Note 7 — Chapter V · WOMAN IN ANCIENT ROME

This agitation, in the year 195 B.C., did not aim at securing direct political power, but it well illustrates the futility of anti-feminist predictions, as well as the law that feminism grows with culture. From that time onward the women of Rome continued to enlarge their liberty and their power. After a few decades the Voconian law was passed, forbidding them to receive legacies; but it was little observed, and the economic power of the wealthier women increased. That many of them used their resources only to indulge a taste for vicious or stupid luxury is merely to say that they did what some rich men did, and are doing. We have just as many instances recorded of wealthy and cultivated Roman ladies who retained all the fine character of their ancestors. Those writers who speak of good wives and good mothers as “the gold that glitters on the muck-heap,” as Dr. Reich does, seem to be ignorant of the real character of some of their types.[7] That famous type of motherhood, Cornelia, daughter of Scipio and mother of the Gracchi, was one of the most learned women of her time, and was no less interested in public affairs than in Greek culture. In her later years her home was a centre of intellectual life, and her letters are highly praised by the first critic of the Roman world. The letters of Cicero refer to numbers of other Roman ladies of no less culture than character and civic interest. The patriotism of Brutus drew its strength, to no small extent, from the spirit of his mother, wife, and sister.