Invisible Romans (10 page)

Of course there was a wide variety of public experience according to local customs. Some women were more stay-at-home than others, and customs in such things as dress varied as well, for we know that in some places women went out veiled (Petronius,
Satyricon
14, 16)
and in others even complete body covering was the norm. In all things women needed to be careful not to cross the boundaries of ‘decency’; for example, although women attended religious gatherings with their husbands, Paul instructs them not to speak, but rather to wait until they get home to ask them about things (1 Corinthians 14:33–5). But in the end in households with few or no slaves, and these households were many, it was simply impractical to sequester women away from the world. They would have needed to be out in the market buying and perhaps even selling, and taking care of household needs. Even in her own home she was not sealed off. The writer of the letter of Timothy states that preachers get ‘into households and capture weak women. Burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, she will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth’ (2 Timothy 3:3–7). Evidently, a woman’s life exposed her to a fairly broad spectrum of experiences.

Fundamentally, the vast majority of women were committed to making a household and family successful. The oft-repeated ideal of spinning wool and keeping a good house corresponds to the norm in pre-industrial societies in general. Although there were some other options available, every girl was taught from the youngest age that marriage was the future to be expected and desired, along with children. When a woman internalized this teaching, she gained a certain steadiness in her life, and if she stuck to it would find reassuring guidance, examples, and precedents in dealing with any problems she encountered. As she matured from a young bride to mother to ‘elder matron’, gaining in age and experience, things valued in the culture, her influence within the household gradually increased. Throughout her life, however, legal and customary standards did mark her off from the world that males knew. As previously noted, she had no legal standing and so a guardian was needed except in unusual circumstances if she was to engage in public transactions such as making a will, a sales contract, or other legal obligation, as in the case of Aurelia Ammonaion from Oxyrhynchus:

[request] To Gaius Valerius Firmus, Prefect of Egypt, from Aurelia Ammonaion. I ask you, my lord, to give me as guardian Aurelius Ploutammon in accordance with the
lex Iulia et Titia
and the Decree of the Senate. Dated in the consulship of our lords Philippus Augustus for the second time and Philippus Caesar. (
AD
247) [response] In order that … may not be absent, I appoint Ploutammon as guardian in accordance with the
lex Iulia et Titia.
I have read this. (Rowlandson, no. 140)

Escape from this legal disability came with three children (four if a freedwoman). An educated woman, Aurelia Thaisous, petitions for this right:

… [Laws long ago have been made], most eminent Prefect, which empower women who possess the right of three children to be mistresses of themselves and act without a guardian in whatever business they transact, especially those who know how to write [in actuality, a legal irrelevancy]. Accordingly, as I too enjoy the happy honor of being blessed with children and as I am a literate woman able to write with a high degree of ease, it is with abundant security that I appeal to your highness by this my application with the object of being enabled to accomplish without hindrance whatever business I henceforth transact, and I beg you to keep it without prejudice to my rights in your eminence’s office, in order that I may obtain your support and acknowledge my unfailing gratitude. Farewell. I, Aurelia Thaisous also called Lolliane, have sent this presentation. Year 10, Epheiph 21.

[response] Your application shall be kept in the [office, i.e. ‘on file’]. (Rowlandson, no. 142)

But the combination of child mortality, ignorance of legal rights, and a heavy male hand must often have discouraged thinking in these terms.

Marriage and sex

Even at the lower end of the stratum I am calling ‘ordinary,’ the culturally embedded desire to have children in order to continue a family and the need of a helpmate to enhance survival chances pushed men and women to marriage. This relationship is illustrated by a dream interpreted by Artemidorus: ‘If a man changes into a woman it is fortunate for a poor man … for he will have someone to take care of him,
as a woman does.…’
(Dreams
1.50). That women shared the desire for marriage with men can be seen from one of the questions posed in the
Predictions of Astrampsychos:
‘Am I going to marry and is it profitable for me?’ (Rowlandson, no. 247). Women sought to know what sort of husband they would have.
Carmen
2.3–4 lists through various nativities the sort of husband(s) a woman might end up with: no marriage at all; a series of husbands; an old man; ‘her grandfather or paternal uncle or maternal uncle or one of those possessing relationship to her’; an overbearing man; a stranger soldier; a man well known in his town; a philanderer. Although marriage was the goal, married life itself might hold ‘disgrace, debauchery, and destruction,’ and divorce might be sought owing to alcoholism or deceit and quarreling. But such possibilities would not have curbed the desire to marry in the first place.

Some might even pursue an unwilling man and marry him:

A man dreamed he was being pursued by a woman whom he had known for a long time; she was trying to wrap him up in a cloak – the one called a paenula in Latin – ripped down the middle seam. Finally, very unwillingly he was overcome. This woman, being in love with the man, married him against his will. After a few years she divorced him – all foreseen by the rent cloak. (Artemidorus,
Dreams
5.29)

And she might use magic to reach her goal:

(I bind) Aritokudes and the women who will be seen with him. May he not marry any other woman or young maiden [than me]. (Gager, no. 23)

I invoke you, who shook the entire world, who breaks the back of mountains and casts them up out of the water, who causes the whole earth to tremble and then renews all its inhabitants. I invoke you, who make signs in the heaven, on earth and on sea, to bring Urbanus, to whom Urbana gave birth, and unite him as husband with Domitiana, to whom Candida gave birth, loving her, sleepless with desire for her, begging for her, and asking that she return to his house and become his wife … (Gager, no. 36)

In order for marriage to be legal for a Roman citizen it had to have four elements: both partners needed to be free, without legal restrictions that prevented marriage, to be of the age of puberty, and to have the consent of relevant parties (i.e. the man, the woman, and their parents). There was no requirement to seek authoritative permission or to register a marriage with any official or even to have any religious ceremony or communal celebration (although both usually occurred).

An essential part of every marriage was the dowry; for ordinary people the amounts were often absolutely small, but presumably appreciable within their local economy. For example, Jane Rowlandson offers a number of Egyptian documents: no. 252 gives a dowry for what appears to be an ‘apparently humble village family’ wedding valued (in clothing and jewelry) at 200 drachma; no. 127 has a contract with about the same value of dowry in jewelry and dress; no. 128 amounts to 200 drachma, and a ‘house and lot’ are to be sold to raise this amount when the wife demands its return; no. 129 has something over 240 drachma in clothing, jewelry, and 120 drachma in cash; no. 132 seems to be just 72 drachma in (informal) dowry. Compare the dowry of an elite (no. 141), which amounts to half a talent of gold in goods, jewelry worth 1500 drachma, clothing valued at 5000 drachma, and 4 talents and 2000 drachma in cash.

As a dowry had to be returned in the case of divorce, it provided some little leverage over the husband, who often needed these resources and/or hoped to inherit them. Thus a woman was understandably possessive of these dowries. She might go into a rage over misuse by her husband: ‘the bride’s dowry is damaged, and she will be furious with him like the burning of fire because of women, and the marriage will be with this thing’
(Carmen
2.1). And a wife was not slow to demand (or just take back) a dowry in divorce disputes. In Plautus’ play
Aulularia,
Megadorus goes on and on about how wives with dowries control and order about their husbands, and he praises the idea of no dowries in order to keep women in their place (
Pot of Gold
475ff.).

Although a dowry might provide some leverage in a marriage relationship, a woman was almost always under some male’s authority. Before marriage it was her father’s; after marriage, it is not clear whose authority the wife was normally under, husband’s or father’s, but the usual living arrangement was for the wife to move in with the husband.
Would she have worried about competing authorities? Artemidorus gives the interpretation of the following dream: ‘A man dreamed that his sister was dragged away from her husband by her father and given to another in marriage’
(Dreams
5.43). If this were not possible in real life, the dream would have no meaning to the interpreter. But how common was this? Rowlandson, no. 138, gives a case of a father claiming under Egyptian law the right to take back his daughter, now married, against her will. The Roman authorities reject this as too harsh, however – and note that as they are under Egyptian (i.e. Greek) law, not Roman,
patria potestas
(the absolute power of a father under Roman law) is not recognized. In the petition, the wife claims to have presented documents ‘all proving that women who have attained maturity are mistresses of their own persons, and can remain with their husbands or not as they choose; and … are they not subject to their fathers …’ One of the prefects being appealed to ruled, ‘The decisive question is with whom the married woman wishes to live.’ It would seem that tradition was on the side of women de facto lying under the control of their husbands, not of their fathers, and that once married, the husband’s home became practically irrevocably her own.

3. Affection in marriage. Aurelius Hermia and his wife Aurelia Philematio describe a beautiful marriage relationship on her tombstone: ‘This is Aurelia Philematio, freedwoman of Lucius. I alive was called Aurelia Philematio, chaste, modest, ignorant of the foul ways of the crowd, faithful to my husband. He was my fellow freedman, the same now torn from me – alas! He was in truth and indeed like and more than a father to me. He took me on his lap a mere 7 years old – now after 40 years I am dead. He flourished in all his doings among men on account of my faithful and firm devotion.’
(CIL
1.01221 =
CIL
6.9499 =
ILS
7472, Rome)

Although love could be a part of a marriage, romantic love was not an essential and perhaps usually not any part of that relationship. Romantic love was looked upon with suspicion, masking true nature, as in the fable of the ‘weasel as bride’:

A weasel fell madly in love with a handsome man. Aphrodite, mother of all desires, granted her wish to be changed into the form of a woman so beautiful that it would be impossible for him not to love her. The instant the man of her choice saw her, he was consumed by a violent passion and desired to take her for his wife. The wedding feast was well underway when a mouse scooted by. The bride jumped from her luxurious couch and began to chase after it. The wedding feast ended in an uproar. Love had played out his jest well. But he left, beaten by basic Nature. (Babrius 32)

Gnomic utterances also disparage romantic love as misleading. It is hard to know whether the passionate graffiti of Pompeii represent romantic love or masculine conquest; for example ‘Vibius Restitutus lay here alone and yearned for his Urbana’ (
CIL
4.2146) – but, if the same Restitutus, it wasn’t only Urbana he longed for: ‘Restitutus often deceived many girls’ (
CIL
4.5251). Whatever young swains wrote on walls, marriage was too important to be left to romantic whims; family continuity and property were at stake, even in poor families, and certainly among ordinary folk.

Although the basic expectation for women in proverbs and elsewhere in popular literature is to be the focus of family – and they are denied any role outside that unit (for example they are ridiculed as being un-soldierlike) – marriage itself could involve a whole gamut of experiences for both husband and wife. The ideal was a life without conflict, one in which there was never a quarrel; this is attested on many, many tombstones, such as:

This is the gravestone Gaius Aonius Vitalis set up for Atilia Maximina, she of purest spirit, an incomparable wife, who lived with me without any quarrels for 18 years, 2 months, and 9 days, having lived 46 years, leading a life of honor and good name, my everlasting solace. Farewell.
(CIL
5.3496 =
ILS
8457, Verona, Italy)