In 1965 Moses Finley published an article, ‘‘The silent women of ancient Rome’’ (unchanged in 1968 and 1977 reprints), arguing that the sources for Roman women were few, ‘‘at cross-purposes’’ with one another, and included no woman’s voice; hence we could form no reliable picture of women in that society. Since then, there has been a flood of books and articles on women of Rome and of many other parts of the ancient world. None of them has been able to find the direct voice of such women, with a few exceptions (the poets Sappho and Sulpicia, a few epitaphs and monuments), but we have become more expert in how to read a wide range of sources to help us see women in the contexts in which they operated. Study of ‘‘the Roman family”1 has developed in many directions since the initial modern studies in the field, helping us better understand women’s roles and relationships with husbands, children, the household, and the interface of these with public life. Studies of benefactions (‘‘euergetism’’) and patronage have revealed more of women’s economic and social activities, as have the studies of professions and jobs. Since Crook’s 1967 work, studies of the voluminous Roman legal texts have been more interested in societal implications than fine jurisprudential points, and women of various status groups are found to be frequent figures in the case studies examined.
New methodology has led to more subtle understanding of ‘‘representations,’’ especially in art and literature. Large bodies of funerary inscriptions have been systematically studied, illuminating personal relationships and revealing the central role of mother - father - child relationships. Other disciplines, especially anthropology and demography, have provided comparative perspectives, for instance on ritual, relationships, health, and death. Modern interest in topics such as sexuality and eroticism has encouraged scholars to look at Roman evidence with a different eye. Our challenge is to try to interpret ‘‘representations’’ and to elicit something of ‘‘reality’’ - or, better, ‘‘realities’’ - for different women.
Much of the new work has focused on the imperial period, where there is a greater quantity and diversity of ancient sources. For the period before the first century BC,
The only continuous, near-contemporary historical source which remains is the early part of the history written by the Greek Polybius. There are fragments extant of various Latin annalists, the epic poet and dramatist Ennius, and of Cato the Elder’s history. The focus of all these is political and military and not such as to tell us much about women or social and cultural life. There are the Latin plays of Plautus and Terence, but as these were based on Greek originals it is difficult to know to what degree they represent Roman life (see also Chapter 25). Archaeology yields little for our topic in the period before the first century, although Etruscan material provides a useful contrast. The few inscriptions extant for this period mostly record official acts and careers, and although Roman coinage becomes richer toward the end of the second century there is little to be deduced from it for our topic. The Twelve Tables were the earliest codification of Roman law (mid-fifth century), and enough of it has been reconstructed to give us some insight into early Roman values, social relationships, the principles of property, and individuals’ rights and duties. Marriage was recognized as a fundamental institution in society. Women could own property in their own right from at least this period. The principle of equal inheritance rights for daughters and sons was recognized.
For the first half of the first century, the contemporary sources we still possess are more numerous and more diverse. The works of Caesar and Sallust are the earliest analytical history in Latin to survive, going beyond the chronological accounts of earlier annalists. Neither of these writers, however, provides much material for our purpose, except for Sallust’s thumbnail sketch of Sempronia as a woman of high rank involved in Catiline’s conspiracy to seize power in 63, to which we shall return. Cicero’s writings, especially his letters and speeches, throw more light on women active in the society of his day, and extracts from some contemporaries’ commentaries on Roman law survive in the later compilation, the Digest. Cornelius Nepos’ surviving biographies and fragments are of some limited use. Catullus’ love poetry takes us into the world of sex, marriage, and society, and Lucretius’ philosophical epic On the Nature of the World (De rerum natura) offers the occasional glimpse into human emotions. The inscriptions of the first half of the first century are not the rich source for personal relationships which later ones are, but an epitaph for Aurelia Philematio and her spouse (Fig. 15.1) anticipates the taste for such commemoration which developed quickly in the period following the fall of the Republic. Individual women had been commemorated with public statues as ideals of Roman virtues: Cloelia, a young woman of the late sixth century, for her bravery and patriotism; Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi and daughter of Scipio Africanus, as the ideal mother (but also a symbol in the factional politics of the late second century). It was when a taste for private funerary commemoration developed in the early to mid - first century that humbler people, including women and children (many of them slaves or of slave origin), began to find a place. We shall return to these below.
Later sources, both Latin and Greek, for the republican period will be drawn on below. Those closest in time to our period were the historian Livy (late first century BC into early first century ad) and the moral anecdotalist Valerius Maximus (first half of the first century ad).
Problems involved in using the available sources to reconstruct, or imagine, Rome of the republican period are inherent in every chapter of this book. For this chapter, there is a particular problem which must be faced in trying to discover ‘‘real’’ Roman women and their contexts. That is the strongly moral purpose of much Roman writing (especially history), the use of myth, and the role of women as symbols of past virtues and vices. Interpretations of myths and legends have varied considerably over the years, and there is still work to be done in learning to interpret these aspects. It is an area where it is difficult to free oneself from assumptions and personal ideologies, but a fresh approach and an open mind are needed.
One of the most enduring of Roman legends was the rape of Lucretia. Attributed to the sixth century, the story enshrined the ideal of female chastity and the honor of Roman women determined to die, if necessary, in the cause of that ideal. Rape was also a prime element in the story of the fifth-century Verginia, presented as a more defenseless young girl than the high-ranking married woman of independent character which Lucretia was. Verginia’s father took the initiative to protect her from a loss of status and from abduction by killing her himself. Apart from Livy’s detailed account (1. 57-9), Cicero was earlier able to refer to Lucretia briefly, as part of a well-known story, when explaining the transition from monarchy to Republic (Rep. 2.25.46). A century and a half later, Juvenal could refer in the same breath to Lucretia and Verginia as warnings of the potential curse of beauty, and the folly of humans who pray for such apparent blessings (Satires 10. 193-5), and assume that the allusions would be readily understood. Such myths and stories were laid deep in the consciousness of girls and boys in their early years. Both these stories had political purposes, but they also perpetuated the Roman ideal of female chastity and the close identity of this with a Roman man’s own identity and honor. When women behaved independently, or, according to more traditional views, improperly, their menfolk were criticized for not exercising the control expected of them.
This kind of criticism is expressed in a speech attributed by Livy (34. 1-8) to Cato the Elder in 195, when women staged a public demonstration in Rome to obtain the repeal of the Oppian Law, a wartime measure which continued to restrict women’s wealth and display. The speech excoriated fellow-senators for allowing the women to behave so freely. Although the form of the speech is Livy’s creation, source analysis has shown that Livy used many original records. Many earlier speeches, including those of Cato, were still available. Much of Cato’s speech criticizes women and men alike for their acquisitive tastes, and recognizes that women often have their own wealth to draw on for display. There is a political as well as moral color to his criticism of women: they were meeting secretly and planning collective action. We can detect the long-standing Roman fear of gatherings which were not officially sanctioned and closely supervised. The same fear surfaces in Livy’s account of the ‘‘Bacchanalian affair’’ of 186 (see also Chapters 2, 10, 22, and 28); and it was an important element in criticism of Christian communities later. The meetings for the Oppian Law demonstrations must have been in private homes. It is clear that women of substance were involved. The tribune who replied to Cato’s speech referred to the respectable women (honestae) in the demonstration, whose presence inhibited Cato from criticism of individual women. References to wives of senators, who wanted finery to match their husbands’, indicate women of rank. And there is general admission that there were many precedents for women’s collective public action, always for public benefit (bonopublico). The Sabine women had intervened between the warring camps of their fathers and Roman husbands; Roman women had contributed wealth to the treasury in times of crisis; and they had been prominent in religious rites, such as the introduction of Cybele to Rome. Such roles were recognized by many men. In spite of Cato’s opposition the Oppian Law was repealed: men with views more sympathetic to the women’s case prevailed.
We find a different analysis of this incident in Valerius Maximus (9.1.3). He too places it in the context of the end of the Second Punic War, in a climate where there was less need of austerity and firm discipline, but this was a general climate, where women shared in the growing luxury and self-expression. For women, however, Valerius’ term is ‘‘boldness’’ (audacia). Valerius Maximus attributes women’s behavior to their lack of intellectual seriousness and the lack of outlets for them to participate in public life, with the implication that the two factors are interrelated. There had been precedents for women playing an important role in public life, but these were in time of crisis and not a regular and accepted part of the fabric of Roman public life. As political crises multiplied near the end of the Republic, some women’s names became prominent as active agents: Sempronia, wife of a consul of 77, wellborn, with many talents, but in her association with Catiline’s conspiracy in 63 portrayed by Sallust as having as many vices as charms, although her intellect was not contemptible ( Cat. 25); Servilia, mother of Brutus and half-sister of Cato the Younger and prominent in Cicero’s letters of the forties; Fulvia, married successively to Clodius, Curio, and Marc Antony. There was clearly active discussion and unease in the late Republic and early Empire about social as well as political conflict. The growing wealth and independence of women was one factor common to most analyses, but it was not the only one. Valerius Maximus perceived that men too had slipped away from earlier standards of self-discipline (continentia) and were implicitly more guilty, having more experience and training in matters of public importance. Men’s spending practices and needs increased in the last century or so of the Republic, as competition for office and status intensified (see also Chapter 17). The costs of public life for ambitious men were probably behind some moves to restrict women’s share of wealthy estates, such as the Voconian Law of 169. Gardner recognizes this, considering the law as ‘‘not hostile’’ to women who, as she says, still had many opportunities to acquire wealth.2
Eventually, competition and conflict came to a head in political and military action, and it was only after two rounds of civil wars in the forties and thirties that Octavian/ Augustus gained supreme power and set about finding solutions for Rome’s perceived problems. His measures were initially political and constitutional; from an early stage they also encompassed urban renewal. It was only in 18 that he directly faced moral issues and their ramifications. Before that year, most aspects of marriage and family life were dealt with within the family, rather than being regulated by legislation. Adultery, for example, was a matter between husband and wife or dealt with by a family council, until Augustus transferred responsibility for it to a public court. Adultery had always been defined as a woman’s crime, so Augustus’ law (the lex lulia de adulteriis) provided for the wife to be the primary target of prosecutions, although there were also penalties for the husband and lover of the guilty woman. The wife’s sexual propriety was essential to men’s confidence in the legitimacy of their children, their primary heirs. This was an economic issue as well as a moral one, but it has been a ‘‘gut issue’’ for men down through the ages.
There had been a long tradition in republican Rome of censors’ having moral supervision of the population. This was exercised through the male head of family (the paterfamilias), who had responsibility for the women under his authority (potestas). One group of women whose behavior was of particular public concern, which went beyond family or censors’ responsibility, was the Vestal Virgins. As we have a long series of incidents recorded for these women, and know many of them by name (in spite of Finley’s claim of the comparative anonymity of Roman women), they might repay closer examination for their intrinsic importance and for what they might reflect of developments involving women more widely. Until now, discussion of them has largely focused on religion and the Vestals’ ambivalent status (for instance, male privileges but female virginity; see also Chapter 10). It might be profitable to consider them in their wider social and political context.
The shrine of the goddess Vesta in the Forum contained an eternal flame whose continued fire protected Rome’s security and continuity. Her six priestesses, responsible for this flame, entered service in childhood and served for at least 30 years, under strict terms of celibacy. Their chastity was thus a matter of national security. Led by a Chief Vestal, they were of impeccable birth and had important roles in public ritual. They had special privileges, such as financial autonomy, being legally independent (sui iuris). We know nothing of their training or education after entry to the religious order, but either by formal coaching within the college or by the very experience of public privilege they came to understand their potential for real (if indirect) power in politics and public life. Of numerous examples of this, one of the best known is their role in late 63, when they intervened with the consul Cicero, who was agonizing about what to recommend to the Senate about the penalty for the captured high-ranking Catilinarian conspirators. Plutarch tells us (Cic. 20.1-2) that on the crucial night the festival of the Bona Dea (‘‘the Good Goddess’’) was being celebrated, open only to women. The sacrificial fire on the altar blazed up unexpectedly, and the Vestal Virgins interpreted this in political terms, as a sign that in the national interest the consul should hold firm in pursuing punishment for the conspirators. The message, which they sent immediately to Cicero, strengthened him to bring on a debate the next morning, which led to the death penalty for the conspirators. The story reflects extraordinary initiative on the part of the Vestals, conscious of their influence and standing and well-informed on the details of a current political crisis.
In that same year, one of the Vestals (Licinia) was active in supporting the candidacy of her relative L. Licinius Murena for the following year’s consulship. One gesture of support was to give Murena her space (locus) at the gladiatorial games. Augustus later allocated particular seats to the Vestals at public spectacles, but it is likely that they sat with other women of rank in the Republic. At the gladiatorial games, men and women were not segregated from each other; so whatever space Licinia allocated to Murena (for himself or his connections) was probably in close
Proximity to the Vestals and thus of high visibility and prestige. Cicero, defending Murena on a charge of bribery, refers to Licinia’s gesture as one of a range of benefits which candidates for office might justifiably receive from family and friends (Mur. 73). Cicero had a vested interest in justifying benefits which had been criticized by the prosecution as improper influence, but he does not contest the fact of Licinia’s gesture. A reference elsewhere to Clodia, wife of the consul of 60, Metellus Celer, reveals that various people of rank had privileged public space to dispose of; her brother Clodius resented her unwillingness to share with him much of her ‘‘consular space’’ at the games and so help his political campaign in that year (Cicero Att. 2.1.5).
The mixture of religious and secular life experienced by priests at Rome, including the Vestals, is illustrated by a report of a pontifical banquet put on in 69 to honor the inauguration of L. Cornelius Lentulus Niger as a priest of Mars (flamen Martialis), one of the senior religious officials at Rome. The report comes from the fifth-century AD writer Macrobius (Sat. 3.13.10-11), but he cites the pontifical records as his authority. It was a lavish banquet, in rooms elaborately decorated and fitted with fine furnishings. Those present were the male priests, four named Vestals, and two other women - these two were Lentulus’ wife Publicia, who as wife of the flamen became flaminica and took on religious duties, and Publicia’s mother Sempronia - a select and high-ranking company. (Macrobius’ male-oriented viewpoint is reflected in his reference to Sempronia as the mother-in-law of Lentulus. Surely she was there as Publicia’s mother? There is no evidence to suggest that a mother-in-law had any special standing.) Macrobius tells the story as an example of the great value once attached to the pleasures of the table, much greater than in his own day. This was a standard of living to which those present in 69 were accustomed. The priests were public officials, not ordained or consecrated in the way priests in our own society are, and all were very much part of the public life of their day (see also Chapters 10 and 12). In August of 69 the conversation at this dinner must have been lively: elections, a serious pirate problem in the Mediterranean, erosion of Lucullus’ command in the East, the aftermath of the trial of Verres for corruption as governor of Sicily, and the trial in the same year (also for corruption as a provincial governor) of the brother of one of the Vestals, Fonteia. Fonteia is not named as being present at the banquet. Perhaps it would have been seen as inappropriate for her to attend the grand pontifical celebration. Defendants and their supporters often put on mourning during a trial, and Cicero makes much, in his defense speech, of Fonteia’s tearful presence and intercession for her brother (Font. 46-9). Those Vestals present, however, and the other two women, will have made the most of their opportunity to keep abreast of social and political issues of the highest importance in Rome.
In 61 the Vestals had a direct role in investigating a scandal which had erupted around Clodius, whose career had made a promising beginning with election in that year to the quaestorship but who was threatened by allegations that he had committed sacrilege by being smuggled into the women-only ritual of Bona Dea. The Vestals, officiating at the ritual, might themselves have witnessed Clodius’ intrusion. As we saw above, they socialized with some of the most distinguished women (and men) in Rome, and those women will have been present. Clodius’ sisters were surely present - the three women named Clodia - and others with family and political connections with Clodius and the Claudius clan. The Senate required the Vestals, with the relevant priests (the pontifices), to pronounce on whether the rites had been vitiated. The Vestals must have been under great pressure and lobbying, but they could hardly avoid concurring that a wrong (a nefas) had occurred. Lobbying of them and by them probably continued when Clodius was brought to trial before a specially constituted tribunal for what we would call sacrilege but what was a new interpretation of incestum. Clodius’ acquittal is usually put down to bribery of the jury, but we can guess that personal and political pressure was also brought to bear on many of the jurors. A particular role for women in this is suggested by Cicero (Att. 1.16.5, in the year 61), who as a witness against Clodius had reason to discredit the jurors after the verdict. The majority of them, he alleges, were disreputable and short of money, but the bribes also included assignations with ‘‘certain ladies’’ and introductions to youths of high-ranking families. Might the ladies too have been of elite families, bringing to bear whatever pressure they could on social peers (the jurors were senators and equestrians)? That such pressure included sexual favors is not implausible, but it might well have had other dimensions. From what we have already seen, upper-class women had many opportunities to be familiar with public controversies and many reasons to wish to influence them.
A casualty of the scandal was Caesar’s then wife Pompeia, in whose house the ritual was being celebrated, as wife of a magistrate with imperium (Caesar was praetor). There was inevitable suspicion that she was the attraction for Clodius’ intrusion, and anyway she had responsibility for the good conduct of the evening. Caesar divorced her, not explicitly for sexual misconduct (which would have involved disruption to any public ties with Clodius), but with the famous words attributed to him by Plutarch (Caes. 10) that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.
In the totality and special nature of their powers and status, Vestal Virgins were not like other women and cannot be taken as wholly representative of Roman women. But they were human beings, members of families which carried on with the business of everyday life, and they interacted with these families and with the wider public. Although the Vestals lived in a special house, adjoining Vesta’s shrine, this was in the middle of the Forum, the center of Rome’s public life and all kinds of comings and goings (see Map 8). They were in no way cloistered, and we have seen some examples of their influence and indeed involvement in various aspects of Roman life. They gossiped, as did many Roman men, and the women who shared in these conversations will have shared many of the Vestals’ economic, political, and social interests. Women friends had estates to administer (although, unlike the Vestals, they were supervised by a tutor, a kind of financial guardian), their menfolk competed for political office and in business, and women played a role in marriage arrangements and other family alliances. Such shared interests and activities suggest that in the Vestals we can get some reflection of other women of their time (although the context will be largely upper-class). It was not just the Vestals’ religious role that made them taken seriously, by both men and women, in wider aspects of Roman life. Priestesses in other societies, such as classical Athens, are not known to have had such influence and involvement. The Vestals were in many ways women of their time.
The requirement for celibacy, however, was absolute, and the traditional penalty for breaking that vow (incestum) was to be buried alive (because direct execution of a sacrosanct person would have been sacrilege). The string of prosecutions against Vestals from at least the fourth century reflects the seriousness with which their vows were taken in public life; but other factors may have lain behind the charge of incestum. This charge was the most direct way of striking at the central identity and status of a Vestal, and the link with national security took it beyond the sphere of private morals into that of the public interest. There is a series of named Vestal Virgins in the records of Rome.3 A number of these were convicted of incestum. Sometimes the male accomplices were named and also charged; and if convicted they were subject to severe penalties, such as public execution in the Forum or a public flogging which resulted in death; but they were not subject to the traditional penalty reserved for the sacrosanct bodies of the Vestals. Not all of the Vestals charged were convicted. The number of acquittals probably reflects the influence and powerful connections of these women. In 114 and 113, there was much popular discontent with the acquittals of two of the three Vestals who had been prosecuted. The suspicion that tight upper-class loyalties were achieving such verdicts is revealed in the political action which was immediately taken to obtain new trials under a new form of jurisdiction. Attacks were at least as much on the pontifex maximus and the pontifices, who had presided at the earlier trial in the traditional procedure. The appointment of a special prosecutor for a new trial was carried through by a plebiscite sponsored by a tribune of the plebs. (This is the immediate post-Gracchan period.) This time, convictions were obtained not only of the original three but of several others, and the death penalty was imposed. (The method of death was perhaps not by the traditional method, because the pontifex maximus did not preside.) Although the new procedure satisfied the complaints of‘‘the People,’’ the executions brought much criticism for their harshness. One of those charged in 114 was a young Marcus Antonius, the future famous orator and the grandfather of the triumvir Marc Antony. He seized the high moral ground (by not taking advantage of magisterial immunity), and this, with his already gifted oratory and the loyalty of one of his slaves, achieved his acquittal. The charge does not seem to have affected his later career. Crassus’ defense, when he was charged with being the lover of a Vestal in 75, was that he was pursuing her to wheedle a desirable property out of her, at a low price. The judges found the motive of avarice more plausible than that of sexual seduction and dismissed the charge. Plutarch tells the story (Crass. 1.2) to illustrate one of Crassus’ prime characteristics; but it is also for us another illustration of Vestals as women of property and business dealings. The prosecutions of men of rank also suggest possible political motives.
Although the charge of incestum probably often had ulterior motives, the charge itself need not lack some credibility. The Vestals moved freely enough in society to have opportunities to form liaisons; there were many adventurous young men in that society, of whom Clodius and the love poet Catullus are examples; and most periods of history have provided examples of‘‘errant’’ nuns and priests. Nevertheless, we have seen enough of Vestals’ activities to understand that prosecutions of them might have been a means to silence their political voice or that of their connections. Prosecutions could also be provoked, in times of national crisis, by the heightened tensions in society. Toward the end of the third century, when Hannibal was inflicting defeat on the Romans on Italian soil, popular superstition was aroused by fearsome prodigies. Before the Battle of Cannae, in 216, two Vestals charged with unchastity were an easy target and were executed, but after the disastrous battle the unchastity was seen as a portent (prodigium) which required a different expiation. In 114 there were rumblings of imminent threats to Roman power, from Africa and the eastern Mediterranean and the northern borders.
There may also have been a growing fear, in conservative quarters, of women of wealth and influence. We may, in the past, have underestimated the real political power of upper-class women because the study of‘‘politics’’ focused on the men who competed for magistracies and military command and in the law courts. But today we are well aware of the wider meaning of political power, and can recognize it in the world of business, law, the media, and entertainment. The old prosopographical method, previously applied mainly to Roman men (see Chapter 1), might fruitfully be extended to women: by examining their family connections and traditions, we might more easily recognize their active roles in networks, patronage, business, friendships and enmities, and intellectual life.
By the late Republic, Roman women seem seldom to have entered a husband’s legal power (manus), or ownership, when they married. They remained subject to the power (potestas) of their paterfamilias, usually their father, while he was alive, meaning that, among other things, daughters could not own property or make valid contracts. After his death they were technically independent (sui iuris), but in many matters, especially the administration of property, they were subject to the supervision of an overseer, or guardian (a tutor). Women of initiative, however, do not seem to have been seriously hampered by this, and the very ownership of wealth and property gave those whose possessed them great status and influence, both inside the family and beyond. There was a long tradition of criticism of women who were domineering because of the size of their dowry or extravagant because of their love of spending (especially on clothes). In fact, it had been a rhetorical commonplace for centuries to deplore wealth and luxury; often this was associated with nostalgia for a supposed earlier period of virtue and simplicity. The criticism of women in particular indicates a society where a not inconsiderable number of women were used to handling and displaying wealth. The resources of such women were gratefully exploited by the state in times of national emergency.
Roman women had never changed their name on marriage. They retained the name of their natal family, and thus an identity separate from their husband’s, although they might sometimes be identified as ‘‘the wife of... ’’, for instance, the most notorious of the Clodia sisters, married to Q. Caecilius Metellus Celer, might be referred to as ‘‘Clodia Metelli.’’ Cornelia (above) and Caecilia Metella (below) are each identified as daughter and wife of a noble man.
The extensive powers of the male head of household (the paterfamilias) have often been seen as severely inhibiting the freedom and independence of family members. Slaves owned by the paterfamilias were indeed property, subject entirely to their master’s power (although toward the end of our period public opinion and then legislation placed limits on the more extreme forms of such power, recognizing some form of humanity even in slaves; see also Chapter 14). Adult sons and daughters, however, almost always lived in separate, independent households. Young men often did this as they became active in public life, and husbands and wives established their own households on marriage. This separate physical existence, and the demographic forces which left most adults fatherless and often parentless from young adulthood or earlier, contributed to more independent lives than the legal technicalities would suggest.
Republican women of many social levels were left with even more independent responsibilities as Rome extended her power in Italy, the Mediterranean, and beyond, and men were called away to fight wars and administer new provinces. Wives in city and country must have had to make many decisions about the rearing and education of children, household budgets, and family businesses. Women had probably always contributed to agricultural and other labor, but in the absence of men of military age the burden was heavier for women, and children took on more at early ages, especially in households with modest or no assistance from slaves. For the women widowed by these circumstances, such responsibilities were permanent. Remarriage for women was frequent in Roman society but not universal. Because husbands were typically about ten years older than their wives (see below), ordinary mortality ensured that there were always more young women seeking husbands than men looking for wives, and the same difference in numbers will have obtained among widows and widowers. In addition, supplies of men in the prime of life were severely reduced in periods of prolonged warfare. Daughters had fewer prospects of marriage in their hometown.
It is impossible to recover the voice of women affected by these absences and deaths. Did they thrive on new responsibilities? Did these responsibilities contribute to the apparent social unease, discontent, or even revolution which can be detected in Rome from Augustus’ time, when husbands were no longer absent for such long periods? In the twentieth century, periods of world wars saw women in the Western world take on responsibilities and positions in the workforce which had previously belonged to men. When returned soldiers began to reclaim their old positions and there were many pressures to put women back into a more restricted domestic role, much social and economic tension resulted. For literate and cultivated upper-class Roman women, the return of absentee husbands might have inhibited some women’s social and intellectual freedom. Rome’s great love poetry was all written in the late Republic and the very early Principate. It was ‘‘probably almost all inspired by adulterous affairs with temporarily deserted upper-class wives. Later, husbands were less fully committed to public affairs, or took their wives to the provinces with them, and love poetry at Rome died.’’5 That poetry does not seem to have been addressed to single younger women. Their chaperoning cannot have been foolproof, but there is no real evidence of their love affairs, and accusations of such affairs are absent from political invective at Rome.
How lower-class and rural women fared in wartime is not clear from our sources. Lower-class women must always have needed to have jobs, and inscriptions record a wide variety of working women, in clerical jobs and entertainment, as nurses and midwives, personal attendants, beauticians, and, beyond the household, barmaids and prostitutes. Most of these are from the city of Rome, and slaves and ex-slaves dominate the record from the second century, in a wide range of specialized jobs. The growing number of slaves brought into Rome (mostly from the East), and often reared there, could learn crafts and specialized forms of service in their owners’ households, sometimes from early childhood. Ex-slaves were often sponsored in businesses by their former owners. If rural women were forced to migrate to Rome for jobs, they must have found the competition difficult.6
Valuable as inscriptions are for jobs and careers, most funerary epitaphs record only a name or a set of names. Until the late Republic, inscriptions tended to be honorific ones attesting public careers, and women did not receive these, being ineligible to hold city magistracies, govern provinces, hold priesthoods (except for Vestals), or serve in the army. The occasional statues for women might have had a brief inscription attached to identify them. It was with funerary inscriptions, which became more numerous from the early or mid-first century, that a wider range of the population began to be represented. What these people commemorated, above all, was family relationships: they often had little else to record. Moreover, the family relationships recorded were overwhelmingly those of close kin (fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, spouses) rather than of more extended links. An exhaustive study of hundreds of thousands of Latin inscriptions by Saller and Shaw, which revealed these patterns of commemoration, opened a new era in the study of Roman social history.7 It argued the hypothesis that these close-knit relationships (our ‘‘nuclear family’’) were the primary focus of family sentiment, rather than those of extended family or clan; they represented major forms of Roman social structure. The bulk of the inscriptions in that study are imperial in date, but the patterns are similar in the republican ones which exist. It is unlikely that the forms of relationships attested in the new form of commemoration in the late Republic had suddenly emerged. They surely existed for a considerable time before this, but it was only in the first century that lower ranks in society had the means and motivation to leave a public and durable record of them. Leading the new trend were ex-slaves or people of recent slave origin, proclaiming their new freedom and, often, Roman citizenship. There are fewer women and girls attested on these tombstones than men and boys, which is typical of all of the Roman evidence which we have - literature, law, art, inscriptions. But mothers, daughters, and wives are much more prominent than males or females of more distant relationships. Even in the earlier inscriptions, if the few women commemorated have any identifier beyond their name it is a family role, usually uxor (wife) or mater (mother).
The law defined girls as fit to marry at 12 and boys at 14, but evidence of such young marriages is sparse. Women did tend to marry younger than men: a ten-year age gap between spouses seems to have been common. Some upper-class women, whose arranged marriages had political, economic, and social implications, did marry young. The daughters of Cicero, Pompey, and Caesar (Tullia, Pompeia, Julia) all made their first marriages in their early to mid-teens. These ages are never given to us explicitly: we have to calculate them from a variety of literary references, and often the calculations are only approximate.
At those ages they would have had little say in the choice of partner, although the law required both of the marrying individuals to express understanding and willingness to marry. (This is recorded in the Digest 23.1.7.1, 23.2.2 - both passages attributed to Paul - of the early third century ad, but generally taken to codify what had been the practice for many centuries.) Outside these elite families, women’s age at marriage tended to be in the late teens. Shaw deduced this by studying the pattern of commemoration for deceased females in funerary inscriptions.8 The commemora-tors were overwhelmingly parents and husbands. Shaw was able to identify an age point where the role of parents declined and that of husbands began to take over, and he argued that it was marriage which brought about this change. It was, in general, in the late teens that women outside elite families began to have husbands to commemorate them.
Women who married very young seldom became mothers before their late teens, fecundity being low in very young women. Modern biological studies have made us aware of this, and reasons for it, but some Roman awareness of it is clear from Augustus’ marriage legislation: it applied to women only from the age of 20. Moreover, infant mortality was high, so that successful births might come even later. Maternal mortality in childbirth was not as high, but was far higher than in the developed world today, where it is about 0.1 per 1,000. The worst modern rate, in poor, rural societies, is about 17 per 1,000. Estimates of Roman maternal mortality rates are 10 to 15 per 1,000.9 It was only in Tullia’s third marriage that she bore her first child, when she was about 30, and even then the child was premature and did not survive. Her second child, nearly four years later, survived only a month beyond his mother’s own death in childbirth in 45. Rome was again embroiled in warfare - this time civil war - and Tullia’s husband P. Cornelius Dolabella was away fighting on Caesar’s side in 49-48 and again in 45. Tullia’s pregnancies and death must have been lonely affairs. What we know of her circumstances comes from her father Cicero, who grieved greatly for this favorite child.
A girl of a different social class who ‘‘married’’ very early was Aurelia Philematium/ Philematio, whose handsome first-century memorial stone is shown in Figure 15.1. This epitaph (CIL 12. 1221; 6. 9499 = ROL4:22-5 no. 53) commemorates her as a wife, and was probably put up by her husband, L. Aurelius Hermia, whose details are also given. Records of this kind yield valuable personal information, even to those without much knowledge of Latin: the name structure is informative, the Roman numerals are still in use today, and the terms for family relationships are soon learned: pater, mater, uir, uxor, filius, filia (father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter). The names here reveal that the couple were born slaves and later given freedom: the abbreviation ‘‘L(uci) l(ibertus/-a)’’ = freedperson of Lucius. Slaves legally had no parents, so when freed they took on the family name of their former owner (here, a L. Aurelius). Their nomenclature and their status put them in a kind of filial relationship with their owner, now their patron (patronus or patrona; see also Chapters 14 and 19). Whereas the daughter of M. Tullius Cicero was Tullia M(arci) f(ilia), ‘‘daughter of Marcus Tullius,’’ and his son was M. Tullius M(arci) f(ilius) Cicero, ex-slaves have the title libertus/-a in place of filius/-a. Hermia and Philematium had been fellow-slaves in the Aurelian household for some time, and were freed by the same owner ( conleibertus [an archaic spelling] = fellow-freedperson), perhaps with a view to their marriage. Their relationship before their freedom was not a formal Roman marriage but contubernium (cohabitation). Philematio’s words, in the first person, tell us that
Fig. 15.1 Stone stele of husband and wife, L. Aurelius L. l. Hermia and Aurelia L. l. Philema-tio, Rome, 1st century BC. British Museum, Catalogue of Sculpture, iii, no. 2274; CIL 6. 9499. © Copyright The Trustees of The British Museum
Hermia took her into his care from the time she was 7, so that he was ‘‘more than her fellow-freedman but, over and above that, her parent (parens).'' Until she died at the age of 40, she had been a faithful and virtuous wife, knowing no other relationship (ll. 5-6). Here are the slave echoes of the upper-class ideal of uniuira, ‘‘knowing only one husband,'' which remained a desirable quality even in a society of high mortality and frequent remarriage.
Although slaves could not legally marry, they often formed marital relationships and produced children. Such children were born slaves and belonged to their mother's owner, but any children born after her freedom were freeborn. A child was its mother's child and took her name and status if its father were not eligible to marry the mother at the time of the child's birth. The lack of a formal marriage seems to be due to ineligibility rather than unwillingness to marry, as far as we can judge from evidence available. Even when one or both partners was not a free citizen, they often used marital vocabulary and ideals. Aurelia Philematio's epitaph reflects that, and the iconography reinforces the words. So children's ‘‘illegitimate'' status was often a function of a parent's status and in these circumstances did not bear the moral stigma which attached to illegitimacy in later, Christian societies. If both partners were free by the time of the birth they could legally marry, and their child would be not only freeborn but could take its father's name and proudly advertise the filiation (e. g., ‘‘M. f.'') of citizen status. This social mobility, within one generation, is clear in the epitaph of P. Seruilius Q. f. Globulus, his father Q. Seruilius Q. l. Hilarus, and the father's wife Sempronia C. l. Eune (CIL 6. 26410), later in the first century.10
Philematio's monument is not as elegant, in lettering or form, as many later ones. But it must still have involved considerable expense. It is partly a tribute to her husband's love, which he professes was equal to hers for him (studio parili). But it was also a tribute to how well he had done in his trade of butcher (lanius) and in moving out of slavery and being able to make a proper Roman marriage. Many of the lower classes could afford no memorial at all and they remain unrecorded. But those who began to erect such tributes in the last century bc express much more of family relationships, virtues, and affection than do any upper-class monuments of the time (see also Chapter 25). The inscription on one of the few memorials to an upper-class woman, the large, imposing tower for Caecilia Metella on the Via Appia leading south out of Rome (where many tombs clustered, burial within the walls of the city being forbidden), bears only her name (Figures 25.10a-b). The form of the name, Caecilia Q. Cretici f. Metella Crassi, does tell the world that she is the daughter of Q. Caecilius Metellus Creticus, consul in 69, and wife of Crassus, probably a son of the triumvir Crassus (consul in 70). The monument seems to be Augustan in date, so who survived from the late Republic to build and dedicate this tomb for Metella? Upper-class tombs are not as forthcoming as those of slaves and ex-slaves, whose families were not famous, and so their details had to be spelled out to the public to proclaim the existence and success of their members. This difference in commemorative practice need not reflect a difference in affective relationships: different commemorative fashions for different social strata are attested in other societies and have been attributed to various factors, such as changing tastes and motivation. We know that Cicero pondered long and hard about a suitable memorial for Tullia after she died. It was probably going to be on an estate outside of Rome, which may help explain the lack of upper-class family memorials at Rome and the preponderance of those of the lower strata (who had no country estates). The growing interest in family commemoration was notable enough for Augustus to exploit it in his own policies and monuments. The Ara Pacis (the Altar of Peace), dedicated in 9 BC, gave a prominence to the figures of women and children which had been previously unknown in official monuments.
When women remarried, they were of an age to take a more active role in the choice of partner, especially if they were by then sui iuris. Can we say that they married ‘‘for love’’? The sources do not provide enough evidence of motivation to answer this, but there are hints that it could happen. Cicero’s letters from Cilicia in 50 show his unease at the plans made by his wife and daughter for Tullia’s marriage to Dolabella, but he concurred because the two women were ‘‘delighted by the young man’s attentiveness and charm’’ (Att. 6.6.1). There is more evidence of the development of love within marriage.1 We need to guard against any cultural assumptions about loveless arranged marriages, and against misunderstanding the Roman ideal of chastity (castitas) in wives. The ideal denoted faithfulness rather than celibacy or frigidity. Sexual pleasure was surely a motive and a reward for marriage, for women as well as for men. That the sexual drive continued in older women is clear from Latin literary references. These references are all pejorative but the image itself suggests that older women did not necessarily lose their sense of sexuality. The hostile references to lascivious older women are all post-republican, and are at odds with the republican image of the mother, often an older woman, as a figure of authority and respect. Catullus is insulting about Lesbia when she ends their affair, but she is still beautiful and desirable, and these are not his most vitriolic and scabrous poems, which are often aimed at men and probably with a political edge. Only a generation later, however, Horace’s attack (in Epodes 8 and 12) is on the loathsomeness of older women wanting to be lovers. He is on the cusp of republican and imperial periods, so perhaps he reflects not so much a change in attitude as a ‘‘bipartite’’ view of women.1 And if we consider the different genres in which the references occur, is it not more likely that the brutal, ridiculing tone of satire is due to genre rather than to a real change in attitudes and behavior from republican to imperial period?
The question arises of when women were considered middle-aged or elderly. Although mortality rates were high, elderly people were not especially rare. Those who survived to the age of 50 had good chances of living another 10-15 years. But individuals aged at different rates, depending on lifestyle, resources, and many external circumstances such as climate and location. One result ofthe age gap between husband and wife was that mothers tended to outlive fathers. This had implications for the position and roles of a widow, and for her relationships with her children and grandchildren.
Augustus’ family legislation penalized unmarried or childless women between the ages of 20 and 49, so we can assume that by the late Republic these were considered the normal limits of the childbearing years. Corresponding ages for men were 25 and 59. The actual penalties, economic and political, were of little importance to the mass of Roman women, but they give us an idea of the period of fecundity in women’s lives and one aspect of women’s identity. Although the primary purpose of marriage was procreation of children ( liberorum quaerundorum causa), women were free to marry after the age of 50. That they did so is reflected in various pieces of imperial legislation which set out the inheritance implications for such a marriage. Sexual enjoyment and companionship would have been among the motives for older women to marry, or, more often, to remarry. Economic and social security must also have been a concern for many older women who had been widowed or divorced, unless they owned considerable property, especially if there were no children to assist them and share their lives.
Although there is some evidence from the second century ad that there was a predisposition in the law to expect children to support parents,13 there is no evidence of this for the republican period. The deep-seated and long-standing ideals of pietas in Roman society suggest that there were at least moral expectations of such support from an early period, but there were no formal provisions. This is consistent with Roman practice with regard to the family in general. Before Augustus, almost all such practice was private and internal to the family or familia. Public concern for children, women, the elderly, the sick, slaves - the normally weaker members of society - surfaces in the second century ad, but there are no references back to republican precedents. It was centuries before public charitable institutions were established, and even then the care of women is not prominent. Perhaps in that later period the convent was seen as an adequate and appropriate place of refuge for lone women.
Women’s relationships and roles within the home can be illuminated by a study of domestic space (see also Chapters 4, 16, and 24). In the Roman home, there was not the same concept of privacy, or dichotomy between public and private, which is familiar to most of us today (see Figures 25.14-17). Nor was there segregation of the sexes. When men of standing held open house in their atrium in the mornings to receive the greetings (salutationes) of friends and clients, wives and children could be present on at least some occasions. Women joined men at dinner. Slaves were omnipresent. In the overcrowded apartments of the poor, there was enforced intermingling and sharing of space, and a heightened role for the local neighborhood. People of all social levels in Rome and other parts of Italy lived much of their lives outdoors, and it is useful to visualize them in the physical context of their activities. We have seen women at theaters and other public spectacles; they frequented the public baths, probably at different times or in different sections from men. They are to be found at other forms of public entertainment and ritual, such as triumphs, religious festivals, and funerals. Some religious rites were open only to women (such as the Bona Dea); in others women played an important part (such as the Bacchanalia festival). They joined men and children on other occasions. For instance, in 63 Cicero invited men to come out onto the streets with their wives and children for thanksgiving at his exposure of the Catilinarian conspiracy (Cat. 3.23). Children are visible in both public and private life. Looking for girls in the various spaces should help us understand ways in which they learnt to be Roman women. Some girls went to school, others were taught privately at home. They were an essential part of various religious rites. In these they were not silent ciphers but active participants, often needing physical stamina for long processions and mental effort to memorize and rehearse songs and ritual. Examples range over a long period: girls led such a procession in 207 (Livy 27. 37. 5-15), and Augustus’ revival of the Secular Games in 17 had equal choruses of girls and boys singing and processing. On at least some occasions, children dined with adults in the home. And everywhere, at home and in the city, there were visual images which helped shape their perceptions of history, interrelationships, and self-identity. Girls were probably sexually aware from an early age: they participated in marriage celebrations, they socialized often with slaves, there was a general lack of privacy, and the painted walls of houses often had explicit scenes which we might consider erotic.
Even when we have found a series of named women over several centuries, of various classes, ethnicities, and ages, and reconstructed something of their circumstances, we are far from knowing much of their inner lives. We can deduce something of their family relationships - relationships sometimes of political and economic significance, perhaps often of some commitment and affection. We know from anthropological studies of modern high-mortality societies that the likelihood of losing children at young ages does not preclude grief and grieving. We might speculate on the effects of frequent divorce and remarriage. Did this loosen family bonds and change the concept of ‘‘family’’? Although children technically ‘‘belonged’’ to the father, and were ‘‘his’’ after divorce, there is evidence of mothers’ continuing to show commitment to children, even beyond what was required by law. One example of this is Cicero’s wife Terentia, as illustrated in Dixon’s study of Terentia’s disposition of property.14 Women were often commemorators on children’s epitaphs.
The thread of rape and condemnation of women in Roman myth and legend has led some to see a strong misogynistic viewpoint in Roman thought and society. But if we look at a broad range of stories, and are not misleadingly selective, is that the overriding impression conveyed? There are indeed ‘‘bad’’ women in Roman legend: strong women, rather than helpless victims. In the very story of Lucretia, Livy provides a flashback to another woman whose actions hastened the fall of the monarchy: Tullia, a royal daughter, who was not a victim but a protagonist in royal arrogance and violence. Tarpeia took the initiative to admit the Sabine enemies to Rome’s Capitoline Hill, where the place of her death subsequently symbolized the death of traitors and other criminals (the Tarpeian Rock). But Cloelia (whose statue we referred to above) used her courage and physical prowess in Rome’s patriotic interests. A more historical figure was Claudia, whose virtue was vindicated in the late third century by her success in getting up the Tiber the boat carrying the image of the goddess Cybele which was to save Rome from its current problems. There were variant versions of most of these stories, indicating a live tradition, reinterpreted for different generations but not meaningless or irrelevant. Both strong and weak women had a place in such tradition, as did the more numerous strong and weak men.
Females were far from invisible in Roman public and private life. Were they marginalized? Like most women in most societies until recently, they did not have the political rights of standing for office or voting in elections or on legislation. They did have a range of legal and social rights, in accordance with their status as freeborn citizen, freed ex-slave, slave, or free foreigner. It might well have been class, as much as gender, which determined their roles.
To try to make some sense of their roles and relationships, if not of their inner lives, we need to reconsider all the stories which we have, in their full context, put these together with other records of females such as epitaphs and the law, and think further about the physical spaces in which they are found.
World History
