shade of Agamemnon, in the Odyssey advised Ulysses not to put any faith
in Penelope and did not stop talking until he had enumerated the entire
list of the vices of the sex. The first Latin authors imitated the
Greeks in their invectives against women; the comedies of Plautus,
especially, teem with virulent attacks upon them.

At Rome, however, the great freedom permitted to women, soon brought
about other opinions in regard to them; they often played an important
role in public and private affairs, and the men convinced themselves
that, like men, women were capable of the greatest crimes and of the most
heroic virtues. The noble stoicism of Arria is not the only example of
courageous virtue displayed by the Roman women at a time when crowned
monsters governed the empire. The young Paulina opened her veins with
her husband, the philosopher, Seneca; Mallonia preferred to die in
torments rather than give herself up to the odious he-goat of Capri.
Who does not admire the noble independence, the conjugal love, and the
matronly virtues of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus?

Moreover, men began to avow their love for women, and we have here
occasion to observe the rapid progress of gallantry among the Romans.
However, the love for boys was no less universally in vogue in Rome, and
Cicero charges, in his letters to Atticus, that the judges who had so
scandalously white-washed Clodius of the accusation of having profaned
the mysteries of the "Good Goddess," had been publicly promised the
favors of the most illustrious women and the finest young men of the
first families. Caesar himself, in his early youth had yielded to the
embraces of Nicomedes, King of Bithynia; moreover, after his triumph over
the Gauls, on the solemn occasion when it was customary to twit the
victor with all his faults, the soldiers sang: "Caesar subdued the Gauls,
Nicomedes subdued Caesar. But Caesar who subdued the Gauls, triumphed,