s, it has been supposed by many that Roman
women of the late period were given up to license. It is,
however, idle to seek in satirists any balanced picture of a
great civilization. Hobhouse (loc. cit., p. 216) concludes that
on the whole, Roman women worthily retained the position of their
husbands' companions, counsellors and friends which they had
held when an austere system placed them legally in his power.
Most authorities seem now to be of this opinion, though at an
earlier period Friedlaender expressed himself more dubiously. Thus
Dill, in his judicious _Roman Society_ (p. 163), states that the
Roman woman's position, both in law and in fact, rose during the
Empire; without being less virtuous or respected, she became far
more accomplished and attractive; with fewer restraints she had
greater charm and influence, even in public affairs, and was more
and more the equal of her husband. "In the last age of the
Western Empire there is no deterioration in the position and
influence of women." Principal Donaldson, also, in his valuable
historical sketch, _Woman_, considers (p. 113) that there was no
degradation of morals in the Roman Empire; "the licentiousness of
Pagan Rome is nothing to the licentiousness of Christian Africa,
Rome, and Gaul, if we can put any reliance on the description of
Salvian." Salvian's description of Christendom is probably
exaggerated and one-sided, but exactly the same may be said in an
even greater degree of the descriptions of ancient Rome left by
clever Pagan satirists and ascetic Christian preachers.

It thus becomes necessary to leap over considerably more than a thousand
years before we reach a stage of civilization in any degree approaching in
height the final stage of Roman society. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, at first in France, then in England, we find once more the
moral and legal movement tending towards the equalization of women with
men. We find also a long series of pioneers of that movement foreshadowing
its developments: Mary Astor, "Sophia, a Lady of Quality," Segur, Mrs.
Wheeler, and very notably Mary Wollstonecraft in _A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman_, and John Stuart Mill in _The Subjection of Women_.[289]

The main European stream of influences in this matter within historical
times has involved, we can scarcely doubt when we take into consideration
its