[15] For Livia's great influence over Augustus see Seneca, _de Clementia_, i, 9, 6. Tacitus, _Annals_, i, 3, 4, and 5, and ii, 34. Dio, 55, 14-21, and 56, 47.
Agrippina dominated Claudius--Tacitus, _Annals_, xii, 37. Dio, 60, 33. Caenis, the concubine of Vespasian, amassed great wealth and sold public offices right and left--Dio, 65, 14. Plotina, wife of Trajan, engineered Hadrian's succession--Eutropius, viii, 6. Dio, 69, I. A concubine formed the conspiracy which overthrew Commodus--Herodian, i, 16-17. The plotting of Maesa put Heliogabalus on the throne--Capitolinus, _Macrinus_, 9-10. Alexander Severus was ruled by his mother Mammaea--Lampridius, _Alex. Severus_, 14; Herodian, vi, i, i and 9. Gallienus invited women to his cabinet meetings--Trebellius Pollio, Gallienus, 16. The wives of governors took such a strenuous part in politics and army matters that it caused the Senate grave concern--see examples in Tacitus, Annals, in, 33 and 34, and iv, 20; also i, 69, and ii, 55; id. _Hist_., iii, 69. Vellcius Paterculus, ii, 74 (Fulvia).
Of course, no woman ever had a right to vote; but neither did anybody else, since the Roman government had become an absolute despotism. The first woman on the throne was Pulcheria, who, in 450 A.D., was proclaimed Empress of the East, succeeding her brother, Theodosius II. But she soon took a husband and made him Emperor. She had been practically sole ruler since 414.
[16] Plutarch, _Roman Questions_, 6. Aulus Gellius, x, 23. Athenaeus, x, 56.
[17] Valerius Maximus, vi, 3, 9. For this he was not even blamed, but rather received praise for the excellent example.
[18] Aulus Gellius, x, 23. A woman in the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus, iv, 6, 1, complains justly of this double standard of morality:
Nam si vir scortum duxit clam uxorem suam, Id si rescivit uxor, impune est viro. Uxor viro si clam domo egressa est foras, Viro fit causa, exigitur matrimonio. Utinam lex esset cadem quae uxori est viro!
[22] Quintilian, _Instit. Orat_., vi, 1, 5. Pliny, _Letters_, vi, 4 and 7, and vii, 5.
[23] Great admiration expressed for Paulina, wife of Seneca, who opened her veins to accompany her husband in death--Tacitus, _Annals_, xv, 63, 64. Story of Arria and Paetus--Pliny, _Letters_, iii, 16. Martial, i, 13. The famous instance of Epponina, under Vespasian, and her attachment to her condemned husband--Tacitus, _Hist_., iv, 67. Tacitus mentions that many ladies accompanied their husbands to exile and death--_Annals_, xvi, 10, 11. Numerous instances are related by Pliny of tender and happy marriages, terminated only by death--see, e.g., _Letters_, viii, 5. Pliny the elder tells how M. Lepidus died of regret for his wife after being divorced from her--_N.H._, vii, 36. Valerius Maximus devotes a whole chapter to Conjugal Love--iv, 6. But the best examples of deep affection are seen in tomb inscriptions--e.g., CIL i, 1103, viii, 8123, ii, 3596, v, 1, 3496, v, 2, 7066, x, 8192, vi, 3, 15696, 15317, and 17690. Man and wife are often represented with arms thrown about one another's shoulders to signify that they were united in death as in life. The poet Statius remarks that "to love a wife when she is living is pleasure; to love her when dead, a solemn duty" (Silvae, in prooemio). Yet some theologians would have us believe that conjugal love and fidelity is an invention of Christianity.