Читать книгу Woman in Science - J. A. Zahm - Страница 9

"She was gentle, pious, loved her husband, was skillful at the loom and a good housekeeper."[15]

As to her mental work, far from being considered on its own merits or as a factor in the world's growth, it was flouted as

"Mere woman's work

Expressing the comparative respect

Which means the absolute scorn."

As early as 450 B.C., when the laws of the Twelve Tables were promulgated, the girls of Rome received instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic. "Up before dawn, with a lamp to light the way, and an attendant to carry her satchel, the little Roman maiden of seven years, or over, would trudge off to the portico where the schoolmaster wielded his rod.[16] For some years this life continued, with but few holidays, and those far between, until she attained some proficiency in the rudiments. Then, most probably, her education in the scholastic sense came to an end. Her brothers and boy schoolmates, if their parents wished it, could proceed from the primary school to the secondary, where geography, history and ethics were taught; where the art of elocution was assiduously practiced and the works of the great Greek and Roman poets were carefully read and expounded; but it was enough for the girl to have learned how to read, write and cipher; she had then to learn her domestic duties."[17]

With the extension of the empire and the consequent enormous increase in wealth and the rapid progress in social and intellectual freedom, there was a notable change in the character of the education given to women, at least to those of the wealthier and patrician families. This was, in great measure, due to the wave of Hellenism which, shortly after the conquest of Greece, broke upon the Roman capital with such irresistible force. To the large and rapidly increasing number of women of keen intellect and lofty aspirations, whose minds had hitherto been confined to the comparatively barren field of Roman letters, the splendid creations of Greek genius came as a revelation. To become thoroughly versed in Greek poetry and proficient in the teachings of Greek philosophy was the ambition of scores of Roman women, who soon became noted for the extent and variety of their attainments, as well as for their rare culture and charming personality.

Among the pioneers of the intellectual movement in Rome, and one of the most beautiful types of the learned women of her time, was the celebrated daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus—Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. She is famous on account of her devotion to her two sons, Tiberius and Caius. She was their teacher; and it was her educated and refined mind that, more than anything else, contributed to the formation of those splendid characters for which they were so highly esteemed by their countrymen. Plutarch informs us that these noble sons of a noble mother "were brought up by her so carefully that they became beyond dispute the most accomplished of Roman youth; and, thus, they owed perhaps more to their excellent upbringing than to their natural parts."[18] One is not surprised to learn that this noble lady was almost idolized by the Romans, and that they erected a statue to her with the inscription, "Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi."

Scarcely less distinguished and accomplished was another Cornelia, the wife of Pompey, the Great. "Besides her youthful beauty," writes Plutarch, in his Life of Pompey, "she possessed other charms, for she was well versed in literature, in playing on the lyre, and in geometry, and she had been used to listen to philosophical discourses with profit. Besides this, she had a disposition free from all affectation and display of pedantry—blemishes which such acquirements usually breed in women."[19]

Then there was the cultured and devoted Aurelia, the mother of Julius Cæsar. It is safe to say that this eminent man was as much indebted to his mother for his success and greatness as were Tiberius and Caius Gracchus to the benign influence and careful teachings of the gentle and virtuous Cornelia. Highly educated and of commanding personalities, both these women, like many others of their time, contributed much to the making of Roman history by the success they achieved in molding the characters of some of the greatest men of their own or of any age.

It is a splendid tribute that Cicero, in his Orator, pays to Lælia when he tells of the purity of her language and the charm of her conversation. "When I listen," he declares, "to my mother-in-law, Lælia—for women preserve the traditional purity of accent the best because, being limited in their intercourse with the multitude, they retain their early impressions—I could imagine that I hear Plautus or Nævius speaking, the pronunciation is so plain and simple, so perfectly free from all affectation and display; from which I infer that such was the accent of her father and his ancestors—not harsh like the pronunciation to which I have just referred, not broad nor rustic nor rugged, but terse, smooth and flowing."[20]

These are a few of the cultured and learned women who shed glory on their country by the refining influence which they exerted in the quiet and unostentatious precincts of the family circle. But there were others who chose a wider field for their activities, and who, by reason of their unerring judgment, well-poised and highly cultivated minds, had so won the confidence of the nation's greatest leaders that they were frequently consulted on important affairs of state. Thus, Cicero tells us of an interview which he had at Antium with Brutus and Cassius. Besides the men, there were present on this occasion three women, who took an active part in the discussion. These were Servilia, the mother of Brutus, Porcia, the wife of Brutus and the daughter of Cato, and Tertulla, the wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus. The views of the women were not without effect, and so confident was Servilia of her power that she engaged to have a certain clause in one of the decrees of the Senate expunged. This is but one of many similar instances which might be adduced from the lives of the women of Rome who took an active part in politics. As we learn from Tacitus, their counsels and assistance were considered of peculiar value by the Commonwealth. For, when some of the sterner old moralists wished to exclude women from all participation in public affairs, the Senate, after a heated debate, decided by a large majority that the coöperation of women in questions of administration, far from being a menace, as some contended, was so beneficial to the state that it should be continued.

Among other noteworthy makers of Roman history, besides those just mentioned, is Livia, the wife of Augustus and the mother of Tiberius. So great was her influence and so persistent was her activity in government affairs, that it is sometimes asserted that she was the prime mover of most of the public acts of both these rulers. This woman, whom Ovid describes as having the features of Venus and the manner of Juno, and who, he declares, "held her head above all vices," was credited with having the benevolence of Ceres, the purity of Diana and the wisdom and craft of Minerva—"a woman," as was said by one of her contemporaries, "in all things more comparable to the gods than to men, who knew how to use her power so as to turn away peril and advance the most deserving."

Then there was the gracious, the virtuous, the self-sacrificing Octavia, sister of the Emperor Augustus, who was so successful in composing grave differences between her brother and her husband, and who so exerted her influence for peace during the troublous times in which she lived that she lives in history as a peacemaker. In marked contrast to this gentle and sympathetic woman was the energetic and heroic Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus. In many respects she was the most commanding personality of her age, and exhibited in an eminent degree those sterling qualities which we are wont to associate with the strong, dignified, courageous women of ancient Rome, who gave to the world so many and so great men in every sphere of human endeavor. "She was," as Tacitus informs us, "a greater power in the army than legates and commanders, and she, a woman, had quelled a mutiny which the emperor's authority could not check."[21] She was, indeed, as has well been said, "a woman to whom one might address an epic but never a sonnet."

I have referred to these distinguished women because they are embodiments of the best types of the noble, patrician families who made the great Roman empire the admiration of all time, and because they exhibit the wonderful advance that had been made in the general status of women since the days of Pericles and Aspasia. I have referred to them, also, to show what women are capable of achieving in the difficult and complicated affairs of public life, when they are accorded the necessary freedom of action and when they are properly equipped for work by education and by association with men of learning and experience. Comparing the secluded and illiterate Greek wife with the free and highly accomplished Roman matron, we find almost as much difference between the two as there is between a child and a fully developed woman—all the difference there was between the unsophisticated young wife, not quite fifteen, of whom Xenophon gives us such a charming picture,[22] and the highly educated and competent mother of the Gracchi.

Of the Greek maiden we are told that, before her marriage she "had been most carefully brought up to see and hear as little as possible and to ask the fewest questions"; that her whole experience before her marriage "consisted in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and in seeing how her mother's handmaidens had their daily spinning tasks assigned to them." Cornelia, on the contrary, was not only, as we have seen, highly accomplished, but also one who, after her husband's death, was quite prepared, as Plutarch assures us, to undertake the management of the extensive property which he left his family, and who, we may well believe, would also have been qualified, had the occasion demanded it, to perform with distinction the same duties that fell to the lot of the gifted wives of Germanicus and Augustus.

Nothing in the history of Greek and Roman womanhood more strikingly illustrates than the two instances given the vast difference in the status of the wives of Greece and Rome, or exhibits more clearly the advantages accruing to early training and thorough mental development. If there was any difference in talent or intellect between the Greek and the Roman woman it was, so far as we can determine, in favor of the Greek. The sole reason, then, for such a marked difference in their capacity for work and for achieving distinction in intellectual and administrative fields of action arose from the lack of education in the Athenian wife and the fullest measure of educational freedom enjoyed by the Roman. That Aspasia, in spite of all the odds against her, was able to rise to such a pinnacle of glory does not prove that she was the superior of her countrywomen—the mothers of the greatest poets, artists and philosophers of all time—but it exhibits rather her good fortune in being able to effect a partnership with the greatest statesman of Greece, and one who was at the same time fully able to appreciate all her rare mental attainments and give her marvelous genius free scope for development by coöperating with him in making the period during which he held the reign of power the most brilliant one in the annals of human progress.

Plato, referring to the oriental seclusion to which Athenian wives were condemned, speaks of them as "a race used to living out of the sunshine," and that, too, among a people that habitually lived out of doors. We have already seen how much greater freedom Roman women enjoyed and how much more important was the rôle they played in public as well as private life; but we have not told all. They not only went to, but presided over, public games and religious ceremonies. They were admitted to aristocratic clubs and had, under the empire, a regular assembly or senate of their own, known as the Conventus Matronarum. Hortensia, the daughter of the great orator Hortensius, pleaded the cause of her sex before the tribunal of the triumvirs, and so eloquent and effective was her speech that she not only won her case, but also won the praise of the critic, Quintilian, for her splendid oratorical effort.

Yet more. A certain woman in the Roman possessions in Africa had so impressed her fellow citizens by her intellectual capacity and administrative ability that she was chosen as one of the two chief magistrates of the place. She is known in history as Messia Castula, duumvira. It is true that the men of the older school, who would limit woman's activities to the distaff and the loom, strongly objected to the increasing freedom and power of women, and endeavored to counteract their influence; but all to no purpose. And it was the crabbed old Cato, the Censor, who growled in undisguised disgust:—"We Romans rule over all men and our wives rule over us."

But great as were the freedom and educational advantages of the Roman women, the startling fact remains that, with the exception of a few fragmentary verses of slight merit and of questionable authenticity, we have absolutely no tangible evidence of the Roman woman's literary ability while under pagan influence. We have seen, in considering her intellectual attainments—especially after the introduction of Greek art and letters into the City of the Seven Hills—that every woman who pretended to culture was obliged to be familiar with the Greek as well as with the Latin authors, that her education was deemed incomplete without a knowledge of Greek poetry, oratory, history and philosophy, but the fact is indisputable that Roman women were not producers like their Greek sisters, and that in no instance did their productions reach anything like the supreme excellence of the creations of a Corinna or a Sappho. There was, it is true, Sulpicia, of whom Martial writes: "Let every girl, whose wish it is to please a single man, read Sulpicia; let every man, whose wish it is to please a single maid, read Sulpicia;" but, if the few amatory verses that are credited to her represent the highest flights of the Roman women in the domain of poetry, then, indeed, were they far behind not only Sappho and Corinna, but also far behind scores of their pupils. Martial does indeed speak of a young maiden in whom were combined the eloquence of Plato with the austere philosophy of the Porch, and who wrote verses worthy of a chaste Sappho; but this was evidently a great exaggeration, for we have no other evidence of her existence.

The creative work of Roman women was, so far as we are able to judge, quite as limited in prose as it was in poetry. Agrippina, the mother of Nero, was one of the few prose writers whose name has come down to us. From her memoirs it was that Tacitus received much of the material incorporated in his Annals.

That some of the women had literary ability of a high order is indicated by a letter of Pliny to one of his correspondents, in which occurs the following passage:

"Pomponius Saturninus recently read me some letters which he averred had been written by his wife. I believed that Plautus or Terence was being read in prose. Whether they were really his wife's, as he maintains, or his own, which he denies, he deserves equal honor, either because he composes them or because he has made his wife, whom he married when a mere girl, so learned and so polished."[23]

Scarcely less distinguished for her taste in literature, and for her talent as a letter writer, was Pliny's wife, Calphurnia, who, at his request, wrote to him in his absence every day and sometimes even twice a day. According to Cicero, his daughter Tulia was "the best and most learned of women"; but her literary work, it is probable, did not extend much beyond her letters to her illustrious father. Nevertheless, what would we not give to possess these letters—to have as complete a collection of them as we have of those of the great orator and philosopher. They would be of inestimable value and would be absolutely beyond compare, except, possibly, with the letters of Mme. du Deffand or of Elizabeth Barrett Browning of a much later age.

Considering the number of educated women that lived in the latter days of the Republic and during the earlier part of the Empire, and their well known culture and love of letters, it is reasonable to suppose that they may have written much in both prose and verse of which we have no record. Literary productions must have more than ordinary value to survive two thousand years, and especially two thousand years of such revolutions and upheavals as have convulsed the world since the time of the Pax Romana, when all the world was at peace under Augustus.

How much of the literary work of the women of to-day will receive recognition twenty centuries hence? Some of it may, it is true, find a place in the fireproof libraries of the time; but who, outside of a few antiquarians, will take the trouble to read it or estimate its value? A few anthologies containing our gems of prose and poetry will probably be all that our fortieth century readers will deem worthy of notice. In view of the chaotic condition of Europe for so many centuries, the wonder is not that we have so little of the literary remains of Greece and Rome, but rather that we have anything at all.

As one might expect, the literary women of Rome, as well as those who ventured to take part in public affairs, had their critics. The satirists of the time were as unsparing of their ridicule as they were long afterward when Molière wrote his Femmes Savantes and his Précieuses Ridicules. And as for men of the old conservative type, a learned woman was as much an object of horror as is a militant suffragette in conservative England to-day. "No learned wife for me," exclaims Martial, "but rather a well-fed slave."[24]

And Juvenal had no more love for educated women than have some of our contemporaries for a blue-stocking housekeeper. He gives his opinion of them in the following characteristic fashion:

"That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as soon as she reclines on her couch, praises Virgil; makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them, and weighs Homer and Mars in the balance. Teachers of literature give way, professors are vanquished, the whole mob is hushed, and so great is the torrent of words that no lawyer or auctioneer may speak, nor any other woman."[25]

But if learned women had their enemies and detractors they also had friends and defenders. Among these was the Stoic philosopher, C. Musonius Rufus, who lived in the time of Nero. Like Plato, he contended that women should have the same training as men and that the faculties of both should be equally developed. The gist of his teaching is contained in the statement that:

"If the same virtues must pertain to men and women, it follows, necessarily, that the same training and education must be suitable for both."[26]

Our brief sketch of women's work in ancient Rome would be incomplete without some reference to the famous Ecclesia Domestica—Church of the Household—on the Aventine, and the distinguished women who were its chief ornaments. During the time of Pope Damasus, and not long before the sacking of Rome by Alaric, the Ecclesia Domestica was a kind of conventual home to which had retired, or in which were frequently gathered, some of the most noble and learned women of the city. Among the most notable of these were Marcella and her friends, Paula and Eustochium.

For beauty of character and nobility of purpose and rare mental endowments they recall the best traditions of a Cornelia or a Calphurnia, while so great was their purity of life and so unbounded was their charity to the poor and suffering that they were honored by being numbered among the saints of the early church. But what specially distinguished them among all the great women of the Roman world was their great and varied learning. In this respect they probably were far in advance of all their predecessors. For, in addition to a thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek literature, history and philosophy, they had, under the great theologian and orientalist, St. Jerome, become proficient in Hebrew and deeply versed in Scripture.

Special mention should be made of Paula and her daughter Eustochium; for it is probable that, had it not been for their influence on Jerome, and their active coöperation in his great life work, we should not have the Latin version of the Scriptures that is to-day known as the Vulgate. This is evinced from the letters of the saint himself and from what we know of the lives of these two remarkable women, who, as St. Jerome informs us in the epitaph which he had engraved on Paula's tomb in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, were descended from the Scipios, the Gracchi and the Pauli on the mother's side, and on the father's side from the half-mythical kings of Sparta and Mycenæ.[27]

They aided him not only by their sympathy and by purchasing for him, often at a great price, the manuscripts he needed for his colossal undertaking, but also assisted him by their thorough knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew in translating the Sacred Books from the original Hebrew into Latin. So great was Jerome's confidence in their scholarship and so high was his appreciation of their ability and judgment that he did not hesitate to submit his translations to them for their criticism and approval. After he had completed his version of the first Book of Kings, he turned it over to them, saying: "Read my Book of Kings—read also the Latin and Greek translations and compare them with my version." And they did read and compare and criticise. And more than this, they frequently suggested modifications and corrections which the great man accepted with touching humility and incorporated in a revised copy.

More wonderful still, the Latin Psalter, as it has come down to us, is not, as is generally supposed, the translation from the Hebrew of Jerome, but rather a corrected version made from the Septuagint by his illustrious collaborators—Paula and Eustochium.

It is safe to say that no two women were ever engaged in a more important or more difficult literary undertaking—one requiring keener critical sense or more profound learning—than were Paula and Eustochium, or one in which their efforts were crowned with more brilliant success than were those of these two supreme exemplars of the grace, the knowledge, the culture, the refinement of Roman womanhood—the crowning glories of womanhood throughout the ages.

St. Jerome showed his grateful recognition of the invaluable assistance received from his devoted and talented co-workers by dedicating to them a great number of his most important books. This scandalized the pharisaical men of the time, who looked askance at all learned women and resented particularly the preëminence given to Paula and her accomplished daughter. But their reproaches provoked a reply from the saint that was worthy of the most chivalrous champion of woman, and revealed, at the same time, all the nobility of soul of the roused "Lion of Bethlehem." It is not only a defence of his course, but also a splendid tribute to his two illustrious friends, and a tribute also to the great and good women of all time.

"There are people, O Paula and Eustochium," exclaims the Christian Cicero, vibrant with emotion and in a burst of eloquence that recalls one of the burning philippics of Marcus Tullius, "who take offence at seeing your names at the beginning of my works. These people do not know that Olda prophesied when the men were mute; that while Barach was atremble, Deborah saved Israel; that Judith and Esther delivered from supreme peril the children of God. I pass over in silence Anna and Elizabeth and the other holy women of the Gospel, but humble stars when compared with the great luminary, Mary. Shall I speak now of the illustrious women among the heathen? Does not Plato have Aspasia speak in his dialogues? Does not Sappho hold the lyre at the same time as Alcæus and Pindar? Did not Themista philosophize with the sages of Greece? And the mother of the Gracchi, your Cornelia, and the daughter of Cato, wife of Brutus, before whom pale the austere virtue of the father and the courage of the husband—are they not the pride of the whole of Rome? I shall add but one word more. Was not it women to whom our Lord first appeared after His resurrection? Yes, men could then blush for not having sought what the women had found."[28]

Time has spared a joint letter of Paula and Eustochium to their friend Marcella—a letter which exhibits so well the rare culture and literary ability of the writers that we cannot but lament that we have not more of the correspondence which was carried on between the learned inmates of the Church of the Household on the Aventine and Paula's convent home near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Such a collection would be beyond price, as it would complete the picture of the age so well sketched by St. Jerome; and, as a contribution to the literary world, it would have a value not inferior to that of those exquisite classics of a later age—the letters of Madame Sevigné to her daughter.[29]