And yet no idea would have appeared more absurd and scandalous to the men of the ancient world, the contemporaries of Pericles and Cæsar. The difference is so radical and profound that it must arise from important reasons. In fact, whoever compares ancient with modern times easily recognises that the rights of sentiment and the principles of liberty have been able to triumph in modern society only by virtue of a complete transformation in social customs and ordinances, which has stripped the family in our times of much of its social importance. To-day the family is purely and simply a form of social life in common. Man and woman cannot live solitary lives. A powerful instinct impels them towards each other. Even when the instinct is not felt, or is spent, the man needs to live in the company of other human beings, to have round him a circle of persons with whom he may find himself in relations of the closest intimacy. To-day the family performs this profoundly human office—this office and practically no other. Nowadays, man and woman study, work, take part in government, compete for the conquest of wealth and power, and exercise an influence on society—engage in all these activities quite outside the family. But it was not so in ancient times. The family was then an independent economic organisation, in which the woman had a predominant part. She wove and spun, providing every member of the family with clothes. She made bread, she dried the fruits for the winter, she seized the right moment for laying in the necessary supplies of provisions—a most important task, in times in which commerce was much less developed than it is now. In poor or moderately wealthy families, the women wove and performed similar tasks with their own hands. Rich women learned to do these tasks as children, but later contented themselves with superintending their performance by women slaves or freedwomen. But, especially in the rich families, the woman could contribute a great deal to the prosperity or the ruin of the house, according as she was or was not active in the performance of her work, zealous in her surveillance, energetic and shrewd in giving her orders, moderate in her expenditure. Even to-day the woman can contribute a great deal, in the wealthy classes, to the prosperity of the family. But for this she requires only one negative virtue, for all that this virtue is not too common or easily acquired: to know how to confine her expenses within reasonable limits, and not to be too ready to gratify her whims. In ancient times, on the contrary, if a woman was to be useful to her family she needed as well a positive virtue: to know how to produce much and well. This explains how we come to know that certain emperors’ wives, Livia for instance, directed the weaving operations in their homes personally and with great zeal, and that Augustus was particular not to wear any togas but those woven in his house under the eyes of his wife.