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,[1181] were virtually as influential in the state as were the women at Sparta. From Cloelia[1182] to Portia[1183] the maidens and matrons of that community displayed the spirit and resolution which we should assume to be characteristic of the wives and sisters of the men who made themselves gradually the masters of the earth. Nor were they backward in applying themselves to intellectual pursuits when the rusticity of the Republic began to be dissipated by the infiltration of Hellenic culture; and by their assiduous studies in philosophy, geometry, literature, and music, they kept pace determinedly with the mental development of the sterner sex.[1184] With the establishment of the Empire, a greatly enhanced authority became the permanent endowment of a limited class. It followed naturally that the female connections of the emperors and their chief ministers could aspire to participate in the despotic government, but the throne itself always remained debarred to women, and to the last days of the Empire the Romans never acquiesced in a female reign. When Agrippina, presuming on her power over a son whom her intrigues had raised to the throne, pressed forward amid general amazement to preside as of equal authority with him at a reception of ambassadors, the philosopher Seneca hastily impelled the young Emperor to arrest his mother with a respectful greeting, and thus, in the words of Tacitus, “under the semblance of filial devotion the impending disgrace was obviated.”[1185] Yet, in several instances, as the guardian of an immature heir to the crown, or as the associate of an incapable husband or brother, a woman was able to retain for a considerable time all the attributes of monarchy. The Syrian Soaemias, the equal in profligacy of her son Elagabalus, assumed the reigns of government, and took her seat in the Senate, which then beheld for the first time a female assisting at its deliberations.[1186] Her career speedily terminated in disaster,[1187] but during the break-up of the Western Empire, two centuries later, no opposition was offered to the predominance of her sex by a dejected people. The Empress Placidia Galla, after enduring many misfortunes, exercised a regency scarcely distinguishable from absolutism for more than a decade, in the name of her son Valentinian III.[1188] In the East the rule of Pulcheria, as the adviser of her brother Theodosius II, and afterwards of her nominal husband Marcian, extended almost to half a century.[1189] The importance of an Augusta in disposing of the crown on the decease of her husband has been indicated in the description of the elevation of Anastasius;[1190] and the official who records the election of Justin, ascribes the turbulence of the populace on that occasion to the absence of control by a princess of that rank.[1191] But the power of a dowager empress was most signally exemplified in the case of Verina, widow of Leo I, who, in her dissatisfaction with the policy of her son-in-law Zeno, succeeded in provoking a revolution, placed the chief of her party on the throne for more than a twelvemonth, and continued to involve the Empire in bloodshed for a series of years.[1192] Below the Imperial dignity the feminine element was perpetually active and widely exerted, especially throughout the provinces. The wives of legates, of proconsuls or governors, accompanied their husbands on their missions to distant parts, and were often responsible, both in peace and war, for the complexion assumed by the local administration.[1193] They displayed themselves ostentatiously in public, addressed themselves authoritatively to the army, and instigated measures of finance, to such an extent that they were sometimes regarded as the moving spirit in whatever was transacted.[1194] Agrippina shared the hardships of Germanicus in his campaign against the Germans, opposed herself to the disorder of the troops when retreating through fear of the enemy, preserved the bridge over the Rhine, which in their panic they were about to demolish, and, combining the duties of a general with those of the intendant of an ambulance, restored confidence to the legions.[1195] Yet Germanicus, in his Asiatic command, fell a victim to the machinations of Plancina, the wife of a colleague; and Agrippina strove ineffectively to withstand the malignant arts of another woman.[1196] In some instances oppression of the provincials was clearly traceable to female arrogance and intrigue; and at length it was seriously proposed in the Senate that no official should be accompanied by his consort, when deputed to the government of a province.