Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/37

Rh her through actual purchase or prescription. Whatever she had or earned belonged to him. He could sit in family court over her, and even punish her with death.

Cato, the elder, expresses his respect for the fair sex in these words: "If every head of a family would strive to keep his wife in thorough subjection according to the example of his ancestors, we should have less trouble publicly with the entire sex."

Among the Romans the adulteress could be killed on the spot by her husband; on the part of the man adultery was no crime. Later, however, this was changed. Under Augustus the adultery of the man was punished, as well as that of the woman. It suited the empire in a certain sense to take the side of woman. It may also have been expected that severity toward the degenerate men might prove a means of checking the impending immorality.

Upon the era of the republic followed the era of the emperors and of immorality, perhaps the greatest that ever existed. Men now sought compensation for their lost liberties and for their interrupted political life in all manner of debaucheries, in which the emperors took the lead from sheer ennui. For debaucheries, however, women are necessary, and what is necessary is tolerated. The importance to which women attain in eras of immorality can be as little satisfaction to them as