I Glorified Daughters the Glorification of Daughters on Roman Epitaphs
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Glorified Daughters The Glorification of Daughters on Roman Epitaphs A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Amanda Kelley May, 2013 i © Copyright by Amanda Kelley 2012 All Rights Reserved ii Thesis written by Amanda Kelley B.S., B.A., Kent State University, 2010 M.A.T., Kent State University, 2011 M.A., Kent State University, 2013 Approved by Dr. Brian K. Harvey, Advisor Dr. Keiran Dunne, Chair of Modern & Classical Languages Associate Dean Raymond Craig, College of Arts and Sciences iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Mourning......................................................................................................................... 1 The Public and Private Value of Children ...................................................................... 7 Traditional View of Women ......................................................................................... 12 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 15 CHAPTER 1 INSCRIPTION INCLUSION DETAILS ..................................................16 CHAPTER 2 DESCRIPTORS .........................................................................................24 CHAPTER 3 SUPERLATIVES ......................................................................................35 CHAPTER 4 DEDICATORS ..........................................................................................47 Examples of Other Dedicators ...................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER 5 DEATH AGE OVERAGES ......................................................................58 CHAPTER 6 MARRIAGEABLE AGE ..........................................................................65 CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................................73 APPENDICES ...................................................................................................................76 iv Appendix A: Typical Inscriptions Across All Age Ranges ......................................... 76 Appendix B: Inscriptions with “GR” or “HEBR” ....................................................... 79 Appendix C: Inscriptions Featuring Multiple Daughters ............................................. 80 Appendix D: Inscriptions with Age Overages ............................................................. 88 Appendix E: Inscriptions Featuring Daughters of Marriageable Age ......................... 93 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................94 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Percentage of Pia Used Across the Age Ranges ............................................... 26 Figure 2: Average Number of Superlatives Used ............................................................. 37 Figure 3: Dulcissima Percentages Related to Total Superlative Percentages ................... 38 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Descriptors .......................................................................................................... 25 Table 2:Other Descriptors Occurring More Than Once ................................................... 29 Table 3: Unique Descriptors in Each Age Range ............................................................. 30 Table 4: Superlative Percentages Related to Total Superlatives ...................................... 36 Table 5: Occurrence of Superlatives Across the Ages ...................................................... 40 Table 6: Most Frequently Seen Dedicators by Age Range ............................................... 48 Table 7: Break Down of Less Common Dedicators by Age Range ................................. 50 Table 8: Descriptors and Dedicators Used for Engaged Girls .......................................... 69 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In primis Meo Consultori summas gratias volo agere I would like to express my appreciation to my advisor, Dr. Brian K. Harvey, for not only providing me the inspiration in his epigraphy class to pursue this, but also for his patience and advice that provided me with the tools I needed to complete this work. Next I wish to thank the members of my committee who were so willing to work with me and give encouragement. For my dear friend Heather Moser, who provided me with the sounding board I needed to work through any difficulties. And finally, to my family and friends, who supported me and listened even when they had no clue as to what I was talking about. viii INTRODUCTION How do you give the right amount of justice to a child who has died prematurely? What aspects of a girl’s life are portrayed on her funerary inscription? How does one judge the accomplishments of a child’s life? These are all questions I asked myself concerning the death of a child in ancient Rome. Adult tombs and inscriptions are more common and there is more epigraphic evidence of them, and so I was curious to know what the inscriptions of children looked like. Inscriptions typically describe adults in terms of their virtues, but what virtues were attributed to children? If virtues tend to be mentioned more often on epitaphs of adults, then how were children described on their tombstones? I also wanted to look at female children in particular because Roman society was dominated by males, and almost all Roman literary and historical documents which have survived view the world from a male perspective. In this thesis, I will show that Roman funerary inscriptions describing girls under the age of 20 follow patterns based on age and traditional values of Roman society. I will specifically be looking at characteristics in the inscriptions such as descriptors, dedicators, and other unusual qualities. Mourning The life expectancy for a female child in ancient Rome was relatively low. The mortality rate for girls by age one was between 23-30%; an additional 16-21% died by 1 2 age 5, so by the time all female newborns reached age 10, 39-51% had already died.1 The causes of the high mortality rate included poor nutrition, the spread of contagious disease, unsanitary living conditions, especially in densely populated areas, and gastrointestinal sicknesses.2 Due to the possibility of death many parents distanced themselves from their children. “… this distance may also have served as a kind of collective defense mechanism, whereby the emotional burden in the case of a child’s death (a common occurrence in ancient Rome) did not fall on the parents’ shoulders alone.”3 Despite the tendency to distance themselves, nevertheless some parents still chose to memorialize their child’s short life with a tomb inscription. It would appear, though, that children are seriously underrepresented in these epitaphs. On the basis of estimated infant death rates, we would expect almost 20 per cent of epitaphs to be in memory of young children, while in reality just 0.4 per cent are. But an entirely different picture emerges if one considers only those epitaphs that specify the age of the deceased person … Approximately 27 per cent are intended for children under the age of 10. Moreover, the age of such young children is often specified meticulously, down to the month and the day, and sometimes even the time of death. … What is more, on the limited space that the stone offered, the statement of an exact age publicly expressed the care that the parents had shown their child. It was a brief and ossified 1 Saller 1994, p. 23-25. 2 Saller 1994, p. 21. 3 Laes 2011, p. 100. 3 expression of their grief and unfulfilled expectations.4 The inscription was the commemoration to the child by grieving parents. In the catalog of inscriptions I deal with here, the grief experienced by some parents was clearly spelled out on the inscription. “The reality is that we find thousands of testimonies on tombstones for children, spread out across the Empire, regarding the material and emotional investment of parents in their prematurely deceased children.”5 Many inscriptions contained expressions of grief from the dedicators who survived. D(is) M(anibus) Iul(ius) Victor Martial(is) f(ilius) ob(itus) an(norum) LV Bessa Iuvenis f(ilia) ux(or) (obita) an(norum) XLV Novella Essibni f(ilia) ob(ita) a(nnorum) XVIII Victorinus parentib(us) et coniugi et Victorinae fil(iae) fecit qui per luem vita functi sunt Mamertino et Rufo co(n)s(ulibus) et Aur(elio) Iustino fratri mil(iti) leg(ionis) II Ital(icae) stipend(iorum) X |(obito) 4 Laes 2011, p. 104. 5 Laes 2011, p. 102. 4 a(nnorum) XXX6 “To the spirits of the dead; Julius Victor, son of Martialis, died at the age of 55; Bessa, daughter of Juvenis, his wife, died at the age of 45; Novella, daughter of Essibnus died at the age of 18; Victorinus made this for his parents, and his wife and his daughter Victorina