Invisible Romans (12 page)

Isidora to Hermias her lord brother, very many greetings. Do everything you can to put everything off and come tomorrow; the child is sick. He has become thin, and for 6 days he hasn’t eaten. Come here lest he die while you’re not here. Be aware that if he dies in your absence, watch out lest Hephaistion find that I’ve hung myself …
(PSI
3.177, Oxyrhynchus, second and third centuries
AD
/Bagnall & Cribiore)

Hard reality could impinge, however. The exposure of children is one of the most difficult things for moderns to come to terms with in the ancient world. Although it was opposed by Jews and Christians, the habit was ingrained and widespread throughout society. Still, it is hard to imagine the calculus of a family including the intentional abandonment, perhaps to death, of their own infant. These decisions perhaps affected women more than men. And certainly the result punished girls more than boys. A famous letter from Egypt testifies to this reality:

Hilarion to his sister Alis, very many greetings. Also to my lady Berous and Apollonarion. Know that we are even now in Alexandria. Do not worry. If they actually set out, I am going to remain in Alexandria. I ask you and beg you, take care of our little one, and as soon as we get our pay, I intend to send it up country to you. If, among the many things that are possible, you do bear a child and if it is a male, let it be, but if it is a female, cast it out. You have told Aphrodiaias, ‘Do not forget me’; but how can I forget you? I ask you, then, not to worry. Year 20, Pauni 23. (Rowlandson, no. 230)

So here is combined a clear love of a child (‘take care of our little one’) and a steely determination to get rid of the next, if it be a girl (‘if it is a female, cast it out’). Although there were contraceptives and miscarriage-inducing treatments available for ‘family planning,’ the surest way to keep the wanted child and get rid of the unwanted one was abandonment. So exposure continued to be a useful option throughout antiquity, however agonizing a particular decision might have been for a particular woman. Even if a child was raised, a desperate family situation could lead to selling the female into prostitution to get money for food and clothing, another wrenching decision.

Turning to a happier aspect of a woman’s life, she would have had many opportunities for socializing outside the home and family. There is every indication that she maintained a strong interconnectivity with other women. She would visit relatives and friends; there were family events to plan and go to; going to market fell to her since most ordinary people would not have had a slave to do this, or other daily chores outside the home such as retrieving water from the local fountain and gossiping along the way. And, of course, there were religious ceremonies to attend to, not only within the household, but beyond it at the neighborhood cult centers and larger sanctuaries nearby – perhaps even a pilgrimage to a fairly distant site now and again. These many religious occasions of all sorts ‘got women out of the house’ and provided sometimes solemn, sometimes raucous opportunities for celebration. This socializing was stigmatized by males as an opportunity for at best frivolous gossiping and at worst malicious slandering; they often assumed that heavy drinking went along with it. Early Christian literature is particularly fond of pointing out and criticizing these alleged weaknesses. While the author of Titus tells older men to be sensible and serious and temperate, he tells older women not to be slanderers
and addicted to wine; by this he emphasizes these two ‘womanly’ failings: gossip and boozing (Titus 2:3). Those women who are seeking leadership as deacons must be ‘serious, no slanderers, but temperate, faithful in all things’ – temperateness has been mentioned among male qualifications too (1 Timothy 3.2), but slander is not insinuated as emanating from males (1 Timothy 3.2–4). And widows are singled out as particularly susceptible to the social weaknesses of sex, gossip, meddling, and heavy drinking: ‘But refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, gadding about from house to house, and not only idlers but gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not’ (1 Timothy 5:13). This conception of female irresponsibility is part and parcel of the downgraded opinion of women in general that pervades the male culture. But with the hostility and suspicion set aside, one finds a picture of women networking to maintain contact with one another, exchange information, and create an environment in which important decisions regarding themselves and their families can be made.

While men worried about the social habits of their women, the women themselves had a more serious list of concerns. Their primary worry was about health – their own and that of their loved ones – and the welfare of various family members. The letters of women written on papyrus focus on these two issues in addition to concerns about business operations, an emphasis that points once again to the active role women played outside the home as well as within it. It is no surprise that women dwelled on health issues, especially their own. The frequent mention of female death in epigraphy and letters points to how common death in childbirth must have been; historically, this has always been a primary cause of female mortality. It must have been on a woman’s mind constantly as the cultural expectation to bear children played itself out.

Dreams were interpreted to help the pregnant woman with her worries. Artemidorus notes how common stillborn births were:

If a pregnant woman has a dream that she is giving birth to a fish, when born the child will only live a short time, for every fish dies when it is taken from its natural environment.
(Dreams
2.18) Parental support and assistance were also crucial:

Mother NN to Ptollis, Nikandros, Lysimachos, Tryphaina, greetings. If you are well, it would be as I pray to the gods to see you well. I received the letter from you in which you inform me that you have given birth. I prayed to the gods daily on your behalf. Now that you have escaped [from danger], I shall pass my time in the greatest joy. I have sent you a flask full of oil and … mina of dried figs. Please empty the flask and send it back to me safely because I need it here. Don’t hesitate to name the little one Kleopatra, so that your little daughter … (P.
Münch.
3.57/Bagnall & Cribiore)

As children grew, worries over their health and safety and education were normal and frequent. The letter from Isidora to her brother quoted above is eloquent. The following letter expresses the concerns of a grandmother for her daughter and grandchildren – as well as a complaint about nonsupport!

Eudaimonis to her daughter, Aline, greetings. Above all, I pray that you may give birth in good time, and that I shall receive news of a baby boy. You sailed away on the 29th and on the next day I finished drawing down [?the wool] … Your sister Souerous gave birth. Teeus wrote me a letter thanking you so that I know, my lady, that my instructions will be valid, for she had left all her family to come with you. The little one sends you her greetings and is persevering with her studies. Rest assured that I shall not pay studious attention to God until I get my son back safe. Why did you send me 20 drachmae in my difficult situation? I already have the vision of being naked when winter starts. Farewell. (P.
Brem.
63/Bagnall & Cribiore)

A further worry attested by letters is concern about widowhood, with its implications of powerlessness. If the widow was young, she had possibilities, as the author of the letter to Timothy attests: ‘So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes …’ (1 Timothy 5:14). But to judge by the evidence from Egypt, most widows were older and few remarried – perhaps the risk of childbearing was too great, perhaps men looked to younger women and despised
widows; when in the tale of Cupid and Psyche embedded in Apuleius’
Golden Ass
Venus berates Cupid for disrespecting her, she says he is treating her with the contempt reserved for widows (5.30). Whatever the specific reasons, nonremarriage seems to have been a widespread phenomenon. A widow’s powerlessness was widely acknowledged, and her position often precarious; life as a widow was not in general something to look forward to. But although widows were universally seen as disadvantaged, in need of help and protection, and easily taken advantage of, some widows at least managed well in their new condition. Artemidorus gives the following dream interpretation:‘… the second woman will lose her husband and will manage her household alone, being, in fact, both wife and husband at the same time.’ This indicates that in widowhood some women carried on just fine without a man in the house.

There was also worry for the safety of loved ones who were traveling:

Eutychis to Amertrion her mother, many greetings. Before everything I pray to God to find you well. I want you to know that I came to the Tyrannion on the 30th of Tybi, and I could not find any way to come to you, because the camel drivers refused to go to the Oxyrhynchite. Not only that, but I went up to Antinooupolis for a boat and did not find any. So now I consider bringing my loads to Antinooupolis and staying there until I find a boat and sail down … Greet for me all in the house and all our friends; I’ll be coming to you soon. I pray for your health. (P.
Oxy.
14.1773/Bagnall & Cribiore)

Indeed, these letters reveal that women traveled to an astonishing extent, whether to visit family (especially to help in child birthing), to do business, or to attend to land owned abroad. They thought nothing of setting out on the road (or river, as the case might be). Elsewhere, other, equally mobile women appear, such as Prisca/Priscilla (Acts 18:1–3); she and her husband were from Pontus, had lived in Rome, and were in Corinth when Paul stayed in their home. But travel always occasioned worry, and it is no surprise that a large number of dreams interpreted by Artemidorus involve possibilities for good and not-so-good things happening while on a journey.

Egyptian households were in large measure made up of extended
and multiple families; I take this pattern as normal across my geographical area because they closely resemble in general what is expected of a preindustrial culture and, specifically, what has been found throughout the Mediterranean in premodern times. In Egyptian documents we find about 60 percent of households living as extended and multiple families, with 35 percent as conjugal (nuclear) families, and only 5 percent of people living as solitaries with no family. In this environment, with a large number of people usually sharing often constrained living conditions, it is little wonder that the papyri are full of family drama. Children were especially prone to inspiring concern and worry. In this fragmentary letter, for example, a mother writes to her own mother about a daughter who is causing her grief:

Heliodora to my mother, many greetings. I am strongly embittered toward you because you did not even deem me worthy of receiving news through a letter of yours. From the time when I went away from you, many troubles have been inflicted upon me by my daughter. See how much she provoked to anger the landlord and his neighbors and then was vexed at him. She stripped me of everything and got hold of my gold jewels and my earrings and gave me a [worn] tunic so that … Invoke the god for me so that he would pity me. Do everything to send my brother to me. I am going to Senepta with Hermous. Do not send me…: what I have is enough for me. Salute all my brothers and the people who love you. I pray for your health. (
SB
16.12326/Bagnall & Cribiore)

Intra-family tensions abound; intergenerational issues frequently come to the fore. Here a mother lectures her son on how his wife, her daughter-in-law, is to blame for problems, and how she twists him around her little finger:

To Kopres [from his mother], greeting. I know your quick temper, but your wife inflames you when she says every hour that I do not give you anything. When you came up, I gave you small coins because I received some grain; but this month I could not find [anything] to give you. I am keeping nothing back from you because I trust you in everything. Your wife says in fact, ‘She does not trust you’ … Nobody can love you, for she shapes you according to her advantage … (
SB
3.6264/Bagnall & Cribiore)

A wife was expected to tolerate faults of a husband that moderns might think quite serious (e.g. alcohol abuse, gambling, or womanizing). This despite the fact that ‘objectively’ such behavior could easily threaten the property and well-being of the family’s children. A good wife simply ignored a husband’s dalliances with slaves and prostitutes; his use of them might even be beneficial if she disliked him or wished to have fewer children. She was only concerned when there was true adultery or open concubinage, which threatened her position and that of her children. But a husband’s neglect often went beyond sexual straying. Violence and abuse were very common. The abusive relationships in family and marriage swirling around the life of Monica, St. Augustine’s mother, give a good picture of this. Her life as given in the
Confessions
presents wife abuse as pervasive in her town of Thagaste – her own experience with her husband, Patricius, is replicated over and over again in the households of other women in the town, most of whom show bruises from their encounters with their husbands. Augustine’s family is a member of the local elite (his father, Patricius, is a town councilor), so Monica’s experience is not that of an ordinary woman. But there is no reason to suppose that male attitudes toward wife abuse in marriage would be any different among nonelites and the poor. Note the threats of violence and strong language of Petronius at
Satyricon
74–5 concerning Trimalchio and wife: