The rights of women to an education were not questioned. That Sulpicia could publish amatory poems in honour of her husband and receive eulogies from writers like Martial[183] shows that she and ladies like her occupied somewhat the same position as Olympia Morata and Tarquinia Molza later in Italy during the Renaissance, or like some of the celebrated Frenchwomen, such as Madame de Staël. Seneca addresses a _Dialogue on Consolation_ to one Marcia; such an idea would have made the hair of any Athenian gentleman in the time of Socrates stand on end. Aspasia was obliged to be a courtesan in order to become educated and to frequent cultivated society[184]; Sulpicia was a noble matron in good standing. The world had not stood still since Socrates had requested some one to take Xanthippe home, lest he be burdened by her sympathy in his last moments. Pains were taken that the Roman girl of wealth should have special tutors.[185] "Pompeius Saturninus recently read me some letters," writes Pliny[186] to one of his correspondents, "which he insisted had been written by his wife. I believed that Plautus or Terence was being read in prose. Whether they are really his wife's, as he maintains; or his own, which he denies; he deserves equal honour, either because he composes them, or because he has made his wife, whom he married when a mere girl, so learned and polished." The enthusiasm of the ladies for literature is attested by Persius.[187] According to Juvenal, who, as an orthodox satirist, was not fond of the weaker sex, women sometimes became over-educated. He growls as follows[188]: "That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as soon as she goes to bed, praises Vergil; makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them; and weighs Homer and Maro in the balance. Teachers of literature give way, professors are vanquished, the whole mob is hushed, and no lawyer or auctioneer will speak, nor any other woman." The prospect of a learned wife filled the orthodox Roman with peculiar horror.[189] No Roman woman ever became a public professor as did Hypatia or, ages later, Bitisia Gozzadina, who, in the thirteenth century, became doctor of canon and civil law at the University of Bologna.