Invisible Romans (51 page)

Taken together, all our sources make it possible to see the invisible Romans.

FURTHER READING

Introduction

There are two very sensible introductions to the challenges of writing ancient history: Michael Crawford (from whom the opening quotation comes) edited a strong collection of essays in
Sources for Ancient History: Studies in the Uses of Historical Evidence
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and David S. Potter’s
Literary Texts and the Roman Historian
(London: Routledge, 1999) (from whom the final quotation comes) offers clear guidelines for using this sort of evidence. Susan Treggiari’s
Roman Social History
(London: Routledge, 2002) has a good discussion of how to evaluate and use sources specifically for social history. Sandra Joshel’s
Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions
(Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1992), pp. 3–15, presents an exceptionally apposite discussion of the issues involved in learning about invisible Romans from literature, epigraphy, and other sources; the whole book well repays careful reading.

Chapter 1

Works that succeed to some extent in treating ordinary men from a nonelite point of view include the essays in
The Romans,
ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993), and Paul Veyne’s ‘The Roman Empire,’ in
A History of Private Life, Volume 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium,
ed. Paul Veyne, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 5–234. Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller’s
The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) remains an excellent brief introduction to the period; Ramsay MacMullen’s
Roman Social Relations
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974) and anything else by MacMullen provide good insights; and Nicholas Horsfall’s
The Culture of the Roman Plebs
(London: Duckworth, 2003), while somewhat idiosyncratic, is stimulating. On early Christianity and Christians, see Bruce J. Malina, The
New Testament World
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), and Wayne Meeks,
The First Urban Christians,
2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Teresa Morgan’s
Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Maureen Carroll’s
Spirits of the Dead: Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), a pathbreaking treatment of epigraph as a rich source for the lives of ordinary people, together give background on how we can know what ordinary people thought. For magic, see Georg Luck,
Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greco-Roman World
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), and Matthew W. Dickie,
Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World
(London: Routledge, 2001); and on curse tablets, John G. Gager,
Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). For astrology, see Ramsay MacMullen, ‘Social History in Astrology,’
Ancient Society
2 (1971), 104–16; and for dreams, Arthur Pomeroy, ‘Status Anxiety in the Greco-Roman Dream Books,’
Ancient Society
22 (1991), 51–74; for associations, see Philip A. Harland,
Associations, Synagogues, and Congregation: Claiming a Place in Mediterranean Society
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003); for street life, see Barbara Kellum, ‘The Spectacle of the Street,’ in
The Art of Ancient Spectacle,
ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 283–99; for law, see J. A. Crook,
Law and Life of Rome
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).

Chapter 2

The following suggestions amplify the picture of women in the Romano-Grecian world. As always, most notices will spotlight elite women, but on a few occasions ordinaries are the focus, and in all there are insights into various aspects of the lives and outlooks of those women.

Sarah Pomeroy moved the study of Greek and Roman women onto center stage in the late twentieth century with her very readable and reliable
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Woman in Classical Antiquity
(New York: Schocken, 1984; reissued with new preface and additional bibliography, 1995). Her treatment of the material is scholarly yet accessible, and important for a wide readership. For a recent, more modest but solid treatment there is now Eve D’Ambra’s
Roman Women
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Jane F. Gardner’s
Women in Roman Law & Society
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991) takes a more formalist approach, but contains much useful information. For late antiquity (a period mostly following that dealt with in this book), Gillian Clark’s
Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) has an excellent overview.

Sourcebooks are a very useful way to see what evidence is available. I mention especially Jane F. Gardner and Thomas Wiedemann’s
The Roman Household: A Sourcebook:
(London: Routledge, 1991); Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant’s
Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992);
Women in the Classical World: Image and Text,
ed. Elaine Fantham et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Suzanne Dixon’s
Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life
(London: Duckworth, 2001). For the legal condition of women there is Judith Evans Grubbs,
Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood
(London: Routledge, 2002).

Collections of essays abound and although usually focused on elite issues, especially literary and art historical studies, they still often contain good information about ordinary women.
Women’s History and Ancient History,
ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), stands out, and, for its useful chapters on ‘invisibles,’
Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations,
ed. Sandra R. Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

Specific studies add greater context. The bibliographies of the works cited above will lead to many other interesting treatments. I have used a good deal of material from Egypt; several excellent studies have made use of the papyri and allowed this to happen. I mention especially
Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook,
ed. Jane Rowlandson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Roger Bagnall’s work has been very valuable as well: Roger S. Bagnall and Bruce W. Frier,
The Demography of Roman Egypt
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), and Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore, with contributions by Evie Ahtaridis,
Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC–AD 800
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006). Studies on specific aspects of ordinary women’s lives are rather rare. However, Susan Treggiari’s ‘Lower Class Women in the Roman Economy,’
Florilegium
1 (1979), 65–86 and ‘Jobs for Women,’
American Journal of Ancient History
1 (1976), 76–104 are exceptional, as are Natalie Boymel Kampen’s many contributions to seeing (and being unable to see) ordinary women in art:
Image and Status: Roman Working Women in Ostia
(Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1981); ‘Material Girl: Feminist Confrontations with Roman Art,’
Arethusa
27 (1994), 111–37; and ‘Social Status and Gender in Roman Art: The Case of the Saleswoman,’ in Eve D’Ambra,
Roman Art in Context: An Anthology
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), pp. 115–32. Beryl Rawson addresses ordinary women in ‘Family Life among the Lower Classes at Rome in the First Two Centuries of the Empire,’
Classical Philology
61 (1966), 71–83, as does Walter Scheidel in ‘The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labor and Women’s Life in the Ancient World,’
Greece and Rome
42 (1995), 202–17. Of some interest is also John R. Clarke,
Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. – A.D. 315
(Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). I have not made much use of purely archaeological material; works like Penelope M. Allison’s
Pompeian Households: An Analysis of the Material Culture
(Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, Monograph 42, 2004) and Lindsay Allason-Jones’s
Women in Roman Britain,
2nd edn (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2005) and
Daily Life in Roman Britain
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008) give an inkling of the possibilities, which surely would repay more study.

Studies of the family and household often touch on the lives of
ordinary women: K. R. Bradley,
Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman Social History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Suzanne Dixon,
The Roman Family
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); and Jane F. Gardner,
Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). On motherhood and family, see Suzanne Dixon,
The Roman Mother
(London: Routledge, 1988, 1990); Beryl Rawson,
Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); and Susan Treggiari,
Roman Marriage: Iusti Coninges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). I mention only a few articles that touch on specific topics; there is much more to be found in bibliographies. On sex, see Suzanne Dixon, ‘Sex and the Married Woman in Ancient Rome,’ in
Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue,
ed. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 111–29; on contraception and abortion, see J. M. Riddle,
Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), and E. Eyben, ‘Family Planning in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,’
Ancient Society
11/12 (1980/1), 5–82; on child exposure, see William V. Harris, ‘Child Exposure in the Roman Empire,’
Journal of Roman Studies
84 (1994), 1–22; on widows, see P. Walcot, ‘On Widows and their Reputation in Antiquity,’
Symbolae Osloenses
66 (1991), 5–26.

For evidence about females in early Christianity, particularly useful are Patricia Cox Miller,
Women in Early Christianity: Translations from Greek Texts
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005); Gillian Clark,
Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Margaret Y. MacDonald, ‘Reading Real Women through the Undisputed Letters of Paul,’ in
Women & Christian Origins,
ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 199–220; and Patricia Clark, ‘Women, Slaves and the Hierarchies of Domestic Violence: The Family of St. Augustine,’ in
Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations,
ed. Sheila Murnaghan and Sandra R. Joshel (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 109–29.

The Brazilian comparative material mentioned can be found in Mary C. Karasch,
Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

Chapter 3

The basic work has long been H. Bolkenstein’s
Wohltätigkeit und Armensflege in vorchristlichen Altertum
(Utrecht, 1939), which is heavily used in A. R. Hands’s
Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome
(Ithaca, 1968). Now there is also Marcus Prell,
Sozialökonomische Untersuchungen zur Armut im antiken Rome: Von den Gracchen bis Kaiser Diokletian
(Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1997). Specific studies include J. Kolendo, ‘The Peasant,’ in
The Romans,
ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 199–213; and on pp. 272–99 of the same collection, C. R. Whittaker, ‘The Poor.’ Teresa Morgan’s groundbreaking work,
Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007) provides much of the detailed discussion of fables and proverbs I have worked with; Greek popular literature is readily available in
Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature,
ed. William Hansen (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998); fables are in
Babrius and Phaedrus,
ed. and trans. with commentary by B. E. Perry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). Comparative work in the ancient world includes Thomas W. Gallant,
Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece:. Reconstructing the Rural Domestic Economy
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); G. E. M. de Ste. Croix,
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquest
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981); and G. Hamel,
Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine, First Three Centuries C.E.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Of wider comparative interest are Bronislaw Geremek,
Poverty: A History,
trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Eric R. Wolf,
Peasants
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966); and G. Sjoberg,
The Preindustrial City, Past and Present
(New York: The Free Press, 1960). Throughout my discussion I have benefited from the fertile ideas of James C. Scott,
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).