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purpose was in fact directly antagonistic, and thus succeeded in turning the mighty oligarchs of the Roman Senate into useful members of a civic bureaucracy. He was the first to learn the convenience of a united cabinet council, and was the founder of all civil services.

Nothing, perhaps, gives to us Englishmen and Irishmen of the nineteenth century so distressing an idea of the life of ancient Rome, as the nature of the relationship which existed between men and women, and between husband and wife. A true knowledge of the nature of the intercourse between the sexes would probably give us a correct idea of the state of civilization in any country. When we read that the men of a nation are employed in eating, drinking, or fighting, while the women till the fields and carry the burdens, we know at once that we are reading of savages. When we learn that women are used solely as ministers of sensual luxury, and that all knowledge, thought, and mental culture is confined to the master sex, we are equally sure that the nation spoken of has not attained to the worship of Christ. The treatment of women in Rome was not that of either of such countries, and yet it was nearly equally far removed from that which we consider due to our wives and daughters.

The Roman maiden who was gently born, carried no burdens and tilled no fields, nor was she doomed to be immured in a haram, with no pursuit but the adornment of her charms, and no possession but the jewels with which she covered them. Her lot, however, was hardly more happy. Marriage in Rome had from the earliest years of the republic been looked on as a high duty rather than a happy privilege. "Its object was," as Mr. Merivile says,

،، not to chasten the

affections but to replenish the curies and the centuries, maintain the services of the temples, and recruit the legions." As long as high duties were cherished by a poor and patriotic people, marriage of this sort sufficed for its object; but when Rome became rich and sensual, such a bond became to be felt as an inconvenient nuisance. By the law also, the Roman wife was little more than the slave of her lord, though the Roman maiden was free enough. The wife was little better

than the chattel of her husband; he could not, indeed, legally kill her, but he could confine her, sell her, beat her, divorce her, make a present of her, and treat her in a manner very far removed, indeed, from that which is generally in vogue in our good city of Dublin.

Marriage had become absolutely unpopular with men and women; and the result was fearfully pernicious both to the morals and policy of the state. We will here give the striking picture which our author shows:

The unmarried Roman, cohabiting with a freedwoman, or slave, became the father of a bastard brood, against whom the gates of the city were shut. His pride was wounded in the tenderest part; his loyalty to the com. monwealth was shaken. He chose rather to abandon the wretched offspring of his amours, than to breed them up as a reproach to himself, and see them sink below the rank in which their father was born. In the absence of all true religious feeling, the possession of children was the surest pledge to the state of the public morality of her citizens. By the renunciation of marriage, which it became the fashion to avow and Loast, public confi dence was shaken to its centre. On the other hand, the women themselves, insulted by the neglect of the other sex, and exaspe rated at the inferiority of their position, revenged themselves by holding the institution of legitimate marriage in almost equal aversion. They were indignant at the servi tude to which it bound them, the state of

dependence and legal incapacity in which it kept them; for it left them without rights, and without the enjoyment of their own property: it reduced them to the status of mere children, or rather transferred them from the power of their parent to that of their hus band. They continued through life, in spite of the mockery of respect with which the laws surrounded them, things rather than persons; things that could be sold, transferred backwards and forwards from one master to another, for the sake of their dowry, or even their powers of child-bearing. For the smallest fault they might be placed on trial before their husbands; or if he were more than usually considerate in judging upon his own case, before a council of her relations; she might be beaten with rods, even to death itself, for adultery, or any other heinous crime; while she might suffer divorce from the merest caprice, and simply for the alleged departure of her youth or beauty.

The latter centuries of the Roman commonwealth are filled with the domestic struggles occasioned by the obstinacy with which political restrictions were maintained upon

the most sensitive of the social relations. Beginning with wild and romantic legends,

the account of these troubles becomes in the end an important feature in history. As early as the year 423, it is said, a great number of Roman matrons attempted the lives of their husbands by poison. They were dragged before the tribunals, probably domestic, and adjudged to death. As many as a hundred and seventy are said to have suffered.

Under such circumstances it became necessary to make laws enjoining the ceremony of marriage; and the appeal which was made on one occasion to the patriotism of the citizen must no doubt have been received rapturously by the Roman matrons :--

Could we exist (said one Metellus, a censor) without wives at all, doubtless we should rid ourselves of the plague they are to us. Since, however, nature has decreed that we cannot dispense with the infliction, it is best to bear it manfully, and rather look to the permanent conservation of the state than to our own present satisfaction.

But the Roman matrons and Roman maidens were too fully of the same opinion themselves, to be angry with the censor for expressing it. Those who had tried the marriage vows knew well the misery of the heartless union. And those who had not, were sufficiently unwilling to submit to a tyranny which no love could make endurable, and from which all love would be banished. It had been the unfortunate result of Roman policy to make marriage as unpopular with the women as with the men.

On this matter it was in vain even for Augustus to make new enactments. His subjects would not marry. "Both the men and women preferred the loose terms of union on which they had consented to cohabit, to the harsh provisions of antiquity." He made positive laws, declared penalties, offered rewards, sung poems in honour of nuptial altars, and did what an emperor could do to make celibacy disgraceful; but it was of no avail. It was necessary that marriage in Rome should have some different meaning than that existing, before either men or women would willingly undergo its hardships.

The domestic ties and immediate family history of the Emperor himself will declare to us, with sufficient plainess, what was the method of

marriage in Rome, and to what extent the wishes of the women were consulted. It seems that the young Octavius, when quite a boy, had been betrothed, we may presume in accordance with the wishes of his uncle Julius; but this union he had himself repudiated after Caesar's death, and had married a Clodia. Clodia he had divorced at the age of twentythree, in resentment, we are told, at the perfidy of her family, and immediately married one Scribonia. By his second wife he had his only legitimate child, Julia,-that Julia of whom Roman history tells us so many scandals. Scribonia, however, did

not please him long; and she again was divorced-not, as it would seem, for any political reason, but because he had seen with a friend of his a charming woman whom he preferred. This charmer was the graceful and astute Livia. It is true that she was married, and married to a friend of his own; but could an Emperor's friend do less than abandon his wife to his master? Livia, therefore, was divorced from her first husband, and carried to the house of Augustus. Here she became in a month or two the mother of her first husband's younger son. These were the wives of Augustus, and thus were they procured. Livia outlived him, and outlived also his natural heirs, many of whom she was accused of destroying, so that the empire might descend to the children of her first husband. Whether she was a murderess or not will never probably now be decided. Her hopes at any rate were realized by the accession of Tiberius to the throne.

Augustus, however, was most anxious to be succeeded by children of his own child. The youthful Julia was therefore married to the young Marcellus, the son of Octavia, and the nephew of the Emperor; and to this marriage there was no objection, but that, never felt by Romans, of near relationship. Our author tells us that Augustus, in fixing on Marcellus for his daughter, had found a suitable" "party." The French word was probably ringing in Mr. Merivale's ears. In England a single person is denominated a party only by one class, to which we imagine Mr. Merivale has never belonged. We may suppose that Julia liked her

party; but, alas! she was not destined to enjoy long her married happiness. Her young husband died, or was murdered, and Julia was left a widow at seventeen.

Agrippa had been one of the earliest friends of the Emperor. They had been in Greece together as boys. They had returned together to Italy, when it became necessary to put off boyish things. Together they had fought their battles and got rid of their common enemies. They were of the same age; and though neither the circumstance of birth or fortune gave to Agrippa early hope of great station, he had won his way by success in wars, and prudence in council, to be the second man in the empire. Indeed we do not know how Augustus could have done without him. But it seems that Agrippa was hardly contented with his place as chief of ministers and first of soldiers. He wanted to connect himself more closely with the imperial seat, and was jealous that another should be named even as the heir of Augustus. It became necessary either to gratify him or get rid of him, and there seems to have been a doubt which course was most desirable. Mæcenas, the second favourite minister of Augustus, had whispered to his master that he should either make Agrippa his sonin-law, or else murder him. There were objections to both alternatives as long as Marcellus lived. The minister was too useful to be lost, and the nephew too near to be abandoned. But when Marcellus died, the difficulties cleared themselves.

Agrippa, it is true, had received, as an instalment of imperial grace, the hand of Marcella, the sister of Julia's husband, and she at this moment was his wife. She, however, was of course divorced, and Julia was at once married to her father's friend.

This match produced a large family of aspirants to the throne, the youngest of whom was born af ter the death of his father. But in spite of her maternal duties, Julia was not a discreet matron.

It is pro

bable that she was averse to the somewhat stern husband that had been given her, whose age, and face, and official duties, were hardly fitted to console a woman for the loss of one whom she had really loved. She bes

came a libertine even during the life of her husband; but that husband did not care to encounter the anger of the emperor by noticing her irregularities. After some nine years of union, Agrippa died; and Augustus, wanting, not an heir-for Julia had four children, and another coming, but an assistant to his throne, was instigated by his wife to give Julia again in marriage to Tiberius, Livia's son. Tiberius had a wife of his own; but she also was disposed of, and the royal princess went a third time to the altar.

Tiberius, however, loved the wife he had lost, and would not put up with the debaucheries of her whom he had gained and thus his domestic joys were not conspicuous. From this time forth the conduct of Julia became atrocious. We hear dark stories of orgies, such as have disgraced humanity in the persons of a few, and but a few, royal ladies since her time. It would seem that she almost equalled Messalina as a princess, and Theodora as a woman, in the violence of her debaucheries. At last the emperor, who had long endeavoured to persuade himself and others that his daughter was a pattern for Roman matrons, could bear it no longer; and Julia, at the age of thirty-six, was banished to an island.

But Julia had had five children, the hope of Rome. Of these the two elder sons died early, both with suspicion of violence; the third was banished, apparently because he was too clumsy for imperial grandeur. But the daughters were destined to be the mothers of emperors. The elder daughter—a second Julia-was early married to a scion of a noble family; but she also misbehaved herself, and was punished, as Mr. Merivale tells us, by "relegation to au island." The daughter of the emperor was in one island, and his grand-daughter in another; both banished, and both for such gross misconduct as even imperial resources could not keep covered from the eyes of the world.

Poor ladies! Such were the effects of Roman marriages.

When Augustus had once firmly consolidated his imperial power, he had already given to posterity that lesson in state craft which we have

been endeavouring to explain. Had he died twenty years earlier than he did, the proof might have been less convincing, but the lesson would have been the same. He outlived by

many years his two great ministers, Agrippa and Maecenas, and was at last fain to lean upon his step-son and son-in-law Tiberius.

We have not here touched on the character of this third of the Caesars -a monarch whose dark shadows have been made fearfully plain to us in the annals of Tacitus. It was not with his own good will that Augustus bequeathed his great inheritance to Tiberius. He never liked him. And though the success of his son-inlaw, as a Roman general, must have made him very valuable, the empe ror raised him to high power solely because there was none other whom he could raise.

been in Europe most similar to his were denied such fortune. Alexander died young, Cæsar was murdered before he had enjoyed his power, and Napoleon's fate was even worse than Cesar's. "The closing scene," says Mr. Merivale, "of this illustrious life has been portrayed to us with considerable minuteness. It is the first natural dissolution of a great man we have been called upon to witness, and it will be long, I may add, before we shall assist at another." Previous to the time at which Augustus sat securely on his throne, the fate of a noble Roman who took part in the affairs of his country was, all but invariably, to die by violence. After the days of Augustus, such a fate was as certain and more wretched. Men in high places were slaughtered like sheep at the caprice of the emperors; and emperors were slaughtered at the caprice of their ministers. To Augustus and his two councillors, Agrippa and Mecenas, it was permitted to pay the debt of nature naturally.

Great reverses towards the end of the reign befel the imperial arnis. A Roman general with his legions was entrapped into an ambush among the German tribes, and the whole army was routed and destroyed. Person ally this defeat distressed the Emperor much, and seems even to have

We must mention one trait of Augustus in his latter days. A certain Cinna contrived a plot against his life, and was detected. Such an act in this man was one of personal ingratitude, as well as national treachery; as he had been favoured by Augustus. The emperor sent for him, and showing him that his plot was discovered impaled him alive. Such must have been the conduct of such an emperor. No-he did not impale him, but conferred on him the consulship! It has been supereated in his mind an unnecessary posed that this clemency in his old age should wipe out the blood-stains which merciless cruelty in youth has left on the name of Octavius. We can come to no such conclusion in these days. Policy may have made it necessary to abstain from the punishment which the traitor deserved. Policy may even have whispered that it would be wise to make a consul of the traitor. But we cannot see that clemency had much to do with it. Augustus had no such appetite for blood as other later sovereigns have had-but he had no horror of it. The life and death of others was to him a matter of indifference.

Augustus was fortunate to the last. To him it was allowed to die naturally in his bed at a venerable age. To how few of those whose talents and ambition have carried them so high, has the same boon been granted. Those whose careers have

panic. But nothing occurred to shake his power in Rome, or for a moment to make his authority doubtful. That the wretched termination of all his family hopes, the fate of his daugh ter and his grand-daughter, and the death of his son-in-law and grandsons, must have carried much misery into his private life, we cannot doubt, if we are to believe that there was anything of the man about him. But in his public life he was of all men the most fortunate. This he felt, and he died probably contented and selfsatisfied. He had played his part well; he had not disgraced the shrine which had been dedicated to him as a god: he had executed his mission with success; and when called on to leave his corporeal splendor and his temples, his human power and divine attributes, he was able to do so without a regret or a fear. No remembrance of the bloody lists which he had written sullied his repose. No

thoughts of those friends and enemies over whose bodies he had stepped up to dominion harrowed his mind. He had done that which the fates required of him, and had done it with success. No Roman could have required more to justify his euthanasia.

At his last moments he was careful as a Roman should be of things exterior. Cæsar when he was falling covered his face decently with his robe. Pompey when he was murdered gave up his last human energy to the arrangement of his mantle. And Augustus, as we are told, had his hair dressed. He then asked those around him whether he had not deserved their applause by the man

ner in which he had acted his part in life's drama-and so he died.

Here we will end our present remarks. They have only carried us to the middle of the second of the three volumes which now lie before us. We may possibly before long return to the remainder of the work, and endeavour to give some short account of the life of Tiberius.

We will not end our article without expressing our thanks to Mr. Merivale for his labours. His truth is never to be doubted, His classic attainments are of the highest order. His research has included all that has been necessary for his purpose, and his personal trouble has never been spared.

PRISONS AND PRISONERS.

Ir has been said that the worst use you can make of a culprit is, to hang him. But we "know a trick worth two of that"-send him to Gaol. There he will have the pleasure of meeting with companions exactly suited to his taste, who, modestly declining to raise themselves to his moral level, will take the most disinterested pains to bring him down to theirs, so that he may go forth a greater villain than he went in. There, if he happens to be utterly uneducated, care will be taken to teach him to read: so that, while in prison, he will acquire the invaluable faculty of perusing his Bible and Prayer-book, to be laid aside, when he comes out, for The History of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. There he will have the benefit of the ministrations of the chaplain, who will use his best endeavours to rectify his corrupt principles, encouraged all along by the comfortable reflection, that those endeavours will be rendered utterly unavailing by the jeers and gibes of the prisoner's associates. There, if he is so fortunate as to be brought under the discipline of what is called the Silent System, he will, if the gravity of his offence, combined with the plausibility of his hypocrisy, entitle him to that indulgence, be released from the observance of the severer rules of the prison, and promoted to the office of warder over his less guilty compa

nions: or, if his delinquency be not of so deep a dye, and his skill in recommending himself to the good graces of the prison authorities be less adroit, he will have the privilege of experiencing all that petty tyranny and insolence of office," which his more expert fellow-convict will be sure to exercise over him. There, too, if he is placed under the tutelage of the Separate System, as at present administered, he will feel any incipient desire of reformation, or any settled resolution to lead a new life, effectually put down by the prospect of his removal to the Public works, where, with singular consistency, he is ruthlessly exposed to the gaze of those very associates from whose view, while in Separate confinement, he had been sedulously guarded.

Such is the uniformity, such the general excellence, such the tried efficacy, of our present Prison discipline! And such it would in all human probability long continue to be, if an event had not just occurred, which demands a readjustment of the whole system of Secondary Punishment. Transportation is at an end, or very nearly so. All our Colonies, with a trifling exception, refuse any longer to receive our convicts. We confess that, so far from sharing in the dismay which this announcement has occasioned, we hail it with solemn

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