Intellectual Women of Rome
By Lady Morgan
(See page 17)
Female amanuenses, or secretaries, or “writers out of books,” were by no means unusual in Rome. Vespasian had a female amanuesis, Antonio, whom he greatly esteemed and confided in. Even the Christian fathers adopted this fashion; and Eusebius asserts that Origen had not only young men, but young women to transcribe his books, which “they did with peculiar neatness.” Among the accusations brought against the Roman women of his own time by Juvenal, is that of their learning; he bitterly attacks their presumption in studying Greek, their interlarding even their most familiar conversations with its elegant idioms and phrases; and, among their other crimes of acquirement, he further accuses them of encroaching on the exclusive male prerogative of mind, by discussing philosophical subjects, quoting favorite authors and scholiasts, their purism in affected exactness of grammar, and by their antiquarian researches in language. On the word antiquarian, an ancient commentator observes:—“Antiquaria, one that does refine or preserve ancient books from corruption, one studious of the old poets and historians, one that studies ancient coins, statues, and inscribed stones: lastly, such as use obsolete and antiquated words. All which, though they might be counted an overplus and curiosity in a woman, yet only the last is absolutely a fault.”