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Perceptions of Women's Power in the Late Republic: Terentia, Fulvia, And

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Perceptions of Women's Power in the Late Republic: Terentia, Fulvia, And 26 Perceptions of Women’s Power in the Late Republic: Terentia, Fulvia, and the Generation of 63 BCE T. Corey Brennan A case can be made, in the instance of an important subgroup of elite women in Republican Rome, for “a generation of 63 BCE”—the year of Cicero’s consulship and the Catilinarian conspiracy. If we take our sources at their word, the initiative of a small coterie of priestesses and magistrates’ wives set in motion a series of events that would do much to pull some of the last remaining threads out of the seriously frayed social fabric of the late Republic. The full story to be sure has to be significantly more complex. But let us start our analysis—which ultimately aims to illuminate the emergence in Roman life and politics over the next decades of powerful women such as Fulvia, then later Octavia, even Cleopatra—by looking at what we are given. 1 Women’s Indirect Influence in Roman Politics: The Case of Terentia If a single incident, more than any other, sheds light on the social and political dynamics of that earlier generation, it would be one that caught the attention of Plutarch and Dio Cassius. It has to do with the portent of a supernaturally rekindled flame at the Bona Dea ceremony of the night of December 3/4 in 63 BCE. Cicero was then one of Rome’s two consuls, and, thanks to his magistracy, by tradition the rite was taking place at his home. Yet it was a ceremony that only women could rightfully attend. Now, as it happens, Cicero had just arrested some very-high-status members of the Catilinarian conspiracy, and he was spending the night outside the house, weighing advice on what to do. Back at his own home, the Vestal Virgins who were present at the ceremony interpreted the weird flame sign, and advised the consul’s wife Terentia to buck up Cicero in regard to state affairs. Terentia then took the lead in inciting her husband against the Catilinarian conspirators. Copyright © 2012. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved. All rights Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. © 2012. John Copyright A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, First Edition. Edited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James, and Sheila Dillon, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=837573. Created from washington on 2020-11-11 00:39:05. Perceptions of Women’s Power in the Late Republic 355 So we are told (Plut. Cic. 20; Dio 37.35; cf. [Sall.] Inv. In Tull. 3). But there seems to be a decent factual basis for the basic outlines of this story. In an autobiographical poem, Cicero recounted a very similar flame portent that Terentia observed while sacrificing the previous year, which was interpreted as a sign that her husband would reach the consulship in the upcoming elections. Another source, the near-contemporary Greek historian Diodorus, recounted how a certain Fulvia (not the famous one discussed below), who learned of the Catilinarians’ designs through pillow talk, chose first to approach Terentia with the news of the conspiracy (Diod. 40.5 with Sall. Cat. 23, 26, 28; Flor. 2.12.6; Plut. Cic. 16). There are ample parallels in the Republic for women making use of an informal network of women in this way. One thinks of Livy’s tale of how allegedly in 186 BCE the consul Postumius learned of a massive Bacchanalian conspiracy only through the grapevine that led to his mother-in-law. More contemporary and to the point, in a letter of December 62 BCE, Cicero tells his friend P. Sestius how effective Sestius’ wife had been in lobbying Terentia on the matter of his provincial assignment (Cic. Fam. 5.6.1). Now, Plutarch cites Cicero himself as describing Terentia as a woman “by nature neither at all meek nor timorous but ambitious and, as Cicero himself says, taking a larger role in his political affairs than she shared with him in domestic matters” (Plut. Cic. 20). Plutarch had at hand something by Cicero that is now lost, but the remark about domestic matters hints that Cicero had written these remarks after he divorced his wife in 47 BCE. There are a sizable number of ancient passages like this; that is, generalizing statements in our sources on women taking indirect part in public life in the Republic and earlier empire. Others evidently criticized Terentia more roundly for her prominent role in the events connected with the quashing of the Catilinarian conspiracy. One hostile tradition, which comes to us only in a late source, asserted that Cicero conducted trials in his house, with the aid of Terentia ([Sall.] In Tull. 3), after the crisis had passed. That seems too much to swallow, and may be a retrojection of the type of gossip that later swirled around the emperor Claudius, with the type of notorious bedroom trial heard before his wife Messalina. But Plutarch is quite insistent that in 61 BCE Terentia gratuitously inserted herself into the most high-profile legal process of the day. This is the trial that the notorious Publius Clodius faced for sacrilege. Specifically, he had dressed as a woman and slipped into the annual celebration of the Bona Dea ceremony that followed the one with the dramatic flame portent. One can see why Terentia would not want the first anniversary of her greatest public moment turned into a joke (or worse). However, Plutarch supplies a different, and startling, motive: Terentia was jealous of the defendant’s sister, Clodia—to be considered another member of the “generation of 63”—who had romantic designs upon the orator. And so she forced Cicero to testify against Clodius. More than one scholar has dismissed this anecdote as “hardly credible” (Carp 1981: 354 n. 32). Yet the passage is quite detailed and unequivocal. Plutarch says: Now, Cicero was a friend of Clodius, and in the affair of Catiline had found him a most eager co-worker and guardian of his person; but when Clodius replied to the charge against him [in the Bona Dea trial] by insisting that he had not even been in Rome at the time, but had been fi Copyright © 2012. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved. All rights Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. © 2012. John Copyright staying in places at the farthest remove from there, Cicero testi ed against him, declaring that Clodius had come to his house and consulted him on certain matters; which was true. (Plut. Cic. 29) A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James, and Sheila Dillon, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=837573. Created from washington on 2020-11-11 00:39:05. 356 Women in a Cosmopolitan World: the Hellenistic and Late Republican Periods Indeed, the statement that it was Cicero who blew Clodius’ alibi finds ample corroboration elsewhere. Plutarch continues: However, it was thought that Cicero did not give his testimony for the truth’s sake, but by way of defense against the charges of his own wife Terentia. For there was enmity between her and Clodius on account of his sister Clodia, whom Terentia thought to be desirous of marrying Cicero and to be contriving this with the aid of a certain Tullus [i.e., as a go-between] So, being a woman of harsh nature, and having sway over Cicero, she incited him to join in the attack upon Clodius and give testimony against him. (Plut. Cic. 29) If Terentia was indeed involved and the motivation is true, this certainly would explain much about the tone of the Pro Caelio of 56 BCE. That speech could almost more accurately be called the In Clodiam, for it is in essence a prolonged attack on the woman rather than a defense of Cicero’s male client Caelius, who was actually on trial. Yet the immediate results of the Bona Dea process of 61 BCE were disastrous for Cicero and his family. Clodius bribed the jurors lavishly and escaped condemnation, became (in 59 BCE) a plebeian and a tribune, and immediately used that office to send Cicero into exile (in 58 BCE), ostensibly for his handling of the Catilinarians. Things became pressing for Terentia, who stayed behind in the city to look after her husband’s affairs and, of course, to lobby for his return to Rome. Such shared concerns—such as house management and the care of children—were traditional and legitimate. But Clodius used Terentia’s presence in Rome to humiliate Cicero in his absence. At one point we hear that she even sought refuge at the Temple of Vesta—evidently seeking aid from her half-sister Fabia, the Vestal Virgin— only to find herself led away to face a hostile Clodius and perhaps also some of his fellow plebeian tribunes. In seeking out her Vestal half-sister, Terentia must have been desperate. Fabia does not seem to have played a very large role in the lives of either Cicero or Terentia—perhaps because Fabia had been put on trial in 73 BCE on the enormously serious charge of incestum (i.e., sexual relations involving a Vestal Virgin), with L. Sergius Catilina as co-defendant. The prosecutor was none other than Clodius. The trial resulted in acquittal for both Fabia and Catiline. P. Clodius later reproached her for it, all the same.
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