Saturday, June 15, 2013

If we had, each of us, upheld the rights and authority of the husband in our own households, we should not today have this trouble with our women. As things are now, our liberty of action, which has been annulled by female despotism at home, is crushed and trampled on here in the Forum….Remember all the regulations respecting women by which our ancestors curbed their license….If now you permit them to remove these restraints…and to put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that you will be able to bear them? From the moment that they become your equals, they will be your masters.
-- Cato the Elder [Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 34.1].