Not long ago an able and eloquent man, well known in political life, made the astonishing statement that from the time Eve left paradise to the advent of the modern champion of her sex, “woman was apparently content with her subordination.” It is not proposed here to enter at all into the present phases of a subject that has been sufficiently discussed, or to define the precise point where those who belong to what our noble friend is pleased to call the “inferior and defective half of the race” may with reason protest; but as a matter of fact there has never been so prolonged and serious a commotion on the much-talked-of “woman question” as in the Rome of two thousand years ago; and perhaps no recorded moment in the history of women has been of such far-reaching importance as those struggles for justice and recognition. With possibly one exception, the points at issue were not quite the same as in the middle of the nineteenth century, but they involved many of the same privileges. The contention concerned not only a woman’s right to a voice in the control of her own property, but to some consideration in marriage, and a measure of personal liberty. The laws that grew out of it, in the slow process of years, have served as a basis for the codes that have more or less governed civilized countries ever since, and though these have often deviated far from the liberal standard of the statutes of Justinian, they have never fallen permanently to the old level. A certain marked resemblance in the character and growth of the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon woman gives us a special interest in these controversies and their practical outcome. That the Roman woman had ample cause for protest could hardly be questioned to-day, even by the most determined advocate of the old order of things. The contrast between the character and ability so conspicuously shown by what she did at various times for her country, and the humiliation of her position, was too great. In the qualities of temperament and imagination which, if given free scope, make poets and artists, the Grecian women surpassed her. But the very traits of sensibility that constituted their fascination rendered them an easy prey to the rule of a master. Their chief legacy to posterity was an esthetic one. The talent of the Roman woman was of another sort. She was of a masterful type, striking in physique, strong in purpose, clear in judgment, with the pride and dignity of a race born to rule the world. It was through her practical wisdom in directing affairs, together with her courage, foresight, and indomitable will, that she gained in the end a degree of independence which perhaps we should hardly call by that name to-day, but which was relative freedom and left a permanent trace on after-ages.