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Page 4
[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]
Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
everything like the family of contemporary civilization? Have we
returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
forebears?
No. If there are resemblances between the modern family and the Roman,
there are also crucial differences. Although the Roman was disposed to
allow woman judicial and economic independence, a refined culture, and
that freedom without which it is impossible to enjoy life in dignified
and noble fashion, he was never ready to recognize in the way modern
civilization does more or less openly, as ultimate end and reason for
marriage, either the personal happiness of the contracting parties or
their common personal moral development in the unifying of their
characters and aspirations. The individualistic conception of
matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to
the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an essentially political
and social point of view. The purpose of marriage was, so to speak,
exterior to the pair. As untouched by any spark of the metaphysical
spirit as he was unyielding--at least in action--to every suggestion of
the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and consolidating the
state of which he was master, the Roman aristocrat never regarded
matrimony and the family, just as he never regarded religion and law,
as other than instruments for political domination, as means for
increasing and establishing the power of every great family, and by
family affiliations to strengthen the association of the aristocracy,
already bound together by political interest.
For this reason, although the Roman conceded many privileges and
recognized many rights among women, he never went so far as to think
that a woman of great family could aspire to the right of choosing her
own husband. Custom, indeed, much restricted the young man also, at
least in a first marriage. The choice rested with the fathers, who
were accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys.
The heads of two friendly families would find themselves daily together
in the struggle of the Forum and the Comitia, or in the deliberations
of the Senate. Did the idea occur to both that their children, if
affianced then, at seven or eight years of age, might cement more
closely the union of the two families, then straightway the matter was
definitely arranged. The little girl was brought up with the idea that
some day, as soon as might be, she should marry that boy, just as for
two centuries in the famous houses of Catholic countries many of the
daughters were brought up in the expectation that one day they should
take the veil.
Every one held this Roman practice as reasonable, useful, equitable; to
no one did the idea occur that by it violence was done to the most
intimate sentiment of liberty and independence that a human being can
know. On the contrary, according to the common judgment, the
well-governing of the state was being wisely provided for, and these
alliances were destroying the seeds of discord that spontaneously
germinate in aristocracy and little by little destroy it, like those
plants sown by no man's hand, which thrive upon old walls and become
their ruin.
This is why one knows of every famous Roman personage how many wives he
had and of what family they were. The marriage of a Roman noble was a
political act, and noteworthy; because a youth, or even a mature man,
connecting himself with certain families, came to assume more or less
fully the political responsibilities in which, for one cause or
another, they were involved. This was particularly true in the last
centuries of the republic,--that is, beginning from the Gracchi,--when
for the various reasons which I have set forth in my "Greatness and
Decline of Rome," the Roman aristocracy divided into two inimical
parties, one of which attempted to rouse against the other the
interests, the ambitions, and the cupidity, of the middle and lower
classes. The two parties then sought to reinforce themselves by
matrimonial alliances, and these followed the ups and downs of the
political struggle that covered Rome with blood. Of this fact the
story of Julius Caesar is a most curious proof.
The prime reason for Julius Caesar's becoming the chief of the popular
party is to be found neither in his ambitions nor in his temperament,
and even less in his political opinions, but in his relationship to
Marius. An aunt of Caesar had married Caius Marius, the modest
bankrupt farmer of revenues, who, having entered politics, had become
the first general of his time, had been elected consul six times, and
had conquered Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutons. The self-made man
had become famous and rich, and in the face of an aristocracy proud of
its ancestors, had tried to ennoble his obscure origin by taking his
wife from an ancient and most noble, albeit impoverished and decayed,
patrician family.
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