Women and Politics in Ancient Rome

Richard A. Bauman

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134821341
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Geschichte
• Categoría: Altertum

First published in 1994. The study of women in the societies of antiquity has assumed a fresh significance in recent years. This book delineates not only the influential and manipulative role of Roman women in the business of government, law and public affairs in general, but also the emergence of women's political and liberationist movements.
Professor Bauman's investigation covers the period from C350 BC to AD 68, and thus embraces the Middle and Late Republic and the Early Principate. It is demonstrated that the story of Roman women over that period is one of cohesion and continuity, of the steady expansion of women's roles in public affairs. That paced expansion, and the means by which it was achieved, such as the acquisition and use of legal knowledge and the influence of women's movements, is the central theme of this book. Bauman's treatment is principally chronological, stressing sequential development, concluding with the great ladies of the Emperor's House.

1
INTRODUCTION

No offices, no priesthoods, no triumphs, no spoils of war. Elegance, adornment, finery—these are a woman’s insignia, these are what our forefathers called the woman’s world.

(The tribune L.Valerius, 195 BC)

Must we accept laws from a secession of women? Our ancestors would not have a woman transact even private business without a guardian, but we allow them to visit the Forum and the Assembly, to support a bill, to canvass for the repeal of a law. Let them succeed in this, and what limit to their ambitions will there be?

(Cato the Censor, 195 BC)

Women are barred from all civil and public functions. They may not be judges or jurors, or hold magistracies, or appear in court or intercede for others, or be agents.

(The jurist Ulpian, c. AD 200)

Why should we pay taxes when we have no part in the sovereignty, the offices, the campaigns, the policy-making for which you contend against each other with such pernicious results?

(The matron Hortensia, 42 BC)

POLITICS IS NOT ONLY ABOUT VOTES

The above passages reflect the situation of Roman women from the strictly constitutional point of view.¹ Although enjoying considerable social mobility under the influence of Etruscan and Hellenistic ideas, and gradually achieving a large measure of independence under the private law, women were at a permanent disadvantage in the public sector. They were rigorously excluded from all official participation in public affairs, whether as voters, senators or magistrates; the only exception was priesthoods, to which they were admitted as Vestal Virgins and in a few other cases. So had it been since time immemorial, and so it continued to be. The public position of women was so unfavourable that it has even been doubted whether they were Roman citizens. The doubts are unfounded, but the general disadvantages are clear.²

What, then, can we hope to uncover in regard to the participation of Roman women in politics and public life? Or, to put it another way, what exactly might the political involvement of Roman women mean? The usual answer is not an encouraging one. It is supposed that it was only through men that women could exert any influence in the public sector; whether by counsel, cajolement, manipulation or promise, a woman could only operate behind the scenes.³ Even Tanaquil, the legendary prototype of the woman of character and determination who leaves an indelible mark on the political scene, could do no more than make her husband the first (recorded) Etruscan king of Rome, and her protégé, Servius Tullius, his successor; and even that degree of interference by a woman was frowned on by later generations.⁴ But indirect influence is only part of the story. There were, in an ongoing process of steady expansion, a number of avenues that gave women access to a more direct public role. Uncovering the more important of these is one of the principal purposes of this book.

Our investigation spans some four hundred years, from the mid-fourth century to AD 68. It was a period of profound change, when a city-state in central Italy gradually advanced to domination of the Mediterranean world, and slowly, and with much travail, adapted its institutions to the demands of its new status. The period witnessed major changes in the situation of women in the private sector, and concomitantly with that women’s public role gradually expanded. Purely for the purpose of outlining our coverage of that expansion, the period can be notionally divided into five phases. They are offered purely as abstractions; they do not (except for the fifth) coincide with any of the usual divisions of the period. But they help to trace the gradual evolution of a feminine presence in Roman public life. They are intended to do no more than that. They are therefore only mentioned in thisintroductory chapter; they are not used either as headings or discussion points in the main body of the work.

The first notional phase runs from the mid-fourth to the end of the third century BC. That is the period which is covered in Chapters 2 and 3. If anything epitomizes this phase, it is the examples, sporadic but significant, of campaigns of direct action mounted by women. The goals were limited, since the participants at no time demanded the vote (despite Cato’s forebodings), but the activities were undeniably political. Some of the protests had specifically feminist goals. Thus, when they campaigned against their disadvantaged status in marriage, they were challenging a system that condemned them to inferiority. At other times they addressed concerns of the community at large, as when they demonstrated against wartime casualty rates, or made their own special contribution to the conflict of the orders, or set up an organization to handle their contributions to the war effort, or exerted significant influence on mainstream politics by promoting new cults.

The second phase covers the first half of the second century BC. It is dealt with in Chapter 4. A feature of the period is that the names of individual women occur more frequently, and more credibly.⁵ That is precisely what one would expect, for the sources are simply reflecting the changed realities. Rome’s conquest of the western Mediterranean was, except for a later postscript, complete, and a similar felicitous result in the east was in the making. In that propitious climate the Great Man makes his appearance, and he is soon joined by La Grande Dame.⁶ She owes her début to changed conditions, for the turn of the third century is precisely when serious inroads into the legal and social disabilities of Roman women began to be made. No longer tied down by childbearing, spinning and weaving quite as rigidly as they had been, many upper class women were able to acquire more than a smattering of education,⁷ and with familiarity with philosophy, rhetoric and literature came questions about society and women’s role therein. A reassessment of the res publica had begun exercising the more progressive minds in male society as well, and the tensions building up on such issues as popular sovereignty spilled over into the area of women’s rights. There was another current of equal importance. The aftermath of the great wars saw mounting social and economic dislocation, and in the rising tide of campaigns for social justice women were, if anything, more prominent than men. In a very real sense the politics of protest, which is the hallmark of the period, was a feminine phenomenon.

By about 150 BC the second phase merges into the third. The latter covers the later Republic down to the death of Caesar, and is discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. Ideological and social tensions intensified, and exploded into the Gracchan period. Women’s public role expanded accordingly. Names of individual women are now linked to more adequate source material. The politically conscious matron reaches maturity, and by the second half of the first century she is every bit as credible as her descendants, les grandes dames of the triumviral period and the Principate, will be in their turn.

The educated matron of the later Republic subjected the problems of society in general, and of women in particular, to more searching scrutiny than her predecessors had done, and in the hands of small, specialized groups women’s involvement in public affairs took on new, and more sophisticated, dimensions. Three such groups are identified in the Gracchan period. One group, headed by Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, is of paramount importance. A second group consists of women who possess some degree of legal knowledge. They make their mark in two ways. One or two women developed skills as legal theorists, and successfully challenged constitutional conventions. Others set up as court practitioners, thus encroaching on the preserve of legal expertise and court oratory which male politicians had always regarded as an important route to electoral success. The third group is the Vestals. Long treated as sacrificial victims and scapegoats by benighted priests and unscrupulous politicians, the Vestals in the Gracchan period rose up against the taboos of a society which had conquered the world but had not learnt how to rid itself of superstition.

By the mid-first century some great republican matrons had come to exert so much indirect influence that it virtually became a form of direct control. Women like Clodia and Servilia, and perhaps Praecia before them, were politicians in their own right. Theoretically they were no nearer to the franchise and office than they had ever been, but their highly organized networks which gave them access to senators and magistrates could no longer be dismissed as mere counselling or cajolery. These women foreshadowed, and in some ways even surpassed, the women of the early Principate. A Servilia, for example, had to be able to pickher way through a veritable minefield of warring elements, none of which could claim undisputed supremacy over the others. The women of the Principate were at least able to gear their activities to a single source of power.

The fourth phase spans the triumviral period, that bridge between the late Republic and the Principate which runs from Caesar’s death to Octavian’s triumph over Antony. It is covered in two chapters. Chapter 7 deals with women other than Octavian’s sister, Octavia, and his wife Livia. One of the women discussed in this chapter, Fulvia, almost pre-empted Livia’s role as the first empress. Chapter 8 deals with Octavia and Livia in the first stage of their careers, that is, in the triumviral period. The history of these two women in the 40s and 30s is a vital element in the formation of that most important institution of the Principate, the Domus Caesarum or House of the Caesars. The material in these chapters could no doubt be distributed differently, with part being added to the late Republic and part to the Principate, but the transitional character of the period is as meaningful for women in public life as it is for anything else.

The fifth phase is co-extensive with a generally accepted period of Roman history. It covers the early Principate from its foundation by Augustus in 27 BC to the death of Nero in AD 68, and is dealt with in Chapters 9 to 13. The introduction of what was, for all practical purposes, a radical departure from the republican system of government, had a profound impact on all aspects of Roman life. In one sense, albeit a negative one, the new system was advantageous to women. This is because the entire basis of male politics changed under one-man rule. The senate remained nominally important, but was seldom much more than a shadow. Office was increasingly dependent on the emperor’s fiat rather than on the alliances and coalitions of the Republic. And the popular assembly, never much more than a rubber-stamp except in brief and troubled interludes, soon lost even its formal role in the process of government.⁸ The decreased importance of the popular assembly is the crucial factor, for it made the denial of the franchise to women less relevant; it meant that something that had been refused to women, though available to all men, no longer mattered. Other inequalities, such as exclusion from the senate and magistracies, remained, but women were no worse off than the great bulk of men belonging to the middle class and the plebs, who were theoretically eligible for preferment but were, apart from the fortunate few, unlikely to achieve it.⁹

In a more positive sense feminine politics underwent a transformation in the Principate because of the innate nature of the new institution. Over the entire period 27 BC to AD 68 the head of state was chosen repeatedly from a single family (or combination of two families), and the throne was seen as a hereditary possession.¹⁰ The family acquired a new status (originating in the triumviral period) as the Domus Caesarum, the House of the Caesars, and the women of the Domus shared in that status to the full. Nor was it simply a matter of honorific titles and privileges, for to some extent the position of imperial women was officially recognized and they became constitutional entities.

What must be accounted one of the most important political roles of imperial women, if only because of its prominence in the history of the period, is the problem of the succession. There had never been a succession problem in the Republic. When a particular family held a series of consulships, it did so by means of electoral alliances. But the emperor was not elected, nor did he have the power to appoint his successor. The most that he could do was to indicate his preference, by dynastic marriage and adoption, and to confer on the candidate of his choice the essential powers that he would need if acclaimed as emperor when the time came. It was in influencing the emperor’s choice of a candidate that imperial women played one of their major roles.

A strong-minded woman was also able to influence general aspects of the emperor’s policy. Sometimes she held his policies in contempt and sought to undermine them. At least one member of the Domus went so far as to form a colourable facsimile of a political party in order to oppose the emperor. Once or twice women came close to a co-regency. In a sense all this was simply a function of the Principate itself. Once the ground rules of government had changed, the political horizons of women could not fail to expand in the light of new conditions and new opportunities.

Our chosen segment of the Principate sees women’s involvement in politics and public life at a peak. Perhaps because of the novelty of having the palace replace the forum, the women of the Domus rose to a higher, and more spectacular, position than any of their republican forebears. In a very real sense the domestic history of the period is the history of those women. Their targetswere less diversified than in the Republic. The wide range of activities open to women in the later Republic was a reflection of the rich potential of the Roman Republic as a whole; but as the choices open to men narrowed in the Principate, so did those open to women. But what the Principate loses in variety it makes up for in intrinsic interest. The politics of the imperial women sheds instructive light on the new order as a whole.

An interesting by-product of the Principate, symptomatic of their greater access to public affairs, was the change in women’s names. In the Republic a woman had only one name, her father’s nomen gentilicium, or family name, with a feminine ending: Julius-Julia. Sisters were distinguished by numbers or priority adjectives: ‘the first Julia’, ‘the elder Julia’. But in the Principate women acquired a second name, a cognomen—thus Julia Agrippina and her sister Julia Drusilla, for which modern investigators are truly grateful.

SOURCES AND SCOPE

The above general outline can now be supplemented in a number of respects. First, the coverage. This is determined partly by the relative importance of the events, but also by the availability of source material. For the Republic we depend largely on Livy and Cicero, supported by other sources. For the triumvirate, Appian and Dio are the mainstays, assisted by Plutarch. For the Principate we rely on Tacitus, with substantial support from Suetonius, Dio and others. Legal evidence is available right across the board, in both juristic and literary texts.¹¹ But epigraphic and numismatic material is confined to the triumviral period and the Principate.

In a certain sense the material is the message. When the full Livy is available the coverage is correspondingly ample. Late Republican topics owe an even greater debt to Cicero. When those resources fail, time and circumstance have usually preserved reasonable substitutes. But if any single author is indispensable it is Tacitus. One need only compare what can be pieced together for Livia in the triumviral and Augustan periods with the fully rounded Tiberian figure of Annales. We can hardly guess how differently Caligula’s sisters would present if what Tacitus did say about them had come down to us. But let us be grateful for what we have. At least we do not have to use scissors-and-paste after Livia, for the two Agrippinas and Messalina are fully documented by the greatest Roman historian.

A word about the book’s title. First, what is meant by ‘polities’? All definitions are dangerous,^* and this word is no exception. One can only define it by giving examples. The examples are in the book. They relate mainly, but not exclusively, to politics, government, law and public affairs in general. Second, what is meant by women? Our primary concern is with upper-class matrons, married women belonging to senatorial or equestrian families. This is not an inflexible rule, however, for unmarried women (especially Vestals) are prominent. So, when the sources authorize it, are one or two plebeian women, apart from the many anonymous players. But on the whole participation in public affairs is no better atte...

Índice

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
• 1: INTRODUCTION
• 2: WOMEN IN THE CONFLICT OF THE ORDERS
• 3: WOMEN IN THE SECOND PUNIC WAR
• 4: THE POLITICS OF PROTEST
• 5: WOMEN IN GRACCHAN POLITICS
• 6: THE POLITICAL STRATEGISTS OF THE LATE REPUBLIC
• 7: THE TRIUMVIRAL PERIOD: DIPLOMACY, ORATORY AND LEADERSHIP
• 8: THE FOOTHILLS OF THE PRINCIPATE
• 9: WOMEN IN THE AUGUSTAN PRINCIPATE
• 10: TIBERIUS, LIVIA AND AGRIPPINA
• 11: CALIGULA’S SISTERS
• 12: MESSALINA, AGRIPPINA AND CLAUDIUS
• 13: AGRIPPINA, NERO AND THE DOMUS
• 14: IN RETROSPECT
• NOTES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY