lasted in its first form up to the end of the sixth century; then it passed into a new development when, in 591, the pontificate of Gregory the Great placed all Christendom in the keeping of the Pope at Rome, and the Keys confined more than the Eagles had conquered. As if to show how the Dread Powers, who make us their sport, disregard our best and wisest, it was to this bloodstained tyrant, Tarquinius Superbus, that the Ancient Woman came with her nine mysterious books, whereof she burned three, and yet another three, demanding now for the remnant the same sum as she had asked for the whole. What was in those mystic pages? What store of hidden wisdom, inspired by the voiceless spirit of the divine? What wealth of occult knowledge, drawn from the secret workshops of nature? What rules of nobler conduct, in pity for the weak and in tenderness for the erring, than were known to those fierce citizens to whom pity was unmanliness, and tenderness to error disloyalty to virtue? What prophecies of historic fate and foreshadowing of the changes that had to come? Who knows now? Like a ghost from the tomb-like a spirit from space that ancient sibyl came and went, leaving behind her those mysterious utterances which might have given us a clew into the heart of the adytum could we but have kept and followed it. Of all women, the Vestals were those who had the most direct influence in public life. Their power traversed that of man, and, themselves under the law, at times proved stronger than the law. The office of these spotless patrician maidens perfect in body and pure in soul "-was to minister in the Temple of Vesta, where they kept alight the sacred fire, guarded the penates, and those holy relics which formed the "fatale pignus imperii,' the "fated pledge of empire." That awful and mysterious Something, that Palladium or sacred substance enclosed in a sealed jar, was deposited in the innermost sanctuary where no one entered save the Virgins and the Pontifex Maximus. And to this day no man knoweth what it was, nor what its shape nor name. If it were a secret known only after initiation, the Virgins kept it well. If it were merely that kind of grave superstiNEW SERIES.-VOL. XLVI., No. 4 tious joke which surrounds an idea with a mystic atmosphere that bears no test of proof, then they had nothing to tell ; and that mysterious Something had no more substance than the garments woven out of air which clad the German king. The sacred fire, however, was a fact patent to all; and this was their chief care. A new one was kindled with pomp and ceremony on the first of every March; and should a careless virgin let the holy flame die out, the Pontifex Maximus scourged her, not seeing her, with his own august hands. One, Æmilia, happier than her later namesake, lighted the dead embers with a piece of her own garment-so full of maternal tenderness was the Mother she served. The vow of chastity was equally sacred with this care of the sacred fire; the penalty for forfeiture was more terrible. Released after thirty years of dedication, and then, when mature women of forty or so, permitted to marry if they would, while they were in their youth and in the service of the goddess the Vestals were required to be as pure as the flame they fed, as chaste as the virgin mother they worshipped. When Numa gave the law, and Egeria inspired it to comparative clemency, the erring Vestal was simply stoned to death. And stoning to death did not mean battering to pieces with fist-large flints, but being killed in a moment by a huge rock, which ended all with the deadly precision of a bullet. But when virtue grew to cruelty and Tarquinius Priscus developed the first command, the foresworn Vestal was stripped of her badges of office, scourged, dressed as a corpse, and carried in a litter to the Campus Sceleratus, where she was buried alive in a vault. To avoid the crime of actual personal murder, a couch, a lamp, and a little food were provided. When the wine and oil and bread were finished-when the lamp had gone out in darknesswhat was it to any one what gaunt and awful misery sobbed away its frenzied life on that couch which was its living bier? Buried deep below the soil she was left to the avenging Furies till kindly death came and took her from her pain 64 but to what greater torture no man could say. Like the foresworn nun, walled up alive within the precincts she had desecrated, mercy passed her by, 35 and Hades was as terrible an abode for two. The people appealed against, and her poor sinful soul as was Hell's Mouth by their tribune quashed, the verdict of to her Christian sister some centuries the pontiffs. They put the thing into later. Her paramour was publicly the hands of Longinus, who condemned scourged to death. This law lasted as both Marcia and Licinia, as well as many long as the institution. One, Cornelia others, and proved himself of a severity Maximilla, was buried alive in the Forum equal to that of any priest or Puritan of so late as the time of Domitian-he, history. It was to help in the purificaso careful to maintain the purity of the tion of the State, polluted by these awful virgins, who had taken Domitia Lon- crimes in those who should have been its gina by force from her husband Ælius spotless exemplars, that the temple to Lamia, and who had seduced his niece Venus Verticordia was built; while, as Julia, the daughter of his brother Titus a sacrifice acceptable to the gods and and the wife of Sabinus. But in the prescribed by the Sibylline books, four space of a thousand years only eighteen men-two Gauls and two Greeks-were Vestals had been found guilty of un- buried alive in the Forum Boarium. chastity, from the establishment of the After which things went better, and the order by Numa to its abolition by Theo- Vestals were scared back to their duty. dosius the Great. As with that careless Æmilia, the goddess herself protected those who were innocently accused, as when Tuccia was enabled by divine favor to carry a sieve full of water from the Tiber to the temple in proof of her innocence and her delator's falsehood. Flavia Terentia, the vestal sister of Cæsar's wife, was impeached by Clodius, but Cato defended her and won her cause. So with Licinia, impeached by Plotinus for criminality with Marcus Crassus. The criminality was disproved; but for all that Crassus got that for which he had paid such dangerous court to a forbidden virgin-namely her country house at less than its market value; out of which, womanlike, Licinia suffered herself to be importuned and teased. The most terrible story of all, however, was that which had taken place before these others, in the time of L. Cassius Longinus, tribune of the Plebs, B.C. 137. Æmilia, seduced by a knight, L. Veturius, thought to lessen her guilt by sharing it, and induced other two vestals, Licinia and Marcia, to follow her example, and break their vows of chastity for the doubtful gain of love. Marcia contented herself with her one lover, but Æmilia and Licinia foreshadowed the future Roman lady, and went into excesses and infidelities which placed their characters at the mercy of many. They were betrayed by the slave who had helped them, and brought to trial before the College of Pontiffs; but L. Metellus, the then head, condemned only Æmilia, and acquitted the other * The honor paid to these virgins, while deserving, was in proportion to their shame when degraded. Purer than the passions of men and stronger than the weaknesses of women, they held that semi-sacred place which all nations and religions have agreed to give to those women who voluntarily undertake a life of chastity and who keep their vows inviolate. Fulfilling the natural functions of neither sex, they received the special honors of both. They assisted, like men, at all great religious rites; were invited to the priestly banquets; went in state to the games and shows; and had the place of honor in the Colosseum, where other women were relegated to the open gallery or portico at the top.* They were present at the solemn appeal to the gods made by Cicero in his speech against Cataline in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, when the imminent peril of the State was averted by the agency of a woman-Fulvia, the mistress of Q. Curtius. They were maintained luxuriously at the public expense, and were released from parental control. They could make a will, and give evidence without taking the oath in a court of public justice. When they went abroad they were heralded by a lictor, and consuls and prætors made way for them. lowering their fasces in token of subordination. If a man passed under their litter he was put to death; so, if any * Even the free Romans did not like too much publicity in their women. Publius Sophus, consul B.C. 268, divorced his wife for attending some funeral games. one insulted them with insolence or ribaldry. Augustus gave them the rights of a matron who had borne three children; and granted them in the theatre the same place of honor they already held in the gladiatorial shows. They could influence justice to mercy by their intercession; and if they chanced upon a criminal on his way to punishment they could demand his release. Wills and contracts were in the keeping of this holiest Doctors Commons of antiquity; and they were commemorated after death as they were celebrated in life by statues raised in their honor and inscriptions dedicated to their praise. These white-robed women, their shortcut hair bound under a white cloth, purple-edged, must have formed a beautiful feature in the public life of Rome. Down the Via Sacra, where every newyear's day the augurs in their robes of purple and saffron, their heads garlanded with green and carrying consecrated boughs the anticipatory palms of Palm Sunday-came in solenin procession to the gilt-roofed temple of Jupiter Capitolinus-its statues standing out against the sky and the fire burning on its altars -down the Via Sacra, where Paulus Æmilius, Pompey and Cæsar, clad in robes rich with Phrygian embroidery, had driven in the glory of their triumph; where Vitellius, in after days, was dragged by the crowd, his hands tied behind his back, his clothes torn and beplastered with mud, his face bleeding and a rope about his neck; where Roman matrons were sometimes seen walking with naked feet for greater righteousness of penance-heading the procession, chanting as they went, these calm and stately virgins manifested the power of womanhood and the might of purity. Preceding the augurs and the great officers of the State, they represented that splendor of chastity, that attribute of modesty which, while they lived, womanhood, however corrupt elsewhere, had not wholly lost. Weak by their sex, strong by their virtue, they spoke to the better conscience of the world. And in an age when might was right, it was to the good of men that these personally feeble women should be honored as the impersonations of mercy, purity, and righteousness. It was a symbol of supreme value that they should precede those who interpreted the mute voices of the gods, and those who ruled a state which the whole known world feared and obeyed. But even the Vestals might not insult the majesty of the people, whose concrete self was Rome. If they did, not even their holy office sheltered them; as in the case of the sister of that headstrong P. Claudius, who lost the battle of Drepana. After his death in exile, "his sister, a vestal virgin, while riding through the crowds in the circus, loudly expressed her regret that her brother no longer lived, since by the defeat of another fleet he might have sent a great many more of the rabble out of the world. She was accused, and condemned to a heavy penalty, as guilty of high treason against the people' -a true Claudian in her aristocratic hatred of the plebs. But now the picture changes. No longer the Roman matron, married by all the laws, dignified her home so that her name became the synonym of domestic purity and personal nobleness. To be sure a few spotless names still appear, like stars in a murky sky, but the crowd is one of licentious Mænads whose very love is ferocity and whose hate is infernal. What kind of woman could have been Fulvia, that "Megæra-like” wife of Clodius ?-he who, disguised as a woman, crept into the house of Aurelia during the celebration of the Mysteries of Bona Dea, and so caused Pompeia to be divorced with the famous epigram: Cæsar's wife must not be suspected.' What grace of sex, what touch of tenderness remained to her when, with her golden bodkin, she pierced the now still tongue of him whose fervid eloquence had so often swayed the destinies of the Empire, and spat in the dead face of her dead husband's enemy? Her love, too -as for Clodius, as for Antony-was a flame that scorched rather than a light that shone; fierce, revengeful, jealous, masterful, as the love of such women always is. ་་ And who but a man so intrinsically weak as was Cicero himself, would have borne so long with Terentia, that Roman Xanthippe, whose restless temper, insatiate ambition, and fatal want of foresight, urged her husband to words and deeds for which he had to pay the supreme forfeit in those beautiful Formian words? Nevertheless, it was an ill-done thing to divorce her in her old age and marry that young girl, Publilia, who, naturally, did not love her sexagenarian husband-and made him feel that she did not. Servilia, the mother of Brutus and sister of Cato, respected neither her own honor nor the chastity of her daughters. The stories rife of the three sisters of Clodius -especially of her nicknamed Quadrantaria, pro causá-abash the reader and perplex the transcriber. Livia Drusilla, that beautiful bit of dissoluteness, greed, and crime, whose fairset villa still exists, but exists like her own memory, leprosied and defaced; Julia, the wife of Tiberius, whose licentiousness broke all bounds and shamed even the shameless; Cæsonia, who maddened Caligula with her hateful philtres, as Lucilia had formerly destroyed Lucretius with hers; Julia Agrippina, the disciple of Locusta, to whom any life obstructive to her ambition or contrary to her desires, was as a stone to be kicked out of her path; Messalina and the two Faustinas,* names which have become types, yet of whom, while the one met with the fate of a criminal, the others were canonized, had temples raised in their honor, coins struck in their memory, and charitable institutions named after them, to connect them forever with goodness and humanity; Lucilla, wife of Lucius Verus and daughter of the younger Faustina, whose crime repeated that of the sisters of Clodius, though, if all that is said be true, heredity and example and the shocked sense of a young wife whose own mother is her rival, may plead her excuse, as her tragic fate claims our pity; Julia Domna, whose greatness of intellect was matched by the greatness of her vices, but who also sure * I know that the fashion of modern scholarship goes to the rehabilitation of these two women, founded chiefly on the intense love their husbands bore them. "O God, I would rather live with her in exile in Gyara than without her in the palace," wrote Antoninus Pius in the anguish of his sorrow after her death, to Fronto; while Marcus Aurelius said of his wife: "To the gods I am indebted that I have such a wife, so obedient, so affectionate and so simple." Was it the old story of woman's craft and man's simplicity? of the magic charm which loose women have and the virtuous have not? or is it all baseless slander, malignant gossip, and the falsehoods born of jealousy and envy? ly expiated her sins when one son was murdered in her arms by the other, and she had to hear unmoved the heartless pleasantry: "Sit divus, dum non sit vivus ;"-where in history can we find a more fatal ending of that much-prized flower-the predominant social power, the unchecked personal liberty of woman? All writers are agreed on this. If the decay of the old religion came in with the Hellenic philosophy, and culture destroyed the faith whereof only its superstitions remained, the decay of morals was due to the increase of freedom among the women, who no longer recognized the law of conjugal subinission nor the virtue of continent selfcontrol. The women were as free as the men; and the practical argument was, that nature had made no distinction between the sexes. What was good for the one was fitting for the other; and vices, like freedom, like virtues, had no sex and therefore no restrictions. Unchastity was the fashion, and every one followed as the queens of society led. No one of patrician rank was so bourgeois as to sacrifice the glowing pleasures of sense to the dulness of self-restraint. The strength of the proud Roman nature showed itself in the plenitude of this license, as formerly in the magnitude of its heroism, the splendor of its virtue ; and the women, who would once sacrifice their dearest affections for patriotism and honor, now threw away every vestige of social decency for the sake of passions that knew no curb and wilfulness that brooked no restraint. No marriage in the true sense remained, and men divorced their wives with no more compunction than a gallant of to-day would leave his hired mistress of a week. Even Cato the younger gave into the strange confusion of the time, and while denying the loan of his daughter-married to Bibulus and desired by Hortensius, to be returned when she should have borne the child which would cement the friendship and form a family alliance between her father and his friend-suffered him to take his wife Marcia, her father Philip consenting. For the wives-who were now really uxores," and no longer "matres-familiarum"-were still under their father's command, and were not of the husband's house. Cato had already were divorced one wife, Atilia, for dissoluteness; but Marcia was of good conduct and repute, and was parted with, apparently, for a complaisance we can scarcely understand. Yet Cato was one of the noblest men of his generation, and surely did not act with conscious baseness. When Hortensius died he remarried Marcia; and ran the gauntlet of a few pleasantries, not undeserved. It was, as has been said, the fashion, and no one was ashamed to "sleep for Cæsar" during wedlock, or to shake off the tie altogether. The law sanctioned eight divorces, within which limit a man might be held honorable and a woman virtuous. As a result, women handed about from one man to the other, themselves nothing loath, as collectors and amateurs might exchange their bits of bric-a-brac. The names form an entangled kind of web where the lines cross and intercross, and the points of attachment are almost too numerous to count and too thickly set to distinguish. Like the "evil strength of a barren figtree,'' corruption undermined the citadel and threw down the walls of all virtue, civic and social. But who could remonstrate when such a woman, say, as Faustina was canonized, and she who had been the world's great harlot was now the nation's minor goddess? To judge by events, the famous illustration of Paulus Æmilius, when he divorced Papiria, was applicable to every one alike; and the shoe pinched each foot that shod itself with matrimony, no matter how beautiful it was. In the midst of this universal corruption, the names of those who held fast to virtue come like a "storm of harmony, unutterably sweet" in the midst of discords, such as filled the air when the bloody waters of the Hebrus bore its piteous burden swiftly to the sea. Loveliest of all is Agrippina, the dear wife of Germanicus; that loving, graceful, Greek-like woman who, of all in history, is the most like Andromache. where is the law of heredity here? From her and Germanicus, both so pure and noble, came that Caius or Caligula, said to be "nature's mockery, born of filth and fire," as well as Julia Agrippina, accused of all the crimes that belong to blood-thirstiness and lust. Is heredity powerless before the spirit of the age? Yet and is example of more weight than inheritance? Beautiful, too, is Arria, the wife of Cæcina Pætus, who, when her husband hung back and did not at once kill himself, as ordered by the Emperor Claudius, stabbed herself, to both hearten him to courage and show him that she would not survive him-handing him the dagger with these nobly pathetic words, It does not hurt much, my Pætus!" By the way, this is the only instance-at least the only instance I can remember-where a Roman woman sacrificed herself for love. For country, yes; for virtue, yes; but for love pure and simple, no. 66 Going on with the sweeter and softer types, Plutarch's wife Timoxena was gentle, true, and pure-but she was a Greek, translated to Rome, but not of Rome; and Trajan's wife and sister, Plotina and Marciana, were women of extraordinary moral loveliness. Where has history a fairer example of democratic royalty than when Plotina, mounting the steps of the palace on her husband's accession, turned round to the people and called them to witness her promise to be always what she was now —that is, the simple and sincere woman they had ever known her, and not the arrogant and immoral Empress whose crimes seemed to be inherent in the purple as moths are enwrapped in the cloth. Thus spoke the spirit of old Rome when men were noble and women virtuous, before luxury had enervated the one or vice had corrupted the other. Marciana should be granted the title of Augusta during her life and canonization as Diva after her death, would have carried with it greater significance of honor had not those others been equally signalized. As things were, such a wom"honan as Marciana could not be ored" by any title given by a government as mean and base as that of Rome had become. Domitia Lucilla, the mother of Marcus Aurelius, too, was evidently a fine and purposeful women; and the wife of Maximianus redeemed her ill-omened name by her fidelity to her unfortunate husband. Valeria and Prisca, the daughter and wife of Diocletian, were as virtuous as they were unhappy; the women of Aquilegia, who gave their hair to be made into ropes when their city was besieged, as the That |