Quintilian mentions several cases of women being sued[146]; Pliny tells
how he acted as attorney for some[147]; and the Law Books will supply
any one curious in the matter with abundant examples.[148] A quotation
from Pliny[149] will give an idea of the kind of suit a woman might
bring, and the great interest aroused thereby: "Attia Viriola, a woman
of illustrious birth and married to a former supreme judge, was
disinherited by her eighty-year-old father within eleven days after he
had brought Attia a stepmother. Attia was trying to regain her share of
her father's estate. One hundred and eighty jurors sat in judgment. The
tribunal was crowded, and from the higher part of the court both men and
women strained over the railings in their eagerness to hear (which was
difficult), and to see (which was easy)."

[Sidenote: Partiality of the law to women.]

There were many legal qualifications designed to help women evade the
strict letter of the law when this, if enforced absolutely, would work
injustice. Ignorance of the law, if there was no criminal offence
involving good morals, was particularly accepted in the case of women
"on account of the weakness of the sex."[150] A typical instance of the
growth of the desire to help women, protect them as much as possible,
and stretch the laws in their favour, may be taken from the senatorial
decree known as the Senatus Consultum Velleianum.[151] This was an order
forbidding females to become sureties or defendants for any one in a
contract. But at the end of the first century of our era the Senate
voted that the law be emended to help women and to give them special
privileges in every class of contract. "We must praise the
farsightedness of that illustrious order," comments the great jurist
Ulpian,[152] "because it brought aid to women on account of the weakness