neither married nor a mother, incurred the punishment decreed by Augustus against celibacy and childlessness.[1] We are indeed told in Roman legislation that the consent of the girl was necessary before passing finally to betrothal and marriage. But it is evident that the consent of a child of twelve years, or even less, was illusory; in reality, the young Roman girl was married by her parents.[2] The young wife was still such a child, that on the day of her wedding she took a ceremonious leave of her playthings and dolls, offering them up to the gods. In reality, it was not the wife who made the engagement, but the persons in whose power she found herself.[3]
Nevertheless, Roman customs conceded to women a certain liberty of manners which the Greeks would not have tolerated. The Roman woman walked in the streets, went to the theatre with the men, shared in banquets, etc.; yet she was, especially in primitive Rome, subjected first to her father and then to her husband. And, besides, public opinion obliged the woman to use in great moderation the practical liberty that was left to her. The famous epitaph of the Roman matron—domum mansit; lanam fecit—is well known. This epitaph may perhaps exaggerate, but it does not lie. Thus Suetonius tells us that the daughters and grand-daughters of Augustus were compelled to weave and spin, and that the Emperor usually wore no other garments but those made by the hands of his wife and sister.[4]
Legally, the Roman wife was the property of her husband, who treated her, not as his equal, but as his child. At Rome, also, conjugal union had been looked at chiefly from the point of view of procreation (Liberorum quærendorum causâ). The wife who was the mother of three children acquired a certain independence; she could make a will even during the lifetime of her husband, and did not need to have recourse to a trustee.[5] But the subjection of woman was very great. The father, invested with the potestas, could sell his child to a third party, in mancipium. The
