a Nero, that the race of noble and
virtuous Roman matrons--the Cornelias and Valerias and Volumnias--was
extinct; and it is equally a mistake to suppose that Rome no longer
produced its honourable gentlemen filled with a sense of their
responsibilities to family and state. The satirist should not here,
nor elsewhere, be our chief, much less our only, guide. The England of
Charles II is not to be judged in its entirety by the comedies of the
time nor by the _Memoirs_ of Grammont. On this matter, however, it
will be more convenient to touch in a later paragraph. It will be best
to deal first with the system in vogue, and then to consider the sort
of woman whom it produced.

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