Conclusion

The three accounts discussed here span more than two centuries and have come down to us in different ways: a funerary epitaph engraved on stone; a collection of letters published by a well-known literary figure during his lifetime and known to us via a (now lost) sixth-century manuscript (Radice 1969: xxvi); and a prison narrative preserved by the Christian community of Carthage, where it was read out in church each year on the anniversary of the author’s death (and in the process reinterpreted by late antique church authorities) (B. D. Shaw 1993; Salisbury 1997: 166-79). Though the circumstances of their composition and preservation differ significantly, all three narratives share a common trait: despite their (to us) highly personal nature, all were consciously composed with an audience in mind, and all are in a sense apologiae, explanations of the authors’ motivations and actions. The anonymous husband who commemorated his wife did so in a speech given at her funeral, which he then memorialized permanently for all to see; Pliny clearly chose for dissemination those letters which he believed revealed him in an understandable and attractive light; and Perpetua knew that her status as a martyr gave her account (and especially her visions) great authority in the eyes of other Christians, present and future. Intimate though these documents are, they are not ‘‘private’’ in the sense that they were meant only for the author and perhaps a few close companions. They tell us only what their authors want us to know. But that does not detract from their value as historical evidence, for these deliberately composed accounts tell us much about the values of the individual and his or her society, and demonstrate how social, religious, and political ideals could come into conflict with the desires and needs of real men and women. Pliny and Turia’s husband feel compelled to tell the world (and the emperor) that they really do want children, but that they love and esteem their wives as much as if not more than any potential offspring. Perpetua shows her fellow Christians that she is willing to sacrifice her own and her family’s well-being and happiness for her faith, but she also lets them know how painful and traumatic that sacrifice is.

The social and political pressures placed on Romans like Pliny, Perpetua, and Turia’s husband were quite different from those faced by Americans and Europeans today: imperial demands that citizens marry and produce children, and the harsh repression of a non-conformist religious cult by means of degrading public execution. But however unfamiliar the circumstances in which they wrote may seem to us, the emotions they (intentionally) reveal are instantly recognizable: grief at the death of a beloved long-time partner; awkwardness in explaining a wife’s miscarriage to her family; conflict between a determined daughter and an elderly father devastated at the loss of his favorite child in the most horrible way imaginable. It is through these narratives of family relationships, very private but at the same time very public, that we come closest to the Romans as human beings.