Roman Civilization

CMS 206 /History 206

Fathers:

• The head of a Roman family was the paterfamilias (father of the family). The familia for which he was responsible and overwhich he excercised his authority included not merely what we would recognize as the nuclear family, but also, slaves and freedmen. Sometimes all of these (as well as close personal friends, clients, tame philosophers) would live within the domus (the family house). By the same token, married adult sons and daughters and friends, freedmen and clients might live in separate residences.
  
  
• To become a paterfamilias a Roman man had to a) be a citizen; and b) his father had to have died. Until a father died, he exercised patriapotestas (paternal power) over his sons (unless he formally chose to free them of his authority by an arcane legal ritual that resembled the ritual for manumission of slaves). On a father's death, his son's were said to be sui iuris (we'll talk about wive's and daughters in a bit). In legal theory patriapotestas was absolute. Sons, like slaves, for example, could own nothing in their own name (with the exception of a peculium - or allowance) and could incur no debts or enter into any contracts without their fathers' consent. Similarly, in theory, a father had a ius necandi "right of life and death," not merely over his slaves, but also over his children.
  
  
• While there are a few famous Roman stories about fathers who excercised this right to kill their sons, in fact, almost all appear to be more myth than history. From a practical point of view there are a number of reasons why father's didn't kill their sons. First, at least among the elite (for whom we have the best evidence), it seems that a significant number (30-40%) of sons had lost their fathers by the time they were teenagers. Second, even if your father was still alive by the time you were old enough to rebel, the odds were he was often away on military or diplomatic service for Rome. So dads simply weren't home often enough to give rise to wholesale slaughter of sons. More importantly, Romans valued greatly the idea of pietas - devoted duty - in this case, to the familia.
  
  
• Pietas meant that sons were unlikely to want to do the kinds of things that would inspire a father to kill them and fathers were unlikely to want to kill their sons. The familial sentiment of Roman family culture was not unlike ours - fathers and sons were praised and admired for their relationships of affection and devotion. Even though the law granted the father the right of killing his children, Romans would have looked aghast at the act (as the mytho-historical examples suggest). Cicero's relationship with his son is probably typical of the reality. Cicero was devoted to his son (and nephew), worried endlessly about his education and spoiled him quite a bit. Marcus junior appears to have been not a bad sort, if a bit of a party animal, who simply didn't have the stuff to rival his father's accomplishments (who did?). The letters between father and son (and Tiro, Cicero's secretary who intervened when Cicero grew exaspertaed with young Marcus) reflect sentiments, concerns and conflicts that probably would sound quite familiar to American families today.
  
  
• Moreover, despite the theoretical autonomy of Roman patres, cultural values guided them to act in consort not merely with their immediate family, but also with larger social groups in which they participated. Romans, for example, frequently discussed important family decisions in a consilium (family council). Members included the father, and friends and family members whose opinions he respected and valued (including women). The Roman pater was charged not merely with responsibility for the preservation and enhancement of his own immediate family, but also with the preservation of that family's tradition. The specter of a man's ancestors hovered over every move he made, both in his own mind, and in the minds of his contemporaries. No pater worth his salt would make an important decision without consulting the consilium. Thus, despite the extraordinary authority granted to a pater by Roman law, social practice compelled him to exercise this authority quite temperately.

Mothers:

• The experience or Roman women varied widely as a function of class, status, region, and time in history of Roman empire. In the case of Christian and Jewish women, their religious identities probably implied a different social experience than that of other contemporary Roman women.
  
  
• Generally speaking Roman women enjoyed a graduallly increasing sphere of legal and economic rights and social autonomy during the course of Roman history. - Women never had direct political rights in Rome (or most other places until the 20th century).
  
  
• Most of our literary texts are from elite sources - so we have best evidence of the life of Roman women of the social, political and economic elite. However, we should not assume from this that we have a historical understanding of the lives these women lived. Most of the Roman writers whose works have survived were deliberately and admittedly writing from a political and or moralizing point of view. Women, in their accounts, were more symbols in an ideological discourse than actual historical figures. When women are used symbolically in ideological discourse, moreover, the gender constructs of the society in which they live are inherently, but rarely explicitly at play. For example, one of the ways that Tacitus is able to use gender in his critique of Augustus, is to write about Augustus' wife, Livia. Tacitus' depiction of Livia (e.g., murdering her stepsons and husband) is of a woman run amok with power (Senator's literally grovelled in her presence). Because, in an ideal patriarchal world, Roman women weren't supposed to have that kind of power, there was, Tacitus suggested without having to say it, something terribly wrong with Augustus. He couldn't control his wife - in which case he was weak or feminine (not a good Roman man). Or he wouldn't control his wife - in which case he was perverse (not a good Roman man).
  
  
• So, one thing our male elite sources about women tell us is what men thought the proper role of women was. This is far different than telling us what the actual social experience of women was. For example, Cicero one wrote "Our ancestors established the rule that all women, because of the weakness of their intellect, should be under the power of guardians." A lovely piece of sexist nonsense we might say today. What is interesting about this statement however, is the fact that we know from his letters that Cicero was fanatically devoted to his daughter, Tullia, who, in his estimation, was extraordinarily intelligent and quite literate (an estimation that his contemporaries seem to have agreed with) and apparently a family member with whom Cicero enjoyed philosophical and literary discussions. Similarly, Cicero's wife, Terentia, who was a bit of a shrew, held the purse strings in the marriage, managed family investments quite well, and Cicero seems to have lived somewhere between awe and terror of her. So when Cicero is writing in his books for all the world to read, he sounds like a bit of a pig. But when he's living his private life, it sounds like he was perfectly happy to acknowledge the liteary acumen of his daughter and financial acumen of his wife - a regular nineties guy.
  
  
• We shouldn't be surprised at this apparent conflict between what folks say (their ideology) and how they live their lives (praxis). We do it ourselves - Americans pride themselves, for example on their democracy, but voter turnout at elections is appallingly low. Americans decry the invasions of privacy perpetrated by photographers against Princess Diana, but eagerly buy People and National Enquirer, magazines devoted to gossip about the private lives of celebraties.
  
  
• Because of this understandable gulf between ideology and praxis, therefore, we know quite a lot about what male writers of the Roman elite thought women should be. What we find when examine these accounts is series of polarized images, or negative and positive ideals: the chaste, devoted wife vs. the self-interested (and therefore opposed to her husband's interest), sexually indiscriminate (and therefore threatening of the husband's ability to know his son was his own and perpetuate the family), powerful or power mongering virago. A paragon of Roman womanly virtue, for example, was Lucretia. Accordingy to Livy, during the reign of the last Roman king, Tarquin the Proud, Roman forces were engaged in a rather boring siege. Wives of the young princes entertained them with banquets and drinking parties, at which a young prince named Collatinus went on at great lengths about how perfect his young wife, Lucretia was. To prove the point, the rather drunken youth saddled up and rode to the home of Collatinus. There they found Lucretia, in marked contrast to the brazen wives of the other princes and officers, quietly spinning wool with her handmaidens. Well of course, Sextus, the son of Tarquin the Proud immediately fell passionately in love with her. He came back on his own a few days later. Lucretia graciously received him as a friend of her husband deserved. But that night he crept out of the guest room and into her chamber and raped her (telling her that if she cried out, he would say he had discovered her sleeping with a slave). After Sextus left, Lucretia sent for her husband and father, and told them what happened, begging them to avenge her honor. They promised and told her that of course this was not her fault and she shouldn't feel guilty. But Lucretia responded `It is for you,' she said, `to see that he gets his deserts: although I acquit myself of the sin, I do not free myself from the penalty; no unchaste woman shall henceforth live and plead Lucretia's example.' Then she drove a dagger in her heart and died. The defenders of Lucretia's honor then formed a conspiracy against the Tarquins, drove them out of Rome and established the Republic.
  
  
• Pliny the Younger similarly describes Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, as a woman of extraordinary devotion to her husband. [The virtue seems to have run in the family. Pliny wrote a similar letter praising Arria's grandaughter, Fannia.] Paetus had been involved in an unsuccessful rebellion against Claudius and was summoned back to Rome from Illyria under guard. Arria, who had accompanied him to Rome, begged the soldiers to let her accompany her husband and attend to his needs (just as they might allow Paetus a slave). They refused, so she hired a fishing boat and followed the naval war ship carrying her husband back to Rome. In Rome, she scorned the widow of her husband's co-conspirator who had offered evidence about the conspiracy to the government in order to save her own skin, with the words, Am I to listen to you who could go on living after Scribonianus died in your arms?' When it became clear that Paetus would be sentenced to death, the only honorable option left for the man was suicide. When he hesitated in the act, Arria took the dagger from his hands, plunged it into her breast, and said, 'Look Paetus, it doesn't hurt." Poor Paetus had not option at this point but to follow suit.
  
  
• What is interesting about Pliny's praise of Arria, however, is that he claims these acts of devotion and self-denial were not here best claim to fame. Instead, Pliny says, Arria should be remembered for the way she tended her husband and son when they were sick. Both were grieviously ill. Arria spent all her time going from one sick room to another. The son died. She was grief stricken, but knew if her husband learned of his son's death, it could kill him. So, even as she arranged the funeral, she pretended the son still lived while she was nursing her husband. This according to Pliny, was Arria's greatest moment.
  
  
• In contrast to these iconic Roman matrons (matrona was the title given to respectable Roman married women), are portraits like that Petronius provides of the Widow of Ephesus. Like Arria, the Widow begins the tale determined to follow her dead husband to the grave. She sneaks into the catacombs, planning to starve herself to death. But, instead, on meeting a soldier charged with watching the graves, she begins a passionate affair. When a family of recently crucified criminal is able to take advantage of the soldier's distraction to retrieve the body, the soldier stands in real danger for his his dereliction of duty. The Widow saves the day by permitting him to dig up the body of her dead husband and substitute it for the snatched body.
  
  
• Juvenal, in his Sixth Satire, similary decries the duplicity of women and their failure to live up to Roman ideals of matronly behavior. For Juvenal, the golden age when women embraced their fecundity, remained chaste and loyal to their husbands, and deferred to their husband's authority are long gone. Therefore, the narrator of Juvenal's poem advises his addressee - Do Not Marry. Women of today (about 120 CE) love to have affairs, - what's worse, with actors and gladiators! The modern woman's lust, moreover, according to Juvenal, is the least of her sins. Girls with big dowries dominate and manipulate their husbands (who admittedly marry them for their money) in decisions concerning the household, tyrannize the slaves, get involved in politics, read Latin literature and Greek philosophy, instigate feuds and disputes that end up in court, and even perform gladiatorial exercises. They drink and indulge in sybaritic dinner parties that degenerate into orgies. Despite their litery pretensions, modern wives a wildly superstitious and spend fortunes on fortune-tellers, astrologers and quacks. If she is unfortunate enough to get pregnant, she hires an abortionist. Conversely, if she needs a child to satisfy her husbands need for an heir, she'll buy a foundling and pass it off as his. If she somehow actually manages to conceive and bear a child, she'll begin plotting against her husband to kill him off early and ensure her son's inheritance.
  
  
• One suspects that real women lived their lives somewhere between the ideals of Arria and Lucretia and the horrors whom Juvenal and Petronius described. But by comparing the 'depictions of "good" and "bad" matrons, we can get a sense of what Romans valued in their women and why:
  
  
  • The Good Wife
    
    
    • chaste
    • loyal and subservient to husband
    • produces heirs
    • devotes herself and her time to the domus
    • is a unavira (a 'one man woman') who does not remarry on husband's death (cf. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi)
    • The Laudatio Turiae and the Laudatio Murdiae, like Pliny's letters on Arria and Fannia, present an idealized portrait of a 'good' Roman matron.

     

  • The Bad Wife
    
    
    • sexually indiscriminate
    • disloyal if not threatening to her husband
    • dominates rather than obeys her husband
    • avoids having children; but if she has them, puts their interests above her husband's
    • active outside the domus, a tyrannt within it
    • Sallust describes Sempronia, a supporter of Catiline, as the paradigmatic "bad" Roman matron.
      
      
  • Note that all these descriptive features of women relate to the domus and familia. Unlike men, women cannot publicly compete for honor or repupation easily. They do not go to war. They cannot run for office or speak before the courts. As a consequence, a woman's honor could only be described in terms of her husband and children. The honor of a man, in contrast, was much more varied. Cicero was a lousy soldier, but a great orator and politician. Marius was a lousy politician, but a great soldier.
    
    
  • While there were exceptions to the general rule, by and large the Romans understood them as extraordinary women caught up in extraordinary events. For instance, Livy tells us that during the 2nd Punic War, Rome had passed a law (Oppian law, 215 BCE) which forbade women to display wealth or luxury in public. The women were happy to oblige, but the law stayed on the books long after the war ended. When the Senate finally got around to revoking the law, Cato the Elder objected. Women poured into the streets, blocked the roads leading to the Curia and generally put up such a fuss that Cato got nowhere. The very fact that they did so, Cato thought, was reason enough to keep the Oppian law on the books and restrain women.
    
    
  • Similarly, Hortensia, the daughter of Hortensius, a great Roman orator and friend and rival of Cicero, was reknowned for making a public speech in Rome. The triumvirs Antony, Octavian and Lepidus, in need of money, intended to tax some of the wealthiest women in Rome. The women of Rome first sought the intercession of the wives of the triumvirs, but getting little luck there (Antony's wife kicked them out of her house), they gathered in the forum and designated Hortensia to speak in their behalf. According to Appian, Hortensia cleverly argued that the very absence of women from public, political life in Rome should shield them from this kind of action.
    
    
    • But if we women have not voted any of you public enemies, if we did not demolish your houses or destroy your army or lead another army against you; if we have not kept you from public office or honour, why should we share the penalties if we have no part in the wrongdoing? Why should we pay taxes when we have no part in pubic office or honours or commands or government in general, an evil you have fought over with such disastrous results? Because, you say, this is a time of war? And when have there not been wars? and when have women paid taxes? By nature of their sex women are absolved from paying taxes among all mankind.
      
      
  • The next day the triumvirs (although incredibley miffed at the ladies) significantly lowered the number of women who would be subject to the tax and instead increased taxes on wealthy men.
    
    
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• Women, before they married, were subject to the patriapotestas of their fathers (like their brothers). When a woman married, the question of who would exercise legal authority over her (husband or father) was resolved in one of two ways. A father and husband might decided that the marriage would be cum manu, in which case the husband assumed all the legal rights of the father over his wife. A woman who married cum manu ceased to be a legal member of her family of birth. It was as though she were adopted into her husband's family. She no longer was an intestate heir of her parents (they could still leave her money, but they had to do so explicitly in their wills). Moreover, if she died, her dowry did not return to her father, but became part of her husband's estate. Romans believed that all their marriages originally were cum manu, but over time they began to practice marriages sine manu.
  
  
• In a marriage sine manu, the wife remained a member of her family of birth. If her father died without a will, she would be recognized as an heir of his estate. If she died, her father would receive her dowry back (each of her surviving children would get 20% of it). Certainly by the time of Augustus, the overwhelming practice of Roman marriage was sine manu - however, it appears that this type of marriage was practiced by Romans for as long as (or almost as long as) marriage cum manu. In theory, marriage cum manu gave the husband greater authority over his wife (patriapotestas, ius necandi) than a marriage sine manu (a husband could only kill his wife in circumstances involving adultery). In reality, it is unlikely a husband under either type of marriage (particularly among the elite) would kill his wife absent the most unusual circumstances and a thorough discussion of the matter in the family concilium. The important difference between these kinds of marriage (again particularly for members of the elite) was the different effects each had on patterns of inheritance and transmission of wealth across generations.
  
  
• Roman marriage law seems amazing modern from our perspective. All that was required for marriage was the consent of both parties and the agreement of both parties to treat the relationship as a marriage. The question of a woman's consent, however, should be thought about in two ways. Legally a girl was subject to her father's patriapotestas. Clearly, it was difficult for impossible for her to marry without his consent. But, what was the legal content of her consent? Could a father compel a daughter to marry against her will? In fact, by the early empire, it was illegal for him to do so. In addition to this legal guarantee (admittedly late in the history of Roman marriage), was the concept of pietas. Just as Roman society and culture rewarded and praised bonds, attitudes and actions of devotion between father and son, so too, did Rome esteem affection between fathers and daughters. These social forces, probably as effectively as legal protections, prevented fathers from abusing their authority over their daughters. A least among the elite, moreover, the practice of marrying girls at a young age (12-16), probably minimized potential conflicts over marriage.
  
  
• No ceremony was required for a Roman marriage. The relationship, moreover, was not regulated by the state in any fashion until the time of Augustus (e.g., no trip to city hall for a certificate). In practice, Romans did have betrothal and marriage ceremonies (but they were not required to make the relationship legally recognized). Similarly, no lawyers or courts were required for divorce. One party to the marriage simply had to inform the other that he/she had withdraw his consent to the relationship. For the action to be legally binding, he/she had to take public steps to make this withdrawal of consent legally cognizable (e.g., move out). But typically, a "Dear John/Jane" letter was how divorced was accomplished. If a wive's adultery was the reason for the divorce he was entitled to keep 1/6 of her dowry (no reciprocity if the husband was a cad). If the marriage had children (who were legally members of the husband's family), the husband retained 20% of the dowry for each child. Our sources, because they represent only the members of the elite, probably over-emphasize issues of betrothal, dowry and divorce. For ordinary Romans, who didn't have huge dowries or political dynasties to maintain, divorce may have been a far less frequent occurance.
  
  
• In theory, as Cicero noted, Romans kept their women subject to some man's supervision. If a woman's father died and she was not married, courts appointed a tutor, whose consent was necessary for the woman to remarry or enter into financial transactions. [The great exception to this practice were the Vestal Virgins, who were legally exempt from tutelage]. Typically, a father or husband in his will would name a tutor. If he hadn't, the courts typically appointed her nearest male relative (brother, cousin, etc.). In practice, however, tutores, increasingly through the course of Roman history became nothing more than a mere formality (can you imagine saying no to Cornelia, mother of the the Gracchi?) and were eventually abolished.
  
  
• In fact, many women never got the opportunity to deal with the problem of managing their tutores. Death in childbirth was very common. If a woman did survive the rigours of childbirth she would, as a rule, increasingly obtain respect and authority within her home. Particularly among the elite, it was unlikely that an adolescent bride's opinion would be much deferred to. Twenty years later, however, when her husband stood a good chance of already having died or at least having spent months at a time abroad, a Roman matron would exercise considerable influence within the home and over her sons.
  
  
• One of Augustus' efforts at reform involved the passage of two legislative programs concerning the family (18 BCE - lex Julia de aduleteriis and 9 CE - lex Pappia Poppaea). Augustus wanted to encourage Roman citizens both to marry and to have more children (mothers of three or more children were given legal privileges like excemption from tutores; fathers were given benefits as well). Augustus' laws also explicitly made formal social conventions that frowned on members of the senatorial class marrying slaves and freedpersons. Finally, Augustus passed laws on adultery. Under these laws a third party could bring a husband or wife to court and claim that a) the wife had been cheating; and b) the husband had knowingly winked (arguably a form of pimping). Romans by and large hated Augustus' legislation and ignored it whenever they could. Interestingly enough, the first defendent in an Augustan adultery suit was Julia, Augustus' own daughter. He was compelled to send her into exile in order to uphold his own law (the same scandal that sent Ovid into exile).
  
  
• Augustus' legislative programs have to be viewed as part of his overall construction of the principate. Romans had long hated the notion of a rex but had also suffered a century of intermittent civil war. When Octavian ceased sole power in Rome he had a challenge on his hands. He couldn't emulate the example of his uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar. Nor could he believe that Sulla's example of one man rule was worth emulating. So Octavian set about creating a monarchy that pretended not to be a monarchy. He claimed he was simply a Roman senator of great auctoritas and sought to invoke Roman precedent for all of his constitutional innovations. His marriage and adultery legislation is interesting because it represents the first time the Roman state had assumed the authority to tell Roman families how to conduct their business. As such, it represents a real increase in the authority of 'government' in Rome. However, because Augustus pitched his program as reforming legislation that sought to restore the "family values" of Rome's ancestors, he appeared to be doing something conservative, not radical. Augustus, moreover, used the image of his family to undergird the power of the principate. On the one hand, he presented himself to Rome as the "father of his country." The example of a father's authority could explain by analogy the new power of the princeps in public affairs. Just as a son ought to defer to his father, a citizen ought to defer to the princeps. Augustus' own family, moreover, was Rome's guarantee against te renewal of civil war. He would, his monuments and statuary promised, provide an heir, and a peaceful transition of power when he died (just as a father's death did not threaten the continued existence of his family). To Romans, exhausted by civil war, this was a welcome promise indeed.

• laws re women in the Roman world / Women Roman Law & Society; (part 2)
• Depictions of Women in Roman Art / Ancient Attitudes towards Women
• Working Class Roman Women / Slaves and Freedwomen / Women at Work
• Women in Roman religion / Women in Roman medicine / Women's Clothing (second site)
• Elite Roman Women / Roman Women in Public Life / Women in Ancient Rome - Lecture Outlines
• Romanae Antiquae / bios of some famous Roman women
• Greek & Latin Women Writers / texts by Roman and about Roman women
• Women in Early Christianity / St. Perpetua
• An adaptation of the Widow of Ephesus