Caenis, the concubine of Vespasian, amassed great wealth and sold public
offices right and left--Dio, 65, 14. Plotina, wife of Trajan, engineered
Hadrian's succession--Eutropius, viii, 6. Dio, 69, I. A concubine formed
the conspiracy which overthrew Commodus--Herodian, i, 16-17. The
plotting of Maesa put Heliogabalus on the throne--Capitolinus,
_Macrinus_, 9-10. Alexander Severus was ruled by his mother
Mammaea--Lampridius, _Alex. Severus_, 14; Herodian, vi, i, i and 9.
Gallienus invited women to his cabinet meetings--Trebellius Pollio,
Gallienus, 16. The wives of governors took such a strenuous part in
politics and army matters that it caused the Senate grave concern--see
examples in Tacitus, Annals, in, 33 and 34, and iv, 20; also i, 69, and
ii, 55; id. _Hist_., iii, 69. Vellcius Paterculus, ii, 74 (Fulvia).

Of course, no woman ever had a right to vote; but neither did anybody
else, since the Roman government had become an absolute despotism. The
first woman on the throne was Pulcheria, who, in 450 A.D., was
proclaimed Empress of the East, succeeding her brother, Theodosius II.
But she soon took a husband and made him Emperor. She had been
practically sole ruler since 414.

[16] Plutarch, _Roman Questions_, 6. Aulus Gellius, x, 23. Athenaeus, x,
56.

[17] Valerius Maximus, vi, 3, 9. For this he was not even blamed, but
rather received praise for the excellent example.

[18] Aulus Gellius, x, 23. A woman in the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus, iv, 6,
1, complains justly of this double standard of morality:

Nam si vir scortum duxit clam uxorem suam, Id si rescivit uxor, impune