his bed and (as we have already observed) many husbands invited to their houses such men, as were likely to give them healthy and well-made children. The difference between the two customs is this, that the Lacedæmonians appeared very easy and unconcerned about an affair, which in other places causes so much disturbance, and consumes men's hearts with jealousy and sorrow; while among the Romans there was a modesty, which veiled the matter with a new contract, and seemed to declare that a partnership in wedlock is intolerable. Yet farther, Numa's strictness as to virgins tended to form them to that modesty, which is the ornament of their sex: but the great liberty, which Lycurgus gave them, brought upon them the censure of the poets, particularly of Ibycus*: for they call them Phænomerides, and Andromaneis. Euripides describes them as follows; These quit their homes, ambitious to display The skirts of the habit, which the virgins wore, were not sewed to the bottom, but opened at the sides as they walked, and discovered the thigh, as Sophocles plainly states: Still in the light dress struts the vain Hermione, Their behaviour, consequently, is said to have been too bold and masculine, in particular to their husbands. For they considered themselves. as absolute mistresses in their houses; nay, they A lyric poet of Rhegium, who lived about Ql. 55. * wished to share in affairs of state, and deliver ed their sentiments with great freedom upon the most weighty matters. But Numa, though he preserved entire to the matrons all the honour and respect paid by their husbands in the time of Romulus, when they endeavoured by kindness to compensate for the rape, obliged them still to behave with the utmost reserve, and to lay aside all impertinent curiosity: He taught them to be sober, and accustomed them to silence, entirely to abstain from wine5, and not to speak even of the most necessary business except in their husbands' presence. When a woman once appeared in the Forum to plead her own cause, it is reported that the senate ordered the oracle to be consulted, what this strange event portended to the city. Nay, what is recorded of a few infamous women, is a proof of the general obedience and meekness of the Roman matrons. For as our historians give us accounts of those who first carried war 5 Romulus made the drinking of wine, as well as adultery, a capital crime in women. For adultery (he said) opens the door to all sorts of crimes, and wine opens the door to adultery. (L.) One Egnatius Mecenius with his own hands put his wife to death for having drunk wine, and was acquitted by the senate. (Plin. H. N. xiv. 13.) And an instance of still greater severity is on record, in which a woman, who had stolen the keys of the cellar, was stoned to death by her relations. One of the reasons assigned elsewhere by Plutarch, why the Roman women kissed the lips of their husbands,' is that if they had transgressed in this respect, they might expose themselves to easier detection.* The severity of this law was softened in the succeeding ages: the women, who were overcome by liquor, were not condemned to die, but to lose their dowers. • What then appeared so strange, became afterward common enough; insomuch, that every troublesome woman of that description was called Afrania, from a senator's wife so named, who busied herself in courts of justice. The eloquent Hortensia, daughter to the orator Hortensius, pleaded with such success for the women, when the triumvirs had laid a fine upon them, that she got a considerable part of it remitted. (Val. Max. viii. 3, 4.) into the bowels of their country, or against their brothers, or committed parricide; so the Romans relate, that Spurius Carvilius was the first among them that divorced his wife, when no such thing had previously happened for two hundred and thirty years from the building of Rome': and that Thalæa, the wife of Pinarius, was the first who quarrelled with her mother-in-law Gegania, in the reign of Tarquin the Proud. So well framed for the preserving of decency, and propriety of behaviour, were this lawgiver's regulations with respect to marriage. Agreeable to the education of virgins in Sparta, were the directions of Lycurgus, as to the time of their being married. For he ordered them to be married, when both their age and wishes led them to it: that the company of a husband, as then suggested by nature, might be the foundation of kindness and love, not of fear and hatred, which would be the consequence if nature were forced; and that their bodies might have strength to bear the trouble of breeding, and the pangs of child-birth, the propagation of children being looked upon as the only end of marriage. But the Romans married their daughters at the age of twelve years, or under; that both their bodies and their manners might come pure and untaint→ ed to their husbands. It appears then that the former institution more naturally tended to the. procreation of children, and the latter to the forming of the manners for the matrimonial union. VA. U. C. 520. See Life of Romulus, vol. I. p. 117, nn. 5. and 6. Aristotle (Polit. vii. 16.) prefers the Spartan principle, as much more beneficial in it's consequences to mankind. Even the object of the Roman regulation, in his opinion, was better attained by deferring the nuptial contract until the female was more likely, from her maturer age, to understand it's obligation and it's importance.* In the education of the boys however, in regulating their classes, and laying down the whole method of their exercises, diversions, and eating at a common table, Lycurgus stands distinguished, and leaves Numa only upon a level with ordinary lawgivers. For Numa left it to the option or convenience of parents, to bring up their sons to agriculture, or ship-building, to the business of a brazier, or the art of a musician. As if it were not necessary for one design to pervade the education of them all, and for each individual to have the same bias given him; but as if they were all like passengers in a ship, who coming each from a different employment, and with a different intent, stand upon their common defence in time of danger, merely out of fear for themselves or their property, and upon other occasions are attentive only to their private ends. In such a case, common legislators would have been excusable, who might have failed through ignorance or want of power; but should not so wise a man as Numa, who took upon him the government of a state so lately formed, and not likely to make the least opposition to any thing he proposed, have considered it as his first care to give the children such a bent of education, and the youth such a mode of exercise, as would prevent any great difference or confusion in their manners; that so they might be formed from their infancy, and persuaded to walk together in the same paths of virtue? Lycurgus found the utility of this in several respects, and particularly in securing the continuance of his laws: But it should be stated, notwithstanding Aristotle's panegyric upon this part of Lycurgus' code (Pol. viii. 1.), that what was perhaps well adapted to the petty district of Sparta, might for that very reason be inconvenient, if not impracticable, in the swelling empire of Rome.* For the oath, which the Spartans had taken, would have availed but little, if the youth had not been already imbued with his discipline, and imbibed with their milk a zeal for his establishment. Nav, so strong and deep was the tincture, that the principal laws which he enacted continued in force for more than five hundred years. But the primary view of Numa's government, which was to settle the Romans in lasting peace and tranquillity, immediately vanished with him: and after his death the temple of Janus, which he had kept shut (as if he had really held war in prison and subjection) was set wide open, and Italy deluged with blood 10. The beautiful pile of justice, which he had reared, being without the cement of education, presently fell to the ground. You will ask then, Was not Rome bettered by her wars"? A question this which requires a long answer, to satisfy such as place the happiness of a state in riches, luxury, and an extent of dominion, rather than in security, equity, temperance, and content. It may seem however to afford an argument in favour of Lycurgus, that the Romans, upon quitting the discipline of Numa, soon attained a much higher degree of power; whereas the Lacedæmonians, as soon as they departed from the institutions of Lycurgus, from being the most respectable people of Greece became the meanest, and were in danger of being absolutely destroyed. On the other 11 10 In the wars with the Fidenates, the Albans, the Latins, &c.. Aggrandised she was, but surely not bettered. For, to say nothing of the turbulent period of her growth, may we not reasonably with M. Ricard impute to her very successes her ultimate decay and downfal? Mole ruit suâ, in the mouth of her own bard, was no poetical fiction. The only solid basis of nas tional grandeur is, Morals and Virtue; and these are the invas Fiable objects of sound and enlightened policy.* |
