Roman Wives, Roman Widows

by Bruce W Winter

  While the exact differences between the lex Julia and lex Papia are no longer clear given that the provisions were amalgamated in the Justinianic code, there are clues which help discern the thrust of the changes. Under the lex Julia no time limit had been specified for the period of engagement and, as a result, bachelors became engaged to very young children so as to prolong their freedom from marriage. The Papian law limited the period to two years, and forbade betrothal with girls under the age of ten, with the age of twelve being the time when they could marry.75

  Rewards were used as a encouragement to freedman to produce children. If he had three liberi (free-born children) he could exclude his patron from any claim on his estate. If he had only two, then the patron was entitled to one third of the estate, and one half if there was only one child. The law also 'extended the right of the female descendants of a patron ... [if] the patron's daughter had three children. If a free-born patroness had three children she enjoyed the same privileges as a man, although this did not apply to a freed patroness'.76

  The inheritance provisions were not abolished in the amended legislation of A.D. 9; the lex Papia Poppaea only modified the proportions of the inheritance for those without children. Nothing changed with respect to the issue of adultery and the legal responsibility on the part of the husband to act, or bear the possible consequences.

  Augustus failed to assuage the public dissatisfaction and felt such pressure that he capitulated to some demands of the lex Papia Poppaea.77 So committed was he to his beliefs on marriage that he himself would not bring forward amendments to the legislation but left it to two consuls to do so, neither of whom, ironically, was married. The concern for our investigation is both with what changed and what did not. The latter is critical, as was the unspoken acknowledgement on the part of Augustus. Political realist that he was, he had to yield in part to the pressure of the Equestrians.

  The critical issues on which he would not negotiate are central to the concerns of this book. Tacitus illustrates the case in A.D. 19 of the Senate v. Vistilia, a married woman of a praetorian family.

  In the same year the Senate passed stringent decrees to repress women's immorality and prohibited prostitution for granddaughters, daughters, and wives of Roman Equestrians. For [Vistilia] ... had made public, before the aediles, her practice of prostitution. This was done in keeping with a venerable custom of our ancestors by which it is considered sufficient punishment for unchaste women to admit their shame publicly. The senate also wanted to know why her husband [Titidius Labeo], had not carried out the punishment provided by law [the lex for his patently guilty wife]. But he explained that the sixty days allowed for him to make up his mind what to do had not yet elapsed, so the senate passed judgement only on Vistilia, who was relegated to the island of Seriphos.78

  Vistilia invoked an ancient tradition, wrongly anticipating that a public confession would result in no further penalties, for prostitutes operated with immunity in the legislation.79 Her husband sheltered under the sixty-day rule when faced with being found guilty for not instituting proceedings against his delinquent wife.

  It is clear that some high-class married women continued to operate like prostitutes (hetairai). In the time of Tiberius some of them registered themselves officially as prostitutes because the laws of Augustus covering adultery did not apply to that class of society. This meant that this offence would no longer be punishable by exile.80 After the death of Augustus his laws did not lapse, in spite of their unpopularity in certain quarters.

  In the previous chapter we noted, among others, poets who actively endorsed, justified and promoted the new set of rules on marriage infidelity for Roman women. One consequence was that it encouraged new sexual mores for young men of the Equestrian order and others who were the recipients of the sexual favours of some of the `new' wives. It was against these `new' ground rules for both female and male that Augustus legislated. The official image of the imperial wife portrayed in stone was that of the Roman matron discreetly dressed in her fulsome stola and deliberately promoted by Augustus and his successors. It was replicated in statue types of distinguished women throughout the Empire and, it is suggested, this was done in part to counter the new Roman women operating with different dress codes endorsed by their `new rules'.

  Krause had argued that the social status some women enjoyed and the sexual freedom in which they indulged (as well as their economic power) were compromised because they were not `emancipated'.81 McGinn responded to his conclusion: `Was there a measurable improvement in the status of Roman women in the classical period, particularly in the last century B.c. and the first two centuries A.D., and, if so, is this change best described as an "emancipation"?'82 He argued that while they did not secure this in the twentieth-century understanding of women's emancipation, a negative answer would draw a wrong implication - that no changes occurred and that all remained enslaved in traditional roles. The ethics and activities of the `new' Roman women (when compared with those of their Republican sisters) were different, especially given the measure of financial and social freedom they had gained.

  What drove Augustus to legislate thus? Ancient historians have sought to provide answers. `Augustus was trying to legislate shame into the upper class ... [his] political stance and legislation intensified this concern for visible respectability.... Augustus' emphasis on elite male rank and on the regulation of sexual liaisons [was intended] to protect and mark a special senatorial sta- tus.'83 He was an adept promoter of traditional Roman values, and his legislative answer was, in part, a response to the perceived threat to Rome's class system and its continuance with what he saw as the promiscuousness of wives. To us it may seem hypocritical that some seven years later, Augustus took Terentia, his mistress who was the wife of Maecenas, and left Rome. This led Dio Cassius to complain that he punished some, spared others, and broke the laws himself. Augustus was neither the first nor the last shrewd politician who operated with a dichotomy of public and private morality.84

  Treggiari has asked, `What difference did the Augustan legislation make? It may have persuaded upper-class men to marry earlier than they might otherwise have done. The incentives for the more prosperous freedmen should have had some impact. Women in both classes were given new reasons to want to be wives and prolific mothers.... What many Romans had henceforth to bear in mind was the effect of the law on disposal of property'.85

  McGinn has concluded that `The lex Iulia et Papia established a hierarchy of marriages based in turn on received notions - among the elite, at least - of the relationship between social position and moral worth. Like other rules the Romans developed in the field of sexuality and marriage, it sought to articulate a social order in terms of rank and gender and, at the same time, to assure the reproduction of this order over time. It helped ensure that Augustus' recasting of the social order (in large part of restating it) would not be temporary in its effects but would, so to speak, be reproduced again and again in future, through the transmission of property and status to the next - deserving - generation'.86 He has also argued that `Concern with promoting marriage and the raising of children formed only part of Augustus' purpose - a crucial aim was to discourage the wrong kind of people from pursuing a path of social mobility ... the law attempted to determine who was not to rise through marriage or testamentary windfall. The idea was to reconcile, through the instrument of law, actual social status with perceptions of what was appropriate. Law would now, more than ever before, define both status and mechanisms for advancement in society' 87

  Phyllis Culham in her essay, "Did Roman Women Have an Empire?" has observed that the actual results of the legislation were more extensive and not necessarily all that were intended. `Augustus' attempt to enforce public morality among the aristocratic elite, had the paradoxical effect of shoring up women's status: it caused them a flow-through of the public status enjoyed by their husbands.' This, Culham has argued, increased both their status and their personal freedom.88 The following chapters wil
l verify her observation.

  However complex Augustus' motives were, no reconstruction can ignore the evidence which points to his desire to restrain through legal means the conduct of the new Roman wives and secure their commitment to chastity in marriage. It is only in response to changes in mores that the scope of parts of the legal reforms of Augustus in this area is explicable.

  There are significant philosophical sources that deal with issues relating to the `new' women and provide an important comparison with the more succinctly expressed instructions to women in the Pauline communities. This is also true of the moral conduct of single and married men, striking the same balance in terms of equal ethical demands on men as well as married women required in the Christian communities. These philosophical discussions are invaluable as they show similar problems were created from the same source, the `new' wives confronting their traditions, and complement the information derived from the Roman legal sources.

  The purpose of this chapter is to examine the responses of the philosophical schools of the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagoreans. It discusses (I) the cardinal virtues and the mores of `new' Roman wives that confronted married women like Seneca's mother; (II) the reasons why women studied philosophy; (III) the problem created by headstrong and arrogant wives who had used their education in an inappropriate way; (IV) the importance of educating daughters; and (V) the demand for sexual abstinence by young men with other women, including other men's wives, and for sexual fidelity by married men. The final section examines the instructions of older women to younger women in the Neo-Pythagorean school.

  To do this, the major portion of this chapter will focus on what Musonius Rufus (c. 30-100/101 A.D.), a Stoic philosopher teaching in the Flavian period, had to say on these issues. The teaching of the Pythagorean philosophical schools comes by way of letters from Melissa, an older woman, to Clearete, a young married woman, on being a wife and mother and manager of her household, and another from Theano to Euboule about raising children. These contrast with the values being promoted in the Julio-Claudian era by avant-garde women and those assumed to be the inalienable rights of men.

  Unlike the great majority of women you never succumbed to immorality, the worst evil of our time; jewels and pearls have not moved you; you never thought of wealth as the greatest gift to the human race; you have not been perverted by the imitation of worse women who lead even the virtuous into pitfalls; you have never blushed for the number of children, as if it taunted you with your years; never have you, in the manner of other women whose only recommendation lies in their beauty, tried to conceal your pregnancy as though it were indecent; you have not crushed the hope of children that were being nurtured in your body; you have not defiled your face with paints and cosmetics; never have you fancied the kind of dress that exposed no greater nakedness by being removed. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honour of modesty.2

  So wrote Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the brother of Gallio and the governor of Achaia, to his mother in order to console her during his exile from Rome (A.D. 41-49) by the emperor, Claudius. Seneca the Younger (4 B.C.-A.D. 65), a Stoic, became a leading statesman during the Principate of Nero.

  The importance of his letter for our purposes lies in the comments about his mother's modesty which starkly contrasted with that of other wives of her day. He describes the alternative lifestyle of the Julio-Claudian married women as lavish with jewellery and pearls and the over-use of cosmetics, vainly putting great store on physical beauty, immoral dressing immodestly after the fashion of the `new' Roman woman, using contraceptives to avoid pregnancy (and, if not successful, aborting the child), pursuing wealth, and pressuring others to embrace the trendy way of life. He contrasts this with those who are the mothers of many children, dressing as befits the role of the married woman, and adorned with the greatest cardinal virtue of a wife, i.e., `modesty' (prudentia, oco4porn vq), which he sees as `the lasting beauty of a woman'.' In Corinth, the sculptor of the statue of Regilla, the wife of the fa mous orator Herodes Atticus, is said to have captured this same virtue epitomising the modest wife.' Although Seneca laments his mother receiving only a smattering of instruction in philosophy, he warmly commends her for she adhered to traditional values in the face of the new, alternative ones.' As a leading Stoic philosopher of the period, it was the teachings of that school which he had in mind in lamenting his mother's lack of formal instruction in its tenets.

  Behind Seneca's ethical evaluations of his mother lay strong Stoic virtues. He wrote elsewhere that philosophy meant `the study of virtue, that `virtue was the object sought and philosophy the seeker', and that `the two cannot be sundered'. He went on to argue -

  Philosophy cannot exist without virtue, or virtue without philosophy. Philosophy is the study of virtue, by means however of virtue itself; but neither can virtue exist without the study of itself, nor can the study of virtue exist without virtue itself.

  For him `philosophy and virtue cling close together'.6

  What were these cardinal virtues which were to be embraced by young men and women, and what were the vices that conflicted with their beliefs and were to be avoided at all costs? The traditional virtues and opposing vices were

  Our particular interest is in the role of these civic virtues and vices in the discussion of the lifestyle of married women. They were also a challenge to the moral and social conduct of younger men who had received the toga virilis, some of whom constituted the illicit clientele of married women, and married men as well.

  Yet it was the sophists among others who were their adversaries. They were accused of providing a philosophical basis for their lifestyle rooted in first-century Platonism where the body was no longer the prison house, but simply the house of the soul. The sophists of the day amalgamated this anthropology with the idea that the senses were the guardians and courtiers of the soul which nature meant to be indulged.9 As the leading educators of the day the sophists did teach the cardinal civic virtues but argued for and promoted another lifestyle in terms of personal conduct.

  Musonius Rufus discussed in detail how both men and women might live good lives according to his school's traditions. He had little time for the type of education being provided by the sophists to whom the young men flocked. This was contrary to previous eras where philosophers had dominated in the final level of education. It explains why he commenced his corpus with the treatise "That there is no need of giving many proofs for one problem."10 After that, he explored the next proposition, "That man is born with an inclination toward virtue." This prepared the way for the important treatise that followed, "Should women study philosophy?" There he affirmed the need of both genders to pursue the cardinal virtues taught by the philosophers. He argued that daughters should be exposed to the same education as young sons because, like other Stoics, he believed in the equality of men and women. It was how that `common' virtue was expressed in practical life that was important and particularly so for our inquiry in this chapter which primarily concerns women."

  While Musonius indicated that the different abilities and roles of males and females must be recognised, his primary interest in this last treatise was how the study of Stoic philosophy influenced the lifestyle of wives. In his defence of women studying philosophy he related classical virtues to the patterns of their lives.

  Let us examine in detail each of the qualities that belong to a good wife, for it will become apparent that each of these qualities results from the practice of philosophy. For example it is necessary for a wife to be a good manager of a household, and capable of anticipating its needs (literally 'welfare') and able to direct the household slaves. In these activities I claim that philosophy is particularly helpful, since each of these activities is an aspect of life, and philosophy is nothing other than the science of living, and the philosopher, as Socrates says, continually contemplates this, `what good or evil has been done in his house'.12

  He then proceeded to explore how the traditional cardinal v
irtues of `selfcontrol' (6co4pooOvq), `justice' (6ixq), and `courage' (&vbpEia), affected the science of living for women.

  But it is also necessary (&XXa 6Ct 6~ Kai) for a woman to be self-controlled (oc 4 pova). On the one hand she is free from lecherous recklessness (oY(Xv KaOapsusty i v &4poblGicov 7rapav6pwv),13 and on the other free concerning other pleasures (KaOapsusty U Tfjc 7rEpl Tas aXXac r 6ovas &xpaGias), not a slave of desire (i? bovXF Flv t 1rM6uµia1c), not contentious (nqb 4Mbvstxov Eivat), not lavish in expense (i 7roXuTEXq), nor extravagant in dress (pry KaXXcoTFiczptav). These are the works of the self-controlled woman and to them14 I would add these: to control her temper, not to be overcome by grief, and to be superior to uncontrolled emotion of every kind." Now the philosopher transmits the instruction of these things.16

  According to Pomeroy, `The term means "temperance" but also connotes chastity and self-restraint. It was the pre-eminent virtue of Greek women; it is mentioned more frequently than any other quality on women's tombstones.' 17 This was no less true in Roman society in the period with which we are dealing. The person, either male or female, who learns and practices these things becomes a well-ordered and seemly person. `What then? So much for the one who has these things (TaUTa)', i.e., the virtues, and avoids the cardinal vice of intemperance (&xoaawia) - Musonius did not discuss this until the very end of the discourse.18

  Musonius' explication of justice explores somewhat unexpected territory. `As for justice (bixq), would not a woman who studies philosophy be just?' He then raises further questions that relate to justice with respect to the conduct of a wife and mother.