Under Pompeii’s Ashes:
Contesting Roman Identities
1/24 Course Aims&goals Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol This week: social identities and class
• Enslaved people • Women • Discussion: Pompeii and the usable past Enslaved people in the Roman world
• Roman familia • Presenting ancient enslaved people • Slaves in Pompeii and the Roman world • Freedmen in Pompeii and the Roman world • Reception and use of ancient slavery in the American Civil War The Familia
• Reflection society • Patriarchal • elder Cato and Cicero: social reality? • nuclear family/extended family • Marriage: women around 15, men around 25 • Property • Gens, familia, domus
British Museum Exhibition
• “Recent research suggests that as many as half the people of Herculaneum, and almost certainly of Pompeii, too, were former slaves. Social mobility was built into the Roman way of life at the time.” • "Downton Abbey is quite a nice comparison," • Lupanar
The Brothel, VII.12.18
• Graffiti feminine names of Greek origin • Painted sex acts above the door
Enslaved people
• All over the Mediterranean, not related to race, sometimes even offspring were sold into slavery • Had different social positions in Roman society • Could control property in the form of the peculium • Manumission • Saturnalia
Social classes and archaeology
• finding the material culture of slaves in ceramics, artifact assemblages, houses, and graffiti based on identifiable ethnic markers • not just look for material traces that uniquely and exclusively belonged to enslaved men and women Enslaved people in the archaeological record • Invisible • Property slaves who are included in lists of tableware, clothes, furniture, and tools in both legal and literary • Strategies, power and resistance • Choreography • Control of space Casa del Fauno(VI.12.6)
Casa di Ceii/Casa di Amorini Dorati Slaves in the house
• Menial and administrative jobs, food preparation, cleaning, cloth production • Kitchen ware, loom weights, • Kitchens, stables • Own familia (not allowed to marry officially) slaves of one household
tasks
• When we see these slaves, they are identified by their tasks, by what they do, or by their place:
• the doorkeeper (ostiarius), cook (cocus), meat carver (structor),hairdresser (ornatrix), attendant (pedisequus), bedchamber servant (cubicularius), provisioner(cellarius), litter bearer (lecticarius), child nurse (nutrix), child attendant (paedagogus),name caller (nomenclator), steward (dispensator), servant who cleaned and maintained the house (atriensis), waiter (ministrator), kitchen gardener (holitor), ornamental gardener (topiarius)
House of Venus in Bikini I.11.6
• Leg irons cupboard
Graffiti • Advertizing slaves for sexual purposes • (on a water distribution tower) : Anyone who wants to defecate in this place is advised to move along. If you act contrary to this warning, you will have to pay a penalty. Children must pay [number missing] silver coins. Slaves will be beaten” • “Successus, a weaver, loves the innkeeper’s slave girl named Iris. She, however, does not love him.” • III.4.2 (House of the Moralist); 7698a: Let water wash your feet clean and a slave wipe them dry; let a cloth cover the couch; take care of our linens.” • VI.6.1 (House of the Olii; on the Via Consolare); 139: “ The city block of the Arrii Pollii in the possession of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius is available to rent from July 1st. There are shops on the first floor, upper stories, high-class rooms and a house. A person interested in renting this property should contact Primus, the slave of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius.” • "Methe, slave of Cominia, from Atella loves Chrestus. May Pompeian Venus be good to them both and may they always live in harmony.“
Funerary inscriptions
• By the owners • Necropolis outside porta nocera and porta Ercolano • Grave stelae with memorials to slaves (single greek names) Paintings
• Depicting slaves • Used by slaves: house shrines House of the triclinium
House of the Chaste lovers
House of the Caecilii (V.1.26)
Shrines
• House shrines: lararia • Separate for slaves, • Worshipping the guiding spirit (genius) of the pater familias • saturnalia House of Sutoria Primigenia (I.13.2),
Worship of the master
• Painting kitchen shrine- house I.13.2 Bakery, House of the Labyrinth , VI 11, 8-10
School for gladiators
• Iudus gladiatorus • Portico of the theatre • Kitchen utility, armor, 18 skeletons • Graffiti names and dueling opponents Manumission
• When slaves were freed they became liberti • Took his former master’s name (gens) • Became Roman citizen • Could not hold public offices (like women) • Could become very wealthy • Casa di vetti owned by freedmen, amphitheatre built by freedman Lucii libertus/a
Isis temple
“ Numerius Popidius Celsinus, son of Numerius, rebuilt at his own expense from its foundations, the Temple of Isis, which had collapsed in an earthquake; because of his generosity, although he was only six years old, the town councilors nominated him into their number free of charge” Use of Roman slavery
• Worse in Antiquity or better in Antiquity?
Abolistionists/confederates
• Confederates: Made the empire what it was • Abolitionists: Reliance on slaves corrupted Roman society, led to moral and political collapse of the Roman Republic • Aristotle: already criticism against slavery • Worse in antiquity – Not able to live together and have children • Better in Antiquity? – Less severe – Not racial Under Pompeii’s Ashes:
Contesting Roman Identities
1/24 Course Aims&goals Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol This week: social identities and class
• Monday: Enslaved people • Wednesday: Women • Friday: Discussion: Pompeii and the usable past Class
• Freeborn • Enslaved • Freed
The Familia
• Reflection society • Patriarchal • elder Cato and Cicero: social reality? • nuclear family/extended family • Marriage: women around 15, men around 25 • Property • Gens, familia, domus Women, gender and ‘engendering’
• Feminism and archaeology • Women in Pompeii
Feminism and archaeology
• Feminist archaeology • Focused on putting women in the archaeological record- • Necessary, but provided a very simplistic view of gender • Western projection
• It often focuses on gender, but also considers related factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. • From ‘looking for women’ to gender Biological essentialism Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity. Gender
• Gender identity is one's personal experience of one's own gender • Social construction • Male/female: transgender? – Ovid’s Tiresias was transformed from being a man into a woman and then back again – Elagabalus asks to be rid of his genitalia – Cinaedus (gender-fluid person with androgynous qualities)
Phaedrus: transgender soldier
"a barbarian threatening the troops of the military leader, Pompey the Great, all of the other soldiers were too afraid to challenge this fierce opponent until a cinaedus stepped forward to volunteer for combat." Women and class in archaeology
Invisible Problems of Evidence tangible evidence on women in the cities of Vesuvius is limited and fragmentary What does archaeology do?
Idealism and reality
The women of Pompeii Women
Free-born women in ancient Rome were citizens (cives), but could not vote or hold political office In comparison to Greece: more independence and freedom Right to own, inherit and sell property Not segregated from men in the homes Could attend races, theater, amphitheater (in separate sections) Etruscan women equal to men, literate, could vote and be elected
Women at work
• Asellina owned a tavern “I beg you to elect Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedile, worthy of public office. Aegle asks for this”
“I beg you to elect Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedile, worthy of public office. Maria asks for this” Women in election graffiti
although women could not stand for political office, 14.5 % of electoral graffiti are by women urging the support of candidates.
• ILS 6408a. I beg you to make Pupius duumvir. Appuleia with her neighbour Mustius (asks), and Narcissus asks you. • 6414 [written on bakery (?) wall]. We beg you to make M. Casellius and L. Albucius aediles. Statia and Petronia ask. Such citizens (would be?) in the city forever. • 6431a. I ask you to make A. Vettius Firmus aedile. He is worthy. Caprasia asks with Nymphius, together with the neighbours. (We) ask you to vote for him. • D'Avino, p.28. I beg you to make Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedile. I beg you to make L. Ceius Secundus duumvir. Recepta (asks), not without Talamus. • D'Avino, p.29. I beg you to make Ceius Secundus duumvir. Sutoria Primigenia with her family asks. Are you asleep, Astylus?
Women as Midwives Boys, are more easily delivered than girls.(6) According to Pliny, fumigations with the fat from hyaena loins produce immediate delivery for women in difficult labor; placing the right foot of a hyaena on the woman results in an easy delivery, but the left foot causes death.(7) A drink sprinkled with powdered sow's dung will relieve the pains of labor, as will sow's milk mixed with honey wine.(8) Delivery can also be eased by drinking goose semen mixed with water or "the liquids that flow from a weasel's uterus through its genitals”
Wealthy Women • Carry out duties as mater familias • Supervision of the household, slaves • Leisure and beauty jewelry and coins found with woman's skeleton outside Pompeii Tomb of Gaius Vestorius Priscus Porta Vesuvio Tomb of Gaius Vestorius Priscus
Tomb of Gaius Vestorius Priscus
To Gaius Vestorius Priscus, Aedile. He lived 22years. His burial place was granted along with2,000 sesterces for his funeral by decree of the town councilors. Mulvia Prisca, his mother, set thisup at [her own] expense
Freed women
• Freed women Liberti • Some freedwomen married well and established their own households • Naevoleia Tyche erected a tomb for her husband at the Ercolano Gate Freed women could own slaves
• Two wax tablets wrapped in cloth were found ,together with some silver vessels in the furnace area of the Palaestra Baths. They relate to a business deal between two women dating to AD 61. • A freedwoman Poppaea Note has borrowed money from Dicidia Margaris. As security she has temporarily transferred ownership of two of here slaves to her creditor. The tablet implies that Poppaea did default on her payment • “ Poppaea Note, freedwoman of Priscus, has sworn that the slaves Simplex and Petrinus are hers and that she owns them and that these slaves are not pledged to anyone, nor does she share them with anyone else………..” Powerful women
• Eumachia • Julia Felix
Eumachia
• public priestess of the Imperial cult in Pompeii during the middle of the 1st century AD • matron of the Concordia Augusta • matron of the fullers • Made her own fortune, married well
Eumachia
Inscriptions as evidence for the role of women Women were subservient to the paterfamilias
Eumachia, daughter of Lucius [Eumachius], public priestess, Religious roles in her own name and that of her son, Marcus independentMunistrius Fronto, built with her own funds the porch, covered passage, Political Architecture as self and collonade promotion promotion and dedicated them to Concordia Augusta [Peace] and ]. Womne to Pietas [Piety could own property Local elite expressed the and be loyalty to the Imperial family independe by imitation- see Livia statue ntly and dedication wealthy
Mamia- a Public priestess and woman of status
Inscription from a seat at the tomb of the public priestess Mamia, Porta Ercolano, Pompeii Tomb inscriptions of priestesses ILS 5053.1. Clodia A.f. sacerdos publica of Ceres, by decree of the city council.
5053.2. Lassia M.f. sacerdos publica of Ceres, by decree of the city council.
5053.5. Clodia A.f. (built) this monument at her own expense for herself and her heirs.
6369. For Mamia P.f. sacerdos publica. The burial place was given by decree of the city council.
6370. Istacidia N.f. Rufilla sacerdos publica.
6371. Alleia daughter of Cn. Maius, sacerdos publica of Venus and Ceres, by decree of the city council at public expense. Praedia Julia Felix
In praedi(i)s Iuliae Sp(uri) f(iliae) Felicis locantur balneum Venerium et nongentum tabernae pergulae cenacula ex Idibus Aug(ustis) primis in Aug(ustas) sextas annos continuos quinque
To let, in the estate of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius: elegant baths for respectable people, shops with upper rooms, and apartments. From the 13th August next, to the 13th August of the sixth year, for five continuous years. The lease will expire at the end of the five years.