g that vast contest between the feminine spirit
and the masculine, which is one of the essential phenomena in all
human history. We see the masculine spirit--the spirit of domination,
of force, of mastery, of daring--ruling complete, when the small
community had to fight its first hard battles against nature and men.
The father commanded then as monarch in his family; the woman was
without right, liberty, personality; had but to obey, to bear
children and rear them. But success, power, wealth, greater security,
imperceptibly loosened the narrow bondage of the first struggles; then
the feminine spirit--the spirit of freedom, of pleasure, of art, of
revolt against tradition--gradually acquired strength, and began bit
by bit to undermine at its bases the stern masculine rule.

The hard conflict of two centuries is sown with tragedies and
catastrophes. Supported by tradition, exasperated by the ever bolder
revolts of woman, the masculine spirit every now and then went mad;
and brutally tore away her costly jewels and tried to deny her soft
raiment and rare perfumes; and when she had already grown accustomed
to appearing in the world and shining there, he willed to drive her
back into the house, and put beside her there on guard the fieriest
threats of law. Sometimes, despairing, he filled Rome with his
laments; protested that the liberty of the woman cost the man too
dear; cried out that the bills of the dressmaker and the jeweller
would send Rome, the Empire, the world, to ruin. In vain, with wealth,
in a civilisation full of Oriental influences, woman grew strong,
rose, and invaded all society, until in the vast Empire of the first
and second centuries, at the climax of her power, with beauty,
love, luxury, culture, prodigality, and mysticism she dominated
and dissolved a society which in the refinements of wealth and
intellectuality had lost the sharp virtues of the pioneer.

It is unnecessary to dilate further on this point; it will be better
rather to dwell a moment on the causes and the effects of this
singular phenomenon. The history of Rome has been and can be so rich,
so manifold, so universal, because in its long record ancient Rome
gathered up into itself, welded, fused, the most diverse elements of
social life, from all peoples and all regions with which it came into
contact. It knew continued war and interrupted peace for centuries.
It held united under its vast sway, states decrepit with the oldest
of civili