Soaemias, we can quite believe, was president of the assembly on the Quirinal which Lampridius sneers at as a foundation of Antonine’s, and yet tells us had existed before his time. It was called the Senaculum or Conventus Matronarum. Friedländer says that it was an ancient and honourable assembly as early as the year 394 B.C., when its members voted their jewels to help raise the tithe in connection with the spoils of Veii. Seneca refers to it in his treatise _De matrimoniis_ as a regular assembly. Again, in the year 209 B.C., the matrons met, in consequence of omens, to decide on expiation; even in imperial times Suetonius says that the Assembly met to reprove Agrippina for her vagaries; and Hieronymus counts amongst the distractions of Roman life the daily attendance at the Matronarum Senatus. What, therefore, this petulant and carping critic can find to grumble about in this permanent assembly meeting to carry out the provisions of the Lex Appia, one simply cannot imagine, unless it be that, having been prejudiced in early youth, he declined to listen to any arguments for the furthering of either women’s rights or duties in the State. At any rate, it is scarcely fair to stigmatise as an immoral and reprehensible act, the Emperor’s grant to this Senate of women of the power to make necessary edicts on points which are now very ably supervised by the Lord Chamberlain’s department. The points discussed were those relating to the length of a train or the Court uniform of a guardsman; the precedence due to rank; who must wait for another’s salutation; to whom a carriage; to whom a saddle-horse; to whom a public conveyance; to whom a mere donkey-cart was a fitting means of progression; who might use mules; or for whom oxen were considered sufficiently rapid; for whom the saddle might be inlaid with ivory; for whom with bone; for whom with silver; or even when pointing out what persons might fittingly wear gold and jewelled buckles on their shoes without the imputation of plutocratic ostentation. To-day, despite the fact that we have progressed by eighteen centuries, it is generally believed in governmental circles that such matters are possibly best settled by women, and such useful, not to say necessary functions concerning the polite amenities of civilised existence would be most readily conceded by authority to their sex, if only such would content and assuage that feline animosity which has of late disturbed social gatherings, even the intercourse between authorities in the state and ladies seeking a useful outlet for their superfluous energies. Alas, the world is grown older, and the female mind now knows itself capable of regulating both the social and political worlds, and has no intention of satisfying its aspirations, like Soaemias, with the social side of life, as long as mere man opposes her entrance into the political sphere.