Saturninus recently read me some letters,” writes Pliny[186] to one of his correspondents, “which he insisted had been written by his wife.  I believed that Plautus or Terence was being read in prose.  Whether they are really his wife’s, as he maintains; or his own, which he denies; he deserves equal honour, either because he composes them, or because he has made his wife, whom he married when a mere girl, so learned and polished.”  The enthusiasm of the ladies for literature is attested by Persius.[187]

According to Juvenal, who, as an orthodox satirist, was not fond of the weaker sex, women sometimes became over-educated.  He growls as follows[188]:  “That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as soon as she goes to bed, praises Vergil; makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them; and weighs Homer and Maro in the balance.  Teachers of literature give way, professors are vanquished, the whole mob is hushed, and no lawyer or auctioneer will speak, nor any other woman.”  The prospect of a learned wife filled the orthodox Roman with peculiar horror.[189] No Roman woman ever became a public professor as did Hypatia or, ages later, Bitisia Gozzadina, who, in the thirteenth century, became doctor of canon and civil law at the University of Bologna.

I have been speaking of women of the wealthier classes; but the poor were not neglected.  As far back as the time of the Twelve Tables—­450 B.C.—­parents of moderate means were accustomed to club together and hire a schoolroom and a teacher who would instruct the children, girls no less than boys, in at least the proverbial three R’s.  Virginia was on her way to such a school when she encountered the passionate gaze of Appius Claudius.  Such grammar schools, which boys and girls attended together, flourished under the Empire as they had under the Republic.[190] They were not connected with the state, being supported by the contributions of individual parents.  To the end we cannot say that there was a definite scheme of public education for girls at the state’s expense as there was for boys.[191] Still, the emperors did something.  Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Alexander Severus, for example, regularly supplied girls and boys with education at public expense[192]; under Trajan there were 5000 children so honoured.  Public-spirited citizens were also accustomed to contribute liberally to the same cause; Pliny on one occasion[193] gave the equivalent of $25,000 for the support and instruction of indigent boys and girls.

[Sidenote:  The Vestals.]

It may not be out of place to speak briefly of the Vestal Virgins, the six priestesses of Vesta, who are the only instances in pagan antiquity of anything like the nuns of the Christians.  The Vestals took a vow of perpetual chastity.[194] They passed completely out of the power of their parents and became entirely independent.  They could not receive the inheritance of any person who died intestate, and no one could become heir to a Vestal who died intestate.  They were allowed to be witnesses in court in public trials, a privilege denied other women.  Peculiar honour was accorded them and they were regularly appointed the custodians of the wills of the emperors.[195]