liberty to select a man who would manage things as they might direct.
There were cases where even the strict letter of the law permitted women
to lay an action on their own responsibility alone: if, when a suit for
recovery of dowry was brought, the father was absent or hindered by
infirmities[138]; if the woman sued or was sued to get or render an
account of property managed in trust[139]; to avenge the death of a
parent or children, or of patron or patroness and their children[140];
to lay bare any matter pertaining to the public grain supply[141]; and
to disclose cases of treason.[142]

[Sidenote: Instances of women pleading in public and suing.]

We read of many cases of women pleading publicly and bringing suit.
Indeed, according to Juvenal--who is, however, a pessimist by
profession--the ladies found legal proceedings so interesting that
bringing suit became a passion with them as strong as it had once been
among the Athenians. Thus Juvenal[143]: "There is almost no case in
which a woman wouldn't bring suit. Manilia prosecutes, when she isn't a
defendant. They draw up briefs quite by themselves, and are ready to
cite principles and authorities to Celsus [a celebrated lawyer of that
time]." Of pleading in public one of the celebrated instances was that
of Hortensia, daughter of the great orator Quintus Hortensius, Cicero's
rival. On an occasion when matrons had been burdened with heavy taxes
and none of their husbands would fight the measure, Hortensia pleaded
the case publicly with great success. All writers speak of her action
and the eloquence of her speech with great admiration.[144] We hear also
of a certain Gaia Afrania, wife of a Senator; she always conducted her
case herself before the supreme judge, "not because there was any lack
of lawyers," adds her respectable and scandalised historian,[145] "but
because she had more than enough of impudence."