PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/157770 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-09-29 and may be subject to change. WOMEN AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE LATE ROMAN REPUBLIC AND THE EARLY EMPIRE Cornelis Willem van Galen 1 WOMEN AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE LATE ROMAN REPUBLIC AND THE EARLY EMPIRE Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus volgens het besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op maandag 30 mei 2016 om 12.30 uur precies. door Cornelis Willem van Galen geboren op 21 oktober 1971 te Haarlem WOMEN AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE LATE ROMAN REPUBLIC AND THE EARLY EMPIRE Cornelis Willem van Galen Promotoren Prof. dr. O.J. Hekster Prof. dr. W.H.M. Jansen Copromotor Dr. G. de Kleijn-Eijkelestam Manuscriptcommissie Prof. dr. H.L.E. Verhagen Prof. dr. L. de Ligt (Universiteit Leiden) Dr. L.B.N. van den Hengel (Universiteit Maastricht) 5 Voor alle mensen die ondanks ingebouwde tegenstand iets moois van hun leven hebben gemaakt. En voor één van hen in het bijzonder. Artwork cover Building Blocks (1997) by Kumi Yamashita Collection of Boise Art Museum, Idaho USA Design thesis Tessa Dix, Dix Design, Heijen Print Print Rendement, Beuningen English text editor Matthew Bladen, Oxford CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The past is a foreign country, they think things differently there. Hartley (1953) 1, slightly adjusted What the law says people may do, as we must constant remind ourselves, is not necessarily the same as what they actually do. Gardner (1986) 5 People aren’t just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances Pratchett (2010) 314 8 TABLE OF CONTENT Preface 13 3.3 Property and inheritance 109 Property rights 110 Chapter 1 Introduction 19 Intestate inheritance 113 1.1 Hortensia and the triumvirs 20 Inheritance through wills 116 1.2 Aim and research questions 25 3.4 Conclusion 119 Sub-questions 27 1.3 Background of the research 29 Chapter 4 The familia in Roman society 123 Relevance of the research 29 4.1 The familia and the public life of the elite 126 Premises 31 A magistrate and his father 128 Sources used and their limitations 34 Public authority and private persuasion 130 1.4 Conceptual framework 38 Negotiations going wrong: Perpetua and her father 132 Model 1: power relations within relationships 38 4.2 The familia outside of the elite 136 Model 2: discourse on social change 41 Sons and stepmothers 138 Gender and notions of kinship and inheritance 42 The familia as a template 140 1.5 Structure of the thesis 45 The Empire and the familia 142 4.3 The demographic regime 144 Chapter 2 Roman citizenship 47 High mortality regime 144 2.1 The different sides of citizenship 50 Demography and perception 146 2.2 The private side of citizenship 54 Roman literature and demography 149 2.3 Critique on a legalistic interpretation of private citizenship 60 4.4 Residence pattern: familia and household 151 2.4 Citizenship terminology in Roman sources 63 Nuclear household and multiple family household 152 Sources used in the overview 63 Literary and archaeological sources on household composition 156 Civis and populus 65 Residence pattern and bargaining power of Roman women 162 Quiris and quirites 67 4.5 Conclusion: Familia, life expectancy and household 164 Pater familias 68 Matrona, vidua and mater familias 71 Chapter 5 A change in marital tradition: a case study 169 Results of the overview 73 5.1 A freedom abhorred by women 171 2.5 Conclusion: the meaning of citizenship 75 5.2 Roman marriage in the early Republic 174 5.3 The third and second centuries BC 176 Chapter 3 Sui iuris: women and the familia 79 5.4 The first century BC until the end of the Republic 181 A contested will 80 5.5 The Augustan marriage laws 186 3.1 The Roman familia 83 5.6 Conclusion 190 Ulpian and the meaning of familia 85 The familia as a corporate group and a patrilineage 91 Conclusion 193 3.2 women and the familia 95 Appendix: Indicators of time 201 Joining and leaving the familia 96 Bibliography 205 Roman marriage 100 Nederlandse samenvatting 223 Marriage, manus and the familia 103 Curriculum vitae 229 10 11 PREFACE PREFACE A few years ago, I discussed the demography of ancient Rome in an undergraduate seminar for To write this thesis was a demanding task. As a social historian working in the field of students in the classics. I asked the students to read a recent paper on ancient demography ancient history and the classics who has tried to include relevant perspectives from gender and to comment on the way that the argument was constructed within this paper. Looking at studies, law, psychology and anthropology in his work, I have often doubted my own capacity Roman history from a quantitative point of view certainly took the students out of their comfort to interpret all information and to understand all viewpoints which are relevant to this project. zone. Most students were baffled by the paper. They were put off by the sheer number of I persevered all the same, because it is my opinion that a research subject like this demands figures, tables and graphs. such a broad interpretation. This is not a subject for a detailed study, a finely drawn miniature One student, however, was not deterred by the calculations. She looked at the actual sketch. This is a subject for a work like Building Blocks by Kumi Yamashita, the artwork on the sources used in the text and was amazed to find out that in the whole paper, which was over front of this thesis. By combining a large number of different blocks and putting them in the twenty pages long, only six ancient sources were referred to, of which only four were central to right light, elements which at first sight seem unrelated to each other can reveal the vague the argument. Based on the interpretation of these four small fragments, a demographic model outlines of the position of women as Roman citizens, when viewed together. and a lot of secondary literature the writer had built his argument. What the student discovered There will certainly be mistakes in this thesis, but I hope readers will also find some was that in the end it was not the author’s calculations which were central to the paper, but the interesting insights on the position of Roman women and Roman citizenship. Whether they way in which the writer had interpreted the four small fragments. Since the fragments referred agree or disagree with my views on the underlying nature of Roman society, I look forward to to numbers of citizens, this meant his interpretation of what a citizen was in the context of these the discussions which may follow. sources. The rest of the paper was mainly an elaboration based on this interpretation. This does not only hold true for that specific paper. The whole debate on the Roman Acknowledgments census figures can be seen as essentially a discussion on the interpretation of what Roman citizenship meant in the context of the Roman census. The definition of citizenship chosen determines to a large extent the outcome of any calculations based on the census figures. This The writing of this thesis would not have been possible without the support and encouragement is the reason why there is such a wide range of different possible outcomes, based on the same of numerous people and institutions. I want to thank the NWO, whose PhDs in the Humanities sources. This is also the case for the interpretation of the corn dole recipients in Rome: time program made my PhD project possible. I also want to thank the Radboud University Nijmegen and again, it is not the calculations which are central, but the underlying discussion on the for its cooperative attitude and the chances it has offered me by giving me the possibility to meaning of citizenship in the Roman context. combine a PhD with work as a lecturer at the university. Other institutions which supported my research over the years are the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome (KNIR), the Erasmus Life Long It is my aim to contribute to this underlying discussion. I want to know who counted as Learning Program, the research school for the Classics OIKOS and the Institute for Gender a Roman citizen in the context of the interaction between citizens and Roman magistrates. I am Studies at Radboud University, where I was able to kick start my PhD project at the Centre for especially interested in the position of women as citizens, because they are often overlooked PhD Research. Finally, I want to thank the Classics departments of the University of Oxford and in discussions on public citizenship, yet they were presumably relevant enough to be counted the University of Reading for the opportunity to work temporarily at these fine institutions. during the census and in the census figures, at least according to the generally accepted Beloch-Brunt interpretation and the interesting new interpretation put forward by Saskia Hin a Although institutions provided the framework for my research, it is the people I worked few years ago. Moreover, I wondered whether research into female citizenship could tell us with who really made my PhD project into such a motivating experience. I especially want to more about the nature of Roman citizenship in general.