Ancient Roman Women
From Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul by T. G. Tucker, 1910.
From: 37 C.E. To: 68 C.E.
Location: Rome, Italy
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul by T. G. Tucker, 1910.
Marcia is now what was known as a "matron." Her position is far more free than it could ever have been in Greece or the Orient, more free indeed than it would be in any civilised country at the present time.
The Romans had at all times placed the matron in a position of dignity and responsibility, and to this is now added the greatest liberty of action. Her husband salutes her in public as ''Madam." Since he is a senator, and it is beginning to be the vogue to call such men "The Most Illustrious," she also shares that title in polite reference to herself. She is not confined to any particular portion of the house, nor, within the limits of decorum, is she excluded from masculine company.
She is the mistress of the establishment, controlling, not only the female slaves, but also the males, in so far as they are engaged in the work of the household. She keeps the keys of the store-rooms. Theoretically at least she has been trained in all the arts of the housekeeper, and thoroughly understands domestic management, together with the weaving and spinning which her handmaids are to perform.
The merits of the wife, as summed up in the epitaphs of the middle classes, are those of “good counsellor, good manager, and good worker in wool." She walks or is carried abroad at her pleasure, attends the public games in the Circus, and goes with her husband to dinner-parties, where she reclines at the meal just as he does. When her tutelage is past she can take actions in the law-courts, or appear as witness or surety. Her property is at her own disposal, and she instructs her own agent or attorney.
It is only necessary that she should guard the honour of her husband. So long as he trusts her he will not interfere. It is only a very tyrannical spouse who will insist that her litter or sedan-chair shall have the curtains drawn when in the streets. We will assume that Marcia is a lady of the true Roman self-respect and dignity, and that Silius and she live a life of reasonable harmony.
But though there were many such Marcias, there were other women of a very different character. There is, for instance, Flavia, who has a perfect frenzy for ''manly" sports, and practises all manner of athletic exercises, wrestling and fencing like any man, and perhaps becoming infatuated and practically running away with some brawny but hideous gladiator. She also indulges frankly in mixed bathing.
There is Domitia, who is too fond of promenading in the colonnades and temples, where a cavaliere servente, ostensibly her business man—though he does not look like it—may regularly be seen carrying her parasol. When at home, she neglects her attire and plasters her face with dough in order to smooth out the wrinkles, so that she may give to anybody but her own family the benefit of her beauty.
There is the ruinously extravagant Pollia, whose passion for jewels and fine clothes runs her deeply into debt, for which, fortunately, her husband is not responsible.
There is Canidia, who is shrewdly suspected of having poisoned more than one husband and who has either divorced or been divorced by so many that she has had eight of them in five years, and dates events by them instead of in the regular way by the consulships: ''Let me see. That was in the year in which I was married to So- and-So."
There is Asinia, whose selfishness is so great, and her affection so frivolous, that she will weep over a sparrow and "let her husband die to save her lap-dog's life." All these women are most likely childless, and many a noble Roman house threatens to become extinct.
There are others, again, whose foibles are more innocent. Baebia, for example, is merely a victim to superstition. She is always consulting the astrologers, the witches, and the dream-readers; she is devoted to the mystic worship of the Egyptian Isis, with its secret rites of purification, or she is a proselyte to the pestilent notions of the Jews. She is too much under the influence of some squalid Oriental who carries his pedlar's basket, or whose business is to buy broken glass for sulphur matches.
Meanwhile Corellia is a blue-stocking, as bad as a préceuse with a salon. As soon as you sit down to table she begins to quote Homer and Virgil and to compare their respective merits. She cultivates bright conversation in both Greek and Latin, and her tongue goes loudly and incessantly like a bell or gong. Her poor husband is never permitted to indulge in an expression which is not strictly grammatical. Worse still, she probably even writes little poems of her own. She may keep a tame tutor in philosophy, but she makes no scruple about interrupting his lesson on morals while she writes a little billet-doux.
Pomponia is an ambitious woman, whose mania is to interfere in elections by bringing to bear upon the senators what has been called in recent times the ''duchesses'” influence. If her husband becomes governor of a province, she will endeavour to be the power behind the throne, and her meddling will in any case prove harmful to, the strict administration of justice.
The remedy in such cases was divorce. In the lower orders of society a mild personal castigation was quite legal and probably not uncommon; but then in these lower orders divorce was by no means so convenient. Among the upper classes its frequency made it scarcely a matter of remark. Nothing like it has been seen until modem America. There was no need of an appeal to the courts or of a decree nisi; there was not even need of a specific plea, although naturally one would be offered in most cases.
The husband or wife (or the wife's father, if she had one), might send a formal and witnessed notice declaring the marriage dissolved, or, as it was called, breaking the marriage lines.'' The man had only to take this step and say with due deliberation ''Take your own property"—or, as the satirist puts it, "pack up your traps"—”give up the keys, and begone." The woman on her side need only give similar notice and ''take her departure."
The only check lay in family considerations, in public opinion, which was extremely lenient, in financial convenience, or in the possibility of particularly wanton conduct being so disapproved in high quarters that a senator or a knight might perhaps find his name missing from the list of his order at the next revision.
It has appeared necessary to give this darker side of the social picture, for, though assuredly not so lurid as might be gathered from the moralists, it was dark enough. For obvious reasons it is desirable not to elaborate. It is perhaps more profitable, as well as refreshing, to consider the brighter side. That there were noble women and good wives, and that the froth and scum and dregs of idle town-life did not make up the existence of the contemporary Roman world, may be seen from passages like the following, which are either quoted or condensed from a letter of Pliny concerning a lady named Arria.
The events belong to the reign of Nero's predecessor Claudius. Pliny writes: "Her husband, Caecina Paetus, was ill; so also was her son; and it was expected that both would die. The son, an extremely handsome and modest youth, succumbed. His mother arranged for his funeral and carried it out, the husband meanwhile being kept in ignorance. Not only so, but every time she came into his room she pretended that the son was alive and better, and very often, when he asked how the boy was getting on, she answered, ‘He has slept well, and shown a good appetite.’ Then, when the tears which she had so long kept back proved too much for her, she used to leave the room and give herself up to grief. When at last she had dried her eyes and composed her countenance she returned to the room.''
When her husband had taken part in an intended revolt against Claudius, he was to be carried as a prisoner across the Adriatic to Rome. ''He was on the point of embarking, when Arria begged the soldiers to take her on board with him. 'I presume,' she said, 'you mean to allow an ex-consul a few attendants of some kind, to give him his food, and to put on his clothes and shoes. I will do all that myself.'" Her request being refused, "she hired a fishing-smack and followed the big vessel in this tiny one." When Claudius ordered the husband to put himself to death, Arria took a dagger, stabbed herself in the breast, drew the weapon out, and handed it to him with the words: "Paetus, it does not hurt. It is what you are about to. do that hurts."
Arria doubtless is a rare type of heroine. But also of the quiet domesticated wife we have a description from the same writer. Unfortunately the letter is one of the most priggish of all the rather self-complacent epistles written by that thoroughly respectable and estimable man; but that fact takes nothing from the information for which we are looking.
Pliny is writing to his own wife's aunt. ''You will be very glad to learn that Calpurnia is turning out worthy of her father, of yourself, and of her grandfather. She has admirable sense and is an excellent housekeeper; she is fond of me, which speaks well for her character. Through her affection for me she has also developed a taste for literature. She possesses my books and is always reading them; she even learns them by heart. When I am to make a speech in court, she is all anxiety; when I have made it, she is all joy. She arranges a string of messengers to let her know what effect I produce, what applause I win, and what result I have obtained. If I give a reading, she sits in the next room behind a curtain and listens greedily to the compliments paid to me. She even sets my verses to music and sings them to the harp, with no professional to teach her, but only love, who is the best of masters. I have therefore every reason to hope that our harmony will not only last but grow greater every day."
And all this time, away in the country homestead and cottage, the good Marsian or Sabine mother is a veritable pattern of domestic probity and discipline. If she possesses handmaids, she teaches them their work in the kitchen or at the loom; if she possesses none, she brings up her big daughters in the right ways of modesty, frugality, and obedience to the gods; and her tall sons religiously obey her when she sends them out to chop the firewood in the rain and cold of the mountain-side.
One subject of perpetual interest where women are concerned is that of dress and personal appearance. The Roman woman emphatically pursued the cult of beauty and personal adornment. Perhaps the first prayer which a mother offered for an expected daughter was that she should be beautiful. Whether she proved so or not, no pains were spared to correct or supplement the work of nature. It is true that fashion, except in the dressing of hair, underwent none of those rapid and astonishing changes which perplex the unsophisticated male of to-day.
Above all, there were no hats. But all that gold and jewels, colours—blue, green, yellow, violet—and varied stuffs—woollen, linen, muslin, and silk—could do for dress was done by every typical woman of means; and every device for improving the complexion, the teeth, the hair, the height, and the figure—which, by the way, never sought the wasplike waist—was fully exploited. We need not go too closely into details. It will be enough to describe the ordinary attire and the ordinary methods of beautification.
The conventional indoor dress consisted of, first, an inner tunic, short and sleeveless, with a band passing over or under the breast, so as to produce something resembling what is called the Empire figure; second, an outer tunic of linen or half-silk, less often of whole silk, which fell to the feet. The outer tunic was fastened on the shoulders with brooches; it had sleeves over the upper arm, and, in the case of adults but not of young girls, a flounce or furbelow at the bottom.
A girdle produced a fold under the breast. The garment was commonly white, but might be bordered with coloured fringes and embroidery; for ladies of senatorial rank it bore the broad stripe worked in purple or gold. On the feet sandals were often worn, but for out-of-doors these were replaced by soft shoes of white, coloured, or gilded leather, sometimes studded with pearls or other gems.
When a lady left the house she threw over the indoor dress a large mantle or shawl, much resembling the toga of the men, except that its colour was apparently what she pleased. This article was passed over the left shoulder and under the right arm, which was left free; it then fell in graceful folds to the feet. Works of art show that a fold of the shawl was frequently laid over the top and back of the head, for which no less becoming covering had yet been introduced.
The hair alone was subject to innumerable vagaries either of fashion or of individual taste. It might have a parting or no parting; it might be plaited over the head and fastened by jewelled tortoise-shell combs, or by pins of ivory, silver, or bronze with jewelled heads, as varied and ornamental as the modern hatpin; it might be carried to the back and rest in a knot on the neck, where it was bound with ribbons; it might be piled into a huge pyramid or ''towers of many stories," so that a woman often looked tall in front and appeared quite a different person at the back; it might be encased in a coloured cloth or in a net of gold thread, for which poorer people substituted a bladder.
But in all cases it was preferred that the hair should be wavy, and this was a matter which was attended to by a special coiffeur kept among the slaves. No handmaid had a harder or more ungrateful task than the tiring-woman, who built up and fastened the reluctant locks while the mistress contemplated the effect in her bronze or silver mirror. There was no rule for a woman's treatment of herself in this respect.
“Consult your mirror,” is the advice of the poet Ovid, who has hopelessly lost all count of styles, since they were “more numerous than the leaves on the oak or the bees on Hybla." To full dress belonged a coronal or tiara, consisting of a band of gold and precious stones.
But who shall dare to speak of the jewellery that bedecked a Roman matron en grande tenue—of the pearl and pendant earrings, the necklaces of pearl and diamonds, the gold snake armlets with their emerald eyes, the bangles and finger-rings, the brooches and buckles on the shoulders and down the sleeves, the gems scattered among the hair, the chains and châtelaines strung with all manner of glittering articles?
Says one who lived at the time: “I have seen Lollia Paulina covered with emeralds and pearls gleaming all over her head, hair, ears, neck, and fingers to the value of over £300,000." If Rome is the eternal city, it is eternal in this respect at least as much as in any other.
Who, still more bold, shall pry into her apparatus for the beautification of her person, examining her patch-box and the innocent little pots of rouge, vermilion, and white lead for the complexion, and of soot to rub under the eyes? Who shall scrutinise too closely that delicate blue which tinges her temples? Who shall dare to question whether that yellow hair of the most approved tone, then best seen in Germany, grew where you find it or came from some head across the Rhine? Who shall venture to ask whether that smooth skin was preserved by her wearing last night a mask of meal, which she washed off this morning with asses' milk
Petronius, indeed, says that the ''lady takes her eyebrows out of a little box," and probably Petronius knew. For her artificial teeth there is an obvious and sensible excuse, and it is no reproach to her if, as the poet declared, ''she puts her teeth aside at night, just as she does her silks." Probably she scents herself far too heavily, but there are many Roman men who are just as bad.
She is ready now for all emergencies, and we may leave her, sitting in her long-backed cushioned chair, waving in one hand a fan of peacock's feathers or of thin wood covered with gold-leaf, and holding in the other a ball of amber or glass to keep her hands cool and dry.
Tucker, T. G. Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul. The Macmillan Company, 1910.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
