It cannot be denied that at this date, though marriage was regarded as the normal and proper condition for men and women who desired to do their duty by the state, and though the wise emperors did everything in their power to encourage it, a very large proportion of the men of the upper classes regarded it as a burden and a vexatious interference with their liberty.  It was not necessarily that they had any desire to be vicious, nor indeed would marriage be much of a hindrance to vice; it was that they desired to be free.  The cause of their disinclination was the same as it is sometimes alleged to be now—­the increasing demands of women, their increasing unwillingness to bear the natural responsibilities of matrimony, their extravagant expectations, and the impossibility of there being two masters in one house claiming equal authority.  But whereas we recognise that love is a possible adjuster of all the difficulties, it was no tradition of the Romans that marriage should be based on love.  With them it very seldom began with love, or even with direct personal choice, but was in most instances entirely a mariage de convenance and arranged for them as such.  Even after marriage we are told by a contemporary writer that the proper feeling for a man to entertain for his wife is rational respect, not emotional affection.  Experience has shown that the result was too often unsatisfactory.

It is unfortunate that the only satires or criticisms on married life which have come down to us were written by men; one would like to hear what the women might have said, if a woman had ever been a satirist.  There is nearly always some basis of truth in a classic satire, but the question is “How much?” Juvenal belongs to a later generation than that of Nero, but what he says is doubtless equally applicable to that age.  It is therefore interesting to note one or two of his objections to contemporary woman, regarded as a wife.  In the first place she is too interfering and even dictatorial.  “What madness is it,” he asks of the man whom he supposes himself to be addressing, “that drives you to marry?  How can you bear with a tyrannous woman, when there are so many good ropes in the world, when there are high windows to throw yourself out of, or when there is the bridge quite handy?” “Why should you be made to wear the muzzle?” “Why take into your house some one who will perhaps shut the door in the face of an old friend whom you have known ever since he was a boy?” “When you displease her, she weeps, for she keeps tears always ready to fall, but when you try to prevent her from displeasing you, she tells you it was agreed that each should have liberty, and that she is a human being.”  He goes on to attack her faithlessness, her extravagance, her superstition, her loquacity, and so forth.  Let us by all means discount his fierce invectives; nevertheless we must take them as but a heightened way of putting circumstances which had a real and all too frequent existence, and which encouraged the growing fancy for bachelordom.  We shall, however, soon look at a very different picture of domestic relations, and it is only fair to assume that these also were by no means uncommon.