ecourse directly to the magistrates. We have record of the assembling
and of demonstrations made by the richest women of Rome in the Forum
and other public places, to obtain laws and other provisions from the
magistrates, like that famous demonstration of women that Livy
describes as having occurred in the year 195 B.C., to secure the
abolition of the Oppian Law against luxury.

What more? We have good reason for holding that already under the
republic there existed at Rome a kind of woman's club, which called
itself _conventus matronarum_ and gathered together the dames of the
great families. Finally, it is certain that many times in critical
moments the government turned directly and officially to the great
ladies of Rome for help to overcome the dangers that menaced public
affairs, by collecting money, or imploring with solemn religious
ceremonies the favor of the gods.

One understands then, how at all times there were at Rome women much
interested in public affairs. The fortunes of the powerful families,
their glory, their dominance, their wealth, depended on the
vicissitudes of politics and of war. The heads of these families were
all statesmen, diplomats, warriors; the more intelligent and cultivated
the wife, and the fonder she was of her husband, the intenser the
absorption with which she must have followed the fortunes of politics,
domestic and foreign; for with these were bound up many family
interests, and often even the life of her husband.

[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]

Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
everything like the family of contemporary civilization? Have we
returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
forebears?

No. If there are resemblances between the modern family and the Roman,
there are also crucial differences. Although the Roman was disposed to
allow woman judicial and economic independence, a refined culture, and
that freedom without which it is impossible to enjoy life in dignified
and noble fashion, he was never ready to recognize in the way modern
civilization does more or less openly, as ultimate end and reason for
marriage, either the personal happiness of the contracting parties or
their common personal moral development in the unifying of their
characters and aspirations. The individualistic conception of
matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to
th