Among the Romans women began to acquire those legal "rights" to which they owe whatever advance they have ever made toward a just equality with men. It was Roman law that lifted a wife from the condition of a cherished slave to a status something higher than that of daughter. But there was still one fatal defect in her position--her husband could divorce her, but she could not divorce him. Cicero, the flower of Roman culture, put away the wife of his youth after living with her thirty years, and no remonstrance on her part would have availed against his decision. But a Roman wife _had_ rights. She could not be deprived of her property, and the law threw round her and her children a system of safeguards which gave her a position and an influence not unlike those of the "lady of the house" at the present time. Instead of being secluded in a kind of harem, as among the Greeks, she came forward to receive her husband's guests, shared some of their festivities, governed the household, superintended the education of her children, and enjoyed her ample share of the honor which he inherited or won. "Where you are Caius, I am Caia," she modestly said, as she entered for the first time her husband's abode. He was paterfamilias, she materfamilias; and the rooms assigned to her peculiar use were, as with us, the best in the house. To the Roman law women are infinitely indebted. Among the few hundreds of families who did actually share the civilization of Cicero, the Plinys, and Marcus Aurelius, the position of a Roman matron was one of high dignity and influence, and accordingly the general tone of the best Roman literature toward woman is such as does honor to both sexes. She was even instructed in that literature. In such a family as that of Cicero, the daughter would usually have the same tutors as the son, and the wife of such a man would familiarly use her husband's library. Juvenal, that peerless reviler of women, the Gavarni of poets, deplores the fact: "But of all plagues the greatest is untold-- The book-learned wife in Greek and Latin bold; The critic dame who at her table sits, Homer and Virgil quotes, and weighs their wits, And pities Dido's agonizing fits. She has so far the ascendant of the board, The prating pedant puts not in one word; The man of law is nonplused in his suit; Nay, every other female tongue is mute." [Illustration: "Madame, your cousin Betty wishes to know if you can receive her." "Impossible! Tell her that to-day I _receive_."--_Les Tribulations de la Vie Élégante, par Girin, Paris, 1870._]