A History of the Wife (7 page)

Rudimentary forms of contraception were in use by this time, such as vaginal suppositories made from wool saturated with various sub- stances believed to prevent fertilization; among the most commonly mentioned were honey, cedar gum, alum, and lead or sulphates mixed with oil. Abortion was a common practice and one that the law did not condemn until the end of the second century. And there was no law to prevent the abandonment and exposure of infants, disproportionately utilized for females. This practice resulted in the survival of more boys than girls, which gave the latter an edge in the marriage market. Find- ing a wife to bear children and perpetuate the family name was the civic duty of every bachelor. While procreation was never the exclusive justi- fication for contracting a marriage for the Romans as it had been for ancient Hebrews and Greeks, the lack of children could be used as grounds for divorce. Tradition has it that the first Roman divorce, that of Spurius Carvilius, surnamed Ruga, in 230 or 231
B
.
C
.
E
., was occa- sioned by the childlessness of his wife.

Divorce was so common a feature in Roman life among members of the elite from the late republican period onward that few persons of any note seem to have been married to only one spouse. Men divorced not only to acquire a childbearing wife, but, more commonly, for social or

political advancement. Major political players like the generals Pompey and Mark Antony had no less than five wives apiece. However perfunc- tory these divorces, they often took an emotional toll on the family and particularly on the children—as in our own time. The great orator and statesman Cicero (106–43
B
.
C
.
E
.) observed how “astonishingly upset” his nephew Quintus was when he heard that his parents were contem- plating divorce. The divorce did not take place, yet Quintus nonethe- less became embroiled in the conflict between his parents, taking his mother’s side, for the next five years.
30

Cicero, himself, chose divorce after he had been married for some thirty years. Although his wife Terentia had been very generous to him by lending him money from her personal fortune to finance his elec- toral campaigns and had been very dear to him when he was in politi- cal exile, he later decided to leave her because he felt she was no longer providing adequately for him, nor for their daughter, Tullia.
31
But Ter- entia had another view of the matter: Cicero left her for a younger, richer woman. According to Plutarch, Cicero married his pupil because “the young woman was very rich . . . he was persuaded by friends and relations to marry her, notwithstanding his disparity of age, and to use her money to satisfy his creditors.” This second marriage was destined to be short-lived. When Cicero’s daughter, Tullia (who had been mar- ried three times), died in childbirth, he divorced his second wife because she did not show sufficient grief at his daughter’s death. Cicero’s expedient treatment of his two wives is indicative of the ease with which men could initiate and obtain divorce, without public condem- nation. At this period of Roman history, women also began to have access to divorce, as long as they had their father’s approval.

Adultery, too, during the late republic and early empire seems to have been on the rise for members of the ruling class. Some married women became as famous for their affairs as other Roman wives for their virtue. Clodia, the wife of the consul Metellus, was known to have had many lovers, including Catullus, who called her Lesbia in his poems. The emperor Augustus’s daughter Julia was exceptionally flam- boyant in her affairs, so much so that Augustus felt compelled to banish her to an island. Four of her lovers were sent into exile and the fifth was executed.

Attempts to correct this moral laxity were codified in 18
B
.
C
.
E
. in the

Lex Julia
promulgated by the emperor Augustus. Henceforth, a hus-

band was required to prosecute an adulterous wife within sixty days of his discovery of the act. The law took a different view of what was appropriate action for an injured wife, since it explicitly stated “that wives have no right to bring criminal accusations for adultery against their husbands, even though they may desire to complain of the viola- tion of the marriage vow, for while the law grants this privilege to men it does not concede it to women.”
32
When a wife was convicted of adul- tery, the husband was required to divorce her, and she had to forfeit half her dowry and a third of her property, and be banished to an island. Pliny the Younger, obliged to officiate at a divorce trial under this law, gives us an eyewitness account of the proceedings:

The case heard on the following day was that of Gallitta, charged with adultery. She was the wife of a military tribune who was just about to stand for civil office, and had brought disgrace on her own and her husband’s position by an affair with a centurion. Her husband had reported it to the governor, and he had informed the Emperor. After sift- ing the evidence the Emperor cashiered the centurion and banished him. There still remained the second half of the sentence . . . but here the husband held back out of affection for his wife and was censured for condoning her conduct. Even after he had reported his wife’s adultery he had kept her in his house, apparently satisfied once he had got rid of his rival. When summoned to complete his accusation he did so with reluctance. . . . She was duly found guilty and sentenced under the Julian law.
33

The way that class and gender issues play out in this case is quite striking. In the first place, the husband and wife are of senatorian rank and the centurion is not, which makes the affair a “disgrace” on the social level—an insult to the husband’s superior position. The centu- rion is easily disposed of. Once his rival was out of the way, the hus- band would have been content to take his wife back, but the law said otherwise. The wife had to be disposed of as well. It is noteworthy that the husband held back “out of affection for his wife.” His wife’s adul- tery had not destroyed his feelings for her, no matter what the law decreed.

Mutual affection in Roman marriages was considered highly desir- able. The ideal of close ties between spouses, even to the point of joint

exile or joint suicide, were part of a Roman Stoic tradition. But
public
displays of affection were frowned upon. In one notable case, a senator was expelled from the Senate for kissing his wife in front of their daughter. While considering this punishment “perhaps somewhat extreme,” Plutarch, who recorded the incident, hastened to add that “it is disgraceful... to kiss and embrace in the presence of others.”
34

Any excessive emotion was suspect. Older men deemed too indul- gent toward their younger wives could become objects of ridicule. Pompey (106–48
B
.
C
.
E
.) was famous for what was considered exagger- ated sentiment toward his last two wives. He married his fourth wife, Julia, Julius Caesar’s daughter, to advance his career, which did not pre- vent him from falling in love with her—he at forty-six and she exactly half his age. In the reproachful words of Plutarch: “he let his fondness for his young wife seduce him into effeminate habits.”
35
She, too, it appears, was enamored of him, but their mutual rapture was cut short by her early death in childbirth. Inconsolable as he was, Pompey soon made another political marriage, this time with the widow Cornelia. It did not take him long to become thoroughly captivated by that highly cultured lady, whose attractions beside those of youth and beauty included her knowledge of geometry, philosophy, and the lute.

When Cornelia and Pompey were married in 52
B
.
C
.
E
., wives of the Roman aristocracy enjoyed responsibilities and pleasures that would have been unthinkable in ancient Greece. They could hold on to prop- erty received from their original families and become very wealthy in their own right. Their dowries, administered by their husbands, would be returned to them in the event of divorce. They had access to private education and could attend public events, such as banquets, salons, and spectacles. Whether these events consisted of readings by poets, dances by naked girls, or sexual orgies, marriage did not prevent women from being present and participating fully.
36

Wives from the upper class moved about outside their homes with considerable independence since their domestic duties, including breast-feeding, could be turned over to nurses, servants, and slaves. It was so uncommon for upper-class women to nurse their babies during this period that Tacitus (56–120
C
.
E
.), among others, chided the wives of imperial Rome for no longer suckling their offspring, and attributed the lack of civic virtue among the young to their lack of mother’s milk.
37
Roman wives were full mistresses of their homes and “keepers of the

keys,” with one notable exception. Husbands held the keys to the wine cellar, since their wives were not allowed to drink wine. That interdic- tion was founded in age-old fears that an intoxicated wife would not be able to remain “pure.”

If a husband was sent into battle or exile, a Roman wife had to be ready to take over his affairs. Then she usually stayed behind in Rome and looked after the family property.
38
She was expected to share her husband’s public glory and his personal misfortunes. In her short, four- year marriage to Pompey, Cornelia had an equal measure of both. In the end, during the civil war, she followed Pompey’s flight away from Rome and was witness to his murder when he landed in Egypt after a major military defeat.

The most famous couple of this era was Antony and Cleopatra. Their story, already legendary in their lifetime, has fed the Western imagina- tion for over two millennia. Shakespeare, Shaw, and Cecil B. DeMille are among the many later-day interpreters who have revised the story, but the historical facts alone can stand by themselves as testimony to romance on an epic scale. And however legendary, their story sheds light on the status of wives in the Roman empire.

Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, had had a short affair with Julius Caesar, which had produced a son named Caesarion. Later, in 41
B
.
C
.
E
., after Caesar’s death, when Antony was part of the second Roman Triumvirate (shared with Octavius and Lepidus), he summoned Cleopatra to South- ern Turkey, where they began their fateful liaison. Antony had already been married three times before he met the Egyptian queen, but he was still ripe for falling passionately, madly, and irrevocably in love.

While Antony’s third wife, Fulvia, maintained his home in Rome and acted as a deputy husband on his behalf in his quarrels against Octavius (who would later become emperor under the name of Augustus), Antony spent the winter of 40–41
B
.
C
.
E
. with Cleopatra in Alexandria. All the Roman accounts of their union depict Cleopatra as the seductive foreigner, whose “Oriental” ways played havoc with Antony’s upright warrior mentality. But what do we really know of the give-and-take between them? Only, that their bodies comingled sufficiently to pro- duce twins, a boy and a girl named Alexander and Cleopatra.

In the meantime, Fulvia was forced to flee Rome for political rea- sons, and as she was coming to meet her husband, she fell sick and

died. Obliged to return to Rome to set his affairs in order, Antony man- aged to reconcile himself with Octavius. To seal the arrangement that would divide up the empire into three regions, Antony was expected to marry Octavius’s sister, Octavia. Since both Octavia and Antony had recently lost their spouses, they were considered perfect for one another. Octavia was expected to take over the care of Antony’s two young sons. This, as a good Roman spouse, she was quite prepared to do, but did she know that Antony also had two more children, the twins recently born to Cleopatra? In any event, both parties agreed to celebrate their nuptials in Rome, after receiving from the Senate a dis- pensation of the law by which a widow was not permitted to marry until ten months after the death of her husband. (Then, as now, annul- ments and dispensations are the purview of the powerful.) Antony struck a coinage to celebrate his wedding to Octavia. It was the first time that a living woman’s portrait appeared on a Roman coin—an honor bestowed upon her as Antony’s wife.

For several years Antony managed his two marriages, the official one in Rome, the unofficial one in Egypt. He and Octavia produced two daughters. But the balance was tipping in favor of Cleopatra, as could be sensed from the coins Antony issued in 37
B
.
C
.
E
. with his portrait on the one side and Cleopatra’s on the reverse.
39
A year later, in Italy, Octavia received the startling news that her husband and the Egyptian queen were married. The lawyers assured her that, since Cleopatra was a foreigner and since Romans of the citizen class were legally bound to marry other Romans, this was not a binding marriage. Prepared to for- give all, Octavia traveled East in 35
B
.
C
.
E
. bringing the troops and gold her husband so desperately needed. At Athens she found a letter, order- ing her to send on the provisions, and to return, herself, to Rome. Three years later, Antony sent her a formal notice of divorce. According to Plutarch writing a century after the events, “Antony sent orders to Rome to have Octavia removed out of his house. She left it, we are told, accompanied by all his children, except the eldest by Fulvia, who was then with his father, weeping and grieving... .”
40
Hence she lived under the wing of her brother, Octavius, who would soon become sole ruler of the Roman empire.

Octavius had every reason to be displeased with Antony’s treatment of his sister, divorced so cavalierly for the Egyptian queen. He was par- ticularly enraged by Antony’s will, which ordered that even if he died