It was inevitable that as the male population diminished, as it undoubtedly did in that century, the importance of woman should proportionately have increased.

Unfortunately too, even when the husbands were at home, their wives sometimes seem to have wished to be rid of them.

In 180 B.C.the consul Piso was believed to have been murdered by his wife, and whether the story be true or not, the suspicion is at least significant.[223] In 154 two noble ladies, wives of consulares, were accused of poisoning their husbands and put to death by a council of their own relations.[224] Though the evidence in these cases is not by any means satisfactory, yet we can hardly doubt that there was a tendency among women of the highest rank to give way to passion and excitement; the evidence for the Bacchanalian conspiracy of 186 B.C., in which women played a very prominent part, is explicit, and shows that there was a "new woman" even then, who had ceased to be satisfied with the austere life of the family and with the mental comfort supplied by the old religion, and was ready to break out into recklessness even in matters which were the concern of the State.[225] That they had already begun to exercise an undue influence over their husbands in public affairs seems suggested by old Cato's famous dictum that "all men rule over women, we Romans rule over all men, and our wives rule over us."[226] But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the men themselves were not equally to blame.

Wives do not poison their husbands without some reason for hating them, and the reason is not difficult to guess.
It is a fact beyond doubt that in spite of the charm of family life as it has been described above, neither law nor custom exacted conjugal faithfulness from a husband.[227] Old Cato represents fairly well the old idea of Roman virtue, yet it is clear enough, both from Plutarch's _Life_ of him (e.g.ch.

xxiv.) and from fragments of his own writings, that his view of the conjugal relation was a coarse one,--that he looked on the wife rather as a necessary agent for providing the State with children than as a helpmeet to be tended and revered.