158 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
participate directly in political life or the courts. Though some women
displayed literary talent, they were not as a rule educated to the same level
as their husbands (Calpurnia was said to have taken up an interest in
literature ‘out of fondness’ for Pliny).^27 No doubt women older than
Calpurnia had more credibility as companions and advisers. It is clear,
particularly from Cicero’s letters, that some older women such as Brutus’
mother were respected participants in political discussions ( Att. 15.10–12,
17). On the other hand, the infl uence of a woman over her husband in
public affairs was regarded as inappropriate, just like that of a slave or
freedman. The governor’s wife may have accompanied her husband, but, if
virtuous, she did not allow provincials to approach lest they try to infl uence
the governor through her (Tacitus, Ann. 3.33–4).^28 In private life it was
thought praiseworthy for the wife to provide moral support for her husband.
Pliny ( Ep. 6.24) tells a story of a wife who convinced her terminally ill
husband to commit suicide and so end his pain by jumping off a cliff into
Lake Como (an honourable act in the Roman view). She persuaded him by
setting an example and jumping fi rst – the last act of a companionate
marriage perhaps, but an asymmetrical companionship (we never hear of a
husband bolstering his wife’s courage by joining her in death).
The companionship ideal was summed up by Plutarch in his Conjugal
Precepts ( Mor. 139D) in the advice that husband and wife share in decisions
about their common life, but that the husband lead. The reality of the
husband’s domination was not always so gentle. The husband was lord of
the domus with the right to exercise his authority over his slaves and his
children, by physical punishment if he wished. The fact that the wife was not
in her husband’s legal power may not always have exempted her from
such domination. In his On Anger (3.35) Seneca asked how a man could
complain of the state being deprived of liberty when he in his own household
became angry at his slave, freedman, client and wife for answering back
to him. The inclusion of the wife in this series of inferior members of
the domus is suggestive. Much later St. Augustine wrote more explicitly that
his mother meekly suffered regular beatings at the hands of his father,
and that most other wives in the small African town of Thagaste had
similar bruises to show ( Confessions 9.9).^29 The source is unique in
the corpus of imperial literature, but not necessarily the wife- beating that
it describes.
The wealthy in the Roman world lived off their property rather than their
labour; as a consequence, a vital aspect of marriage was the property
arrangement, which refl ected the ambiguous position of the woman in the
family. Though a wife was a physical and social member of her husband’s
family, her property was quite separate. In non- manus marriages only the
woman’s dowry went into her husband’s ownership. The provision of a
dowry was regarded as a duty of the father, but was not mandatory for a
legitimate marriage (as in Athens). While dowries were sometimes large, up
to one million sesterces, their value and function must be put into perspective.