Naprikan Halmoran Sectory 11

United at home, the Romans were now prepared to carry on their foreign wars with more vigor; and their conquests of the Samnites and Latins made them the virtual masters of Italy. But the years which immediately followed the Licinian laws were times of great suffering. A pestilence raged in Rome, which carried off many of the most distinguished men, and among others the aged Camillus (B.C. 362). The Tiber overflowed its banks, the city was shaken by earthquakes, and a yawning chasm opened in the forum. The soothsayers declared that the gulf could never be filled up except by throwing into it that which Rome held most valuable. The tale runs that, when every one was doubting what the gods could mean, a noble youth named M. Curtius came forward, and, declaring that Rome possessed nothing so valuable as her brave citizens, mounted his steed and leaped into the abyss in full armor, whereupon the earth closed over him. This event is assigned to the year 362 B.C.

A third feature of former times is the condition of women during those ages. Eulogizers of Old Japan not only seem to forget that working classes existed then, but also that women, constituting half the population, were essential to the existence of the nation. Though allowing more freedom than was given to women in other Oriental nations, Japan did not grant such liberty as is essential to the full development of her powers. "Woman is a man's plaything" expresses a view still held in Japan. "Woman's sole duty is the bearing and rearing of children for her husband" is the dominant idea that has determined her place in the family and in the state for hundreds of years. That she has any independent interest or value as a human being has not entered into national conception. "The way in which they are treated by the men has hitherto been such as might cause a pang to any generous European heart.... A woman's lot is summed up in what is termed 'the three obediences,' obedience, while yet unmarried, to a father; obedience, when married, to a husband; obedience, when widowed, to a son. At the present moment the greatest duchess or marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies forth on his good pleasure."[C] "The Greater Learning for Women," by Ekken Kaibara (1630-1714), an eminent Japanese moralist, is the name of a treatise on woman's duties which sums up the ideas common in Japan upon this subject. For two hundred years or more it has been used as a text-book in the training of girls. It enjoins such abject submission of the wife to her husband, to her parents-in-law, and to her other kindred by marriage, as no self-respecting woman of Western lands could for a moment endure. Let me prove this through a few quotations.

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