clear foresight despatching some
trustworthy friends to liberate the reverend suspect from his dangerous
and uncomfortable surveillance, and send him on his way to a freer air?

There was much talk on free will and election, as well as of sinners
in power, and the need of grace and reformation, when Vittoria Colonna
came, a little later, to enjoy the liberty of thought and literary
discussion for which this court was famous, also to forward the
interest of her friend, the eloquent Fra Bernardino, who wished to
found here a Capuchin convent. It was quite safe to sit on the grass or
in the gardens during the long summer evenings, listening to a Greek
play, and talking about the respective merits of Homer and Petrarch,
who had been dead a long time, or the genius of Ariosto, who had just
closed his eyes after charming his age and saying so many agreeable
things about its women. But it was not so safe to reflect on wicked
popes, or call in question whatever dogma they might choose to present
to a credulous world. The Duchess Renée was made sadly conscious of
this fact, as was her gifted protégée, Olympia Morata. Her mind had a
mystical quality, and the germs of a more spiritual faith had taken
root there. But her amiable husband applied the screw as he was told.
To have one’s children taken away and to be confined in a remote
corner of one’s castle was too much to bear, and a suspiciously sudden
conversion under good orthodox ministrations was the result, with
convenient mental reservations to serve until the duke died and the
lady was safely back in France with her royal kin and the protecting
sympathy of her heretical friend, the gifted and powerful Marguerite of
many-sided fame.

But in the meantime the literary talks went on, led by her brilliant
daughters, who contented themselves with topics that were less
explosive. Tasso said that Lucrezia and Leonora d’Este were “so well
versed in affairs of State and literature that no one could listen to
their conversation without amazement.” Here, as elsewhere, they talked
a great deal about matters of sentiment. Tasso held a controversy at
the academy on “Fifty Points of Love.” One of them was a question
whether men or women love the more constantly and intensely. Orsini
Cavaletti, a lady of distinction in literature and philosophy, claimed
the palm for her own sex, and came off with equal if not superior
honors before a learned and brilliant audience. What the other points
were I do not know. The amount of energy expended on such trivial
themes was curiously illustrated a few years before by Isotta Nogarola,
a lady of Verona, who discussed with learned men the question as
to whether Adam or Eve was the more guilty, and wrote a defense of
Eve which must have created more than a ripple of interest, as it
was printed a century afterward. This champion of justice was not a
reformer nor an _emancipée_, but a woman of rank and a friend of
popes, who had the courage to come to the rescue of her sex from the
denunciations of ages. Doubtless the discussion was largely a play of
wit and an exercise in analysis that applied itself to small things,
since it was not safe to attack great ones.

But our unfortunate poet did not confine himself to theory, and love
proved a more disastrous subject for him than did religion for some of
his friends. It was to this same brilliant Leonora, whom he lauded to
the skies, that Tasso dared lift his eyes in too familiar or ambitious
a fashion before he was shut out of the world seven years as a madman.
Whatever the facts of this tragical romance may have been, we know that
the lady died at forty-five, in the odor of sanctity and unmarried,
while her gayer but equally clever sister became the wife of the last
Duke of Urbino, whom she found so dull and tiresome that she returned
after three years to her brother’s court, where the livelier tastes
were more to her liking. But its glories had already paled and its
stars had mostly set. Tasso was the last.

The traveler of to-day looks with curious eye on the faded splendors of
the grim old castle, and speculates idly upon the tragedies that have
been acted within its silent walls. But he goes away to the poor little
cell at the hospital of St. Anna and drops a tear over the fate of the
poet who ate his heart out there. Time brings strange reparations, but
they are always too late.


V

In the days when they were talking of men, women, and manners at
Urbino, and the brilliant Bembo was writing high-flown letters about
literature and celestial love to Lucrezia Borgia, or discoursing upon
the same themes, in the intervals of many graver ones, at Ferrara, and
Alexander VI was making the society of Rome as wicked as he knew how,
which was very wicked indeed, Isabella d’Este, wife of the Marquis
of Mantua, was the central figure of one of the most charming and
intellectual courts in Italy. This “noble-minded Isabel,” of whom
Ariosto says,

  I know not well if she more fair
  May be entitled, or more chaste and sage,

carried with her to the banks of the Mincio, already made classic as
the birthplace of Vergil, the literary tastes which had been nurtured
in the scholarly air of Ferrara. We have seen her developing as a child
under the care of the wise Leonora. At six she astonished the envoy
sent to arrange her betrothal, by her precocious intelligence, engaging
conversation, and graceful manners. It was a kindly fate that led her
to the court of the Gonzagas, which was famous for the learning and
culture of its women.

Of all the princesses who shed such luster on this period she had,
perhaps, the most personal distinction. To the wisdom and force of
her mother she added more esprit and a warmer temperament. In tact,
dignity, learning, and the virtues of a well-poised character, she did
not surpass her husband’s sister, the much-loved Duchess Elisabetta of
Urbino, but she seems to have had more native brilliancy of intellect.
Living from 1474 to 1525, she was brought into familiar contact with
the most famous men and women of the golden age of the Renaissance,
and played an important part in many of its stormy crises, but, under
all conditions, one is impressed with her strong individuality, her
versatility, her intrepid spirit, and her unfailing charm. She combined
the tenderness of a woman with the mental vigor of a man. Fair, witty,
gracious, and a noted beauty, she was equally at home discussing art
and literature with the masters, and grave political problems with
popes and kings, arranging fêtes, ordering a picture, selecting a
brocade, or playing with a child.

The old and imposing palace of Mantua to this day shows traces of the
taste and generosity of its most distinguished mistress. She filled it
with rare books, exquisite tapestries, and curios of all sorts, chosen
with the discrimination of a connoisseur. Its walls were decorated with
the masterpieces of Correggio, Mantegna, Perugino, and other great
artists whom she was proud to call her friends. Chief among those in
whose conversation she delighted were Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, who
immortalized her. A living portrait by the latter is still one of the
treasures of the Louvre. Her keen critical taste was quick to divine
intrinsic values, and she was always on the alert for fresh talent to
add to the glories of her little court. It was not rich, and we find
her troubled at the prospect of entertaining her sister’s magnificent
husband, Lodovico Sforza, who proposed to visit her with a retinue of a
thousand or so. But her money went freely for everything pertaining to
matters of intellect and taste. She sent her agents in all directions,
even to the far East, and a new-found statue, a rare bit of tapestry,
or a precious mosaic was an event of joy. Her own teeming imagination
was full of pictures, and she liked to suggest themes to artists, which
were not always easy to put into living form. But her sympathetic and
intelligent enthusiasm was in itself an inspiration.

This critical, art-loving Isabella, however, was more than a
dilettante. Her heart went out to every form of suffering. Running over
with kindness, and always ready to help the needy and deserving, her
sympathies sometimes got the better of her judgment, and more than once
she had to regret enlisting her friends in the cause of the unworthy.
This generous quality was a part of her rich temperament. With her
intellectual tastes, and the many cares and responsibilities of her
position, she was no grave and cold Minerva. We find her everywhere
entering into the sports and gaieties of her age with the zest of a
woman abounding in spirit, vitality, and the joy of life. When she went
to see her sister at Milan, she rode, danced, hunted, made impromptu
verses, dazzled her friends with flashes of wit, and fascinated
old and young alike with her winning, lively ways. Her powerful
brother-in-law was always glad to consult her on serious questions of
State, as well as on his vast plans for making a beautiful and artistic
city. The things that were shaping themselves in the minds of great
artists appealed to her ardent imagination. “This is the school of
the _master_ and of those who _know_, the home of art and
understanding,” she wrote from there.

Her letters to her family are always full of vivacity, clear and to
the point, but glowing with affection. The friendships she inspired
were devoted, even passionate. “It seems as if I had lost not only
a tenderly loved sister, but a part of myself,” wrote the Duchess
Elisabetta, after one of her visits. “I long to write to you every
hour.... If I could clearly express to you my grief, I am sure it would
have so much force that compassion would bring you back.” In such a
spirit these women wrote to one another. The Latin race is effusive,
and the art of expression, which is its supreme gift, no doubt often
ran ahead of the feeling or the thought; but these familiar letters
bear the stamp of sincerity and help us to know the manner of woman
that wrote them.

This noble lady of so many gifts and graces was born to lead and not
to follow. She could take the affairs of government on occasion, and
was amply fitted to rule firmly and wisely. Her first aim was to
win the love of her people, which, she says, is of “more value to a
State than all its fortresses, treasures, and men-at-arms.” When her
husband had matters to settle that required delicate diplomacy, he
sent her on a special embassy to the Vatican, where the Pope loaded
her with honors and had Bibbiena’s new comedy, “Calandra,” played for
her entertainment. A helpful wife was this queen of the Renaissance,
and no one knew it better than her husband, whose profession was war,
which often led him far from the court she had made so famous. Perhaps
she had a trace of pardonable vanity. She deferred a visit to Venice
because she did not care to have her modest train brought into so close
a contrast with the imposing splendors of the “little sister” whom she
loved but did not attempt to rival on her own ground. The glories she
most sought were of the intellect and not to be bought with money.

The distinctive quality she impressed upon her court was an artistic
one. Its art treasures were of the choicest, and the best plays,
classical or modern, were brought out there. Music was her passion. She
sang well herself, also played the lute and viol. In the days before
Palestrina had opened a new world of harmony, she maintained one of the
finest orchestras in Italy. No gifted musician ever appealed to her
in vain. But there was no field of thought in her time which she did
not explore. If her knowledge was not profound, it was wide, and she
looked at things largely from a human point of view, not superficially,
but sympathetically. She applied her intelligence and her talents not
only to the advancement of the fine arts, to the cultivation of the
best in literature, to the interests of her people, but to the art of
living with due regard for one’s duties and responsibilities to the
future as well as to the present. If Vittoria Colonna represents the
highest thought of her age as applied to things spiritual and literary,
Isabella d’Este is a living example of its finest mundane side. No one
better illustrates the power and the penetrating fragrance of a strong
and vivid personality. It is a type that has many imitators, but such a
gift, which is an assemblage of many gifts, cannot be copied.

A court dominated by so rare a spirit, and attracting all the
refinement, talent, and intelligence of a brilliant age, could not be
otherwise than luminous. We have no record of its conversations, but
we know that its standards were high, and that the best passports of
admission there were achievements of the intellect. Rank no doubt had
its place, and manners were indispensable, but to genius and learning
much was forgiven. Purely material splendors had small weight. Some
of its princes had left traditions of culture, but it was a woman of
intellect, force, independence, and charm who gathered these into a
society that proved a center of light which shone brightly on after
generations.


VI

Of scarcely less interest than Isabella d’Este is her sister Beatrice,
the fresh, dark-eyed, dark-haired, gay, and laughing girl who went
to Milan at fifteen as the bride of Lodovico Sforza, and died before
she was twenty-two, after condensing the experiences of a lifetime
in a few short years. This court has left the record of much sin and
many tragedies, and it furnished some great princesses to the smaller
and less imposing ones, but its literary glory was not so conspicuous
as its splendor and its crimes. A court that numbered Bramante and
Leonardo da Vinci among its stars, however, is not to be passed
lightly. These colossal men were not easy to command, and prince as
well as princess often appealed to them in vain. It is not likely that
they gave much precious time to courtly pleasures, as the first order
of genius thrives better in solitude or the sympathetic companionship
of the few, though Leonardo was much sought after for his personal
accomplishments. But the inspiration of an intelligent woman has more
to do with the results of genius than an unthinking and altogether
material world is apt to imagine. The Duchess Beatrice was the moving
spirit at Milan when its greatest artists were creating the monuments
that were to be its lasting glory. Under her critical eye, too, the
architects, painters, sculptors, and decorators made the church and
cloisters of Certosa things of imperishable beauty, happily unconscious
that they were building and carving the tomb of the little lady who was
so gracious and so appreciative.

These artistic tastes, which she shared with her sister, were inherited
from her mother, and they were fostered in the court of her grandfather
at Naples, where she spent her childhood. At Ferrara she was a trifle
overshadowed by the more gifted and beautiful Isabella, but she still
lived in a stimulating atmosphere. From a worldly point of view it
was a brilliant prospect that opened before the young girl when she
went away from classical Ferrara as the child-wife of a man she had
never seen. On the personal side the clouds were dark, but that inner
realm in which lies happiness or misery was never considered. The
formidable Lodovico was certainly not good, but he had the cultivated
tastes of his time, and magnificent projects, into which the small
but clever duchess entered with enthusiasm. With grace, generosity,
a fine intellect, and a singularly brave and vigorous character, she
captivated at once the heart of the blasé prince, who had been none
too well pleased with the policy of her coming. No one loved better
the pageants, tournaments, and amusements of her age. No one rode more
fearlessly, hunted with more zest, or danced with more pleasure. She
pursued everything with the ardor of youth and a happy temperament. But
her careful training had not been in vain. This fifteen-year-old wife
reserved her leisure hours for serious things. She had a fine literary
as well as artistic taste, and filled her cabinet with rare and costly
books. It is common enough to collect costly books which are never
read, but not so common for pleasure-loving girls to take delight in
the masters of literature. Even in our enlightened day they are apt
to prefer novels, and usually very poor ones. Doubtless the Duchess
Beatrice had learned advisers, but she knew how to select them, which
is in itself a talent. There were many men of letters about the court,
and some of them read to her while she was busy with her needle, just
as others used to do in the old days at Ferrara. They did not read the
last romance, but great poems, sometimes the “Divine Comedy,” sometimes
Petrarch, sometimes later verses, or histories. The grand Lodovico
often stole in to listen, and gave thoughtful attention, especially to
the greater master. Perhaps he recalled those happy moments in his sad
captivity when the only thing he asked was a copy of Dante to while
away the long and lonely hours in a French prison.

In the quiet summer days, among the groves and fountains of Vigevano or
Pavia, when the dripping of the water and the rustling of the leaves
made a sweet accompaniment for the strains of the orchestra that
floated away past the tree-tops and lost themselves in the upper air,
we find her listening to an animated discussion between Bramante and
Gaspari Visconti on the relative merits of Dante and Petrarch, with her
own sympathies on the side of the more spiritual poet. It was this same
Visconti who said that the talents and virtues of the discriminating
duchess surpassed those of the greatest women of antiquity. Giuliano
de’ Medici also speaks of her as a woman of “wonderful parts.” Poets,
artists, and singers flocked to her for patronage and recognition from
many countries, sure of a generous sympathy.

Nor were her tastes and abilities limited to things gay, artistic, and
literary. She had a clear head and a facile talent. When scarcely more
than eighteen her husband sent her on a diplomatic mission to Venice,
where she spoke with grace and dignity before the doge and seigniory
on a matter of politics. No one questioned her modesty in doing so, and
every one praised her wise and tactful eloquence. She confesses to a
little tremulous apprehension, but writes in a naïve and artless way of
her cordial reception by the councilors, also of the magnificent fêtes
given in her honor.

In the troubled days of Milan, when the aspiring Lodovico proved weak
and faint-hearted, it was his brave little wife who went with him to
the camp, reconciled the differences among the officers, and inspired
the soldiers with her own courage and enthusiasm. In the final crisis,
at this time, it was still the young and fearless woman who took prompt
measures to defend the city after her husband had fled and left her to
bear all the burdens alone. It is not a question here whether he was
right or wrong. The morals of politics were worse then, if possible,
than they are now, and he had at least a powerful following. On a
matter of public policy it is clear enough that she could not lead a
party in opposition to him. What she thought we do not know, though her
courage and her swift resources showed the quality of the woman.

Many were the sad hours this inconstant husband gave her, but when she
was gone in the freshness of her innocent youth, he put himself and
everything about him in sable, refused to be comforted, and mourned
her the rest of his life. In spite of his wandering fancies, which
she had the spirit to curb, he said that he loved her better than
himself,--which, if true, was saying a great deal,--and that she had
been his adored companion no less in the cares of State than in his
hours of ease. That she shared his cruelties is not supposable from
anything we know of her character, but it is certain that he owed to
her taste and counsel much of his reputation as an enlightened ruler
who crowned his city with the glories of art.

With her loss his star began to wane. “When the Duchess Beatrice died,
everything fell into ruin. The court, which had been a paradise of joy,
became a dark and gloomy inferno; poets and artists were forced to seek
another place.” So writes a man of letters, in the last days of the
fifteenth century, of a woman of twenty-one who had tried to make the
richest and worst court in Italy a home for literature, art, and all
that makes for the intellectual good of the race.


VII

If I have lingered a little over personal details in these brief
sketches, it is the better to show the versatile character of the
women who shed so much luster on the golden age of the Renaissance.
Of the relative moral value of these representative women of their
time I think there is little question, in spite of the fact that the
age is so persistently quoted to prove that women degenerate in virtue
as they advance in intelligence. That the tone of morality was very
low, that vice was scarcely frowned upon, that men in power and out
of it broke every commandment in the decalogue without compunction or
even taking the trouble to put on a veil of respectability, and that
a large class of women were swept into the vortex of corruption, is
true enough. But it is also true that the strongest protest against
this state of affairs was made by women, and that the few prelates who
dared lift their voices against the scandals in high places numbered
their most zealous assistants among them. To say nothing of the
multitudes who cast their jewels and ornaments into the flames at the
bidding of Savonarola, and consecrated themselves to a pure and simple
if not ascetic life,--all of which may be set down to the account
of emotionalism rather than intelligence,--it was the women most
noted for talent and learning, whether princess, poet, or university
professor, who were most honored for their virtues. The pure-minded
Contarini found in Vittoria Colonna his strongest support in a hopeless
struggle against the sins and corruptions of the church. Olympia
Morata was a conspicuous example of great intellect and great learning
put to the service of a bettered humanity at serious, indeed fatal,
personal sacrifice. And she was not alone. There were numbers of these
women--poets, scholars, and thinkers--who lived spotless lives and
worked for the good of their sex and race.

Of the noble ladies who presided over the literary courts, the few we
have recalled were among the greatest, and, with one exception, it
is generally conceded that their lives were without reproach. Others
were victims of a power over which they had no control. It must be
remembered that these women, however capable or high in place, were in
the last resort subject to the will of men. Their new intelligence had
made them helpers to be respected, and tempered a little the possible
tyranny of their self-constituted masters, but men themselves, the
nobler and wiser, saw the dangers in the abuse of their own power.
“If women corrupt, they have first been corrupted by their age,” said
Giuliano de’ Medici, the best and purest of his family, in one of the
conversations at Urbino, which, thanks to its women, had not only the
most intelligent but the most virtuous court in Italy.

When a Borgia or some other pope equally devoid of moral sense, who
sits at the head of Christendom and directs its conscience, orders
at pleasure the marriage and divorce of his own daughter, or of any
other woman who can serve his political or mercenary ends, giving her
no choice and no recourse; when Imperias and Tullias preside over
the salons of Rome because etiquette forbids a pure and high-minded
woman to live in this lax society of prelates and cardinals, which
she would be likely to find neither safe nor agreeable, there is
little to be said about the connection between woman’s intelligence
and moral decadence. Imperias and Tullias have lived in all ages, and
they have flourished best where good women were the most ignorant and
colorless. Some of them have had talent and esprit. They have sung,
acted, danced, written sonnets, affected learning, patronized the arts,
even put on the garb of virtue and piety; but they can be no more cited
as representatives of the women of centuries ago than the same class
to-day can be taken as a measure of our own moral standards, which is
clearly impossible. Intelligence was never a guaranty of morals, as the
mind can be sharpened for bad ends as well as good ones. It is even
possible that the woman of education and strong mental fiber may be
more easily led into the sins of ambition, but she is far less likely
to drift into the follies of vanity, passion, and a weak will than
the ignorant one who has no rational outlet for her energies and her
untempered sensibilities. The faults, too, of a luminous age are seen
in a glare of light that is wholly wanting in periods of darkness when
vice shelters itself behind closed doors upon which it too often hangs
the drapery of virtue.

It is difficult to measure the intellectual value of the women of the
Renaissance, as their influence went out in a thousand rills, seen and
unseen, to fertilize after-ages, and not least our own. There were many
good writers, but no great ones, unless we except Vittoria Colonna,
whose poems, though unequal, were of a high and intrinsic literary as
well as moral quality. As an _in memoriam_ her sonnets to her
husband are not likely to die, and as the first collection of sacred
poems her later work has a distinct and honorable place on the world’s
records. Why there were no artists of note is a problem not easy to
solve, as the field is one in which women seem especially fitted to
excel. Elisabetta Sirani might have won a high place on the roll of
fame, as great critics were struck with her vigor, her grasp of large
subjects, her facile style, and her careful finish; but she lived in
the decline of art, and died at twenty-six. Women were more famous as
scholars, and many of them stood on a level with distinguished men.
Educated with them in the best schools, their tastes were formed on the
best models. A lady who converses or lectures before learned dons in
Latin, and writes the purest Greek, is not a shallow pretender, though
she may be neither original nor profound. Nor do they seem to have been
pedants, though much of the phraseology of both men and women strikes
us now as stilted and inflated; it was the style of the day. No doubt
there was more or less dilettantism, which was a weakness of the time
that ended in the destruction of literary values; it is quite possible,
too, that many liked what it was the fashion to like, as they have done
in all ages, without any clear tastes or convictions of their own,
though this foible is by no means confined to women. That period, like
our own, had its army of pale imitators who follow in the wake of every
movement that is likely to reflect on them a small degree of honor, and
in the end sink its finest standards in hopeless mediocrity.

But the influence of a multitude of highly educated and intelligent
women is too subtle and far-reaching to put into definite terms. To
trace it in its large results, even if this were possible, would take
us far beyond our present limits. It is felt at every moment, in the
home, in society, in amusements, in the church. It directs the currents
of men’s lives from the starting-point, it infolds them like light, it
is a stimulant and an inspiration. But no one knows precisely where it
begins or ends. This is why it has been so ignored, why men, except in
individual cases, have so persistently depreciated the qualities that
opened for them the way to the finest issues.

The direct power of the learned princesses of the literary courts
is more readily seen. By virtue of their position, as well as their
talents, they created a society, spread a taste for things of the
intellect, and did a great deal to curb the vice and cruelty which
pressed with special severity on their own sex. If they could not
change the drift of the age, and were subject to conditions which
good men were unable to control, they tempered and modified them.
The whole Platonic movement, which they did so much to foster, was a
protest against the sensualism that has always been their worst enemy.
To sustain a spiritual cult in a race that worshiped, before all
things, material beauty was not easy. It had a tendency always to lose
itself in phrases and mystical subtleties, but it put woman on a new
pedestal, and social life on a higher plane. We have only to note the
bacchanalian revels of the poets, wits, and philosophers of Florence,
the orgies of folly, vulgarity, and sin which the great Lorenzo led and
the very wise Platonic Academy smiled upon, to learn the difference
between a lettered society of men without the tempering influence of
high-minded women, and the brilliant circles we have seen gathered
about princesses of learning, refinement, and grace, who guided its
amusements and restrained its license. No woman of conspicuous virtue
and ability has left a permanent stamp on the social life of Florence.
Clarice, the wife of the versatile Lorenzo, had many virtues, but she
was evidently in no sense a leader. Poliziano has no prejudice against
learned women, as he falls in love with the gifted and beautiful
Alessandra Scala and is inconsolable because she will not marry him. He
also pays court to Cassandra Fidelis, and corresponds with Lucrezia,
the mother of his patron, who is finely educated and writes poetry; but
he is angry when Clarice interferes with his manner of training her
children, “because she is a woman and unlettered”; indeed, he quarrels
with her about it and goes away. She, in her turn, finds fault with his
pagan morals, and is glad to be rid of his presence, no doubt with good
reason. But whatever she may have been as a mother, she seems to have
lacked the talent or the desire to gather about her a lettered society,
and the result is seen in the disgraceful orgies of her husband and his
clever satellites, with no advantage to the “unhampered intellects”
of these poets and savants, but with a decided disadvantage to their
manners and morals.

It was during the reign of pure, highly educated, and able women that
the Italian courts reached their highest point of power and brilliancy.
When, by the accident of succession, those of smaller caliber and more
frivolous tastes took the scepter, they invariably declined and lost
their prestige.

It is quite superfluous to cast a mantle of charity, or any mantle
whatever, over the crimes of the Renaissance, but I have tried in a
small way to recall another side of its abounding life, which had its
roots largely in the character of its forceful and intelligent women.
The age that gave us a Bianca Capello gave us also a Vittoria Colonna.
The one has long since been consigned to the fitful oblivion of
infamy; the other holds her imperishable place among the stars, still
lighting the sorrowful and world-weary with her messages of love and
hope. The centuries of beauty and sin when men like to say that woman
lost her birthright of virtue--a birthright which they never ceased
to invade from their own stronghold of power--saw her transfigured
by the imagination of Michelangelo into the immortal sibyls who sit
side by side with the prophets in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
pure and passionless, with the brooding eyes that long ago fathomed
all the secrets of a suffering world, read in the mystic leaves the
records of nations still unborn, and saw from afar the light of the
ages--unchanging types of the wisdom and divination that lie in the
feminine soul. It saw, too, the Virgins of Fra Angelico, unfading
symbols of purity as of angelic sweetness; and the Madonnas of Raphael,
looking wistfully out of their repose with a ray of celestial love in
their eyes and a smile of eternal beauty on their lips.


VIII

It is no part of the plan here to trace the causes of the decadence
in which men lost their liberty of thought and women their position.
Greed of money, greed of power, love of pleasure, the growth of
luxury, and the low ideals that surely follow in their train, brought
their logical results. The flower of estheticism that expands in
the rich splendors of its ripe perfection verges already toward its
dissolution. Then the Roman Catholic reaction, which forbade men to
think, sent women back to prayers and seclusion, as a business instead
of a resource; it was becoming, and quite safe. But the Italian
princesses had set a fashion of knowledge, and of putting society on
an intellectual plane, with what trimming of beauty and adornment of
manners they could add. The irrepressible and many-gifted Marguerite
of Navarre took it up with various changes and originalities of her
own. The clever Frenchwomen saw their opportunity, and when the courts
were sunk in vice and inanities, they drew out of the past its secret
of social power, and created the literary salon, which was one of
the glories of the golden age of France. The wave of knowledge which
had raised the Italian women so high, and then so strangely receded,
culminated again in the intellectual brilliancy and unparalleled
influence of the Frenchwomen of the eighteenth century. The rise and
fall of this movement and its central figures I have treated quite
fully elsewhere. Again the wave receded, with the coming of the
republic, to revive under other forms in our own country and our own
day. Will another decadence follow? The future alone can tell, and no
prophetic sibyl has read the secret of that future. Possibly it will
depend largely upon the poise and sanity of women themselves.




SALON AND WOMAN’S CLUB

[Illustration: Decorative image]

  · New Mania for Knowledge ·
  · Women’s Clubs as Central Points ·
  · Parallel between the Literary Salon and the
  Woman’s Club ·
  · French and American Women ·
  · Attitude of Anglo-Saxon Men toward Women ·
  · Puritan Gospel of Feminine Liberty ·
  · The Woman’s Club not a School of Manners ·
  · Its Moral Value ·
  · Its Social and Intellectual Value ·
  · Imitation Culture ·
  · Special Distinction of American Women ·
  · Their Foibles ·
  · Multiplication of Clubs ·
  · Warning in the Excesses of the Later Salons ·
  · Tendency to Separate Men and Women ·
  · The Charm of Social Life ·
  · Wisdom of Consulting the Past ·




[Illustration: Decorative image]


I

It is not too much to say that the entire present generation of women
is going to school. Infancy cultivates its mind in the kindergarten,
while the woman of threescore seeks consolation and diversion in clubs
or a university course, instead of resigning herself to seclusion
and prayers, or the chimney-corner and knitting, after the manner of
her ancestors. Even our amusements carry instruction in solution.
Childhood takes in knowledge through its toys and games; the débutante
discusses Plato or Coquelin in the intervals of the waltz; youth and
maturity alike find their pleasure in papers, talks, plays, music,
and recitations. In these social menus everything is included, from a
Greek drama or an Oriental faith to Wagner and the latest theory of
economics. We have Kipling at breakfast, Rostand or Maeterlinck at
luncheon, and the new Utopia at dinner. After a brilliant day of being
adored and talked about, Browning has been duly labeled and put away,
but Homer classes and Dante classes still alternate with lectures
on the Impressionists or the Decadents. In this rage for knowledge,
science and philosophy are not forgotten. Fashion ranges the field
from occultism to agnosticism, from the qualities of a microbe to the
origin of man. To-day it searches the problems of this world, to-morrow
the mysteries of the next. There is nothing too large or too abstruse
for the eager, questioning spirit that seeks to know all things, or at
least to skim the surface of all things.

Nor is this energetic pursuit of intelligence confined to towns or
cities. Go into the remote village or hamlet, and you will find the
inevitable club, where the merits of the last novel, the labor problem,
the political situation, the silver question, the Boer war, and the
state of the universe generally, are canvassed by a circle of women as
freely, and with as keen a zest, as the virtues and shortcomings of
their neighbors were talked over by their grandmothers--possibly may be
still by a few of their benighted contemporaries.

In its extent, this mania for things of the intellect is phenomenal.
One might imagine that we were rapidly becoming a generation of
pedants. Perhaps we are saved from it by the perpetual change that
gives nothing time to crystallize. The central points of all this
movement are the women’s clubs, of which the social element is a
conspicuous feature, and we take our learning so comfortably diluted
and pleasantly varied that it ceases to be formidable, though on the
side of learning it may leave much to be desired.

But it is notably in this mingling of literature and life that women
have always found their greatest intellectual influence, and the club
is not likely to prove an exception. The rapidity of its growth is
equaled only by the extent of its range. Of women’s clubs there is
literally no end, and they are yet in their vigorous youth. We have
literary clubs, and art clubs, and musical clubs; clubs for science,
and clubs for philanthropy; parliamentary clubs, and suffrage clubs,
and anti-suffrage clubs--clubs of every variety and every grade, from
the luncheon club, with its dilettante menu, and the more pretentious
chartered club, that aims at mastering a scheme of the world, to the
simple working-girls’ club, which is content with something less:
and all in the sacred name of culture. They multiply, federate, hold
conventions, organize congresses, and really form a vast educational
system that is fast changing old ideals and opening possibilities of
which no prophetic eye can see the end. That they have marvelously
raised the average standard of intelligence cannot be questioned, nor
that they have brought out a large number of able and interesting women
who have generously taken upon themselves not only their own share of
the work of the world, but a great deal more.

One can hardly overrate the value of an institution which has given
light and an upward impulse to so many lives, and changed the
complexion of society so distinctly for the better. But it may be worth
while to ask if the women of to-day, with their splendid initiative
and boundless aspirations, are not going a little too fast, getting
entangled in too much machinery, losing their individuality in masses,
assuming more responsibility than they can well carry. Why is it that
lines too deep for harmonious thought are so early writing themselves
on the strong, tense, mobile, and delicate faces of American women? Why
is it that the pure joy of life seems to be lost in the restless and
insatiable passion for multitudes, so often thinly disguised as love
for knowledge, which is not seldom little more than the shell and husk
of things? Is the pursuit of culture degenerating into a pursuit of
clubs, and are we taking for ourselves new taskmasters more pitiless
than the old? “The emancipation of woman is fast becoming her slavery,”
said one who was caught in the whirl of the social machinery and could
find no point of repose. We pride ourselves on our liberty; but the
true value of liberty is to leave people free from a pressure that
prevents their fullest growth. What do we gain if we simply exchange
one tyranny for another? Apart from the fact that the finest flowers of
culture do not spring from a soil that is constantly turned, any more
than they do from a soil that is not turned at all, it is a question
of human limitations, of living so as to continue to live, of growing
so as to continue to grow. Nor is it simply a matter of individuals.
Societies, too, exhaust themselves; and those which reach an
exaggerated growth in a day are apt to perish in a day. It is not the
first time in the history of the world that there has been a brilliant
reign of intelligence among women, though perhaps there was never one
so widely spread as now. Why have they ended in more or less violent
reactions? We may not be able to answer the question satisfactorily,
but it gives us food for reflection.


II

The most remarkable, though by no means the only, precedent we have for
a social organization planned by women on a basis of the intellect, was
the French literary salon of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
These women had relatively as much intelligence as we have, and
possibly more power. It must be taken into consideration that they were
remote from us by race, religion, and political régime, as well as by
several generations of time, and that their spirit, aims, and methods
were as unlike ours as their points of view. But that which they did
on traditional lines and a small scale we are doing on new lines and
a very large scale. Their intellectual life found its outlet in the
salon, as ours does in the club. These equally represent the active
influence of women in their respective ages. Both have resulted in a
mania for knowledge, a change of ideals, a radical revolution in social
life, and an unprecedented increase in the authority of women. As they
have certain tendencies and dangers in common, it may be of interest to
trace a few points of resemblance and contrast between them; also to
glance at the elements which have gone into the club and are making it
so considerable a factor in American life.

The salon, like the club, was founded and led by clever women in
the interests of culture, both literary and social; but, unlike the
club, it was devoted to bringing into relief the talents of men. The
difference, so far as manners are concerned, is a fundamental one. It
would never have occurred to the women of that age to band together
for self-improvement. If they had given the matter a thought, it would
not have seemed to them likely to come in that way; still less would
it have occurred to them that this mode of doing things could be of
any service in bettering the world or their own position. Rousseau,
who wrote so many fine phrases about liberty, and left women none at
all, not even the small privilege of protesting against injustice,
said that they were “made to please men”; and it is safe to say that
the Frenchwomen had no scheme of life apart from men, until they were
ready to go into seclusion for prayer and penance and preparation for
the next world. They accepted the fact that men had the ordering of
affairs, and that they could make their own influence felt only by
acting through them. “What is the difference whether women rule, or
the rulers are guided by women?” said Aristotle. “If the power is in
their hands, the result is the same.” It was simply a question of the
best way of ruling the rulers. In this case the rulers were of a race
that has not only a great liking for women in the concrete, but a
great admiration for woman in the abstract. So long as her gifts are
consecrated to his interest and pleasure, the Frenchman never objects
to them--indeed, he is disposed to pay much homage to them. In the
interest of some one else, or even in her own, it is another matter.
They might be inconvenient. But in this new kingdom of the salon he was
quite willing to accord her the supremacy, since she gave him the place
of honor and furnished an effective background for his talents without
too much parading her own. He had only to shine and be applauded. What
more could he desire?

Naturally, under such conditions, among the first of her arts was
that of making things agreeable. If she had any fine moral lessons
to inculcate, she gave them in the form of sugared pills that were
pleasant to take. In her category of virtues the social ones were
uppermost; but they were the means to an end, and this end must not
be lost sight of. Her special mission was to correct coarse manners
and bad morals, as well as to secure due recognition for talent; but
she went about it in her own way. It may be said that, as a rule, the
Frenchwoman is much less interested in _what_ is done than in
_how_ it is done. In the early days of the salons she concerned
herself little, if at all, with theories and grave social problems;
but she did concern herself very much with questions of taste and
manners, the refinements of language and literature, the subtleties
of sentiment, the dignity of converse between men and women. Nor did
she bring to these questions an untrained mind. If she did not make
so much of a business of improving it as we do, she did not neglect
private study and the reading of the best books, which, though few,
were undiluted. “It gives dull colors to the mind to have no taste
for solid reading,” said Mme. de Sévigné, who delighted in Montaigne
and Pascal, Tacitus and Vergil, with various other classics which are
not exactly the food for frivolity. These women did not always spell
correctly, and would have declined altogether to write a paper on the
“Science of Government” or the “Philosophy of Confucius,”--subjects
which the school-girls of to-day feel quite competent to treat,--but
they showed surprising clearness and penetration in their criticisms
of literature and manners. The coteries which formed an audience for
Corneille, sympathized with the exalted thought of Pascal and Arnauld,
helped to modify and polish the maxims of La Rochefoucauld,--as those
which, a century or so later, discussed the tragedies of Voltaire
or the philosophy of Rousseau with men of genius who would have had
small patience with platitudes,--needed no lowering of levels to suit
their taste or comprehension. They were held firmly to fine literary
ideals. All they asked was simplicity of statement, and this was made a
fashion, to the lasting benefit of French literature.

It is true that the movement of the salon was in the direction of a
brilliant social as well as a brilliant intellectual life; but to fuse
such varied materials, to unite men of action and men of letters,
nobles and philosophers, statesmen and poets, people within the pale
and people outside of it, in a harmonious society, presided over by
women who set up new standards and new codes of manners, meant more
than intelligence, more than social charm. It involved diplomacy of a
high order, which implies flexibility, penetration, and the subtler
qualities of the intellect, as well as tact, sympathy, and knowledge
of men. This was notably an outgrowth of the salon, where women owed
much of their influence to a quick perception of the fine shades of
temperament, genius, interest, and passion through which the world is
swayed. The result of such training was a mind singularly lucid, great
administrative ability, and a character full of the intangible quality
that we call charm. If it was a trifle weak as to moral fiber, this
may be largely laid to the standards of the time, which were not ours.
Mme. du Deffand put the philosophy of her age and race into an epigram
when she said that “the virtues are superior to the sentiments, but not
so agreeable.” Both temperament and education led these women toward
Hellenic ideals. The latter-day woman is inclined to look upon their
methods as trivial and their attitude as humiliating; but, whatever we
may think of their point of view, we must admit their masterly ability
in making vital changes for the better, and attaining a position of
influence which we have hardly yet secured for ourselves. They did much
more than form society, create a code of manners, and set the fashions,
which we are apt to look upon as their special province. They refined
the language, stimulated talent, gave fresh life to literature, exacted
a new respect for women, and held political as well as social and
academic honors in their hands.

If they sometimes dipped into affairs of state in support of their
friends, and with a too incidental reference to the interests of the
State, I am not sure that even the men of our own time are absolutely
free from a personal tinge of the same sort, without the saving grace
of altruism. At all events, in the pursuit of a better order of things,
they took the pleasant path around the mountain rather than the
doubtful and untrodden path over it, which, since they could not go
over it if they tried, was, to my thinking, the wiser way.


III

But other times, other conditions and other methods. It was a long step
from these fine ladies in rouge and ruffles to the earnest American
women of high aims and simpler lives who, not far from thirty years
ago, began seriously to group themselves in clubs for social fellowship
and mental culture. The difference is equally marked, now that these
gatherings are numbered by thousands. It is more vital than a variation
in manners, as it lies in the character of the two races.

The club had no prestige of a class behind it, and concerned itself
little with traditions. It was a far more radical departure from the
old order than the salon, which, though it established a new social
basis, did it through delicate compromises that left the aristocratic
spirit intact. It was only in its later days that the iconoclasts
invaded it, to some extent, and made it a sort of hotbed for the
propagation of democratic theories which seemed quite harmless until,
one day, a spark set them ablaze, and the generation that had played
with them was swept to destruction. The club was democratic from the
foundation. It did not revolve round men of letters, or men of any
class. There was no man, or influence of man, behind it--no man in the
vista. It does not aim to bring into relief the talents of men, but
the talents of women who had come, perhaps, to wish a little glory on
their own account. There was no longer an outlet for their activities
in the salon, which belonged neither to the genius of the age nor the
genius of the race. The Anglo-Saxon man is not preëminently a social
being, and though he has not been entirely neglected in the matter of
vanity or personal susceptibility, he has rather less of either than
his Gallic compeers. Nor is he so amenable, either by temperament or
training, to the delicate arts that make social life agreeable. Half a
century or so ago, the American, in whose chivalrous regard for women
we take so much pride, was in the habit of saying many fine things
about them in what he was pleased to call the sphere God had assigned
them; indeed, he went so far as to offer a great deal of theoretical
incense to them as household divinities, with special and very human
limitations as to privileges. But he frowned distinctly upon any
intellectual tastes or aspirations. His attitude was tersely and
modestly expressed in Tennyson’s couplet:

  She knows but matters of the house,
  And he, he knows a thousand things.

This master of diverse knowledge would have smiled at the notion of
finding either profit or amusement in meeting women for the purpose of
conversation on the plane of the intellect. The few rare exceptions
only emphasize this fact. “A woman, if she have the misfortune of
knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can,” said Jane
Austen. We are far from that time; but men of affairs even now find
literary talks in the drawing-room tiresome, and persistently stay
away. Thoughts, too, had become a commodity with a market value, and
men of letters no longer found their pleasure or interest in wasting
them on limited coteries. They preferred sending them out to a larger
audience, at so much a page, while they smoked and chatted more at
their ease among themselves at their clubs. Whether they did not find
women inspiring,--which, under such conditions, is quite possible,--or
did not care to be inspired in that way, the rôle of inspirer was
clearly ended. The few efforts to take up the fallen scepter of the
salon proved futile in intellectual prestige, though they may have
served to while away some pleasant hours. A society based upon wealth
without the traditions of culture is apt to smother in accessories the
delicacy of insight and the esprit which were the life of the salons.
On the other hand, those who pose as apostles of plain living and high
thinking make the mistake of ignoring the imagination altogether, and
too often serve their feasts of reason without any sauces at all, which
fact should probably be laid to the account of the race that takes its
diversion as seriously as its work. After all, one cannot say “Let us
have esprit,” and have it, any more than one can say, “Let us have
charm,” and put it on like a garment.

But the women of forty or fifty years ago lacked much more than a
social outlet for their talents and aspirations. They had no outlet of
any sort beyond charity and the fireside. The Frenchwomen had little,
if any, more real freedom, possibly not so much in some directions:
but rank brought them deference and consideration; the age of chivalry
had put them on a pedestal. It may have been a bit theoretical, but
an illusory power is better than none at all, as it has a certain
prestige. If they were queens without a very substantial kingdom, they
had, at least, the privileges, as well as the responsibilities, of high
positions, and shone with something more than reflected glory. Then
their talents were too valuable to be ignored, as they were the best of
purveyors to Gallic ambitions. The Roman Church, too, was far-seeing
when it provided an outlet for their surplus energies and emotions. If
they had no fireside of their own, or the world pressed heavily upon
them, they could retire from it, and hope for places of influence, even
of power, in some of the various religious orders. In any case, there
were peace and a dignified refuge. But it is a noteworthy fact that the
Reformation left to women all the sacrifices of their religion, and
none of its outward honors or consolations. If the philosophers had no
message of freedom for them, still less was it found on Puritan soil.
“Women are frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish,” said John Knox, who
was far from being a model of patience himself, and seems to have been
singularly swayed by these weak, inconsequent creatures above whom he
asserts that man is placed “as God is above the angels.” Milton has
left us in no doubt as to his position regarding them:

  My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
  Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
  God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
  Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.

Such was the Puritan gospel of liberty as applied to women. John Knox
and Milton joined in the chorus that glorified their vassalage, while
Calvin added a cordial refrain, with a prudent reservation as to queens
and princesses.

It is needless to dwell upon this phase of a past the ideals of
which are as dead to us as the goddesses of Greece and the heroines
of the Nibelungenlied. It has been sufficiently emphasized already,
and concerns us here only as it shows us the spirit under which our
grandmothers were born and bred. It cannot be denied that they were a
wise, strong race, rearing thinkers and statesmen who have left few
worthy successors, though they did not spend much time in discussing
the best methods of training children, were better versed in domestic
than social economics, and doubtless had misty ideas about Buddhism
and the ultimate destiny of Woman. It may be superfluous, also, to say
that many of them had occasion to think little of their restrictions,
and would have resented the suggestion that they had any which were
not good for them, if not positively desirable. Limitations, even
hardships, do not necessarily imply misery. People are curiously
flexible, and get a sort of happiness from trying to fit themselves to
conditions which, though unpleasant, are inevitable. Then, conditions
are not always hard because they have unlimited possibilities in that
direction. One may even wear a chain and ball quite comfortably so long
as one stands still, or if the chain be a silken one and the ball cast
in pleasant places. The difficulty is that one does not always wish to
stand still; nor is it always possible, whatever the inclination may
be. The march of events is irresistible, and one is often forced to a
change of position to escape being trampled upon. Besides, in a society
that is based upon the right of people to do as they choose within
certain very flexible limits, one half is not likely to continue to do,
without a protest, what the other half says it ought to do, when it is
compelled to take its full share of burdens and rather more than its
full share of sacrifices, without any choice as to cakes and ale. These
daughters of liberty held no longer the places of honor accorded to
rank, and were not only without visible dignities of any kind, except
as the palest of satellites, but were largely, if not altogether,
excluded from the intellectual life of their husbands. They were told
to be content with the dignity of maternity, while they were virtually
shut out from the things that consecrate maternity. It was under such
conditions that the woman’s club was born. Men had already set up clubs
of their own, and women had no choice but to do the same thing, or
drift into the hopeless position of their respectable Athenian sisters
of the classic age, who lived in fashionable but ignorant seclusion,
while their brilliant husbands sought more congenial companionship
elsewhere.

But women did not plan a club for amusement, as men have usually
done: they planned it for mental improvement. It was not without a
prophecy of the coming time that the characters of our grandmothers
were trained in so severe a school. They were the reverse of
pleasure-loving, and took even their diversions seriously. The central
point of their lives was an inexorable sense of duty. Its twin trait
was energy. With a radical change of ideals their daughters did not
lose these traits. A religious devotion to one set of aims was simply
transferred to another. The road to their new Utopia was knowledge.
All things would come in its train--culture, independence, happiness,
the power to help a suffering world. It was this leaven of Puritan
traditions which gave the club an element that was not found in the
salon. The American woman may lack a little of that elusive quality,
half sensibility, half wit, which makes so much of the Frenchwoman’s
charm; she may lack, too, her perfection of tact, her inborn
genius for form and measure: but she has what the Frenchwoman has
not--something that belongs to a race in which the ethical overshadows
the artistic. It is devotion to principles rather than to persons, to
essentials rather than to forms. Her pursuit of knowledge may often be
superficial, from the immensity of the field she lays out for herself;
but her aims are serious, and lead her toward moral and sociological
questions, rather than matters of sentiment and taste.

The woman’s club is not a school of manners, and concerns itself little
with the fine art of living. It claims to instruct, not to amuse--or,
rather, it seeks amusement in that way; and it is more interested in
doing things than in the modes of doing them. It does not rely upon
diplomacy to gain its ends, but upon the wisdom and justice of the
ends, appealing to the reason instead of the imagination. It also
deals more with masses than with individuals. No doubt, the necessity
of going outside the realm of personal feeling in managing public or
semi-public affairs helps to give the poise and self-command which go
far toward offsetting the intensity of temperament that has always made
the discussion of vital questions so perilous in gatherings of women,
though we have occasion enough to know that wisdom and sanity do not
invariably preside at gatherings of men, even supposably wise ones. The
qualities fostered by the club are energy, earnestness, independence,
versatility, and--not exactly intellectual conscience, which implies
traditional standards, but a sense of intellectual duty that is not
quite the same thing. All this is remote from the spirit of the salon,
with its social codes and conventions, its graceful amenities, its
sparkling wit, its play of sentiment, its diplomatic reserves, and its
clear intelligence working through endless private channels toward a
new order of things. It points to the club, not as a conservator of
social traditions, or a creator of social standards, or a tribunal of
criticism, but as a literary and political training-school, a maker
of citizens with a broader outlook into the world of affairs, a
powerful engine of moral force. Perhaps its greatest direct value at
present lies in this moral force, which is the outgrowth of centuries
of sternly moral heritage, and runs not only through philanthropic
channels, but through all the avenues of life.

Of scarcely less importance are the impulse and direction the club has
given to the administrative talents of women--talents which mark their
special strength, and are far too valuable to be ignored at a time when
all the wisdom of the world is needed, in private as well as in public
affairs, to guide it safely through its threatening storms.


IV

But it is of the intellectual and social value of the club that I
wish more especially to speak here. It is often asked by thoughtful
foreigners why American women, who are free to pursue any career they
like, with ample privileges of education and the universal reign of the
literary club, have produced no writers of the first order, measured
even by the standards of their own sex. One finds many clever ones, and
a few able ones, but no Jane Austen, no George Eliot, no Mme. de Staël,
no Mrs. Browning. This may be partly due to the fact that we have not
yet passed the period of going to school. It is possible that another
generation, reared in the stimulating atmosphere of this, may give
us some rare flower of genius, if its mental force be not weakened by
the general pouring-in process, or dissipated in the modern tendency
toward limitless expansion and dilution. But club life in itself is not
directly favorable to creative genius. The qualities of the imagination
never flourish in crowds, though a certain order of talent does
flourish there--a talent that brings quicker returns and more immediate
consideration, at far less cost. The salon made brilliant and versatile
women who were noted for conversation and diplomacy; it made charming
women who ruled men and affairs through rare gifts of administration,
tempered with intelligent sympathy and tact; it made executive women,
and finely critical women, and masterful women, who left a strong and
lasting impression upon the national life: but, though they lived in
the main intellectual current of their time, stimulated and inspired
its leaders, and had much to do with its direction, they seldom made a
serious effort in literature themselves. The few who have left a name
in letters only illustrate the fact that individual genius is a flower
of another growth. Mme. de Staël would have been a great woman under
any conditions; but we owe all of her best work in literature to her
exile from the social life of Paris, where her thoughts had no time
to crystallize. The gift of Mme. de Sévigné was nearly allied to a
conversational one, but her mind was matured and deepened during years
of seclusion under the lonely skies of Brittany. Mme. de la Fayette
left the world of the salons early, to find her literary inspiration
in the solitude of ill health and the stimulating friendship of La
Rochefoucauld. Mme. du Châtelet, whose talent was of another color,
wrote on philosophy and translated Newton, not in the breezy air of
the salons, but in the tranquil shades of Cirey and the less tranquil
society of Voltaire. There were other women who wrote, though they
usually chose to hide a light which was not a very brilliant one, and
to shine in other ways. It may be that it was the salon which made
these women possible, as it created an intellectual atmosphere in which
thought blossomed into intense and vivid life; but its direct tendency
was to foster in women talents of a quite different sort from creative
ones. It developed to a high degree, however, the fine discrimination
and critical sense which led Rousseau to say that “a point of morals
would not be better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that
of a pretty woman of Paris.”

The clubs have hardly lived long enough to justify a final judgment as
to their outcome; but the best writers of our own time have not been,
as a rule, actively identified with them, though a few, whose minds
were already formed in another school, have had much to do in founding
and leading them. The many able women who have given their time and
talents to the clubs have oftener merged their literary gifts, if they
had them, into work of another sort, not less valuable in its way, but
less tangible and less individual. It is the work of the general, who
plans, organizes, sifts values, adapts means to definite ends, but who
lives too much in the swift current of affairs to give heed to the
voice of the imagination, or to master the art of literary form which
alone makes for thought a permanent abiding-place.

But if the clubs do not produce great creative writers,--who, after
all, are born, not made,--they furnish a multitude of ready ones, and
an army of readers who are likely to have a dominant voice in the
taste of the next generation. The result is certain to be--indeed, is
already--a voluminous literature. The quantity of a thing, however,
does not insure its fine quality; oftener the reverse. Naturally,
the question of standards becomes one of grave importance, unless we
are ready to accept the rule of the average, which more than offsets
the rise of the lowest by the fall of the highest, with an ultimate
tendency downward. We grow in the direction of our ideals, and these
are measured by the height of our standards. That many of the clubs
have exalted ideals, and are doing a great deal of valuable work, is
not a matter of doubt. It is equally certain that some of them work
with a zeal that is not according to knowledge, through lack of
capable leaders, and through a fallacy, nowhere so fatal as in art and
letters, that the wish to do a thing is equivalent to a talent for
doing it.

There is no doubt that American women read and discuss books enough. It
may be that we read too many. One may devour books as one does bonbons,
and with little more profit. Nor is there any doubt that we write
papers enough and hear talks enough on every imaginable subject, from
the antediluvians to Imperialism and the Chinese question. To whatever
all this mental activity may lead, it does not always lead to culture,
even of the mind, and I take the word, unqualified, to include much
more. It does lead to a broad diffusion of intelligence, but there is
an essential difference between intelligence and culture. Paradoxical
as it may seem, it is quite possible, in running after the one, to run
away from the other. The woman who belongs to ten or twelve clubs in
order to be of the new age, and to learn enough of all sorts of things
to be able to talk about them, may find her social compensation and a
harmless way of amusing herself, if she likes that sort of amusement;
but if she aims at mental culture, that is another affair. It is not
a matter of facts and phrases and formulas that one goes in search
of, but an inward growth, the result of long and loving companionship
with the best thought of the world, which is not at all the same
thing as a flitting acquaintance with a multitude of subjects, or
the ability to talk glib platitudes about the latest fads in art or
science or literature. Such companionship is found to only a limited
extent in gatherings of any sort; but stimulus and inspiration may be
found there, and here lies the true intellectual value of the club. To
thoughtful and sincere women, who have a certain amount of training and
natural gifts of assimilation, with small facilities for contact with
the thinking world, it is a priceless boon. But to narrow and untrained
intellects that like to flit from one thing to another, content with
a flying glimpse and a telling point or two which will go far toward
making them seem wise to the uninitiated, there are large possibilities
in the way of what we may call imitation culture. It is simply another
outlet for the ambition of the parvenu who puts on costly clothes and
rare jewels in the comfortable assurance that “fine feathers make fine
birds.”


V

It will, I think, be conceded that the special distinction of the
American woman does not lie in her intellect or her learning. Brilliant
gifts and attainments, to a certain point, may indeed be exceptionally
frequent; but they have often been equaled, if not exceeded, in the
past. It lies, rather, in her facility for utilizing knowledge and
adapting it to visible ends. To a combination of many talents has
been added one to make them all available. It is essentially a talent
for “arriving,” in other words, a talent for success, either with or
without intellectual ability of a high order, and consists largely in
a keen insight as to serviceable values, with a marked aptness for
catching salient points and using them to the best advantage. It is
a variation of the same talent that has made our country the wonder
of the century. In men we call it business sagacity, but it may find
an outlet in many other channels besides the amassing of fortunes. In
women we call it cleverness, and its shades are endless. It makes the
success of the philanthropist, the leader, and the administrator of the
household, as well as the fortune of the social aspirant, and sometimes
of the charlatan. In itself it has no ethical quality. It is simply
an instrument, and its value depends upon the end for which it is
used. But the result of it is that no women in the world have so much
versatility, or make a little knowledge go so far.

On the social side this talent is invaluable, and it is one of the
most piquant charms of the American woman, when the sharp corners of
provincialism are rubbed off. On the intellectual side, however, though
it gives an adaptable quality to genuine scholarship, it drifts easily
into superficiality and affectation. I do not mean to say that the club
is responsible for the fact that a hundred charlatans follow in the
wake of every real talent, as a hundred Tartufes in the wake of every
saint--when saints are in fashion; but it _is_ responsible when
it takes a bit of colored glass for a gem. It is sure, also, to suffer
from the pretension of those who illy represent it. The salon, which
made things of the intellect a fashion, received its worst blow in the
house of its friends. Madelon, in “Les Précieuses Ridicules,” looked
upon life as a failure if she chanced to miss the last romance, or
portrait, or madrigal, or sonnet; and Cathos declared that she should
die of shame if any one asked her about something new which she had
not seen. The pen of Molière sketched the crude copy of a fine thing
in colors too vivid to be mistaken, and henceforth the copy stood for
the thing. The world had its undiscriminating laugh at the salons;
good taste blushed at the company in which it found itself; and the
interests of intelligent women were put back for a generation. It was
not the first time that a good cause has suffered from its too zealous
followers, nor is it likely to be the last. The world moves in circles,
even if there be a spiral tendency upward, as the optimists amiably
assure us.

Doubtless we fancy ourselves much wiser than those seventeenth-century
précieuses whose imitators did them so much harm. Certainly we put more
seriousness into our pretensions. But we have our own little faults and
affectations, though they are not precisely the same. We do not devote
ourselves to portraits, or sonnets, or madrigals. We do not moralize in
maxims, good or bad, nor do we pretend to be sentimental; indeed, we
pretend not to be, if we are. Sentiment is out of fashion. The modern
Philaminte may look with chilling pity upon her belated sister who
has the courage to like Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, when she ought to
prefer Ibsen and the symbolists; but she is not likely to faint at a
common word, or dismiss her cook for a solecism. Our foibles are of
quite another sort. Instead of painting little pictures on a small
canvas, we take a very large canvas and pad our pictures to fit it. We
do not map out the passions on a _carte du tendre_, or give our
valuable time to the discussion of a high-flown Platonism which cradles
a woman in rose-leaves, while her lover waits for her a dozen years
or so because it is vulgar to marry; but we map out the fields of the
intellect, extending from protoplasm to the fixed stars, and undertake
to traverse the whole as confidently as we start for a morning walk.
If we cannot get over the ground fast enough, we can take an electric
train and catch flying glimpses sufficient to give us a pleasant
consciousness of being intelligent and quite modern.

Such vast aims are, no doubt, praiseworthy, and reflect great credit
on the clubs which have demonstrated so clearly the expansive quality
of the feminine mind; but they are also fatiguing, and suggest the
possibility that these same clubs are pushing us a little too fast
and too far. One is often forced to the conclusion that we should do
more if we did not try to do quite so much. It is very well to follow
Emerson’s advice to “hitch your wagon to a star”; but he never proposed
hitching it to all the constellations at once. When I hear the Greek
poets, the Italian painters, the English novelists, and the German
masters disposed of at a symposium in a single afternoon, as I did not
long ago, I wonder if the rare quality of mental distinction which made
the glory of the Immortals will exist at all in the future; whether we
shall not build tents for our thoughts instead of temples; whether,
indeed, the finest flavor of thought will not be as hopelessly lost as
the perfume of the flowers that are scattered in indiscriminate heaps
along the highways to show their quantity.

Nor is there less danger in attempting too large things than too
many things. It is certainly courageous for a woman who knows little
of history, less of philosophy, and nothing at all about the art of
writing, to undertake the Herculean task of preparing a paper on “The
Pagan Philosophers and their Schools.” With the best efforts, she will
have only a few outlines of facts and second-hand opinions, which might
have a certain value if either she or her audience proposed to fill
them out. But this is precisely what the modern woman who wishes to
know a little of everything has no time to do, even if she have the
inclination. There is to be a similar outline of Greek literature the
next week, one of the middle ages the week after, and so on to the end
of the season, when she has a fine collection of skeletons, with no
flesh and blood on any of them, if, indeed, the skeletons themselves
have not vanished into thin air. The Forty Immortals would shrink with
dismay from the magnitude of such a scheme. The worst of it is that one
comes to have a false sense of perspective, and to judge works of the
intellect by their size instead of their quality--like the pretentious
but ignorant woman who gravely remarked, after hearing a brilliant
talk from a brilliant man on Irish wit, that she “did not find it very
improving.” There is, too, the natural result of calling things by the
wrong names, and mistaking the thinnest of veneering for culture.

It is by no means necessary, or even desirable, that every woman
belonging to a club should be a savante; indeed, considering the
number of the clubs, I am not sure that this would not bring about a
more deplorable state of affairs than if there were none at all. It
may even be better for the average woman to know a little about many
things than all about one thing, if she has a certain discrimination
as to values, and the fine sense of proportion which is the result of
more or less mental training. But it _is_ desirable that each one
should have at least a little knowledge of what she undertakes to write
or talk about. Why a woman who might have something to say concerning
certain phases of our colonial life should be asked to write a paper
on Greek art, of which she has not even read, much less thought, or
one who is more or less familiar with various pleasant corners of
English literature should be called upon to entertain her hearers
on the Italian Renaissance, of which she knows nothing whatever, is
one of the mysteries of the new era. “I am so glad to see you,” said
one woman to a friend whom she met on the street. “I have a paper to
write on the symbolists. You know all about such things. What are the
symbolists, anyway?” We are told that when the blind lead the blind,
both are likely to come to grief. It is needless to say that these
faults are not universal, as there is a great deal of careful study and
fine thought in the clubs, but they are sufficiently common to be noted
among things to be avoided.

A still more serious danger lies in the endless multiplication of
clubs, which offers an irresistible temptation to those who like to
cull a little here, and a little there, without too exacting effort
in any direction. They may all be valuable in themselves, but because
it is good to belong to one or two active clubs of different aims,
it does not follow that it is good to belong to a dozen; and I know
of a woman who claims with pride that she belongs to twenty-two!
“Moderation is the charm of life,” said Jean Paul, and one sees with
regret how little of that sort of charm there is left; indeed, I am
not sure that it has not ceased to be considered a charm. We may find
a note of warning in the later days of the great salons. The social
life of the eighteenth century reads like a page of our own, with its
whirl of _conversazioni_, its talks on science, its experiments
in chemistry, physiology, psychology, its mania for discussing
literature, art, and philosophy. The literary salons had blossomed
into great centers of intellectual brilliancy, of which all this life
was the natural pendant. It was the fashion then, as now, for women to
concern themselves with affairs of state; to talk of the rights of man,
though they had less to say than we have about the rights of woman; to
dream of a social millennium, which they were doomed to wade through
rivers of blood without reaching. They too invaded the secrets of the
laboratory, and even the surgeon’s domain. We hear of a young countess
who carried a skeleton in her trunk when she went on a journey, “as
one might carry a book to read,” in order to study anatomy. These
women, like ourselves, aimed to know a little of everything. They too
were fired with the passion for intelligence and the passion for
multitudes. With the craving for novelties came the ever-growing need
of a stronger spice to make them palatable. In this carnival of the
mind they lost their faith and simplicity, loved with their brains
instead of their hearts, forgot their natural duties, and found natural
ties irksome. Longing for rest without the power to rest, they suffered
from maladies of the nerves, and were devoured with the ennui of
exhaustion. Life lost its equilibrium, and the result was inevitable.
The reaction from the restlessness of an intellect that is not fed from
inner sources, but finds its stimulus and theater alike in the world,
was toward an exaggeration of the sensibilities. “If I could become
calm, I should believe myself on a wheel,” said one whose brilliancy
had dazzled a generation. This fatal “too much” was not the least of
the causes that lost to women the empire they had won. All movements
are measured, in the end, by a standard of common sense, and reactions
are in proportion to the deviation from a just mean. The revolution
which brought liberty to men, or at least shifted the burdens to
some one else, deprived women of what they had. They were forbidden
to organize, and sent back to the fireside and cradles. The republic
swept away from them the last vestige of political power, and gave them
nothing in the place of their lost social kingdom. They were forced to
speak with hushed voices in hidden coteries. Of these there were always
a few, but their prestige was gone. “There is one thing which is not
French,” said Napoleon; “it is that a woman can do as she pleases.” And
he proceeded straightway to give point to his theory by exiling the
ablest woman in France and silencing all the rest.

We are apt to take high moral ground on the frivolity of these women,
and to pride ourselves on our superiority because we have such a
serious way of amusing ourselves--so serious, indeed, that we forget
there can be anything so questionable as frivolity about it. To be
sure, the clubs are free from many of the faults of the salons. They do
not put social conventions in the place of principles, nor substitute
an esthetic conscience for an ethical one; nor do they drift at all in
the direction of moral laxity. A movement of the intellect, too, which
has its roots in the character is more likely to last than one that
hangs on the suffrage of those it was meant to please and glorify. But
we have the same mental unrest, the same thirst for excitement, the
same feverish activity, the same indisposition to stay at home with
our thoughts. A fever of the intellect may be preferable to a fever
of the senses, and less harmful as an epidemic, but it tends equally
toward exhaustion and disintegration. It is not so much a question of
morals as a question of balance. The modern fashion, however, of doing
everything, even to thinking, in masses, is not altogether due to a
fever of the intellect, any more than it was a hundred years ago. Much
of it is doubtless due to a genuine love of knowledge, much of it to
a haunting desire to be doing something in the outside world, though
the thing done be possibly not at all worth the doing; but a great
deal of it is due to a sort of hyperæsthesia of the social sentiment,
or the mental restlessness that betrays a lack of poise and depth in
the character. We call it the spirit of the age--the innocent phantom
which has to bear the burden of most of our sins, and is gathering
so resistless a force that the strongest and wisest are swept along,
despite themselves, in its accelerating course. But the spirit of the
age is only the sum of individual forces. It needs only a sufficient
number of wise counter-forces to temper and modify it.


VI

A word as to another phase of the club. We have seen that the salons
broke through the exclusive lines of rank, and created a society
based largely upon standards of the intellect, with a meeting-point
of good manners. The woman’s club has done a similar work toward
preventing the crystallization of American society on the basis of
wealth. Its standards are professedly of the mind, though they are
flexible enough to include a wide range of ability, aspiration,
and small distinctions of various sorts. It would be too much to
say that these elements are fused into anything like a homogeneous
society; but they have a recognized point of contact that suffices for
literary or charitable aims, though not altogether for social ones,
which demand the larger contact of personal sympathies, and a certain
community of language that comes within the province of manners. The
salons, however, were wise enough to establish and maintain the social
equilibrium between men and women, while the clubs seem to be rapidly
destroying it. Outside of a limited dinner-giving, amusement-loving
circle, it is undeniable that our social life is centering largely
in clubs composed exclusively of women, whose tastes are diverging
more and more from those of men, and in the functions growing out of
them. To these we may add a few receptions with a sprinkling of men,
and an endless procession of teas and luncheons with no men at all.
Private entertaining of a general character, with its varying flavor of
individuality, seems likely, with many other pleasant things, to become
a memory. If these clubs grew out of a state of affairs in which women
were virtually excluded from the intellectual life of men, we are fast
drifting toward the reverse condition, in which men will have no part
in the intellectual and very little in the social life of women.

Whether this marked separation of interests beyond a reasonable point
be for the good of either men or women, is a matter of grave doubt.
It is certain that women who are brought into frequent contact with
the minds of men think more clearly and definitely, look at things
in a larger way, and do a finer quality of intellectual work, than
those who have been limited mainly to the companionship of their own
sex. Societies of women are apt to fail in breadth through too much
attention to technicalities out of season, to sacrifice the greater
good to personal prejudices, to emphasize a little brief authority, to
grow hard rather than strong, to become carping and critical without
the clearness of vision that gives a rational basis for criticism.
Nor does the fact that a great many women are superior to these
limitations, and that men are not invariably free from them, affect the
general drift of things. On the other side, it is equally true that men
have done the greatest work under the influence of able women, from the
days of Pericles and the great Greeks who found a fresh inspiration
in the salon of Aspasia, to the brilliant men of modern times, too
numerous to cite here, who have not failed to acknowledge their debt to
feminine judgment and criticism. Men, too, are naturally averse to the
trammels of form, and, left to themselves, rapidly lose the refinement
and courtesy that came in with the social reign of women. While the
best of each is drawn out through social contact on the plane of the
intellect, the worst is accented by separation.

Then, aside from the fact that a large part of the happiness of the
world depends upon a certain degree of harmony in the tastes of men
and women, which is not likely to exist if they have utterly divergent
points of social interest, men are an incontestable factor in all
our plans for bettering matters, themselves included. We cannot
fairly claim to constitute more than half of the human family, and,
if we do not make some social compromise, we may share the fate of
the Princess Ida, and see all of our fine schemes melt away like
the fabric of a dream. We are not yet ready to establish an order
of intellectual vestals, though drifting in that direction; and,
since the women’s clubs do really constitute a distinct social life,
why not make them more effective on that side? Why leave all these
possibilities of power in the hands of those who make a business of
amusing themselves? It is a fashion to rail at society as frivolous;
but it is precisely what we make it, and it is ruled by women. If it
tends to grow vapid, and luxurious, and commercial, and artificial, we
have only to plan something as attractive on a finer and more natural
basis. And where do we find a better starting-point than in connection
with the women’s clubs? To be sure, men do not, as a rule, find them
interesting; indeed, they vote them a trifle dull, but that may be
because they have no vital part in them. Then, the fault may lie a
little in the women themselves. There is clearly a flaw somewhere
in our methods or our ideals. In trying to avoid the frivolities of
society, we may fall into the equally fatal error of failing to make
better things attractive, and so permit the busy men of to-day to slip
away altogether from the influence of what many are pleased to call
our finer moral and esthetic sense--to say nothing of what we lose
ourselves. It may be deplorable, but it is still a fact, that truth is
doubly captivating when served with the piquant sauces that make even
error dangerously fascinating. We have to deal with people as they are,
not as we think they ought to be.

I am not disposed to quote the Frenchwomen of a century or so ago as
models. But there are many points we might take from them in the art
of making a social life on intellectual lines agreeable, as well as a
vital force. When women who are neither young nor beautiful dominate
an age of brilliant men through intellect and tact, it does no harm
to study their methods a little in an age when women of equal talent,
superior education, and finer moral aims succeed to only a limited
extent in doing more than stimulate one another--a good thing to do,
but not final. Those women, too, had old distinctions to reconcile,
and a powerful court for a rival. They had one advantage, as they made
a cult of esprit, which is a gift of their race, while we make a cult
of knowledge, which may be more substantial, but is less luminous, and
not so available socially. Besides, knowledge is a thing to be acquired
and not caviar to mediocrity, which is apt to use it crudely, and with
pretension. “Let your studies flow into your manners, and your readings
show themselves in your virtues,” said Mme. de Lambert. I am sorry to
say that the typical Frenchwoman of a hundred years ago did not always
take so exalted a view of her duties; but even as a matter of taste
she had too delicate a sense of proportion to merge the woman in the
intellect. She scattered about her the flavor of knowledge rather than
the knowledge itself; which is not so easy, as one does not have the
real flavor of knowledge without the essence of it, and something more.
Rare natural gifts have a distinction of their own, but in ordinary
life what one _is_ counts for more than what one _knows_, and
the secret of attraction lies rather in the sum of the qualities which
we call character than in the acquirements. A woman may be familiar
with Sanskrit, and calculate the distance of the fixed stars, without
being interesting, or even admirable, as a woman. The main point is to
preserve one’s symmetry, and one’s center of gravity; then, the more
knowledge the better. It may be that the flaw in our ideals lies just
here, and that in the too exclusive pursuit of certain things fine in
themselves, we neglect other things equally if not more vital.

No doubt the Frenchwoman did much that she ought not to have done, and
left undone much that she ought to have done, just as we do, though the
things were not precisely the same; we know, too, that the time came
when she did lose her poise, and with it her power. But, with all her
faults, in the days of her glory she never forgot her point of view.
She was rarely aggressive, and, without being too conscious of herself
or her aims, it was a part of her esthetic creed to call out the best
in others. With consummate tact, she crowned her serious gifts with
the gracious ways and gentle amenities that disarmed antagonism and
diffused everywhere a breath of sweetness. She carried with her, too,
the sunshine that springs from an inexhaustible gaiety of heart, and
this was one source of her unfailing charm. Perhaps it was partly why
the literary salon retained its prestige for nearly two hundred years,
and, in spite of its errors, was brilliant and amusing, as well as an
intellectual force, to the end.

It is far from my intention to repeat the old cry that other days were
better days, and other ways better ways, than ours. We have a life of
our own, and do not wish to copy one that is dead, or to put on manners
that do not fit us. But the essentials of human nature are eternally
the same, and in bringing new forces to bear upon it we may do well
sometimes to consult the wisdom of the past, to ponder the secret of
its failures as of its successes. It is not a matter of depreciating
our aims or our ways, but of getting the most out of them, perhaps
through some subtle touch that we have missed; also of preserving our
sanity and equilibrium in this new order of things, which tends always
to grow more complex and more bewildering.




Transcriber’s Notes

In a few cases, inconsistent hyphenization was standardized to use the
one more common throughout the text.

Page 262: “set up their household gods” changed to “set up their
household goods”

Page 346: “died at twenty-six” changed to “died at twenty-six.”



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