WOMEN AND ORDER

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We find every so often in the surviving literary sources accounts of misbehavior by Roman matrons and Vestal Virgins mentioned as the primary  cause for disorder during Rome’s formative history (from the time of the Struggle of the Orders to the end of the Second Punic War in 202 BCE). 

While a group of misbehaving matrons was usually needed to cause state wide troubles, a single Vestal Virgin could eff ect the same result if she did not uphold her vows of chastity and was subsequently found out. In the first case, the ability of the group to cause troubles arose from the reciprocal dependency of the private from the public sphere and the definition wrought by tradition of what moral behaviors constituted the basis for a well-functioning state. This is true as well of the Vestal Virgins, priestesses guarding the hearth of Rome, which symbolized the Roman people and Roman male procreative power,45 except that the Vestals existed as an exclusive group in the public (male) sector.46 In the first case, it was the action of a group that could put the state at risk, whereas in the latter case, it was a single Vestal Virgin.

Unlike fictional accounts, Roman matrons in real life, in a historically tangible period such as the late Republic, for example, voiced their opinions and their disagreements. A Roman woman could make money. As long as these business ventures were for the good of the family, there was no objection to them. Acceptable actions and transactions did not trigger comment; there was simply silence. When Cicero’s daughter Tullia died shortly after  giving birth in Feb ru ary 45 BCE, her father was distraught. His letters of  this period to his friend Atticus show him attempting to find consolation  in reading and writing. There is a discussion of building a shrine in honor of Tullia. “I shall naturally hallow her,” writes Cicero, “with every kind of memorial which Greek and Latin genius can supply. Perhaps that will appease my wound.” 47 In all the letters that touch on Tullia’s death, we learn nothing substantial about Tullia. She was dutiful and simply there, silent, as all virtuous women were ideally to be. Cicero, mourning Tullia’s death, portrays her as the ideal Roman woman, a type exclusively found in literature.

To be worthy of memory a Roman woman must have, above all, fulfilled her duties as a daughter, wife, and mother. Women who spoke out in public ran the risk of being ridiculed, especially if their cause was of a personal nature and did not serve a public good. A wonderful example of this is Cicero’s  defense of Marcus Caelius Rufus in 56 BCE. While some of Rome’s inhabitants celebrated the first day of the ludi Megalenses (games in honor of Mater Magna, which featured theater plays), others watched a fascinating and entertaining spectacle in the lawcourts. He branded one of Claudius’ infamous descendants, Clodia, Caelius’ former lover and now turned accuser, a Medea of the Palatine (Pro Caelio 19) and a “woman of loose morals” who established herself in the public baths and bought the bath attendant with a “quarter.” 48 Cicero not only argued, he performed, taking on the persona  of the esteemed Appius Claudius Caecus as he defended Caelius against the charge of being involved in the murder of Alexandrian ambassadors who argued against Ptolemy XII Auletes’ restoration.49

The rhetor Quintilian remarked over a century later that Caelius’ nickname for Clodia had been quadrantaria Clytaemnestra (Inst. 8.6.53). Clytemnestra of Greek myth was the wife of Agamemnon, who, in contrast  to Odysseus’ wife Penelope, married another man, Aegistheus, during her husband’s ten-year absence. When Agamemnon returned home, Clytemnestra killed him. The phrase quadrantaria Clytaemnestra turns Clodia into a disloyal, impious, cheaply bought, and thus utterly un-Roman, woman. 

Should this Clodia also have been the poet Catullus’ lover, Lesbia, as was alleged in antiquity, modern commentators began to question only in the twentieth century.50 We have to concede that this Roman woman hardly followed in Lucretia’s and Verginia’s heroic footsteps. Whether Clodia was as bad (irreverent of tradition) as surviving literature and subsequent explanatory models want us to believe is certainly open for discussion. One thing is clear, however, and the references to Medea and Clytemnestra reinforce this: Clodia meddled, or was perceived to have meddled, in politics, the sphere of men. Thus, her behavior was judged un-womanlike and unRoman; her actions may have been for her brother’s benefit, but they were perceived to be selfish. It cannot be discounted that these actions may in  part be due to the fact that Clodia’s brother was the infamous Clodius, whom Cicero deeply disliked.51

Cicero spoke and wrote with the assuredness that comes from being in the dominant (vir) position while debasing and deriding Clodia. Sallust did the same when he created the sketch of Sempronia, a supporter of Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline), who planned a coup d’état in 63 BCE, which Cicero, consul that year, uncovered and crushed. In Sallust’s estimation, Sempronia had committed many misdeeds (facinora) often with manly audacity (virilis audacia). She was a woman well situated by birth and appearance (genere atque forma) and furthered by the status of her husband 

Decimus Iunius Brutus, consul of 77 BCE. Her son Brutus (Decimus Iunius Brutus Albinus) had a distinguished career under Caesar but, like the tyrannicide Marcus Iunius Brutus, he was also involved in the dictator’s assassination. Sempronia was highly educated and possessed wit and grace (multae facetiae multusque lepos), but she meddled in politics; hence, even her positive attributes, which Sallust listed, worked against her.52 Sempronia was a married woman (mulier), whose sole obligation and focus, ideally, was to be toward her husband, children, and family. Her manly audacity, already out of place for a woman, only intensified the negativity of her actions.53

Notes

49. This Ptolemy was Cleopatra’s father and pro-Roman. In 58 BCE, he fled to Rome as a consequence of Rome’s conquest of Cyprus, which his brother ruled. Caecus served Roma as censor (312–307 BCE) and was one of Clodius’ and Clodia’s most esteemed ancestors.

 50. Apul. Apol. 10, and for a list of modern studies, see OCD “Catullus, Gaius Valerius.”

 51. The Bona Dea Aff air (62 BCE) had caused the rift between Clodius and Cicero. In 58 BCE, Clodius introduced a bill exiling any Roman who had put fellow Romans to death. Th e bill passed, and Cicero, who as consul in 63 BCE, had encouraged and approved the elimination of Catiline and his followers, was exiled. Cicero was allowed to return to Rome in 57 BCE. His villas and his house on the Palatine, however, had been destroyed (Cic. Dom.). On the site of the Palatine house, Clodius had a temple to Liberty built (Cic. Dom. 111 and 116; Dio Cass. 38.17.1, 39.11.1, 39.20.3; Plut. Cic. 33.1; Richardson [1992], 234).

 52. Sall. Cat. 24.3–25.5, 40.5–40.6.

 53. Sall. Cat. 23.

Written by Sarolta A. Takács in "Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons:Women in Roman Religion", University of Texas Press, Austin, USA, 2008. excerpts pp.18-20. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.