says is doubtless equally applicable to that
age. It is therefore interesting to note one or two of his objections
to contemporary woman, regarded as a wife. In the first place she is
too interfering and even dictatorial. "What madness is it," he asks of
the man whom he supposes himself to be addressing, "that drives you to
marry? How can you bear with a tyrannous woman, when there are so many
good ropes in the world, when there are high windows to throw yourself
out of, or when there is the bridge quite handy?" "Why should you be
made to wear the muzzle?" "Why take into your house some one who will
perhaps shut the door in the face of an old friend whom you have known
ever since he was a boy?" "When you displease her, she weeps, for she
keeps tears always ready to fall, but when you try to prevent her from
displeasing you, she tells you it was agreed that each should have
liberty, and that she is a human being." He goes on to attack her
faithlessness, her extravagance, her superstition, her loquacity, and
so forth. Let us by all means discount his fierce invectives;
nevertheless we must take them as but a heightened way of putting
circumstances which had a real and all too frequent existence, and
which encouraged the growing fancy for bachelordom. We shall, however,
soon look at a very different picture of domestic relations, and it is
only fair to assume that these also were by no means uncommon.

A Roman girl with a reasonable dowry might expect to be married at any
age from about 13 to 18. The Italian of the south, like the Greek,
ripens early. The legal age was 12; on the other hand to be unmarried
at 19 was to be distinctly an old maid. In the northern provinces of
the empire maturity was less early, whereas south of the Mediterranean
it was even earlier. The legal age for the bridegroom was that at
which his father or guardian allowed him to put on the "toga of the
man" and enter the Forum. Thus theoretically a Roman youth might
become a benedict when about sixteen, and Nero was only at that age
when he married his first wife Octavia. Generally speaking, however,
if Marcia was as old as 16, Silius would hardly be under 26 or 27.

The marriage, as has been said already, would commonly be a matter of
arrangement between families, sometimes effected by their own members,
sometimes by an interested friend or some other go-between. "You ask
me," writes Pliny to Mauricus, "to look out for a husband for your
niece. Th