She is ready now for all emergencies, and we may leave her, sitting in her long-backed cushioned chair, waving in one hand a fan of peacock’s feathers or of thin wood covered with gold-leaf, and holding in the other a ball of amber or glass to keep her hands cool and dry.

CHAPTER XVII

CHILDREN AND EDUCATION

Unlike too many couples of the same class, Silius and Marcia are blessed with children.  We will assume that there are two, a boy, whose full name shall be Publius Silius Bassus, and a girl, who is to be called Silia Bassa.  It is perhaps to be regretted that there is not a third, for in that case the father would enjoy to the full certain privileges granted by law to parents who so far do their duty by the state.  As it is, he will in the regular course of things receive preference over childless men, when it comes to candidature for a public office or to the allotting of a governorship.  The decline in the birthrate had become so startling at the close of the republic that the first emperor, Augustus, had decided that it was necessary on the one side to penalise persons who remained either unmarried or childless, and on the other to grant fixed concessions to all who were the parents of three.  A bachelor could not, for instance, receive a legacy from any one but a near relative; a married man without children could only receive half of such a legacy; a man with three children could not only enjoy his legacy in full, but could take the shares forfeited by any bachelor or childless legatee who figured in the same will.  It does not appear that the law produced any great effect, and, to make it still more futile, the later emperors began to bestow what was called the “privilege of three children” on persons who actually had either fewer or none at all.

The power of the father over the children is theoretically almost absolute.  Even when a son is grown up and married he legally belongs to his father; so does all his supposed property.  The same is the case with a daughter, unless she becomes a Vestal Virgin, or unless she marries according to the stricter of the two kinds of matrimony already described.  In the older days of Rome the father could, and sometimes did, put his children to death if he chose.  Though too free an exercise of so extreme an authority was no longer recognised, it was still quite legal to make away with an infant which was badly deformed.  Says Seneca, in the most matter-of-fact way, “We drown our monstrosities.”  It was quite legal also to expose a child, and leave it either to perish or to be taken up by whosoever chose.  In most such instances doubtless the child became the slave of the finder.  Not only was this allowable at Rome and in the romanized part of the empire; it was a frequent practice throughout the Greek or Eastern portion.  Again, a father might sell his child as a slave, particularly for continual disobedience.