The moral life of youth was carefully guarded in the girl, leniently supervised in the young man. The Roman, like the Greek, readily condoned the resort of men to prostitutes. The profession was legalized and restricted; brothels (lupanaria) were by law kept outside the city walls and could open only at night; prostitutes (meretrices) were registered by the aediles and were required to wear the toga instead of the stola. Some women enrolled as prostitutes to avoid the legal penalties of detected adultery. Fees were adjusted to bring promiscuity within the reach of every pocketbook; we have heard of the “quarter-of-an-as woman.” But there was now a rising number of educated courtesans who sought to win patrons by poetry, singing, music, dancing, and cultured conversation. One did not have to go outside the walls to find these or other ladies of easy persuasion; Ovid assures us that they could be met under the porticoes, at the circus, in the theater, “as numerous as stars in the sky”;34 and Juvenal found them in the precincts of temples, particularly that of Isis, a goddess lenient to love.35 Christian authors charged that prostitution was practiced within the cellas and between the altars of Roman temples.36
Male prostitutes were also available. Condemned by law, tolerated by custom, homosexualism flourished with Oriental abandon. “I am stricken with the heavy dart of love,” sings Horace—and for whom?—“for Lyciscus, who claims in tenderness to outdo any woman”; from this passion he can be freed “only by another flame for some fair maid or slender youth.”37 Martial’s choicest epigrams turn upon pederasty; and one of Juvenal’s least publishable satires represents the complaint of a woman against this outrageous competition.38 Erotic poetry of indifferent worth and gender, the Priapeia, circulated freely among sophisticated youths and immature adults.
Marriage contended bravely with these rival outlets and, helped by anxious parents and matrimonial brokers, managed to find at least temporary husbands for nearly every girl. Unmarried women above nineteen were considered “old maids,” but they were rare. The betrothed couple seldom saw each other; there was no courtship, not even a word for it; Seneca complained that everything else was tested before purchase, but not the bride by the groom.39 Sentimental attachment before marriage was uncommon; love poetry was addressed to married women or to women whom the poet never thought of marrying; and women’s escapades came after marriage, as under similar conditions in medieval and modern France. The elder Seneca assumed widespread adultery among Roman women,40 and his philosopher son thought that a married woman content with two lovers was a paragon of fidelity.41 “Pure women,” sang the cynical Ovid, “are only those who have not been asked; and a man who is angry at his wife’s amours is a mere rustic.”42 These may be literary conceits; more reliable is the simple epitaph of Quintus Vespillo to his wife: “Seldom do marriages last without divorce until death; but ours continued happily for forty-one years.”43 Juvenal tells of a woman who married eight times in five years.44 Having been wed for property or politics rather than for love, some women considered their duty fulfilled if they surrendered their dowries to their husbands and their persons to their lovers. “Did we not agree,” an adulteress in Juvenal explained to her unexpected husband, “that we should both do as we liked?”45 The “emancipation” of women was as complete then as now, barring the formalities of the franchise and the letter of dead laws. Legislation kept women subject, custom made them free.
In a number of cases emancipation, as in our time, meant industrialization. Some women worked in shops or factories, especially in the textile trades; some became lawyers and doctors;46 some became politically powerful; the wives of provincial governors reviewed and addressed troops.47 The Vestal Virgins secured political appointments for their friends, and the women of Pompeii announced their political preferences on the walls. Conservatives moaned and gloated over the apparent fulfillment of Cato’s warning that if women achieved equality they would turn it into mastery. Juvenal was horrified to find women actresses, athletes, gladiators, poets;48 Martial describes them as fighting wild beasts, even lions, in the arena;49 Statius tells of women dying in such jousts.50 Ladies rode through the streets in sedan chairs, “exposing themselves on every side to the view”;51 they conversed with men in porticoes, parks, gardens, and temple courts; they accompanied them to private or public banquets, to the amphitheater and the theater, where “their bare shoulders,” said Ovid, “give you something charming to contemplate.”52 It was a gay, colorful, multisexual society that would have astonished the Periclean Greeks. In the spring fashionable women filled the boats, shores, and villas of Baiae and other resorts with their laughter, their proud beauty, their amorous audacities, and political intrigue. Old men denounced them longingly.
Frivolous or immoral women were then, as now, a conspicuous minority. Quite as numerous—though not always distinct—were the ladies who fell in love with art, religion, or literature. Sulpicia’s verses were thought worthy of being handed down with those of Tibullus; they were highly erotic, but as they were addressed to her husband they were almost virtuous.53 Martial’s friend Theophila was a philosopher, a real expert on the Stoic and Epicurean systems. Some women busied themselves in philanthropy and social service, gave temples, theaters, and porticoes to their towns, and contributed as patronesses to collegia. An inscription at Lanuvium speaks of a curia mulierum, “an assembly of women”; Rome had a conventus matronarum; perhaps Italy had a national federation of women’s clubs. In any case, after reading Martial and Juvenal, we are disconcerted to find so many good women in Rome. Octavia faithful to Antony through every betrayal, and rearing devotedly his exotic children; Antonia her loving daughter, the chaste widow of Drusus, and the perfect mother of Germanicus; Mallonia, who publicly reproved Tiberius for his wickedness and then killed herself; Arria Paeta, who, when Caecina Paetus was ordered by Claudius to die, plunged a dagger into her breast and, dying, handed the weapon to her husband with the assuring words, “It does not hurt”;54 Paulina, who tried to die with Seneca; Politta, who, when Nero had her husband executed, began to starve herself, and, when the same sentence came to her father, joined him in suicide;55 Epicharis, the freedwoman who suffered every torture rather than betray the conspiracy of Piso; the unnumbered women who concealed and protected their husbands in the proscriptions, went with them into exile, or like Fannia, wife of Helvidius, defended them at great risk and cost: these alone would tip the scale against all the trollops of Martial’s epigrams and Juvenal’s stings.
Behind such heroines were the nameless wives whose marital fidelity and maternal sacrifices sustained the whole structure of Roman life. The old Roman virtues—pietas, gravitas, simplicitas—the mutual devotion of parents and children, a sober sense of responsibility, an avoidance of extravagance or display—still survived in Roman homes. The refined and wholesome families described in Pliny’s letters did not suddenly begin with Nerva and Trajan; they had existed quietly through the age of the despots; they had survived the espionage of emperors, the debasement of a helpless populace, the vulgarity of the demimonde. We catch glimpses of such homes in the epitaphs of mate to mate and of parents to children. “Here,” reads one, “lie the bones of Urbilia, wife of Primus. She was dearer to me than life. She died at twenty-three, beloved of all. Farewell, my consolation!” And another: “To my dear wife, with whom I passed eighteen happy years. For love of her I have sworn never to remarry.”56 We can picture these women in their homes—spinning wool, scolding and educating their children, directing servants, carefully administering their modest funds, and sharing with their husbands in the immemorial worship of the household gods. Despite her immorality it was Rome, not Greece, that raised the family to new heights in the ancient world.