Politically the most successful years of the republic had been those when the senate’s authority had been respected and deferred to by the other participants in the Roman political system. In the third and early second centuries BC it had maintained an aura of competence and stability and, although its legal powers were limited, it had dominated the decision-making process. Unfortunately the senate’s aura was easily dissipated through its own incompetence and political clumsiness. The growth of the empire with its demands for good administration and effective defence had led to rising social tensions at home, between rich and poor, Romans and allies. Here was a variety of challenges that the body had proved unable to meet. The Gracchi, for instance, had been met with nothing more visionary than violence. At the same time, and crucially, the senate did not have a monopoly of coercive power and was thus vulnerable to those who did, the elected consuls and praetors during their term of office and afterwards if their commands were prolonged. When outsiders, such as Pompey, also acquired commands, the senate was rendered impotent. It survived because the conventions of the constitution remained astonishingly powerful. When the crunch came Pompey did not overthrow senatorial government even though he undoubtedly had the power to do so.
In the 50s, however, the constitutional conventions came under renewed strains. The people had never been quiescent in the state, their assemblies passed all legislation, and the electorate, in effect all citizens who could reach Rome, chose the chief magistrates. However, now an enlarged and volatile urban population (with the allies added as voters after 90 Bc) offered opportunities for unscrupulous manipulators such as Clodius to engineer popular unrest. The assemblies were rowdy places and the people could easily be flattered or disturbed by the attention they were given. Although this was hardly a democracy in the sense of that known in Athens, the crowd became more excitable as respect for the senate diminished. The senate, now increasingly marginal to events, had to rely on its former enemy Pom-pey to defend it not only against street disorder but also against the ambitions of Caesar who had manipulated populist unrest to his advantage ever since the beginning of his career. (The story has been well told by Fergus Millar, notably in The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor, 2002), who has stressed the restricted space in central Rome in which the different assemblies, including the senate, clustered, each watching the other’s activities.)
Ultimately he who dared won. Caesar could argue that he was only defending his threatened dignity (his honor) as a Roman when he crossed the Rubicon. However, he had used his magistracies and commands to achieve a political supremacy whose logical end, if he triumphed over his enemies, was dictatorship. What kind of dictatorship perhaps even Caesar did not know, so powerfully did the heritage of republican liberty limit the possibilities of one-man rule. In the event Caesar failed to replace the republic with an alternative, while his acclaimed quality of clemency left his enemies and those who still cared for ‘liberty’ at large. His assassination was the result and it was followed, inevitably, by a new power struggle. The old republican concept of libertas was challenged on the battlefields of Philippi and from then on there was only a struggle between competing dynasts. The winner of this, Octavian, now promised that he had no other interest than the restoration of the republic whose institutions and conventions still survived. It was a promise that a shattered senate and a weary people were ready to accept.
The Romans of the late republic preserved an idealistic picture of early Rome with life centred on steady toil in the fields, piety to the gods, and loyalty to the state in peace and war. There was also an ideal of womanhood. Women, in their role as the wives of farmers and soldiers, were expected to be industrious and frugal home-keepers, the mothers of future citizens. Most valued was the virtue of pudici-tia, a word that had connotations both of fidelity and fertility. The univira, the woman who had slept only with her husband and never remarried after his death, was the sexual ideal, encapsulated perhaps in Lucretia, who, raped by the son of the last of the Roman kings, killed herself rather than live with the dishonour of providing an unchaste example to others. Absolute loyalty to their menfolk was also expected. The women of the neighbouring Sabine tribe served as the ideal here. They had been forcibly carried off as wives by Romans but when, in the next campaigning season, their kinsfolk tried to rescue them, they appeared, now clutching their ‘Roman’ babies, to reconcile the invaders. Generally the Romans, like the Etruscans, had a much more relaxed attitude towards the appearance of women in public than the Greeks did. Women could eat with their husbands and even preside over meals at which both sexes were present.
Shortly after the shock of the devastating defeat of the Roman armies at Cannae (earlier, pp. 385-6), the Oppian Law was passed. It forbade flamboyant display for women, and this specifically included parading themselves in carriages. The need for the law is evidence that, with so many men absent from Rome, or killed in battle, women were becoming more socially venturesome. Those from the elite were creating social networks among themselves and there are accounts they would meet to make ritual sacrifices for the good of the state. At first the new law appears to have been respected, but when the Punic War ended in victory (201) and husbands began returning home, tensions grew. There seemed no reason for any continuing restraint. In 195, there was an extraordinary demonstration by women against the Oppian Law. They blockaded the streets and the entrance to the Forum claiming that the wealth of the republic was increasing every day and they should be able to share in it.
It was the elder Cato, consul in that year, who emerged to uphold the values of traditional Roman womanhood against what, as ever, he saw as the pernicious influences of the east. Luxurious living, he blustered, was breaking down the discipline that was needed to keep the women in check. Women’s ‘unbridled natures’ would always be beyond satisfaction and he mocked the men who were so ready to give in to their demands. His opponents argued that it was fitting that the heroes of Rome’s wars should set their wives up in state, as a glittering appendage to their own status. The Oppian Law was repealed and the women celebrated with a new procession in which they appeared in all their finery.
Displays of opulence now became common. Polybius has left an account of the lifestyle of Aemilia, the widow of the great Scipio Africanus:
When Aemilia had left her house to take part in women’s processions, it had been her habit to appear in great state, as befitted a woman who had shared in the life of the great Africanus when he was at the height of his success. Apart from the magnificence of her personal attire and the decoration of her carriage, all the baskets, cups, and sacrificial vessels or utensils were made of gold or silver, and were carried in her train on such ceremonial occasions, while the retinue of maids and menservants who accompanied her was proportionately large. (Translation: I. Scott-Kilvert)
So emerges the strong independent woman, of whom Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus and Aemilia, and mother of the Gracchi, is a prime example (see earlier, p. 400). By the first century a few aristocratic women were also well educated. Of Cornelia, the (fifth) wife of Pompey, it was said (by Plutarch): ‘The young woman had many attractive qualities, quite apart from her youth and beauty. She had a solid knowledge of literature, of playing the lyre, and of geometry, and she was a regular and intelligent listener to lectures on philosophy.’
The shift in attitude was mirrored by changes in marriage customs. There was never any pretence that romance played much part in the making of a marriage that, in aristocratic circles, normally saw an older man, perhaps in his late twenties, being joined to a girl who had just reached puberty. Political considerations were important, with families using their marriage links to sustain alliances. The marriage of Pompey with Caesar’s daughter Julia is an obvious example and it is good to report that it developed into a genuine love match—one ending tragically, however, when Julia died in childbirth in 54 Bc. A major purpose of marriage was to produce male heirs who could extend the family line and, according to Lucretius, the committed wife was expected to lie still during sexual intercourse as this was the best way to ensure conception. The achievement of a pregnancy came before sexual pleasure. Prostitutes, who did not want to conceive in any case, could be more forward in their love-making, says Lucretius, and they and their partners were assumed to enjoy it more.
In Rome’s early history the most common form of marriage was in manus. Here the father of the bride transferred her, with her dowry, into the hand (manus) of her husband’s family and abdicated all responsibility for her. It is probable that in early times the dowry was in land that would be added to the husband’s plot that the family would then work together. If the husband died his widow and any children would inherit the plot intact and their livelihood was preserved. An alternative way of marriage, sine manu, allowed the wife to retain membership of her own family, and thus the right to any inheritance due to her from it, even though married into another. Her husband no longer had formal control over her. By the first century
Bc, for reasons that are not wholly clear, this had become the most popular form of marriage. Although the woman retained a tutor, a member of her family who was responsible for her affairs, she had some independence in the management of her business. She could carry out cash transactions, own property, and accept inheritances.
Women also retained some control over their dowries. A husband was expected to keep it intact and could even be sued by his wife if she suspected it was being put at risk by his financial misdealing. At his death it was returned to her, even if it meant the estate had to be broken up to extract it. On her death it was the convention that the dowry would pass down to the children. The dowry would even be repaid in cases of divorce and Cicero, divorcing his wife Terentia, found himself financially embarrassed at having to do so. He promptly married a very young and rich girl, Publilia, but this marriage also ended in divorce. By the first century Bc divorce had become common and had lost much of its stigma (from the days when it was largely the result of a wife’s adultery). Mere incompatibility seems to have been enough.
There is some evidence, therefore, that even within a male-dominated world women were given some margins within which they could maintain an independent life. It is also clear that women did participate in decision-making in the family. A study of funerary inscriptions show that the names listed focus on a small, rather than extended, family group with women preserving their own names and taking precedence over more distant male relatives. A mother expected to be consulted over arrangements for her daughter’s marriage and, in one of his letters, Cicero reports a family conference held by his friend Brutus after the assassination of Caesar. Brutus’ mother Servilia seems to have actually presided. (Such a family meeting was known as a consilium, literally ‘consultation’.)
It is clear that Romans did see marriage as having a companionate quality, as acting as a satisfier of emotional needs. Much of the evidence comes again from funerary inscriptions, especially those of freedmen whose new status would be flaunted in stone when they had died. The conventional phrasing often makes them hard to interpret but there is enough personal feeling surviving to suggest marriages were often very happy. (‘You who read this,’ one epitaph to a wife concludes, ‘go bathe in the baths of Apollo, as I used to do with my wife. I wish I still could.’) There is also the long inscription, dating from the late first century BC and conventionally known as the Laudatio Turiae (‘In praise of Turia’), in which a husband recaptures the virtues of his dead wife and the care and loyalty she showed to him during the turmoil of the civil wars. Unable to produce children she had even offered him a divorce, but he had rejected the offer, preferring, he said, to live with her than with another who could bear him children. (A succinct discussion of the eulogy can be found in Judith Evans Grubbs, ‘The Family’, chapter i6 in David Potter (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Empire, Oxford and New York, 2006, 313-16.)
A century later Pliny the Younger writes with real tenderness to his young wife, Calpurnia.
It is incredible how much I miss you, because I love you and then because we are not used to being separated. And so I lie awake most of the night haunted by your image; and during the day, during the hours I used to spend with you, my feet lead me, they really do, to your room; and then I turn and leave, sick at heart and sad, like a lover locked out on a deserted doorstep. . . (Translation: Jo-Ann Shelton)
A small group of women never experienced these affections. These were the six Vestal Virgins chosen before the onset of puberty by the pontifex maximus from the elite families of the city. They were required to live for thirty years in celibacy tending the flame of the temple to the goddess Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, in the Forum. Officially without family, they had full control of their own wealth, could make wills, and administer their property without a tutor. Although they had their own house in the Forum, they were not socially isolated. They were given a public status, with special seats reserved for them at banquets and games. There is enough evidence to show that they were aware of affairs of state and sometimes even tried to intervene. When Cicero was deciding how to deal with the Catiline conspirators (see earlier, pp. 413-14), the Vestal Virgins announced that their sacred flame had flared up, which they interpreted as support for firm action. Augustus gave his will into the care of the Virgins. On the other hand, if they broke their vow of virginity, the punishment was death. An offender was walled up alive in an underground chamber.
Women had their own festivals and cults. In the festival in honour of Fortuna Virilis (the Fortune of Men), for instance, women offered incense and a drink of honeyed milk and poppyseed and then bathed together in the men’s bath. Ovid claimed the ritual blinded men to the bodily defects of their womenfolk. In early December, men were temporarily excluded from the house where women celebrated the festival of Bona Dea, ‘the good goddess’, a cult originally imported from the east. The wives of prominent citizens were invited alongside the Vestal Virgins and these took charge when the outrageous Publius Clodius (see earlier, pp. 420-1) attempted to infiltrate the ceremony disguised as a female musician when it was being held at Caesar’s house. His presence had contaminated the whole rite and the Vestal Virgins ordered a repeat. Even prostitutes had their own rituals carried out at the Temple of Venus.
Marriage had its own rituals. Unlike men, women had no rite of passage at puberty and their wedding seems to have fulfilled this role. The bride sacrificed her childhood toys before being taken off in procession from her own home to that of her groom who was awaiting her. There were ceremonies of welcome and the couple sat together hand in hand on a couch as these were completed before retiring to the bridal chamber.
There were especially harrowing experiences for many women during these last years of the republic. Husbands were often away in the army and there were massive disruptions in land ownership, especially in the first century Bc. It would have been hard for many to create a secure home for children. Then there were the tribulations of conception and childbirth. Cicero doted on his daughter Tullia and her own experience tells of the challenges for even the wealthy. Her first two marriages were childless; one ended with the death of her husband, the second in divorce. Her third marriage was an unhappy one and her husband was often away with Caesar. She bore him her first child, a son, at 30. It died the same year. Pregnant again in 45 she died in childbirth and her second son survived only a month. Mortality of women in childbirth is estimated to have been between 10 and 15 in every 1,000 births. Many children died young, though if a man survived childhood and reached 20 he could expect on average another thirty-five years of life.
Tullia must have been one of hundreds of thousands of women and children whose sufferings in these disturbed times have passed unrecorded. Some took to a life of promiscuity, freely using their sexuality to enjoy a succession of lovers. Catullus and his ‘love’ for the dissolute Clodia have already been recorded. The Umbrian poet Propertius (c.50 Bc-after 16 Bc) vividly records his tortuous love affair with Cynthia, the sex snatched at odd moments. (‘We used to make love then on street corners, twining our bodies together, while our cloaks took the chill off the side walk.’) These women have their sexual power and well they know it. They are all too ready to deride their hapless lovers. Cynthia says to Propertius:
So you’ve come at last, and only because that other woman has thrown you out and closed the doors against you.
Where have you spent the night? That night that belonged to me?
Look at you creeping back with the dawn, a wreck.
It’d do you good to have to spend the sort of night you make me spend! You’d learn what cruelty is.
I sat up over my loom, trying to stave off sleep then tired of that and played the lyre a little.
(Translations: J. Warden)
Cynthia’s adept, and somewhat manipulative, presentation of herself as weaver and musician reminds the reader that the loom and the lyre was the symbol of the virtuous wife. When Augustus, as part of his campaign to restore social order, instituted a return to the traditional decorum of marriage he insisted that his wife Livia should be seen to be making the family’s clothes. So, despite the dislocations of the late Republic, the old traditions persisted. As Gillian Clark points out in her Women in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1993), they are found surviving even in the late empire.
In the first of his Georgies the poet Virgil, whose homeland around Mantua had been laid waste in the conflicts of the late republic, pleaded with the ancient gods of Rome to allow Octavian, ‘this youthful prince, to save a world which was in ruins. There had now been periods of disruption in Italy since the Social War of 90 bc with the years 49 to 31 being ones of almost continuous civil war. Octavian appeared to be in a position to offer peace. He had a monopoly of armed force, with some sixty legions under his command and the means to maintain them from the wealth of Egypt and taxation from the empire. Yet this did not assure stability. The loyalties of so many troops could not be guaranteed forever, particularly if there were no further enemies for them to confront, and their commanders were to conceive other ambitions. It was essential to have most of them disbanded and settled as soon as possible.
Octavian’s position with the senators was also uncertain. Even though many had died at Pharsalus and in the proscriptions of 43 bc, the survivors still retained a belief in their role as the defenders of libertas against anyone who threatened to become a dictator or monarch. There was much the senators could do to make Octavian’s position untenable. Even his aura as military commander was not unblemished. Accusations of cowardice at the Battle of Philippi lingered, while Actium had been a scrappy victory. Octavian had to enhance his image by emphasizing the acclamation he had received as imperator (the accolade given to a victorious commander by his troops) during campaigns in the Balkans in the late 30s. He adopted the title, from which the word emperor is derived, as a praenomen. In 29 bc, in an attempt to further dignify his image as a commander, he celebrated three glorious days of triumph: one for victory in the Balkans, one for Actium, and one for Egypt.
Whatever his failings as a commander (and his next campaign, in Spain in 26 bc, was no more than a temporary success), Octavian now proved a consummate political operator. In the years that followed he was to forge a permanent settlement with the senators that transformed the collapsed republic into an empire while still maintaining the pretence that republican ideals and institutions persisted. While never using a title grander than prineeps, first citizen, one that had honourable precedents in the republic, Octavian was to emerge with senatorial approval as ‘Augustus, with a package of powers which gave him, and, as it turned out, his successors, the status of an emperor. (See Anthony Everitt, The First Emperor: Caesar Augustus and the Triumph of Rome, London, 2006, for a solid biography; Karl Galinsky (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, Cambridge, 2005, for essays covering most aspects of the Augustan age.)
World History
