Roman Wives, Roman Widows

by Bruce W Winter

  The letters discussing Christian wives and widows also demanded an end to the culturally accepted promiscuous behaviour of both single and married men in the Pauline communities. This will be referred to for comparative purposes in Part II. The letters to the Pauline communities did not perpetuate the gross inequality that the secular society and Roman law condoned either explicitly or implicitly.

  I have returned yet again to 1 Timothy 5:3-16 but for a very different reason. In 1988 I published an article on the role of the dowry and the care of widows in i Timothy 5:3-16 where the focus was on the dowry's importance and the binding legal obligations of `the lord' of the dowry. These factors had not been incorporated into the discussion as to why Christians who failed to provide support were condemned as behaving not just like `unbelievers' but as `worse than unbelievers' - they had thrust their widowed mothers and older female relatives onto the charity of the church.26 In 1994 `Widows and Legal and Christian Benefactions' was restricted to exploring the role of older widows in the church, and the appropriate response to them with the invoking of benefaction language which `honoured' them for their deeds of service to others.21 In neither work did I deal with the Sitz im Leben of the young widows. The requirement under Roman law that they remarry was only alluded to in the first essay, as was its possible connection with the intention of Augustus' law to curb the promiscuous behaviour of some of the young wid- ows.28 The issues young widows experienced were not discussed in any further detail in either essay. Their connection to the new woman is explored here in detail.

  My reason in so soon revisiting i Corinthians 11:2-16 arises from important monographs that have been published in the past two years on dress codes of women and the official enforcement of them. They add further to the discussion and alter aspects of my former interpretation of the passage.29

  My approach in research has been to seek to read the primary sources and only then have recourse to any secondary discussion by ancient historians. I owe this to the lifetime example of Emeritus Professor E. A. Judge who demonstrated the importance of the primary focus on sources.30 In this book the ancient texts are separated in the main body to assist the reader to focus on the ancient material. I have departed from the usual convention of an opening chapter that rehearses the history of the discussion of this subject. The past treatment has already been documented in a number of monographs as well as the many New Testament commentaries produced on letters sent to the Pauline communities.31 I have been keen to take an independent look at the issues involved, beginning with the primary sources.

  There have been an enormous growth and specialisation in the disciplines of archaeology, epigraphy, and papyrology. The result has seen the fragmenting of ancient history as a single enterprise, in spite of the retrieval by electronic means of so much information from the ancient world, including both literary and non-literary sources. That ought to have resulted in harvesting this information more quickly. However, even those working in the various sub-disciplines of ancient history are not always able to integrate the information from across these specialised areas, given the degree of sophistication and the specialised technical language and documentation that have developed.32

  The New Testament context should now be more easily investigated than in past generations with speedy access to existing databases. If at times ancient historians find themselves struggling with all the primary evidence, then it is little wonder that their New Testament cousins feel overwhelmed by the amount of material on the TLG and PHI CDRoms and access to an avalanche of secondary material.

  Cambridge Greek and Latin Texts on the first or other centuries which are edited in the light of other extant material in endnotes, can help in the translation and illumination of particular aspects of the texts. They were produced in order to help the reader understand both the text and its Sitz im Leben. This monograph stands more in that tradition by drawing attention to relevant ancient sources not generally known by those who read the New Testament, and it parallels Hennie J. Marsman's Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East. 13 The aim, then, has been to place before the reader new material, regarded as apposite to the texts, for the consideration of those in the academy as well as the church.

  This book on women in the Pauline communities is something of a par allel treatment to Richard Bauckham's recent book, Gospel Women.34 The first two sections go beyond the scope of his work which dealt with those women who are actually named in the gospels. It finds a parallel in the last chapter for he comments on Joanna whom he identifies with Junia in Romans 16:7. This book, however, is more limited in its focus because it argues that the setting of the texts on women in the Pauline communities was that of the `new women'.

  All authors hope that their readers will read the book from beginning to end before forming a judgement, and especially so where methodological considerations and important primary evidence that is germane to subsequent discussion are embedded in the opening chapters. Studies on the intersection between New Testament sources and others of the same period can be highly productive for ancient historians and biblical scholars alike. I leave it to the reader to assess how helpful this study has been in locating firstcentury horizons and whether it illuminates aspects of the texts addressed to the Pauline communities.

  New Testament scholars have generally assumed that in the first century, there was a longstanding and broad societal consensus on the roles of women, wives and widows in public and in private. As a result, it is often concluded that female converts to Christianity would have needed to make little or no significant changes in their general lifestyle or relationships. Cultural mores were simply endorsed or, as the evidence is sometimes read, were actually reenforced in the Pauline churches. Therefore Paul becomes at best a social realist or, at worst, a social conservative who encouraged realism or conservatism in his communities. It is perhaps because of this, that discussions have concentrated on Pauline traditions and not enough on the social context in which these first-century women lived.

  The power of husbands over their wives can be paralleled with that of the father over his children. `Of the various aspects of patria potestas ... that of the notorious right of the father to put his children to death' is known. According to Harris, it was very rarely exercised in Republican times and not at all in the imperial period.' However, there certainly are recorded instances resulting in capital punishment where a wife was subjected to the judgement of her hus band or his family for the murder of her spouse. In the Republican period, Pullicia, who poisoned her husband, the consul Postumius Albinus, and Licinia who did the same to her spouse were put to death by their late husband's relatives.

  Sexual debauchery connected with cultic activities saw the Senate c. 155 B.C. commissioning the Consuls `to investigate women who had made impure use of Bacchanalian rites. Many were found guilty by them and all were executed in their homes by their kinsfolk'.2

  In the time of Claudius, Tacitus records the case of Pomponia Graecina, who, being

  a woman of high family, married to Aulus Plautius - whose ovation after the British campaign I recorded earlier - and now arraigned for alien superstition, was left to the jurisdiction of her husband. Following the ancient custom, he held the inquiry, which was to determine the fate and fame of his wife, before a family council, and announced her innocent.

  `Her creed, as was often the case, gave rise to immorality, on which she was tried and acquitted by the family council." It has been suggested that the superstition referred to was Christianity.' In terms of life and religion in Republican times in the early Empire, heads of some households could hold total sway over their wives, making them subject to their husband's domination and their position vulnerable to exploitation.

  However, this is not the total picture. What is to be made of the affection reflected in an early-first-century A.D. statue from Rome in the British Museum? It represents the marriage of Lucius Aurelius Hermia and his wife, Aurelia
Philematium. She is modestly attired with the traditional marriage veil over her head, wearing an ankle-length dress and kissing his hand; he is dressed in his toga affectionately looking at her.5 This figure with the approving gaze of the husband and the modestly dressed and demure wife is a statue type from the late Republican period and the early Empire. He was a freed man of Lucius and a butcher from the Viminal Hill in Rome. The epitaph on the tombstone reads -

  My wife, who died before me, my only wife, chaste in body, a loving woman who possessed my heart, she lived faithful to a faithful husband; equally in her devotion, she never let avarice keep her from her duty.6

  Affection on the part of first-century husbands in the marriage relationship does not normally spring to twenty-first-century minds, but it did exist, and there was no reluctance to portray it in statues or inscriptions commemorating deceased spouses. What feelings lay behind the grave stone erected by a plasterer in Rome who recorded his love for his wife who `was 18 years, 9 months and 5 days when she died and had been married to him for 5 years, 6 months and 18 days'?' This, however, is by no means the complete picture.

  It is well known that the sexual propriety expected of a wife contrasted starkly with the culturally acceptable unfaithfulness of her husband with household slaves and female dinner companions. Chastity was expected of wives both in Greek and Roman times.

  Aulus Gellius recorded an attitude where some husbands in the Republican period boasted they were exonerated from any accountability. They were, however, free to bring the ultimate penalty against their wives.

  It is also written, regarding the right to kill: `If you catch your wife in adultery, you can kill her with impunity; she, however, cannot dare to lay a finger on you if you commit adultery, nor is it the law'.'

  The early-second-century A.D. writer, Plutarch, presents the rationalisation of the husband's behaviour in a speech that was traditionally delivered in the nuptial bedroom.9 It demanded of the wife both her faithfulness to him and his gods, and the acceptance of his casual sexual liaisons. Plutarch justified the husband's activity on the grounds that extra-marital escapades were a means of gratifying his lust, for it would be entirely inappropriate for him to use his wife in this way.10 The fact that Plutarch knew both young people as friends only highlights the widespread acceptance of a husband's adultery. In another illustration, when L. Aelius Caesar's wife criticised his adulterous behaviour he was said to have justified this by asking her to let him exercise his lust on other women because a wife was for dignitas and not sensuality."

  When it is remembered that many brides were married (in most cases in their mid-teens) to men who were some ten years older,12 then such a speech could only re-enforce both his demand of faithfulness on her part and her expectations of his casual sexual dalliances. Treggiari in her magnum opus on Roman marriage explains this inequitable situation thus: `Implicit in the advice to wives to ignore the philandering of their husbands is the idea that it meant little. We may picture a continuum that runs roughly from brief encounters with a man's own slaves or prostitutes and music-girls though other people's slaves (where negotiation or poaching was involved) to respectable but unmarried women of a lower social class, and then to wives and women of his own class and long-standing affairs .113

  Beryl Rawson writes of this period that there was `some discrimination against women ... they could be punished for affairs with slaves and low-class persons while men could not be. But the area of discrimination was much narrower than is sometimes suggested'.14 In the time of Augustus adultery on the part of a wife was not, in most cases, a capital offence but rather a criminal one, as Chapter 3 will show. The husband could still operate with a mea sure of impunity in his sexual liaisons, and his behaviour was accepted on the grounds that women were less sensuous than men and had higher moral standards.15

  We will now explore in detail some of the material of another group of firstcentury women from the late Republican period and the early Roman Empire whose existence has not generally been noted in New Testament studies. It provides a somewhat different picture to that normally associated with the stereotype of the domestic life of Roman women, and wives in particular. On the basis of this material Part II of this book will argue that it provides the critical Sitz im Leben for concerns expressed to the Pauline communities about certain patterns of behaviour judged to be inappropriate for Christian women, wives and widows.

  Ancient historians have observed that around 44 B.c. evidence of a 'new' type of woman emerged in certain circles in Rome.16 Both in ostensibly factual texts and in imaginative writing a new kind of woman appears precisely at the time of Cicero and Caesar: a woman in high position, who nevertheless claims for herself the indulgence in sexuality of a woman of pleasure.''

  What could have given rise to such a change in the traditional behaviour of married women? Wives still brought to marriage the all-important dowry but could now retain their own property. It was also possible for them to terminate the marriage, and receive back a portion of, or the whole dowry.18 Along with this financial independence some also experienced a measure of social freedom. Roman wives began to compete for men with those from whom they had been traditionally differentiated, viz., foreign women and freedwomen. The latter two groups defended their activities thus:

  They [the wives] claim we always go with their men, they say we are their concubines, and try to squelch us. Because we are freedwomen, both your mother and I became prostitutes.'9

  They had been former slaves who plied their charms as hetairai during the banquets and provided sexual pleasures for their individual dinner companions in what were popularly called `after dinners'.20 Among their clients were, of course, the husbands of Roman wives. It is explicable that wives of social status should revolt against these totally inequitable moral standards made possible when financial security gave them power to act independently.

  `To judge from our sources in the last years of the republic, the more independent women of good family were beginning to decide for themselves what kind of social occasion they enjoyed .'21 The `realistic prose reportage and the emerging genre of the personal love elegy offer glimpses of glamorous and assertive women, living a life of parties and self-gratification and choosing their own lovers.'22 At least two of these women named by Cicero and Sallust have been identified from other evidence. Of the women celebrated in love poetry Catullus's beloved has been identified with the historical Clodia, wife of Metellus, and so has Sempronia.23

  The literary evidence we possess of the new Roman woman is threefold and consists of (a) the views of contemporary writers covering the late Republic and the early second century A.D.; (b) those of the poets and the playwrights; (c) and the legal moves of Augustus where he specifically legislates against this new phenomenon in the late Republican period and the early Empire.

  Sallust (c. 86-c. 35 B.c.) in Catiline said of Sempronia who was a married woman with children that she was

  able to play the lyre and dance more skilfully than an honest woman should, and having many other accomplishments which minister to voluptuousness. But there was nothing which she held so cheap as modesty and chastity. Her desires were so ardent that she sought men more often than she was sought by them ... she was a woman of no mean endowment; she could write verse, bandy jests and use language which was modest or tender or wanton.24

  Sallust himself took a noble woman ten years his senior as his mistress. Of her Cicero wrote that she was

  the daughter of one of Rome's noblest families, claiming the sexual freedom of a woman of no social standing to lose, and making no effort to conceal her behaviour - `a woman not just noble but notorious'.25

  A subsequent lover, Caelius, was accused of `passions, love making, adulteries, visits to Baiae, beach picnics, parties and revelling, songs, choruses and boat- trips'.26

  In a letter written from Laodicea in March, 50 B.C. to his friend Atticus, Cicero also records the conduct of Vedius Pollio, a friend of Augustus and a wealthy and powerfu
l son of freed persons. His baggage, mistakenly taken to be that of his host who had died suddenly, was opened for inventory purposes. In it were found five cameos of distinguished Roman women, who had given them to him as mementoes of their sexual liaisons. One of the highclass women was, he tells Atticus, `the sister of your friend "the brute" and wife of that "charmer" who takes things like this so lightly'.27 It was but one instance of a husband turning a blind eye to his wife's promiscuous conduct. Tacitus recorded that in A.D. 19

  the senate passed severe provisions to repress women's dissoluteness and prohibited prostitution for granddaughters, daughters, and wives of Roman knights. For Vistilia, a woman of a praetorian family, had made pub lic, before the aediles, her practice of prostitution. This was done in keeping with a valid and venerable custom by which it is considered sufficient punishment for unchaste women to admit their shame publicly. The senate wanted to know why Titidius Labeo, Vistilia's husband, had not carried out the punishment provided by law for his patently guilty wife. He explained that the sixty days allowed for him to institute criminal proceedings had not yet elapsed, so the senate passed judgement only on Vistilia, who was relegated to the island of Seriphos.28

  Plutarch also comments on the `new' women. He refers to those who were `bored by uncompromising and virtuous men [sic], and take more pleasure in consorting with those who, like dogs and he-goats, are a combination of licentiousness and sensuality'.29 He warned husbands that `those who are not cheerful in the company of their wives, nor join with them in sportiveness and laughter, are thus teaching them to seek their own pleasures apart from their husbands '.30