The Women of the Caesars | Page 5

daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul
in 58, and a most influential senator of the popular party.
Whoever studies the history of the influential personages of Caesar's
time, will find that their marriages follow the fortunes of the political
situation. Where a purely political reason was wanting, there was the

economic. A woman could aid powerfully a political career in two
ways: by ably administering the household and by contributing to its
expenses her dower or her personal fortune. Although the Romans gave
their daughters an education relatively advanced, they never forgot to
inculcate in them the idea that it was the duty of a woman, especially if
she was nobly born, to know all the arts of good housewifery, and
especially, as most important, spinning and weaving. The reason for
this lay in the fact that for the aristocratic families, who were in
possession of vast lands and many flocks, it was easy to provide
themselves from their own estates with the wool necessary to clothe all
their household, from masters to the numerous retinue of slaves. If the
materfamilias knew sufficiently well the arts of spinning and weaving
to be able to organize in the home a small "factory" of slaves engaged
in such tasks, and knew how to direct and survey them, to make them
work with zeal and without theft, she could provide the clothing for the
whole household, thus saving the heavy expense of buying the stuffs
from a merchant--notable economy in times when money was scarce
and every family tried to make as little use of it as possible. The
materfamilias held, then, in every home, a prime industrial office, that
of clothing the entire household, and in proportion to her usefulness in
this office was she able to aid or injure the family.
More important still were the woman's dower and her personal fortune.
The Romans not only considered it perfectly honorable, sagacious, and
praiseworthy for a member of the political aristocracy to marry a rich
woman for her wealth, the better to maintain the luster of his rank, or
the more easily to fulfil his particular political and social duties, but
they also believed there could be no better luck or greater honor for a
rich woman than for this reason to marry a prominent man. They
exacted only that she be of respectable habits, and even in this regard it
appears that, during certain tumultuous periods, they sometimes shut
one eye.
Tradition says, for example, that Sulla, born of a noble family, quite in
ruin, owed his money to the bequest of a Greek woman whose wealth
had the most impure origin that the possessions of a woman can
possibly have. Is this tradition only the invention of the enemies of the

terrible dictator? In any event, how people of good standing felt in this
matter in normal times is shown by the life of Cicero.
Cicero was born at Arpino, of a knightly family, highly respectable,
and well educated, but not rich. That he was able to pursue his brilliant
forensic and political career, was chiefly due to his marriage to Terentia,
who, although not very rich, had more than he, and by her fortune
enabled him to live at Rome. But it is well known that after long living
together happily enough, as far as can be judged, Cicero and Terentia,
already old, fell into discord and in 46 B.C. ended by being divorced.
The reasons for the divorce are not exactly clear, but from Cicero's
letters it appears that financial motives and disputes were not wanting.
It seems that during the civil wars Terentia refused to help Cicero with
her money to the extent he desired; that is to say, at some tremendous
moment of those turbulent years she was unwilling to risk all her
patrimony on the uncertain political fortune of her husband.
[Illustration: The so-called bust of Cicero. All but the head is modern.
Now in the Museo Capitolino, it was formerly in the Palazzo
Barberini.]
Cicero's divorce, obliging him to return the dower, reduced him to the
gravest straits, from which he emerged through another marriage. He
was the guardian of an exceedingly rich young woman, named Publilia,
and one fine day, at the age of sixty-three, he joined hands with this
seventeen-year-old girl, whose possessions were to rehabilitate the
great writer.
This conception of matrimony and of the family may seem unromantic,
prosaic, materialistic; but we must not suppose that because of it the
Romans failed to experience the tenderest and sweetest affections of
the human heart. The letters of Cicero himself show how tenderly even
Romans could love wife and children. Although they distrusted and
combatted as dangerous to the prosperity and well-being of the state
those dearest and gentlest personal affections that in our