ANTIQUITY OF THE MILITANT WOMAN

Northern Advocate, 27 August 1913, Page 3

ANTIQUITY OF THE MILITANT WOMAN

HER DOINGS IN ANCIENT EOME. SOME NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS. Militant women marching the streets of London and attempting to enter the sacred precincts of the House of Commons; using bombs, burning houses, and upsetting the Derby race; argumentative women annually descending upon the capital of the State of New York, appealing to legislative committees, buttonholing unwilling legislators, holding public meetings, orating, agitating, pleading, all for the sacred cause of

women's suffrage—this has been generally accepted as a new development brought, forth by the twentieth century.

But this phase of feminine activity is not modern. The men of ancient Rome had to face their aroused womankind; who, agitating practically the same cause, adopted identical methods, displayed similar per"sistence and tenacity of purpose, and in their day created equal turmoil and disturbance.

The crisis was brought about at the beginning of the third century through the efforts to abrogate the so-called Oppian law, which had been passed twenty years before during the terror caused by Hannibal's invasion and had attempted to curb the growing luxury of women. " The area about the Capitol, ,, says the historian Livy, " was filled with crowds who favoured or opposed the law. Nor could the matrons be kept at. home, either by advice or shame, not even by the express commands of their husbands; but beset every street and avenue in the city, beseeching the men as they went down to the Forum to suffer the women to have their former rights to wear ornaments restored to them. This throng of women increased daily; for they arrived even from the country towns and villages, and they had at length the boldness to come up to the consuls, praetors, and magistrates to urge their request."

QUITE A MODERN FLAVOUR. Descriptions such as this would seem modern enough to grace the daily columns of our newspapers. The debate became most heated, and speedily shifted from the narrow question of what the women should wear to the real point at issue—the question of whether or not the women had any right publicly to interfere with or to urge legislation. How modern sound the arguments of Cato the Censor, that strong-minded ■man, whose ringing voice must find an echo in many a present-day legislator's breast, when, in referring to the behaviour of the women, he said: " It was not without painful emotions of shame that I just now made my way into the Forum through a band of women. Had I not been restrained by respect for the modesty and dignity of some individuals among them, rather than of the whole number, and been unwilling that they should be seen rebuked by a Consul, 1 should not have refrained from saying to them, ' What sort of practice is this, running into public, besetting the streets, and addressing other women's husbands? Could not each have made the same request to her husband at home? Are your blandishments more seducing in public than in private, and with other women's husbands than your own? Although if matrons would let their

I modesty confine them within the limits of their own rights, it did not become you, even at home, to concern yourselves about any laws that I might be passed or repealed here.' " After relating how the older Romans had confined their women to their homes, under the strict guidance and surveillance of their parents, brothers, or husbands, and then pointing to the weakness of the husband as the primary cause of the state of affairs at that time existing the worthy Consul went on to say: •' If every individual had made it a rule with respect to his wife to maintain the prerogative and authority of a husband, we should have less trouble with the whole sex. Will you give rein to their intractable nature, and then expect that they themselves set bounds to their licentiousness, and without your interference They long for liberty—or, rather, to speak the truth, for unbounded freedom in every particular. For what will- theyj-not attempt if they now come off victorious? Our forefathers restrained their undue freedom and subjected them to the authority of their husbands. If you suffer them to throw off these institutions one by one, to tear them asunder, and at last to be set on equal footing with yourselves, do you imagine you will ever be able to endure them? The moment that they become your equals they will become your superiors. So soon as the law shall cease to limit the expenses of your wife, you yourself wi'l never be able to do so." PAR FROM NEW EVEN THEN. Can modern tongue, however eloquent, or pen, however skilful, more aptly set forth the arti-suffrage proposition? In reply to Cato, Valerius the Tribune, said: "It is no new thing for the women to come out in public in a body on occasions so closely concerning themselves. In the time of; Romulus they, by their interposition between the two armies, stopped a fight in the Forum; later they turned away the army of Coriolanus, which would have overwhelmed the city. When Rome was taken by the Gauls, it was the matrons who brought their gold into the public treasury and ransomed the city." I And then the champion of the fair sex went on to give vent to these remarkable words, "When you—the husband—may wear purple in your great coat, will you not suffer your wife to have a purple mantle? The matrons' only wish iS that their dress should be under the regulation of their individual husbands, not under the law, and it ought to be the wish of the men to hold them in control and guardianship, not in bondage; to prefer the title of father or husband to that of master." The women next day, continues Livy. poured out into the public streets in much greater numbers, and in a body beset the doors of M. and P. Brutus the Tribunes, who had protested against the repeal cf the law, and did not withdraw until the Tribunes, worn out by their importunity, promised not to oppose it further. lv these modern times the Tribune Valerius, if living, would assuredly have the unanimous support of the sex whose cause he so eloquently espoused, for any public office subject to their influence. The heroic Cato was. twice married, and therefore in a nifiisure able to resist to the end the blandishments of the agitators; but the majority of the legislators, although doubtless agreeing with Catq's views, felt that discretion was the better part of valour in a matter so closely related to their domestic tranquillity, and supinely voted, as '.the ladies desired, and the law was repealed After the repeal of tho law, "tin- women evinced their exultation and triumph by going in procession through the streets, bedizened with Their now legitimate finery," and for several days thereafter publicly showed their great satisfaction in the signal victory they had won over the antiquated ideas of such old-fashion-ed men as Cato the Censor. i jA DEMONSTRATION QUELLED BY ' THE POLICE. For many years thereafter the Roman legislators studiously avoided interference with feminine rights and privileges; grateful, no doubt, that no encroachment on their own domains was attempted by a party whose strength in public affairs had been so signally demonstrated. In 43 8.C., however, there arose a situation that brought forth renewed feminine agitation for equal rights, and evoked the precise argument now advanced that to deny those rights was to permit "taxation without representation. ''

kt thai, time, shortly after the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Triumvirs Anthony, Octavius, and hepidus were in sore need of funds with which to defray expenses of the civil war then raging between them and Brutus and Cassius. After exhausting every other means of raising

money, it was proposed to impose z speci.il war tax upon women, '.to be bafi'd u;ion The individual's wealth in each case. Immediately there occurred a repetition of the scenes already lescribed. Headed by Hortensia, the daughter of the famous orator Hortensius. a crowd of women forced their way into the presence of the Triumvirs, and Hortensia' made a stirring address, which, according to Rome's great rhetorician was "an honour to the • sex." "Why should we pay taxes," cried this ancient Portia, "when we have no part in the honours, the commands, the statecraft, for which you contend against one another with such harmful results?" When Hortensia had thus spoken, says Appian, the Triumvirs were angry that the women had dared to appear in pifblic, and ordered the licfors to drive them away from the tribunal: but owing to the cries of the multitude outside they said that they would postpone consideration of the matter until the next day. Nevertheless, because of the extreme need of tlie time, the bill was passed. It is noteworthy that there we have the first instance" of women publicly arguing that taxation without representation is unlawful. Also it is the first instance where the authorities found it necessary to put flown the public demonstration caused by such arguments with the aid of the police authorities; for the "lietors" were nothing more nor less than the ancient equivalent of the London constables. THE FEMALE SENATE. Such rapid progress 'did feminine influence make from this time onward that we find the remarkable spectacle of a Senate, composed exclusively of women, existing in Rome at about 220 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Elagabulus. This female Senate was uresided over 1 y the mother of the Emperor, and had absolute and exclusive control over all questions pertaining to dress, etiquette, and amusements, and there was no appeal from its decision The immense progress made by women in ancient Rome in regard to those rights which in more modern times are not questioned, particularly those as to dress, together with the daring and logical arguments advanced by them when they entered into public disicussions in relation thereto, are evidence that but for the untoward end of the Roman Empire modern woman suffrage would have found a complete precedent.—Win. Wallace Whitelock, in the "New York World Sunday Magazine. , '