punish crimes; and sometimes, as their nature and their number frightened the tribunal, it became, in a manner, necessary for the law to cover itself with a veil, because it would have been equally dangerous and scandalous to have discovered all the guilty.

There is no doubt but that in this age women were much oftener praised for their rank than their virtue, and more frequently for talents and graces than morals.

In the early days of the empire, there were many orations in praise of women pronounced from the rostrum: the elogy of Junia, sister of Brutus, and wife to Cassius; the elogy of the Empress Livia, mother of Tiberius; that of Octavia, by Augustus; and that of Pompeia, by Nero.

We may say that the first of these was in praise of rigid and republican virtue. The second ought to mark the character of women, in its medium betwixt republican manners and the manners of a court, and under a prince. Livia belonged to the first, by some remains of simplicity, and, to use the words of Tacitus, by the sanctity of her house: she belonged to the second, by a rising ambition, by the desire of renown, by a rational artifice, and by the art of employing skilfully the persuasive charms of her sex; in short, by intrigue and management, applied by turns to great and little things.

The third, that of Octavia, was the elogy of beauty become interesting by misfortunes, and connected with great events, of which she was rather the victim than the cause; but the elogy of Pompeia, pronounced by an emperor, and applauded by the Romans, shows the last stage of corruption.

It seems that all the women who belonged to the imperial house, or who entered into it, were honoured in the same manner after their death. Many amongst them, whilst upon the throne, were scandalous in their pleasures; but the deifying them repaired all: religion was less severe than morals, and it was easier to make a goddess than a virtuous woman.

There were, nevertheless, in these times, some virtues amongst the women. But these virtues remarked themselves. Most of them owed their birth to Stoicism, which, under the first emperors, expended itself in Rome.

We know that Stoicism is for the manners, what the republican austerity is for the government. It raised up again, in some families, the ancient manners; but with this difference, that formerly, in Rome, the virtue contracted almost in birth was like the habits of infancy, and the happy work of example as well as laws.

But in the empire, virtue was only to be acquired by reason and fortitude; the principles of morality, aided by cool reason,

were not alone sufficient. In order to arrive at whatever man is capable of, there must be a certain enthusiasm, which gives energy to the soul, and supports it: an enthusiasm, which proposes to itself a grandeur above the grandeur of man; which makes a man contemn pleasures, the better to guard against vice; which makes him brave troubles, the better to subdue himself; which, in short, in places where crimes are all-powerful, both by authority and example, renders man independent of every thing but his duty, and, raising him above the vile universe which surrounds him, makes him his own censor, his own master, and the judge and admirer of

himself.

In that period, Stoicism was then necessary at Rome, as a powerful counterpoise to a terrible weight; and in effect, it produced the strongest contrasts: the excess of courage by the side of the excess of baseness, and the most rigid austerity by the side of the most dishonourable licentiousness.

It is to be remarked, that Stoicism never produced such noble effects in Greece, as in Rome; perhaps, because there was something to resist it, it made extraordinary efforts.

To produce grand virtues, there must be great occasions and great evils. Stoicism resembles that strength which augments itself in proportion to the resistance it meets with.

Many celebrated Romans, nourished in this sect, displayed the virtues which it inspired: and the women, more susceptible of habits than of principles, and almost always governed by the manners the most striking, imitated their husbands and their fathers.

Portia gave the first example: daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus, she was, if we may use the expression, raised to the grandeur of their souls. In the conspiracy against Cæsar, she proved herself worthy to be associated in the secrets of the state. After the battle of Philippi, she would not survive the liberty of her country, and the death of Brutus, but died with the fierce intrepidity of a Cato.

The example of Portia was followed by Arria; who seeing her husband, when he was to die, staggered, and hesitating to encourage him, pierced her own breast, and returned him the poniard; also by her daughter, married to Thraseas, and by the daughter of Thraseas, married to Helvidius Priscus, both worthy to be the wives of great men; by Paulina, wife of Seneca, who opened her veins with him, and was forced to live; during the few years that she survived, she carried, says Tacitus, an honourable paleness, which attested that part of her blood had flowed with the blood of her spouse.

The same greatness of mind was shown, though in another

manner, by Agrippina, wife of Germanicus: this lofty and tender lady, while she was still young, buried herself in retirement; and without suffering her haughtiness to bend under Tiberius, or her heart to corrupt itself by the manners of the age, continued equally implacable against her tyrant, and faithful to her husband; she passed her life in bewailing the one, and detesting the other.

Lastly, by the celebrated Epimona, whom Vespasian ought to have admired, and whom he so shamefully put to death.

Amongst all these women, exposed to the hatred of tyrants, very few of them procured the honour of a public oration; but they obtained what is of greater value, they were praised by Tacitus, and two lines of Tacitus are worth more than all the customary panegyrics together.

It is not my intention to speak of all the celebrated women of the Empire; but Oppius, Herodius, Philostratus, and Dion, having all of them quoted one of a different character and species of merit, it will be permitted me to mention her. This was the Empress Julia, wife of Septimus Severus, born in Syria, and daughter of a priest of the sun; it was predicted of her, that she should be raised to the rank of a sovereign, and her character justified the prediction. Upon the throne she passionately loved, or appeared to love, letters; either from taste, from a desire to instruct herself, from her love of renown, or possibly from all these together, she passed her life with the philosophers.

Her imperial rank, perhaps, was not alone sufficient to conquer noble hearts; but she joined to it, besides, the charms of wit and of beauty. These various attractions rendered unnecessary that management which consists but in cunning; and which, by observing dispositions and foibles, governs great souls by little means. She obtained the title of philosopher; but her philosophy, however, was not equal to endowing her with morals. Her husband, who did not love her, esteemed her genius, and consulted her upon all affairs, and she governed even in the reigns of her sons.

Julia was, in short, an empress and a politician, occupied at once by the sciences and affairs of state, and pretty publicly mixing in pleasure; having the courtiers for her lovers, men of learning for her friends, and philosophers for her courtiers. In the midst of a society where she reigned, and where she instructed herself, she arrived at playing a great part; but as she did not join the merit of her sex to these accomplishments, we admire her, but we blame her. She obtained from her contemporaries more praise than respect, and from posterity more renown than esteem.

After her we find Julia-Mammie, who was of the same family, and was also an empress, or at least mother of an emperor. It was her merit to have equal genius and courage; and, above all, she educated her son, the young Alexander Severus, for the throne, nearly in the same manner as Fenelon afterwards educated the Duke of Burgundy; she made him at the same time virtuous and sensible.

At last, in following the course of history, the famous Zenobia presents herself. She was worthy to have been a pupil of Longinus; a princess who knew how to write as she knew how to conquer; who was at last unfortunate with dignity; who consoled herself for the loss of a throne by the mildness of a retreat, and for the loss of the pleasures of grandeur by the pleasures of the understanding.

All these ladies received great praises from the writers of their age, and have served since to swell the catalogues of all the panegyrists of celebrated women.*

* At present, there only remains to us two elogies upon empresses one is the panegyric upon Eusebia, wife of Constance. This lady was the protectress of Julian; she raised him to the rank of Cæsar, and, by the secret charm which wit and beauty has, even over tyrants, she several times saved him from the political furies of a prince always ready to murder those whom he feared. Julian, who owed to her the empire and his life, composed her panegyric; but we must allow that his gratitude did not make him eloquent.

The other is by Lucian; it is in dialogue and a sort of portrait ; it is not precisely known to whom it is addressed. But the commentators, who are almost always confidents in these sort of secrets, do not fail to assure us, that it is a panegyric upon an empress. But whoever it was intended for, we may venture to say that it is the original of forty or fifty thousand portraits of heroines or princesses, which during four hundred years, have been drawn in France, in Italy, or in Spain, by all the orators, historians, poets, or romancers; with whom it is the custom and rule, that the same woman has every perfection of which any woman is capable. I add, that it is the first instance which we find amongst the ancients of that species of gallantry so much in fashion amongst us, and which consists in saying to women, with a light wit and a heart of ice, every thing which we do not believe, and every thing which we would have them believe. This style, which people adopt from the want of sensibility, and the desire of being thought to have it, and which joins exaggeration to falsity, Lucian acquired from the corruption of the manners in the empire, from the natural lightness of the Greeks in his time, and from his own character. Wit may decry, but it is only the heart which knows how to praise.

We have observed, that at the time when Rome changed its form of government, there arose a change in the manners; but near about the third century, there was a new and still more important revolution.

Until then, the manners of women were only founded upon morals, and were not connected with religious ideas. In some countries they had connected the manners with politics; but, according to the different plans of legislation, the laws had drawn different lines where the virtues of women were to begin, and where they were to end, of which the dances of the Lacedemonian girls were a striking instance; and according to the expression of Montesquieu, Lycurgus had taken away modesty even from chastity itself.

At Rome, the women were seen to dance publicly upon a stage; decency put no veil between them and the eyes of the people; and if Cato came to a spectacle to go out again, it was not so with the magistrates and the pontiffs who attended there. The arts, which every where imitated nature without hiding it, assisted in seducing the imagination by the eyes.

Philosophy has no fixed principle respecting women; sometimes it combats against them, and would take from them that gentle modesty which forms the defence as well as the charm of the sex.* Sometimes it would have that tender union, which is supposed to be formed from an union of hearts, be only an instantaneous attachment, to be destroyed in the instant after.†

Religion itself was then only a species of sacred policy, which exhibited rather ceremonies than precepts. They honoured the gods as, amongst us, we honour powerful men; that is to say, they offered them incense, and in return expected protection. They were protectors, and not lawgivers.

But when Christianity arose upon the earth, religion then gave precepts. It enjoined the most rigid laws in respect to women and to manners. It strengthened the bonds of marriage, and of a politic institution made it a sacred one, placing the marriage contracts between the tribunal and the altar, under the protection of the divinity.

The "Christian religion" did not merely confine itself to preventing actions, but extended its influence even over the thoughts; above all, placing a barrier against the senses. proscribed even inanimate objects, which could assist towards

It

School of the Cynics, which regarded modesty as a convention,

and made it a duty to free oneself from it.

+ System of the community of women in a state.