About a century after Pliny published his correspondence, a young woman in Roman North Africa wrote down a quite different account of herself and her family. Vibia Perpetua was a Roman citizen and member of the local elite of Thuburbo Minus (a town not far from Carthage), bilingual in Latin and Greek (and probably Punic too), and literate - not, of course, the product of the sort of rhetorical and literary training that Pliny had enjoyed, but unusually well-educated for a woman of her time. But any resemblance between the two stops there. For whereas Pliny had punished Christians as criminals, Perpetua actually converted to that disreputable and illegal religion.
Perpetua was one of a group of catechumens (converts who were not yet baptized) arrested in 203 and executed in the arena at Carthage. The story of their martyrdom, with particular attention to the deaths of Perpetua and of another young woman, the slave Felicitas, was written down by a member of the local Christian community who had witnessed the events. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is particularly compelling, however, because its editor also included what has been called Perpetua’s ‘‘prison diary,’’ her own account of her confinement and trial before the governor. This is one of a tiny number of writings by a woman to survive from the Roman period, and is unique for the direct and intimate style in which Perpetua narrates her experiences. The focus of her account is firmly on her own family relationships, especially her conflicts with her pagan father, who was distraught over his daughter’s refusal to save her life and her family’s reputation by denying her newfound faith. Even Perpetua’s visions - an important part of her account - involve another family member, her long-dead younger brother (Bremmer 2002: 88-93; Bradley 2003).
The editor of the Passion of Perpetua explicitly tells us that Perpetua was ‘‘honorably born, well-educated, properly married’’ (honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta), that she was about 22 years old, had a father and mother and two (living) brothers, one of whom was also a catechumen (though not arrested with her), and an infant son ‘‘at the breast’’ (P. Perp. 2). Her status and educational level are evident from the story she tells; her nomenclature indicates that she was a Roman citizen, and her family was probably of curial (municipal elite) status. Her father had a position to maintain in the community - a position severely jeopardized, indeed ruined, by his daughter’s arrest and execution as a Christian. Perpetua’s marital status is much less clear: we hear nothing about a husband apart from the enigmatic phrase matronaliter nupta (which presumably signifies legitimate marriage, iustum matri-monium, though matronaliter is not a term found in the legal sources). If she had been widowed, one would expect the editor of her account to mention this; on the other hand, if she were divorced, he might well prefer to leave this fact unmentioned, given Christian disapproval of divorce (Evans Grubbs 1995: 242-53). More puzzling - and revealing - is the fact that Perpetua herself never mentions her husband, either in relation to herself or her baby, a point so odd to a Roman reader that the author of the fourth-century Acta ‘‘normalizes’’ Perpetua’s story by stating that her husband was at the trial (B. D. Shaw 1993: 33-6). Unlike her father and her brother, he does not visit her in prison or appear at her trial. He may have abandoned her after her arrest and subsequent notoriety as a Christian.
It is odd also that neither her husband nor his family are interested in the baby; under Roman law, children conceived in a legitimate marriage belonged to the father (or to his paterfamilias, if the father had died). Although Perpetua kept her baby with her until he was weaned (as he was, of necessity, shortly before her execution), we would still expect the baby’s paternal relatives to claim him after her death. Yet it appears that Perpetua’s father took the baby after her trial and that he was reared by her family. Perhaps the stigma of a condemned Christian wife and mother was too much for the (ex?)husband and his kin, and they did not want responsibility for the child. (Similarly, another member of the Christian community took the newborn infant of the slave Felicitas, who had given birth in prison; legally, it belonged to Felicitas’ owner, who evidently preferred not to assert his or her rights.) Perpetua several times refers to her anxiety about nursing her baby, whom she was allowed to have with her for part of her time in prison. It is significant that she does breast-feed him; the use of wet-nurses, though criticized by ancient moralists, was evidently quite common, particularly among the elite but also at lower levels of society (Bradley 1991: 13-36; Dixon 1988: 120-9). The baby was probably at least a year old when Perpetua was arrested, since he was apparently weaned without difficulty when she at last had to give him up; he could have been two or older, and the father long gone.
Perpetua’s own account begins with a confrontation with her father, one of four such encounters she records:
When we were still with the official attendants [in prison] and my father wanted to overturn me with words and persisted in casting me down on account of his love for me,
I said, ‘‘Father, do you see, for example, this vase lying here, or water pitcher, or whatever?’’
And he said, ‘‘I see it.’’
And I said to him, ‘‘It can’t be called by any other name than what it is, can it?’’
And he said, ‘‘No.’’
‘‘So I also cannot call myself anything other than what I am, a Christian.’’ Then my father, moved by this word [‘‘Christian’’], threw himself toward me in order to pluck out my eyes, but he only annoyed me and he left defeated, along with the devil’s arguments.
Then for a few days, because I was free from my father, I gave thanks to the Lord and was refreshed by his absence. (P. Perp. 3)
She insists on seeing her father as an adversary; repeatedly she describes him as trying to ‘‘cast me down’’ with diabolical (because tempting?) arguments. Later she is visited by her mother and brother, to whom she entrusts her child. ‘‘And so I was pining away because I saw that they were pining away because of me.’’ Both appear to be Christian sympathizers; elsewhere Perpetua says that her father alone of all her family did not rejoice at her impending martyrdom - this does not mean that they were glad she was going to die, but that, like all Christians, they believed that martyrdom was a great privilege and ensured eternal life for the martyr. When she obtains the right to have her baby with her in prison, ‘‘immediately I gained strength and was relieved from my distress and anxiety for my baby, and suddenly the prison became for me a governor’s mansion, so that I preferred to be there rather than anywhere else.’’
After a few days a rumor went the rounds that we would be heard [in court]. Moreover, my father also came up from the city, consumed with weariness, and he approached me in order to cast me down, saying, ‘‘Have pity, daughter, on my gray hairs, have pity on your father, if I deserve to be called father by you; if I brought you forth with these hands to the flower of your youth, if I put you first before all your brothers: don’t hand me over to the dishonor of men. Consider your brothers, consider your mother and your aunt, consider your own son who will not be able to live without you. Put down your pride, don’t destroy all of us. For no one of us will be able speak freely, if you have suffered anything.’’
He was saying these things like a father out of affectionate duty (pietas), kissing my hands and throwing himself at my feet; and weeping, he no longer called me daughter but lady (domina). And I grieved for the misfortune of my father, because he alone from my whole family would not rejoice about my suffering (passio). And I comforted him, saying, ‘‘It will happen on the [prisoners’] platform as God wants. For know that we have not been put in our own power, but in God’s.’’ And he departed from me very saddened. (P. Perp. 5)
When the Christians went on trial before the acting governor, Hilarianus (on whom see Rives 1996), Perpetua’s father again appears:
We went up onto the platform. The others, when asked, confessed [that they were Christians]. Then it happened also to me. And my father appeared right there with my son, and he dragged me from the step, saying, ‘‘Worship the gods. Have pity on your baby!’’
And Hilarianus the governor... said, ‘‘Spare your father’s gray hairs, spare your infant boy. Make a sacrifice for the safety of the emperors.’’
And I replied, ‘‘I will not do it.’’
And Hilarianus said, ‘‘Are you a Christian?’’
And I replied, ‘‘I am a Christian.’’
And when my father stood up in order to cast me down, he was ordered by Hilarianus to be thrown to the ground and he was struck with a rod. And my father’s misfortune grieved me as if I had been struck; I grieved so for his wretched old age.
Then (Hilarianus) announced sentence on us all and condemned us to the beasts, and we went down joyfully to prison. Then because my baby had become accustomed to being breast-fed and to remaining in prison with me, immediately I sent the deacon Pompo-nius to my father, asking for my baby. But my father refused to give him over. And just as God wanted, he did not long for my breasts anymore nor were they inflamed, so that I was not tormented by anxiety for my baby or pain in my breasts. (P. Perp. 6)
Presenting the defendant’s young child in court in a bid for sympathy was a centuries-old practice. In this case, however, it is not the judge who needs convincing, but the accused herself, who remains unmoved. Her father’s obstreperousness in court earns him a humiliating punishment, beating with a rod - a penalty from which those of his class would normally have been immune (the Vibii were presumably honestiores [‘‘more honorable,’’ on which see Garnsey 1970]). Perpetua’s father makes one more appearance, as the day of the spectacle in which she will be killed draws near:
My father came to me, consumed with weariness, and he began to pluck out his beard and to throw it on the ground, and to lie prostrate on his face and to cast reproach on his years, and to say such words as would move all creation. And I grieved for his unhappy old age. (P. Perp. 9)
But even as Perpetua distances herself from her father and her baby, forsaking the family responsibilities of this world for reward in the next, she creates for herself another family - in which she plays the same roles of mother and daughter - through a series of self-induced dreams (Salisbury 1997: 92-115; Bremmer 2002: 95-119; Bradley 2003). In her first dream, after her father’s first visit and when she has been allowed to have her baby with her, Perpetua climbs a long ladder, avoiding weapons and implements of torture, and treading on the head of a diabolical serpent on her way to the top. There she finds a gray-haired man, a shepherd milking his sheep, ‘‘and he raised his head and looked at me and said to me, ‘Welcome, child’ (teknon, the Greek word). And he called to me and gave me some of the cheese which he was milking...’’. It is her father, transformed into a Christ-figure, who nurtures her as she nurtured her child in prison. Her second dream, after her trial and final separation from her baby, is even more revealing. Suddenly, in prayer, she speaks the name of her long-dead brother, who had died at age seven from a cancer on his face: ‘‘I see Dinocrates, coming out of a shadowy place where there were many others, and he was really burning hot and thirsty, with dirty clothing and a pale coloring, and there was on his face the wound which he had when he died.’’ In her vision, Dinocrates was trying in vain to drink from a pool full of water, whose rim he could not reach. ‘‘And I awoke, and I knew that my brother was afflicted. But I had faith that I would be of help to him in his affliction” (P. Perp. 7). She prays, and receives a follow-up vision:
I saw that place which I had seen before, and Dinocrates, with a clean body, well-dressed, taking refreshment, and where there had been a wound I saw a scar. And I saw that pool, which I had seen before, with its rim lowered down to the boy’s navel (umbilicus), and he was drawing water from it without ceasing. And above the rim was a golden dish full of water. And Dinocrates began to drink from it, but the dish did not lessen. And, satiated, he started to play in the water as babies (infantes) do, rejoicing. And I woke up, and I understood that he had been removed from his punishment. (P. Perp. 8)
Perpetua had to give up the baby to whom she had given life, and could no longer nurse him; but by her prayers, she has given new life to her little brother, and has assuaged his thirst. As she removes herself from her family roles in this world, she recreates them in the next (see Salisbury 1997: 105). But her fourth and final vision, on the eve of her martyrdom, is quite different: she becomes a man in order to do combat against ‘‘the Egyptian’’ (Satan). Knowing that she is about to die in the most public, ‘‘masculine’’ way possible (as a wild-beast fighter), Perpetua sheds all her private, ‘‘feminine’’ roles, whether real or dreamt.
On March 7, Perpetua and her companions went gladly to their deaths in the arena, as a special spectacle celebrating the birthday of the emperor’s son Geta. Perpetua and the slave Felicitas were exposed to an enraged cow (intended to be humorously appropriate to their female sex). Perpetua did not die from the encounter; she had to be executed afterwards by the sword - a fitting end for one of her status.
‘‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he is not able to be my disciple’’ (Lk 14:26, cf. Mk 10:29). The full impact of Jesus’ words is made clear by Perpetua’s account: conversion to Christianity entailed rejection of the world, including, especially, one’s own family. Perpetua’s father did not exaggerate when he said that after her death in the arena, no one of her relatives would be able to speak freely; they would all be under suspicion, whether or not they were Christians too. In twenty-first-century America, when political rhetoric often associates religion (primarily Christianity) with ‘‘family values,’’ it is salutary to remember that early Christianity was far from ‘‘pro-family.’’ Eventually, when the persecutions ended (110 years after Perpetua’s death) and Roman emperors took up Christianity, the stark contrast between dedication to God and devotion to family was softened (Arjava 1996; Nathan 2000). The family legislation of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, for the most part followed the policies set by his predecessors, with two major changes: unilateral divorce became harder to obtain (especially for women) and the Augustan penalties on the unmarried were abolished. The first was probably prompted at least in part by Christian influence; the second was more likely a response to senatorial unhappiness with Augustus’ laws than to the Christian admiration for celibacy (Evans Grubbs 1995). Ascetic renunciation replaced martyrdom as the manifestation of Christian rejection of the world, and monasticism offered an alternative to traditional family structures. But patria potestas continued to be a living legal and social concept in late antiquity (Arjava 1998), while marriage practices and parent-child relations continued along traditional lines up to the end of antiquity. Perpetua’s experience reminds us how radical and inimical to the Roman concept of family Christianity could be.
World History
