Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/351

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course.^[1] Her name has been preserved to us in the nomenclature

of science, and through an astronomical compliment a cluster of stars is still distinguished as the Coma Berenices.^[2] From these few examples the reader may derive some notion of the social relations of the ruling families in that extended Greek realm which came into being as the result of the conquests of Alexander. One by one the separate autonomies succumbed to the force of the Latin arms, and before the beginning of the Christian era all of them which lay to the west of the Euphrates had become merged in the provincial system of the Roman Empire.

When we turn our attention to the Roman Republic, we find that the females, although in law subjected absolutely to the will of their male relatives,^[3] were virtually as influential in the state as were the women at Sparta. From Cloelia^[4] to

↑ Justin, xxvi, 3. He was called Demetrius the Handsome, son of the D. above-named, but not by Phila. She stood at the door of the chamber, while the ministers of her vengeance were operating within, calling out to them to spare her mother (c. 250 B.C.). Her own fate was to be put to death by her son, Ptolemy IV of Egypt, in 221 B.C.
↑ That is, her hair cut off and suspended in the temple of Aphrodite to propitiate divine favour for her husband (Ptolemy III), during his Syrian war, c. 245 B.C. It became a constellation according to the adulators of the day, as is shown in the poem of Catullus, a translation from the Greek of Callimachus.
↑ The constitution of the Roman family can be apprehended readily by running through the consecutive expositions in Muirhead's Private Law of Rome, Edin., 1886, pp. 24, 64, 115, 248, 345, 514. In law the mother and children were practically the slaves of the paterfamilias: he could divorce his wife at pleasure, and yet 500 years elapsed before a husband made use of this power, so potent was the high ethical code which sustained the Republic.
↑ The story or legend of Cloelia used to be well known. Being delivered as a hostage, with a number of other maidens, to Porsena, she encouraged them to escape, and headed the band in swimming across

[1] Justin, xxvi, 3. He was called Demetrius the Handsome, son of the D. above-named, but not by Phila. She stood at the door of the chamber, while the ministers of her vengeance were operating within, calling out to them to spare her mother (c. 250 B.C.). Her own fate was to be put to death by her son, Ptolemy IV of Egypt, in 221 B.C.

[2] That is, her hair cut off and suspended in the temple of Aphrodite to propitiate divine favour for her husband (Ptolemy III), during his Syrian war, c. 245 B.C. It became a constellation according to the adulators of the day, as is shown in the poem of Catullus, a translation from the Greek of Callimachus.

[3] The constitution of the Roman family can be apprehended readily by running through the consecutive expositions in Muirhead's Private Law of Rome, Edin., 1886, pp. 24, 64, 115, 248, 345, 514. In law the mother and children were practically the slaves of the paterfamilias: he could divorce his wife at pleasure, and yet 500 years elapsed before a husband made use of this power, so potent was the high ethical code which sustained the Republic.

[p235_r4-4] The story or legend of Cloelia used to be well known. Being delivered as a hostage, with a number of other maidens, to Porsena, she encouraged them to escape, and headed the band in swimming across

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