Invisible Romans (13 page)

Then for the first time (but not the last) our good times were thrown into confusion. For now when a cute lad had entered along with other servants, Trimalchio grabbed him and began to give him long kisses. And so Fortunata [Trimalchio’s wife], in order to emphasize her rights at law, began to swear at Trimalchio, calling him a filthy fellow and a disgrace who couldn’t control his lusts. The final insult she hurled was, ‘You dog!’ Trimalchio was offended by the insults and hurled a cup at Fortunata’s face. She screamed as though she’d lost an eye and put her trembling hands to her face. Scintilla was alarmed as well. She pulled her terrified friend to her bosom to protect her.

This shows Trimalchio’s essential vulgarity despite his wealth – thus Petronius, at least, thought that the subelite behaved like this. In
The Golden Ass,
too, a husband angered at being cuckolded would have done violence to his wife if a friend had not convinced the wife to go away until the husband’s anger had cooled – a tactic that would have met with Monica’s approval, while the beating itself falls within the acceptable, as Artemidorus’ interpretation of a dream shows: ‘To strike someone is auspicious, so long as you have authority over them – except in the case of a wife; for if she is struck, it means she is committing adultery’
(Dreams
2.48).

A letter on papyrus is eloquent about an abusive husband:

To Protarchos. From Tryphaine, daughter of Dioskourides. Asklepiades, to whom I am married, persuaded my parents, although I, Tryphaine, was unwilling, to give me to him as my caretaker, and … [Asklepiades] entered into the marriage, [?receiving] also on my behalf a down payment on my dowry consisting of clothing worth 40 drachmas and 20 drachmas of coined silver. But my accuser, Asklepiades, since he kept going off throughout the marriage for no reason, squandered the aforementioned goods, abused me and insulted me, and, laying his hands on me, he used me as if I were his bought slave … (Rowlandson, no. 257)

Abuse is even recorded on a couple of gravestones. One Iulia Maiana is described as having been slain in a domestic argument:

Julia Maianae, a highly honorable woman, was murdered at the hands of a most cruel husband. She lived married to that man for 28 years and they had two children, a boy, 19, and a girl, 18 years old. O Faithfulness personified! O Duty itself! Julius Maior, her brother, set this up to a sister so sweet, along with Ingenuinius Januarius her son. (
CIL
13.2182 =
ILS
8512, Lyon, France)

And as can been seen from the following example, a family set up a monument to a sixteen-year-old wife who, it says, had been murdered, hurled into the Tiber by Orfeus, her husband:

Restutus Picenesis and Prima Restuta made this gravestone for Prima Florentia, their dear, dear daughter, who was thrown into the Tiber river by her husband, Orfeus. The man named December set this up to one who lived only 16 years.
(IPOstie-A,
210 =
ISIS
321)

Women had to fear violence in other aspects of their lives, too. A letter from Egypt tells of an employer who beat an employee’s wife:

When I was calculating accounts with Bentetis, son of Bentetis, a shepherd of Oxyrhynchus in the same division, and when he wanted not to pay me, but to cheat me, he behaved in an insulting manner to me and to my wife Tanouris, daughter of Heronas, in the aforesaid Areos Kome. In addition, he also pelted my wife unsparingly with hard blows on every part of her body he could, although she was pregnant, so that she gave birth to a dead fetus, and she herself lies in her bed and is in danger of her life. (Rowlandson, no. 229)

And women also could be in danger from fellow citizens:

From Hippalos son of Archis, public farmer from the village of Euhemeria of the Themistos division. On the 6th Tybi, while my wife Aplounous and her mother Thermis were bathing, Eudaimonis daughter of Protarchos, and Etthytais daughter of Pees, and Deios son of Ammonios, and Heraklous attacked them, and gave my wife Aplounous and her mother in the village bath-house many blows all over her body so that she is laid up in bed, and in the fray she lost a gold earring weighing three quarters, a bracelet of unstamped metal weighing 16 drachmas, a bronze bowl worth 12 drachmas; and Thermis her mother lost a gold earring weighing two and a half quarters, and … [text becomes fragmentary] (Rowlandson, no. 254)

A wife used the weapons of reason and self-controlled restraint in the face of a husband’s tantrums and abuse. Monica, St. Augustine’s mother, presents another way of dealing with abusive husbands: manipulating them. The language of slavery is often used to describe the relationship of husband and wife, and in a hostile relationship the strategies of a slave in avoiding beatings would serve a wife well. As slaves were wise
to be obsequious, so wives: ‘The upright wife runs her home by paying attention to her husband’s wishes,’ says Publilius Syrus (Maxim 108). They were advised to practice
blanditiae
from an early age, wheedling, and like means as a way to deal with the men in their lives.

As a last resort there was the possibility of divorce. Sometimes this was motivated by bad circumstances of a marriage, such as infidelity or abuse, but sometimes by what was apparently mutual consent, as this letter from Egypt shows:

To Promachos from Zois, the daughter of Heraclides, along with her legal guardian, her brother Irenaeus son of Heraclides, and also from Antipater son of Zeus: Zois and Antipater agree that they are separated from each other with the agreed upon marriage arrangements null and void … Zois has received from Antipater by his own hand from their common household that which he held in dowry, namely clothing worth 120 drachmas and a pair of gold earrings. As of this moment the marriage contract is completely invalid … and from this time on it will be legal for Zois to marry any man and for Antipater to marry any woman, with both free from any threat of legal action.
(BGU
4.1103)

Finally, in responding to a crisis in a marriage, or simply to the whims of fortune, women were perfectly capable of taking things into their own hands, leaving a husband, and taking up with someone else, whatever the ‘legal’ situation:

To Claudius Alexandros, centurion, from NN son of Panetbeous, public farmer from the village of Theadelphia. The wife with whom I was living [and by whom] I have begotten a child, becoming dissatisfied about her marriage with me, [seized] an opportune absence of mine, and left my house … Months ago, without a so-called [?divorce], taking away her own goods and many of mine, among which were a large white unfulled cloak and an Oxyrhynchite pillow, and a striped
dilassion
[a garment], materials for two
chitons,
and other farmers’ working implements. And although I have many times sent to her seeking to recover my things, she has not responded or returned them, and yet I am supplying to her the cost of support for our child. Besides, having now learned that one Neilos son of Syros from the same village had lawlessly taken her and married her, I submit [this petition] and request that she and Neilos may be summoned before you in order for me to be able to obtain legal redress and get back my things and be helped. Farewell. (Rowlandson, no. 137)

Women in the economy

The most striking thing about the economic role of Roman women of all classes and incomes is that they kept the household functioning. Their duties ranged from mundane chores to sometimes complicated commercial dealings. Hierocles, a second-century
AD
philosopher, seems to describe a peasant household. The women do wool work, cook, make bread, light fires, draw water, make beds, and carry out some things around the house that require physical strength: grinding corn, kneading dough, cutting wood, getting wood, moving large containers around, and shaking out bedcovers. Women also help out in the fields and with harvesting when they are needed. This picture is very congruent with that given of a similar life in Galilee. The attested jobs done there include baking bread and selling it in the market; keeping a shop; helping with agricultural work, especially during the harvest; selling produce from the home, as well as delivering it to the market for sale; and being wet nurses. The Mishnah lists a woman’s work in the home as (in order): grinding corn, baking, and laundering; preparing meals and nursing children; making her husband’s bed; and working wool; but notice that tasks that must have been done (e.g. sweeping out, cleaning up, keeping lamps and fires, purchasing supplies in the market, and doing the household accounts) are not mentioned here. For each slave brought into the house, one of these listed tasks might be deleted, in order, although Gamaliel felt that wool working should be done no matter what, to avoid idleness.

The oft-quoted epitaph of Claudia echoes this sentiment; she kept the house and worked at wool:

Visitor, I have a little something to say to you; stop and give it a read. This is a common tomb for an uncommon woman. Her parents gave her the name, Claudia. She loved her husband with all her heart. She brought forth two children. One she left above the earth, the other below. Her conversation was lovely, her gait was graceful. She managed the household. She wove in wool. I have spoken. Go on your way. (
CIL
6.15346 =
ILS
8403, Rome)

Weaving was so much seen as a quintessential wifely thing that ‘A woman dreamed that she finished her weaving. She died the next day. Since she no longer had work, she no longer had reason to live’ (Artemidorus,
Dreams
4.40). Food preparation was also central, as was childbearing and care. The need for many children to offset high infant mortality meant that women were completely socialized into their role as child-producers from their typical age of menarche, fourteen, until fertility tapered off by thirty and ended in their mid forties.

Despite the fact that work such as this in the home was central to the vast majority of women’s lives, females in their attested roles as home managers never appear in images on grave reliefs, which is curious, since the fact of fine household management – working in wool, and other roles – is often mentioned in words in grave epitaphs. For example, Amymone, who died in Rome, is praised by her husband as most good and most beautiful, as a wool spinner, as dutiful, modest, pious, faithful, frugal, chaste, and a stay-at-home – but her image on the gravestone does not illustrate actual duties (
CIL
6.11602 =
ILS
8402). For some reason there was a hesitancy to show women engaged in the jobs that were so highly valued in the culture in general.

The importance of wool weaving extended beyond the household. In addition to providing material from which to make clothing, a woman could produce a surplus that could be sold. This ‘cottage work’ was crucial to the survival of poor households, as Apuleius’ story illustrates:

This indigent fellow, pressed down by desperate poverty, managed to stay alive by doing construction work for a few asses a day. He had a wife who was just as poor, but infamous for her insatiable lust. [the wife’s lover visits her while the husband is out; the husband returns unexpectedly; the wife brazenly challenges him] … ‘Just look at you, acting like you have nothing to do, ambling about with your hands in your pockets, not going to work like you usually do to help us get by and put some bread on the table. And here I am, wretch that I be, working my fingers to the bone day and night spinning wool so that at least we can have a lamp to light our miserable hovel.’
(The Golden Ass
9.5)

But ordinary women wove as well. John Chrysostom notes that a woman should make cloth at home, but if she didn’t she could buy other women’s cloth; these women sold it themselves, vending it in the markets
(Against Those Men Cohabiting with Virgins
9,
PG
47.507). And also from Egypt there are many contracts and documents illustrating the participation of women in weaving both as a cottage industry and within a manufacturing environment. Women could even own and run whole weaving establishments (Rowlandson, no. 205). Women doing piecework at the loom to earn a meager wage had a very long history –one can even point to a Homeric simile:‘… and as some honest, hardworking woman weighs wool in her balance and sees that the scales be true, for she would gain some pitiful earnings for her little ones’
(Iliad
12.433–5). In Egypt, a whole family including mother and wife sought such employment:

Apollophanes and Demetrios, brothers, craftsmen in all the skills of weaving women’s clothing, to Zenon, greetings. If you please and you happen to have the need, we are ready to provide what you need. For hearing of the reputation of the city and that you, its leading man, are a good and just person, we have decided to come to Philadelphia to you, we ourselves and our mother and wife. And in order that we might be employed, bring us in, if you please … (Rowlandson, no. 201)

So besides cottage labor, women worked outside the home. How many did so is impossible to say, but the notices of their work are common enough. Susan Treggiari’s study of occupations shows that men were attested in six times as many occupations as women; it is telling, in addition, that a woman’s gravestone mentions an occupation only one time in a hundred. In Artemidorus’ dream book and the astrological handbooks, women’s occupations are also mentioned much less frequently than men’s, although such jobs as actress, midwife, nurse,
priestess, cleaning lady, and prostitute are noted. It is not hard to say why this is. Work was not seen as an integral part of a woman’s identity, so it did not feature so much in advice on such things as marriage, family, and children. Treggiari notes, ‘Women appear to be concentrated in “service” jobs (catering, prostitution); dealing, particularly in foodstuffs; serving in shops; in certain crafts, particularly the production of cloth and clothes; “fiddly” jobs such as working in gold-leaf or hair-dressing; certain luxury trades such as perfumery. This is a fair reflection of at least part of reality.’ As previously noted, she estimates that only 1 percent of the epitaphs of women mention an occupation; this small number is actually consonant with the evidence from preindustrial Brazil where, in the middle of the nineteenth century, notorial registry records show that only about 3 percent of women listed some occupation outside the home.