vicissitudes of politics and of war. The heads of these families were
all statesmen, diplomats, warriors; the more intelligent and cultivated
the wife, and the fonder she was of her husband, the intenser the
absorption with which she must have followed the fortunes of politics,
domestic and foreign; for with these were bound up many family
interests, and often even the life of her husband.

[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]


Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
everything like the family of contemporary civilization? Have we
returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
forebears?

No. If there are resemblances between the modern family and the Roman,
there are also crucial differences. Although the Roman was disposed to
allow woman judicial and economic independence, a refined culture, and
that freedom without which it is impossible to enjoy life in dignified
and noble fashion, he was never ready to recognize in the way modern
civilization does more or less openly, as ultimate end and reason for
marriage, either the personal happiness of the contracting parties or
their common personal moral development in the unifying of their
characters and aspirations. The individualistic conception of
matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to
the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an essentially political
and social point of view. The purpose of marriage was, so to speak,
exterior to the pair. As untouched by any spark of the metaphysical
spirit as he was unyielding--at least in action--to every suggestion of
the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and consolidating the