Women

One - and arguably the only - area that remains thoroughly understudied in the realm of Roman spectacle is the role of women, and the discourse about that role. The most extensive discussion of any female entertainer in the Roman world, albeit one that falls outside the strict chronological limit of this chapter, is Procopius’ assault on the reputation of Theodora, the future wife of Justinian. Her talent, so he claims, was puffing out her cheeks in an amusing fashion. Her official zone of performance was the theater, where, with her sister, she gave performances between chariot races. Her efforts in this regard paled in comparison with the sexual gymnastics in which she routinely engaged, if Procopius is to be believed, with a remarkable number of men. Procopius’ attack on Theodora, as with other male critiques, tended to suggest that independent women must be prostitutes (Procop. Arc. 8). Other displays involving women, likewise described as sex shows, include the nude water ballet at Antioch deplored by John Chrysostom in the fourth century ce, or the Floralia at Rome, where prostitutes seem to have dramatized the escape of women from Lars Porsenna (Brown 1988: 316; Wiseman 1999: 197-8). In the classical Greek world, the flute girl was also assumed to be a prostitute. The same sort of critique was leveled against actors in any genre not sanctified by inclusion in the agonistic cycle (see section 2 above). In simplest terms, the view was that since they acted in plays where illicit sex was central to the plot, actors and actresses were themselves people of very loose morals (Webb 2002: 296-7).

The discourse of infamia occludes issues of a very different sort. By simply claiming that men and women who played in roles that excited thoughts of sex on the part of their audience were morally reprehensible, members of the upper classes evaded their own responsibility as the financial backers of these very entertainments. Like the negative discourse about gladiatorial combat pandering to the base desires of the humble, the authors of this discourse often avoided admitting that they were as fascinated by what was going on in front of them as anyone else. At the same time, there is ample evidence to suggest that a career on the stage was potentially very lucrative for women. Although it falls outside the period covered in this chapter, a rescript of Theodosius in 393 forbidding women of the stage to dress in the clothing that ordinarily could only be afforded by women of the upper classes reflects a much broader social fact (CTh. 15.7.11). Women of the lower classes could make very substantial sums of money from their trade: centuries earlier, Cicero reports that a good female dancer could make 200,000 sesterces for a single appearance, and Volum-nia with whom Mark Antony (and others) had affairs in the forties bce was able to move in upper-class circles because she had made a great deal of money (Lebek 1996: 44).

If the popularity of public spectacle freed some women from dependence upon individual males to advance economically, it also challenged the restrictions placed on women of good family. Women as well as men were the object of the senatus consultum of 19 ce that forbade people of equestrian and senatorial status from appearing on the stage or in the arena. At the same time, of course, it reveals that this was a choice that women could make if they wanted to. The range of possibilities in such a career was very great. It extended from wretched careers that might be compared to those of strippers or other workers in modern industries that appeal primarily to male sexual fantasy, to careers that might reasonably be compared to those of modern pop idols in terms of their financial success. At the same time, it also appears that the desire to compete with the past opened up performance opportunities for girls of aristocratic families that were unparalleled in any other period of antiquity. The discourse concerning these careers (which were intended to end with marriage) shows a definite admission that women could participate in some spectacles without damaging their status, and further suggests that in the Greek east (though not in the Latin west) parental support could be found for girls who wanted to perform in a variety of stage and athletic events.

The impetus for this movement appears to have come from Sparta. A feature of the refoundation of the traditions of the agOge after 146 bce was the creation of an extended course of athletic training for girls (Cartledge and Spawforth 1989: 206; Mantos 1995: 134). In the twenties bce Propertius wrote:

Sparta, I marvel at many of the rules of your wrestling ground, but most of all at the many delights of gymnasia where girls train, because a girl exercises her naked body without shame amidst wrestling men, when the ball deceives the arms with a swift throw, and the hooked rod clanks against the rolling hoop, and the dust-covered woman stands at the end of the track, and endures the wounds from harsh pancration: now she ties joyful arms to the boxing-glove with thongs, now she turns the flying weight of the discus in a circle. (3.14.1-10)

Propertius’ vision of female athleticism offers important insight into some aspects of the account of the reforms of Lycurgus, the legendary Spartan lawgiver, written by Plutarch toward the beginning of the second century ce. In composing his account, Plutarch was plainly influenced by contemporary admiration for what were felt to be the benefits, both in terms of health and morality, of the existing Spartan system. Thus Plutarch says:

He [Lycurgus] exercised the bodies of young women in footraces, wrestling, the casting of the discus, and of the javelin, so that the product of their wombs would have a strong beginning in strong bodies and come better to maturity so that they would have easy pregnancies and deliveries... nor was there anything disgraceful in the nudity of young girls for they were modest and wantonness was banished. (Lyc. 14.2, 4)

That Plutarch’s understanding was not derived from some earlier source is strongly suggested by the fact that discussions of Spartan women in the fifth century BCE imply that the system of female education then in place created nymphomaniacs, and by the fact that it corresponds to medical theory current in the imperial, though not the classical, period (Oribasius 18.11-15; 21.4 [quoting Rufus of Ephesus]; Galen 9.109 Kuhn).

The competitive recreation of archaic Sparta would prove to have important consequences for young women who lived outside of Sparta. General admiration for Spartan virtue, an admiration that increased the further the reality of classical Sparta receded into the past, seems to have inspired imitation of the Spartan training system for girls. One of the speakers in Athenaeus’ Doctors at Dinner, a work with a dramatic date at the beginning of the third century ce, observes:

The Spartan habit of showing naked girls to strangers is praised, and, on the island of Chios, it is pleasant to walk into the gymnasia and along the race courses to see young men wrestling with girls. (Deip. 13.366e)

In this case it is probably correct to press the point that the speaker refers to the young men who are wrestling with girls as neoi, indicating that this training was continued for girls, whom we may assume to be of roughly the same age as the neoi, into older adolescence. This view is also necessitated by the fact that Plutarch explains the advantage of the Spartan system in terms of its impact on girls’ reproductive lives.

The result of the reformed Spartan system, and its imitation elsewhere, was thus to create a cadre of teenaged women who were capable athletes, and could participate in a range of sports that was unthinkable in the classical period, when female athletes seem to have been early adolescents, and participated only in footraces. It also gave rise to new festivals in which these women could participate. At Sparta, for instance, an inscription records a female victor in a footrace at the Livia, a festival in honor of the wife of Augustus, who had sought refuge at Sparta in the triumviral period before her engagement to the future emperor (SEG 11 no. 861; Mantos 1995: 134). The extent of these contests is further suggested by an inscription from Delphi honoring the three daughters of a man named Hermesianax, who had won victories in races at a variety of festivals in the Peloponnese in the first half of the first century ce (SIG3 802). Their victories in events such as the Asclepeia at Epidauros, the Pythian,

Nemean, and Isthmian games, as well as at a lesser festival at Sicyon, reveals the extent of the efflorescence of footraces for young women; when Menander Rhetor says that ‘‘in some festivals, such as at Olympia, women do not appear at all,’’ he could be read as saying that at many they did (Men. Rh. 364.5-6). Other sources reveal that these festivals included events other than footraces. Nero appears to have brought Spartan female wrestlers to Rome, possibly in the context of his Capitoline games in the sixties. We know little of the impression they made, save that a scandal ensued when a member of the Senate named Palfurius Sura convinced one of these women to engage him in a wrestling match. We do not know who won, and Nero does not seem to have objected. Vespasian did, and expelled Palfurius from the Senate (Schol. ad Juv. 4.53). Women were not included when Domitian refounded the Capitoline games, and female athletes appear to have been restricted in their activity to the east. To judge from the remarkable account offered by John Malalas of the Olympic Games refounded by Commodus at Antioch in 181 ce, the Spartan-inspired range of female events remained very much an activity for girls of aristocratic background. It is worth quoting Malalas’ account because it seems to be influenced by archival material (Schenk 1931: 419 n. 13, contra Mantos 1995: 142), including, possibly, a civic decree that spelled out the connection, for the Greek world, between athletic participation and virtue:

Well born young people came from every city and district to the sacred contest of the Olympic games, competing under an oath, and they contended against each other. Receiving no money from any source, they conducted themselves chastely and with great moderation; they were rich, having their own slaves as attendants, each according their own wealth, and many of them were maidens.... There were maidens who practiced philosophy and were present under a vow of chastity; competing, wrestling in leggings, running, declaiming and reciting various Greek hymns. These women competed against other women and the competition was intense, whether it was in wrestling, the races or recitation. (Malal. 12.10)

Septimius Severus seems to have respected these traditions. When he brought women’s games to Rome - he may even have been present at the Antiochene Olympics that took place during his term as a legate to Pertinax in Syria - he was deeply disappointed to discover that a Roman audience, used to regarding female entertainers as curiosities, greeted the event by chanting lewd acclamations. Severus was not amused: he banned the exhibition of female gladiators altogether, perhaps thinking that such exhibitions had so corrupted Roman taste that a Roman audience could not appreciate what female athletes were doing (Dio 75.16.1). The confusion in the Roman audience between women who engaged in athletic contests and female gladiators reflects the fact that there was no widespread western adaptation of the Spartan myth.

We have no text that provides much information on the history of female gladiators. It is likely that their emergence reflects the ongoing desire to find something new with which to titillate the fancy of spectators in the amphitheater. Since their existence is implied by the senatus consultum of 19 ce, while Cicero does not mention them (one may well imagine that Clodia would have appeared as agladiatrix as well as everything else in Cicero’s defense of Caelius if female gladiators existed at that time), it is likely that they are a creation of the expanding spectacle culture of the

Augustan age. At no time do they appear to have been common. To judge from comments in Petronius’ Satyricon, and an inscription found at Ostia which records their first appearance there in the second century, female gladiators were regarded as a special treat for the fans (Fora 1996: no. 29). As for how they fought, a monument erected in commemoration of some games at Halicarnassus records that a duel between two women, named, appropriately enough, Amazon and Achillea, ended in a draw (Coleman 2000a). The significance of this object (aside from providing the only representation of female gladiators that has survived) is that it shows that women fought according to the same rules as men. It would be possible for women to fight only if they had access to some sort of professional training.

In roles ranging from athletes to gladiators, in performances ranging from the routines of veiled castanet dancers in Egypt (Webb 2002: 286) to nude water ballet at Antioch, women came to play a significant role in Roman spectacle. Careers are likely to have been short: female athletes were evidently supposed to give up competitive performance upon marriage, while the evidence for stage performers likewise suggests that they were younger women. But they were still careers, and while some of them were exploitative, the extreme interest in performances by women (one young man was so fascinated by castanet dancers that he fell from a window: P. Oxy. 475) stands as a powerful illustration of the main point of this survey: that public spectacle thrived because it challenged the norms of hierarchical society. The role of women is an important reminder that the study of Roman spectacle must concentrate not only on the role of the games in supporting the social order, but also on the ways in which these same spectacles could offer opportunities to those who wished to escape its constraints.

It is unlikely that we will ever be able to understand the role of spectacle in Roman life if we concentrate on public venues and legal distinctions; likewise it is very difficult to understand any one style of entertainment in isolation from others. There were plainly people who were not interested in any of this; some people genuinely shared the attitudes expressed by the younger Pliny and preferred to attend poetry recitals, or even listen to Pliny recite his rhetorical works. Since their voices are expressing approved aristocratic attitudes toward leisure activity, they may often drown out other voices, voices that expressed a majority opinion. Pliny never suggests that he would have a gladiator or actor around the house, but there is enough evidence to suggest that plenty of other people would have. Roman spectacle extends across a spectrum ranging from private indulgence to local festival, from local festival to provincial event, and finally to the grandiose events in which emperors displayed their magnificence to their people.

The imperial government played a significant role in shaping the tastes of its subjects; one of the most striking features of the urban landscape of the Roman Empire is the ubiquity of buildings associated with all manner of entertainments. While some emperors might fine-tune the system by expressing particular interest in one form of entertainment over another, in the long run the Roman state, by supporting local government based upon a model of civic benefaction, encouraged the spread of the full range of entertainment. The result was that between the first and fourth centuries CE a spectacle culture arose in the territory of the Roman Empire that helped forge a common urban culture unmatched prior to the modern era.