Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/94

58 the innovation, that Agrippina sat enthroned beside Claudius on a lofty tribunal, to receive the homage of the captive Caractacus. Nero emancipated himself from the grasping ambition of his mother only by a ghastly crime. The influence of Cænis on Vespasian in his later days tarnished his fame. The influence of women in provincial administration was also becoming a serious force. ... Thus Juvenal was fighting a lost battle, lost long before he wrote. For good or evil, women in the first and second centuries were making themselves a power."

The Christian emperors made the dower of the wife not simply the property of the two spouses. It was the endowment of the new household, a sort of reserve fund which the law assures to the children which they would find intact in spite of the ruin of their family, if it should occur. The dower was offset also by the gift propter nuptias which the man must give. The law also provided that the dower and the gift propter nuptias should be equal and that the spouses should have the same rights of survivorship. These seem to be distinct improvements on the dotal system, but that system has dropped out of popular use in modern times and the advantage of this legislation has been lost with it.

The family was more affected by the imperial constitutions of the fourth century, which enacted the views and teachings of the clergy of that time. Constantine endeavored to put an end to concubinage, and the power of mothers over their children as to property and marriage was made equal to that of fathers. It appears that the collapse of the ancient society and the decay of the old religion with the rise of Christianity and Mithraism with new codes of conduct and duty produced