The Private Life of the Romans. Harold Whetstone Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ to the validity of the marriage (§74) it was never omitted. It was a public function, that is, any one might join the procession and take part in the merriment that distinguished it, and we are told that persons of rank did not scruple to wait in the street to see the bride. As evening approached the procession was formed before the house with torch bearers and flute players at its head. When all was ready the marriage hymn (hymenaeus) was sung and the groom took the bride with a show of force from the arms of her mother. The Romans saw in this custom a reminiscence of the rape of the Sabines, but it probably goes far back beyond the founding of Rome to the custom of marriage by capture that prevailed among many peoples. The bride then took her place in the procession attended by three boys, patrīmī et mātrīmī (§82); two of these walked by her side, holding each a hand, while the other carried before her the wedding torch of white thorn (spīna alba). Behind the bride were carried the distaff and spindle, emblems of domestic life. The camillus with his cumerus also walked in the procession.

      87 During the march were sung the versūs Fescennīnī, abounding in coarse jests and personalities. The crowd also shouted the ancient marriage cry, the significance of which the Romans themselves did not understand. We find it in at least five forms, all variations of the name Talassius or Talassio, who was probably a Sabine divinity, though his functions are unknown. Livy derives it from the supposed name of a senator in the time of Romulus. The bride dropped on the way one of three coins which she carried as an offering to the Larēs compitālēs; of the other two she gave one to the groom as an emblem of the dowry she brought him, and one to the Larēs of his house. The groom meanwhile scattered nuts through the crowd. This is explained by Catullus as a token of his having become a man and having put away childish things (§103), but the nuts were rather a symbol of fruitfulness. The custom survives in the throwing of rice in modern times.

      88 When the procession reached the house, the bride wound the door posts with bands of wool, probably a symbol of her own work as mistress of the household, and anointed the door with oil and fat, emblems of plenty. She was then lifted carefully over the threshold, in order to avoid the chance of so bad an omen as a slip of the foot on entering the house for the first time. Others, however, see in the custom another survival of marriage by capture. She then pronounced again the words of consent: Ubi tū Gāius, ego Gāia, and the doors were closed against the general crowd; only the invited guests entered with the pair.

FIGURE 16. THE MARRIAGE COUCH

89 The husband met the wife in the atrium and offered her fire and water in token of the life they were to live together and her part in the home. Upon the hearth was ready the wood for a fire, and this the bride kindled with the marriage torch which had been carried before her. The torch was afterwards thrown among the guests to be scrambled for as a lucky possession. A prayer was then recited by the bride and she was placed by the prōnuba on the lectus geniālis (Fig. 16), which always stood on the wedding night in the atrium. Here it afterwards remained as a piece of ornamental furniture only. On the next day was given in the new home the second wedding feast (repōtia) to the friends and relatives, and at this feast the bride made her first offering to the gods as a mātrōna. A series of feasts followed, given in honor of the newly wedded pair by those in whose social circles they moved.

90 The Position of Women.—With her marriage the Roman woman reached a position unattained by the women of any other nation in the ancient world. No other people held its women in so high respect; nowhere else did they exert so strong and beneficent an influence. In her own house the Roman matron was absolute mistress. She directed its economy and supervised the tasks of the household slaves but did no menial work herself. She was her children's nurse, and conducted their early training and education. Her daughters were fitted under their mother's eye to be mistresses of similar homes, and remained her closest companions until she herself had dressed them for the bridal and their husbands had torn them from her arms. She was her husband's helpmeet in business as well as in household affairs, and he often consulted her on affairs of state. She was not confined at home to a set of so-called women's apartments, as were her sisters in Greece; the whole house was hers. She received her husband's guests and sat at table with them. Even when subject to the manus of her husband the restraint was so tempered by law and custom (§36) that she could hardly have been chafed by the fetters which had been forged with her own consent (§73).

91 Out of the house the matron's dress (stola mātrōnālis, §259) secured for her the most profound respect. Men made way for her in the street; she had a place at the public games, at the theaters, and at the great religious ceremonies of state. She could give testimony in the courts, and until late in the Republic might even appear as an advocate. Her birthday was sacredly observed and made a joyous occasion by the members of her household, and the people as a whole celebrated the Mātrōnālia, the great festival on the first of March, and gave presents to their wives and mothers. Finally, if she came of a noble family, she might be honored, after she had passed away, with a public eulogy, delivered from the rostra in the forum.

      92 It must be admitted that the education of women was not carried far at Rome, and that their accomplishments were few, and rather useful and homely than elegant. But the Roman women spoke the purest and best Latin known in the highest and most cultivated circles, and so far as accomplishments were concerned their husbands fared no better. Respectable women in Greece were allowed no education at all.

93 It must be admitted, too, that a great change took place in the last years of the Republic. With the laxness of the family life, the freedom of divorce, and the inflow of wealth and extravagance, the purity and dignity of the Roman matron declined, as had before declined the manhood and the strength of her father and her husband. It must be remembered, however, that ancient writers did not dwell upon certain subjects that are favorites with our own. The simple joys of childhood and domestic life, home, the praises of sister, wife, and mother may not have been too sacred for the poet and the essayist of Rome, but the essayist and the poet did not make them their themes. The mother of Horace must have been a singularly gifted woman, but she is never mentioned by her son. The descriptions of domestic life, therefore, that have come down to us are either from Greek sources, or are selected from precisely those circles where fashion, profligacy, and impurity made easy the work of the satirist. It is, therefore, safe to say that the pictures painted for us in the verse of Catullus and Juvenal, for example, are not true of Roman women as a class in the times of which they write. The strong, pure woman of the early day must have had many to imitate her virtues in the darkest times of the Empire. There were mothers then, as well as in the times of the Gracchi; there were wives as noble as the wife of Marcus Brutus.

      

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      CHILDREN AND EDUCATION

      REFERENCES: Marquardt, 80–134; Voigt, 322 f., 397 f., 455 f.; Göll, "Gallus," II, 65–113; Friedländer, I, 456 f., III, 376 f.; Ramsay, 475 f.; Smith, lūdus litterārius; Harper, education; Baumeister, 237, 1588 f.; Schreiber, Pl. 79, 82, 89, 90; Lübker, Erziehung.

      94 Legal Status.—The position of the children in the familia СКАЧАТЬ