34.2
"If we
had, each one of us, made it a rule to uphold the rights and authority of the
husband in our own households we should not now have this trouble with
the whole body of our women. As things are now our liberty of action,
which has been checked and rendered powerless by female despotism at
home, is actually crushed and trampled on here in the Forum, and because
we were unable to withstand them individually we have now to dread their
united strength. I used to think that it was a fabulous story which tells us that
in a certain island the whole of the male sex was extirpated by a conspiracy
amongst the women; there is no class of women from whom the gravest
dangers may not arise, if once you allow intrigues, plots, secret cabals to go
on. I can hardly make up my mind which is worse, the affair itself or the
disastrous precedent set up. The latter concerns us as consuls and
magistrates; the former has to do more with you, Quirites. Whether the
measure before you is for the good of the commonwealth or not is for you to
determine by your votes; this tumult amongst the women, whether a
spontaneous movement or due to your instigation, M. Fundanius and L.
Valerius, certainly points to failure on the part of the magistrates, but
whether it reflects more on you tribunes or on the consuls I do not know. It
brings the greater discredit on you if you have carried your tribunitian
agitation so far as to create unrest among the women, but more disgrace
upon us if we have to submit to laws being imposed upon us through fear of
a secession on their part, as we had to do formerly on occasions of the
secession of the plebs. It was not without a feeling of shame that I made my
way into the Forum through a regular army of women. Had not my respect
for the dignity and modesty of some amongst them, more than any
consideration for them as a whole, restrained me from letting them be
publicly rebuked by a consul, I should have said, 'What is this habit you have
formed of running abroad and blocking the streets and accosting men who
are strangers to you? Could you not each of you put the very same question
to your husbands at home? Surely you do not make yourselves more
attractive in public than in private, to other women's husbands more than to
your own? If matrons were kept by their natural modesty within the limits of
their rights, it would be most unbecoming for you to trouble yourselves even
at home about the laws which may be passed or repealed here.' Our
ancestors would have no woman transact even private business except
through her guardian, they placed them under the tutelage of parents or
brothers or husbands. We suffer them now to dabble in politics and mix
themselves up with the business of the Forum and public debates and
election contests. What are they doing now in the public roads and at the
street corners but recommending to the plebs the proposal of their tribunes
and voting for the repeal of the law. Give the reins to a headstrong nature, to
a creature that has not been tamed, and then hope that they will themselves
set bounds to their licence if you do not do it yourselves. This is the smallest
of those restrictions which have been imposed upon women by ancestral
custom or by laws, and which they submit to with such impatience. What
they really want is unrestricted freedom, or to speak the truth, licence, and if
they win on this occasion what is there that they will not attempt?
