It is not the purpose here to pursue in detail this phase of Roman life, nor to trace the slow and obscure changes in the laws that followed the revolt of women from ages of oppression. This brief outline suffices to show that the women of two thousand years ago were far from accepting abject subservience without a protest; that they had the spirit and intelligence to combine in their own defense; that they won the privilege of virtually the same education which was given to men, and so much consideration that the Romans of the third and fourth centuries were more just to a woman’s rights of property than were the Americans in the first half of the nineteenth. Happily better counsels prevail here to-day; but it is a commentary on the instability of human affairs that, even on the higher plane of morals and intelligence from which we started, the battle had to be fought over again. THE “NEW WOMAN” OF OLD ROME [Illustration: Decorative image] · Wickedness of Imperial Days · · The Reverse of the Picture · · Parallel between the Romans and Ourselves · · Their “New Woman” · · Her Political Wisdom · Her Relative Independence · · Literature in the Golden Age · · Horace · Ovid · · Tributes to Cultivated Women in Letters of Cicero · · Literary Circles · Opinions of Satirists · · Reaction on Manners · · Tributes in Letters of Pliny and Seneca · · Glimpses of Family Life in Correspondence of Marcus Aurelius and Fronto · · Public Honors to Women · [Illustration: Decorative image] I